I'm not sure if this counts, but the first thing I was ever taught to "cook" was frozen vegetables. I was 3, and my mom would put me on a stool in the kitchen, in front of the stove.

Unfortunately, "Eggs in a Basket", or "Birds Nests" as they were introduced to me as, were a nightmare for me as a kid. My babysitter would make them for all of the kids she was watching, and shoo away everyone who came to try and rescue me from a day spent sitting at the table, staring at it. If it wasn't scrambled, I wanted nothing to do with it! It was only with the introduction to Eggs Benedict about 3 years ago, that I was able to eat poached, or sunny-side up eggs!

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I made this recipe last weekend!! The family was out early, I was home alone with single egg in the fridge. We call this "Pirate Eye".

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Eggs are a good thing to start with; they're easy enough that you can build some confidence quickly, but you can always tell a good cook from a hack because they understand how subtle egg cookery really is...

P.S. It's actually spelled "pore" rather than "pour" - it's a reference to the act of concentrating on something so intently that you sweat!

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This was also one of my favorite meals to make as a kid! Possibility even my first. We called them "Pop-Eyes". It took me a while to learn the best technique, as my first few dozen were somewhat scorched. Low heat and a steady hand wins the race.

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Cracker Barrel has an egg-in-a-basket but it's not very good. It's missing something...it's a little bland...I think they use sourdough bread.

I always had this growing up and it's such a simple thing to make but the work:interesting ratio is very high. Now, I usually butter the actual bread, then cut the hole, then fry it all up. The trick too is, if you like runny egg like me, to make sure you don't cook the yolk!! :D

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The first thing I learned to cook was Welsh Rarebit.
This was the second. I learned it from my best friend's mother who called them "hole in the middle eggs." This dish has many other names: boxcars, toad in a hole, eggs in a hole. Recently, a friend told me that a friend of her parents,Gloria Swanson, called them "eggs a la Bogie" because her friend Humphry Bogart cooked them.
I'm a cook at Buddhist retreat centers an make both of these dishes regularly.

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Whatever it is I learned to cook first, it was probably thanks to Easy Bake Oven. I remember making mini-brownies a lot...I also remember my first attempts to make waffles. I might have been six years old at the time, and even though my mom helped me to mix the batter, my first try at waffles ended in a stinky, sloppy mess.

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My first cooking experience was cooking an egg for an egg sandwich. I was 3 1/2, I pulled a chair up to the stove so I could actually see the stove top, pulled the ever present cast iron skillet of bacon fat over the front burner, turned it on, set it for low, grabbed an egg out of the fridge, waited a bit for stuff to get hot, threw in the egg. I got the bread out (I didn't toast it, but that would have been trivial, it was an automatic Sunbeam - you just throw the bread in, the toaster toasts it) and got really pissed because there wasn't any of the white stuff to put on it (Miracle Whip). I made my sandwich anyway. I have no recollection if I put salt and pepper on it. I then went outside with it to go find my parents.

Yep, I cooked myself without any adult supervision. I turned off the stove, and put the chair back. The house did not catch on fire.

My parents originally thought I had mooched off one of the neighbors. They were a bit surprised when they got inside to find out that I had indeed cooked the sandwich myself. The one telling thing was the fact that I had left the skillet on the burner without putting it back on the rear burner.

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we call that egg on an island.

i remember very clearly the first thing i cooked...i was down the shore (wildwood nj) and my cousin and i had gotten back to the house before the grown ups....it was a 5 block walk and we were just faster than they were....we were also hungry and decided to make spaghetti...but since we werent allowed to turn on the stove we decided to break up the spaghetti and put it in a strainer and hold it under hot running water till it was done.....a long time later it was still crunchy but we put butter and parm cheese on it and ate it anyway.

the first thing i taught my kids to cook was chicken ala king....leftover cooked chicken, canned cream of mushroom soup, canned cream of chicken soup, canned peas, canned mushrooms, milk and salt and pepper....they still beg me to make that for their birthday meals.

the first thing i ever baked was a jewish apple cake and its the only thing i ever taught my kids to bake other than boxed brownies.

