I was already vaguely interested, and when I was desperate for a pandemic hobby, it was a fairly natural choice. I can recommend “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat” by Samin Nosrat as a good introduction - recipes, but, more importantly, explains a bunch of basic concepts and “whys”. Then, if you can stomach youtube (ublock origin or some other adblocker + sponsorblock are basically mandatory), check out e.g. Food Wishes (Chef John, aside from a râthër wéîrd spèàking style, is good at explaining things in an accessible way), Helen Rennie, Frank Proto and others.

Trial and error is a must eventually, but starting off that way is very likely just wasting food, effort and motivation because failing at cooking can be pretty demoralizing.

You know a fad genre is well and truly dead when Forbes is reporting on it

True, just thought it was funny.

The irony in this being a youtube link though