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I have been learning to cook for a little while now, and can make 10+ good looking and tasting meals but I have a problem I am encountering that I notice more and more as I learn new meals.

It seems all my meals (exception of things like soup or salads) break into the same 3 things

  1. A meat (Chicken, Fish, Ham, Steak, Pork, Lamb, ect)
  2. A starch (Either Pasta, Potatoes done some way or Rice)
  3. A few vegetables (Normally do something like carrots and broccoli)

It seems this way with almost any fancy (ish) dish I try to make, since I don't like cooking simple meals since I one day plan to open a restaurant. I am still young and would love to learn more.

Is there other areas of cooking I can look into to break this trend of 1 meat, 1 starch, and 2 veges (or more)?

Or some way of modifying the #2 and #3 things so that it is vastly different enough to provide variety (since the meat is always cooked different ways or in different sauces).

Thanks for any help I get!

P.S. I should mention I have celiacs so I can't have gluten, but I do generally know all the substitutions in order to make up for it.

Lain
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    Try making a list of more interesting foods that you've had at restaurants. Then google for recipes and try them out. Also check out [the Kitchn](http://www.thekitchn.com/) and [Serious Eats](http://www.seriouseats.com/) for ideas. – David Bruce Borenstein Jul 02 '15 at 13:13
  • Where I live there are no nicer restaurants. Every time I go to one the meals I get are more basic and worse than the stuff I cook at home unfortunately, since they are more family restaurants. – Lain Jul 02 '15 at 13:17
  • Try going vegan or vegetarian for a couple of weeks -- if nothing else, you'll get out of the 'meat' category. Even though I grew up in a pasta-heavy household, we had a lot of variety of sauces (butter & parmesean, oil & garlic, tomato, ragu, bechamel, carbonara, pesto, etc). – Joe Jul 02 '15 at 13:45
  • And I agree w/ David B : food blogs are a good place for inspiration. If you have a local library, you can also check what they have in the way of cookbooks for ideas. – Joe Jul 02 '15 at 13:46
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    Try different cuisines - Italian pasta, Chinese (ha! as if there was "a Chinese quisine") stir-fry, Indian curry, Thai curry, Mexican enchiladas, Mediterranean seafood..... None fall into the classic "meat and two vegs" category. Come back after your culinary world trip. – Stephie Jul 02 '15 at 14:09
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    I agree with @Stephie. Different cuisines can open a vast array of dishes. A couple more ideas might be German or Spanish. A good paella, dish of kielbasa and sauerkraut, or Hunter's schnitzel make for excellent meals. Of course, it all comes around to what you and your family like. – Cindy Jul 02 '15 at 14:36
  • I see the question is getting not only close votes, but plenty of random ideas in comments, which is a hallmark of being a bad question. I don't know if it would have had a chance of getting good answers (it is very marginal), but this is not what is happening. – rumtscho Jul 02 '15 at 15:38

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Different Cuisines is definitely the way to go. Many dishes from South America (chile, brazil, argentina) seem truly innovative from an American palette. Maybe you can gain some excellent insights into these amazing and wonderful cultures through their culinary voyages!

While the meat-vege-starch thing is a staple of a euro-centric diet, something that our privileged positions in society takes a certain advantage of, it's remarkable what you can pull off with the addition of different plating techniques involving sauces and various cooking techniques.

hownowbrowncow
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