A few things I've learned over many years of experimenting with random cooking/baking recipes I find online:
Many recipes do not take food prep (like washing and chopping vegetables, defrosting frozen ingredients, or trimming fat from meat) into consideration when they give you an estimate of how long it will take. Take this into consideration when planning what to eat.
Some recipes have what I call "Check Points" or stages where you can prep food beforehand and set it aside a day or two before you cook. This can be super helpful in planning meals for a week, and gives you time to take care of tedious things like chopping veggies or mixing dry ingredients
the day before you actually need them.
It's not cheating to buy pre-cut veggies if you can afford it. I love matchstick carrots but god I hate cutting them, so I compromise by quartering baby carrots instead of getting a big carrot.
Never trust a recipe that says you can brown onions in under 10 minutes.
If the recipe comes from a mommy blogger, always double or triple the amount of spices (unless you like bland food).
Before you begin cooking, read through the recipe, then read through the comments to see what worked and what didn't for other people who attempted making the dish.
Same goes for specialized tools- sometimes you can get around not having a $100+ tool by using workarounds people mention in the comments.
Take some time to learn basic food safety. I'm not saying you need to get servsafe certified, but there are best practices for keeping your workspace clean and sanitized that will keep you healthier in the long run.
As you cook more and more you may be able to judge food amounts without measuring tools. For example, I know what an approximate tablespoon of liquid looks like in a bowl, and I discovered that my palm can hold about a half cup of chocolate chips (very important knowledge).
Check your parchment paper BEFORE it goes into the oven to see what the temperature cut off is because it WILL catch on fire if the oven is too hot.
There really IS such a thing as too much garlic in a recipe but determining that level is a thing you can really only come to understand through experimentation and guesswork.
