[the_af]

Paranoid cooking as in "how can I be sure what I'm cooking isn't toxic"?

I started cooking relatively late in my life, and the lesson is: unless you're doing something strange, it's really hard to poison yourself by cooking. Also: real cooks improvise, they don't follow a recipe set in stone.

You can always screwup and cook something that doesn't taste nice (especially by overcooking), but if you mix and cook random vegetables, chicken, rice, etc, you'll generally have something edible and non-poisonous. If you follow an actual recipe it's even better, of course. Eventually you'll learn some tricks (e.g. sautéed onions go with everything and smell nice).

I suppose stay away from seafood or anything you're unsure of how (long) to cook.