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We called that dish "Toad in the Hole" and then made French toast from the leftover circles.

Sunday brunch was a family ritual, and my brother and I became responsible for making the traditional breakfast fare early on. Pancakes, French toast, chipped beef on toast, Toad in the Holes...I still make them all!

Cookies, too, out of the "Betty Crocker Cooky Book" were our other early kitchen conquest.

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This was my favorite breakfast as a kid-- but we called it an "Egyptian Omelet". Toasting the bread circle in butter is the most delicious part.
I can't remember the first thing I learned how to cook, which is kinda sad. It was probably toast, if that counts.

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The first thing I ever remember cooking was an egg sandwich also (I was probably 6). The wierd thing is that the recipe came from -- Grover of Sesame Street. However, to this day it's why I make my own egg sandwiches with buttered bread.

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Amazingly.. i think my first recipe is the same one! It was a recipe in a homework assignment in the first grade and it was called a mexican hat egg. but it's the same thing! I still eat it till this day..

some good things never grow old!

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My mom used to make me eggs in a basket, but she called them pirate's eyes - the circle of toast covered the egg. This is one of my favorite breakfast foods still.

I don't remember what the first thing I cooked was, although I know by the age of 10, I was getting the chicken ready to go in the oven when I got home from school (my Dad got home early so was there to supervise).

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This has got to me my all time favorite way to cook an egg, mostly for nostalgic and emotional reasons. My brother and I always called them "Poppy Eggs." We thought this to be the universal term. When I was a little older, I realized we called them that because our Poppy made them for us. He and our Nana tought us how to cook them ourselves. I still make them at least once a week, and yes, the bread in the pan is the best part. Thanks for a wonderful memory, Marissa!

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We call those "Hole in ones", and make them with rye bread. Yum yum.

I have no idea what the first thing I cooked was, but my folks have photos of me in an adults apron that was longer than I was tall, standing on a step ladder using a butter knife to slice mushrooms for shrimp creole . . .

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This post evoked a beautiful, nostalgic moment for me, as it obviously did for you all. And I love the regional/national differences apparent as to our names for the dish (for the record, we called 'em 'Egg-In-The-Nest')! Anyhow, the first thing I recall making was the Velvet Crumb Cake from "Betty Crocker's Cookbook for Boys and Girls" -- I chose that recipe because of the name. I still have my original copy of this classic, by the way, and it's a first edition. Yes, youngsters, that dates me!

Spitz

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The first meal i remember cooking all by myself were eggs and beans - growing up in a mexican family, beans were a staple and we always had some fresh beans from the pot on hand - so it was on a wonderful chicago wintery day that i woke up to find my mother was still in bed and unable to feed her six kids before they went off to school - this really made me worried - so as soon as recess started - i jumped over the school fence and ran the four blocks home - i went straight into my mother's room and found she was still in bed and told her not to worry because i was going to make her some food so she could get better - i scrambled 4 eggs and fried some beans and warmed some tortillas and served them to her on a plate and then ran back to school where nobody missed me
what i didn't know was that my mother couldn't eat the food because i used too much oil to make it and it was too greasy - she ended up getting out of bed and fixing the meal into dinner by adding more eggs and potatoes and putting it in a nice gravy-type salsa and then fixing the beans up by adding various veggies and refrying them
but i'd been helping my mother in the kitchen as far back as i could remember - that just happens to be the first meal i made all by myself - i was six years old

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I have been discussing this dish with a few friends over the past week. We have discovered many names for it including UFO and Hole-in-One.

I am especially fond of letting my daughter choose the cookie cutter we remove the center of the bread with, and then putting the cut out bread in the toaster, then dusting it with powdered sugar.

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v31/Catamaul/UFO/

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