Be homeless and broke. It will force you to cook as the only way to save money and survive

Find some simple recipes, and follow them to the letter. If it says to add something “to taste”, just add a small amount of it and assume it’s fine. As long as you aren’t trying to invent your own dishes, or improvise somehow, you should be fine.

Learn what you need to do to follow recipes, and then you’ll learn the rest over time. Cook things you like to eat.

Don’t get a bunch of junk for your kitchen. You only need basic things and can buy them as you go.

• Knives - you only need a chef’s knife (8" or 10") for most kitchen tasks and a paring knife for small things. Optional: bread knife (i just use a chef’s knife), filet knife, boning knife, cleaver.

• Pots and Pans - get all stainless steel and/or cast iron/enameled cast iron. Don’t buy aluminum or nonstick. Frying pan. Saucepan. Big pot and/or Dutch oven (can use as a soup pot on the stove or in the oven for other things, enameled recommended). Baking sheet (and a silicone matt for nonstick).

• Other: peeler, box grater, garlic press (way easier than mincing garlic), citrus juicer, steamer insert for a pot, measuring cups and spoons, cutting board (plastic is OK - bamboo is another good budget option, one for meat and one for plants recommended)

• Know what it means to steam, boil, simmer, sautee, bake.

• Keep your knives sharp.

• Learn the basic cuts (dice = .5 - 2cm cubes, mince = very tiny little pieces, julienne/batonnet/chiffonade - strips of stuff of various sizes).

• The key to cutting anything is to break it down into manageable, regular pieces that you can easily turn into cubes or rectangles.

Since you have difficulty tasting:

• Don’t over-salt. You can always add more, but you can’t remove it.

• Acidity and fat are important to make food taste good. Vinegar is often a hack to make food taste better.

• Adding MSG to your food is also a great way to make it taste better.

• Learn what herbs and spices belong in different kinds of food. Some can go in a lot of different cuisines and dishes - like salt, pepper, garlic, onion, parsley, and chives. But others have more niche uses, and some combinations are very typical of specific cuisines. Buy individual spices, not spice mixes. Dry spices are stronger than fresh spices, so if substituting dried for fresh, you will use less than you would use if they were fresh.

The head chef of Alethea (3 star michelin restaurant) totally lost his sense of taste for years and still ran one of the best restaurants in the world.

I learned cooking by strictly following the recepy. If you do that, for example Pasta Napoli, you will be fine. It’s a simple recepy, but most people like it. And everyone can add salt, parmesan or whatever they like afterwards.

To a certain point, cooking has more to do with seeing what’s happening (when is water boiling, when are onions fried enough etc.) than tasting it. So you should be fine.

Also with Pasta, you just have to feel if it’s soft enough and since you are used to texture you should be even more fine tuned to it ;)

Everyone is saying undersalt things, but I’m assuming, that you don’t even have a clue whether a teaspoon of salt would be undersalting or oversalting. You should get someone to show you what a “normal” amount of salt is per person. It won’t be perfect but at least edible.

Since you can’t really taste or smell, your best bet will be to follow recipes and hope for the best. Approach cooking like a science. Measure at all points during the process. Measure out all the ingredients and prepare then ahead of cooking them. When cooking meats, use a thermometer to measure the temperature of the meat to make sure they are cooked.

Its always better to undersalt things than over salt. You can always add more salt but can’t remove it. You can pre salt things and hour before and this will help even out the saltiness of most things.

Okay, so it looks like nobody read your text. Sorry about that.

Edit: I suppose I should actually answer. The main thing is that you’re going to have to communicate with people who can taste. They’re going to notice things you don’t, and that can even be safety things if there’s an ingredient that has spoiled.

Rely on recipes that don’t have a “to taste” option. I expect a lot of what you’ll cook will need to be simple.

You just cook. Thats litterly it

When you start, you follow recipes. Pick a type of cuisine you like. At some point as you explore recipes you will start to understand the “flavor bouquet” of that cuisine. This understanding will help you with what spices go together in a pleasant way, and in what amounts. Like Thai food. Or Italian food.

That said, bread can be a gateway recipe. It’s simple: yeast, flour, water + a sugar to activate the yeast. Not all bread is sandwich bread. Starting with flatbread (for hummus, gyro, etc) or pizza crust also works. No bread machines, that would defeat the purpose of your original question, but a stand mixer with a dough hook is ok. For sandwich bread, King Arthur Flour has solid recipes (ignore ingredient branding).

If you like vids, Kenji Lopez-Alt is excellent. He also has a book called The Food Lab which is useful but not necessary, depending on how you learn. Serious Eats also has useful guides.

Just follow the recipe and you should be fine. Like the other person in the comment said, undersalt the food and add the salt shaker on the table should they need it. I for one, have never put salt in my spaghetti since I find it too salty.

In addition to what others have said, I’d recommend two things:

1. Deliberately understalt food. You can always add more salt on the table, you can’t take salt away.

2. Prep compound butter beforehand with someone helping you taste. Grab roasted garlic (2-3 heads), red wine vinegar (a couple drops), 400g of good quality butter with no added ingredients (eg avoid garlic butter bars), handful of fresh chopped thyme and rosemary, and bit of pepper and salt (same thing as before, underseason). This will give you an already prepped flavour bomb to add to savoury foods. I usually add a couple bones’ worth of marrow as well, and the resulting butter goes well with any meat (non-fish), vegetables, bread, even plain rice.

I’ve found that when you cook with lots of fresh veggies, you can mostly just dump them in and it tastes good. Again, you do want a bit of salt, but as everyone else said, you can hand out a salt shaker.

Everyone here saying “undersalt, undersalt” like salt is the only additive that can go wrong in excess. Pretty much any spice is, too, so don’t go crazy on any of them especially pepper, chili, anything “hot”.