This seems like something I absolutely need, especially as a college student. I don't know how to cook good healthy meals, but I want to learn how (especially cheaply if I can).
By the time you are good at that dish you will have invariably learned skills that transfer to related dishes, as well as how to taste and adjust. So you pick the next to learn. To make a product analogy, it’s vaguely like “Crossing the Chasm”.
Learning to cook this way is wonderful because you begin to see how dishes come together and start to imagine your own recipes! Whereas if you cook a new dish every time, you get spread a little thin and lots of cooking remains frustratingly “magical.”