I hate the phrase "intuitive cook".

I hate it because it gets used to describe someone who cooks the way I do - without recipes, frequently without measuring. Winging it. Eyeballing. Throwing a bunch of stuff together and seeing what happens. And magically, thanks to my "intuition" it works. Bullshit.

It's not magic, and it's not intuition. I'm an analytical cook. All intuitive cooks are analytical cooks. The only reason it looks like we're intuitive cooks is that most of the time, we can't be bothered to show our work. But just because you don't see the process that turns freezer, fridge, and pantry items on hand into a meal based on what dishes are clean, how much time is available, and how much energy I have doesn't mean that process isn't there.

The key to becoming an analytical cook is information. The more you know about techniques, ingredients, and flavors - what they do, how they behave, what they taste like and go with - the more tools you'll have at your disposal when it's time to solve the "what should I make" problem. So how do you build up this storehouse of information? Here's how I did it.

First, watch cooking shows. They don't even have to be good cooking shows. But don't watch them with the mindset of wanting to make whatever it is the teevee chef is making. Just watch what they do, and why they do it. There's a ton of background information you can glean just by paying attention to what techniques every single TV personality uses when they're in front of a stove. The stuff they all do, even Sandra Lee and Guy Fieri? That's the proven stuff. The stuff that works. The basics you should be doing. Notice how no TV chef ever uses a salt shaker? They all pinch kosher salt out of a dish and sprinkle it by hand. That's what you should be doing. The why of it is because it gives you a tactile sense of how much salt you're using, and an easy way to control how much that is. Do that.

You'll also get an idea of what order to put things in a pan. You can't trust timings on cooking shows, because they fake it. For a while, I was cooking onions for 30 seconds before dropping the next ingredient in, because that's what they did on the TV. Truth is, onions should cook longer than that in most sweats and sautes, but they never show that part. But you can get a good sense of the order. Nobody ever puts the garlic in before the onions. So you shouldn't, either.

Recipes are also a good source of analytical info. Don't just follow a recipe. Read it and understand it. If it's a good recipe, every step and ingredient is there for a reason. If you figure out what that reason is, then you can use that technique or ingredient outside that recipe, for the same reason. This is a great way to learn how long steps take, and fill in the missing pieces from television. Obviously, the non-recipe parts of good cookbooks also help with this, but the best books are ones that actually explain how and why things work. Ruhlman's "Elements of Cooking" is awesome in this regard, and small enough that it's not TOO intimidating. You just have to account for the fact that Ruhlman is the kind of guy who's curing hams in his basement, and take from him what you can that's appropriate to your skill level.

And then, there's the 800 pound elephant in the room. Experience. At the end of the day, nothing will teach you how things work, how things taste, and how they combine than actually getting in there, making things, and fucking up. Fucking up is one of the best things you can do in the kitchen, but only if you're paying attention. Paying attention is key. Ever help someone whose computer is broken? And you ask them what they did, and they cannot tell you? Don't be that person in the kitchen. If you're paying attention, you'll know the things you did that helped (so you can do them again) and the things you fucked up (so that you can fix them next time). Use your senses. Garlic and pine nuts will tell your nose when they're ready for the next step. Meat will tell you by feel when it's done. You can hear when your pan is too hot, or not hot enough. Pay attention to what's going on around you in the kitchen and you'll learn things. 

And once you've learned enough things, and figured out how to apply those things in new situations, you can skip showing the work, and let everyone else be impressed by your "intuitive" grasp of cooking. But we know better, don't we?