"Teach a man to fish." I've learned a lot of good recipes from services like Blue Apron. Having the ingredients prepped the first time you embark on a new recipe makes it way more approachable.
If I can't find something, at the end of the day, pretty much any piece of food seasoned and grilled will taste good.
Fast forward a year, and I can now cook almost everything more to my tastes than any restaurant serves. The one exception is dim sum, which I tried a few times and decided it was far too much effort for far too little food. Very fiddly, you need a lot of patience.
But just, what do you like? Look up a recipe on the internet, go buy those ingredients, and it's gonna suck at first, but practice, practice, practice! (And now, turns out cooking is sexy. Nice side-effect to discover for having been out of the game for a while.)
I do this often. "What is this odd ingredient/vegetable?" Look up a recipe and buy it.
>> Any advice for someone like me who doesn't cook much?
Start by cooking whatever you're used to eating. And keep it as simple as possible.
A one sentence detour: I feel shame for the fuel and packaging these things require.
That said, we are finding it easier to cook healthy things for ourselves by copying the general patterns in the meals.
One pattern for you: get a food in the Brassica oleracea category. Dice it up, cook it in a pan with some olive oil. Move it to the side, and fry a chicken breast in the center of the same pan. Throw some cherry tomatoes and a few teaspoons of vinegar into the pan. After the chicken is cooked, throw a can of some vegetable sauce, like tomato sauce, onto all of it and cook it in the oven for 20 minutes.
Each thing can be substituted with something else, but those are the dance steps for half of the meals.
Get spices ( garlic powder, coriander - whole, paprika, cumin, turmeric, chili powder, ginger powder - the rest is up to you)
Buy a container of chicken or vegetable stock - after you open it and whatever you do not use freeze the rest. Next time just thaw it and use it again.
Soy sauce, vinegar (balsamic and rice ), sriracha, any-other-stuff-that you happen to have, olive oil.
When you have this on your way from work go to a store on a way:
Give yourself a strict ten minutes to get stuff. Decide what protein you want. Get it. Go to vegetables. Pick one thing that is familiar and one thing that is not that familiar. Get them. Get a single bunch of herbs. Herbs make everything better. If you do not have an onion, a tomato, a head of garlic, get it.
Ten minute limit would force you just to "grab stuff" rather than fixate on all kinds of blockers.
Go home, google "Fast and easy <protein> with <vegetable> skillet". Follow directions like a guideline for your CRUD application.
They may have considered that... and not cared. Their job was to pump up the number of subscriptions, sell Wall Street on their growth metrics, and then cash out in an IPO.
Blue Apron truly doesn't feel like a company built to be around for a long time.
Even most chefs start as prep cooks chopping vegetables. Start with watching how to cut an onion and start making dishes with onions.
If people are only buying blue apron to learn then what happens when all their customers can cook for themselves.
I don't use any of these meal prep services, but I know people who do and they love it.