This problem definitely exists and I've been bitten by it personally(1), but it used to be harder to get around than it is now. In previous generations it was assumed that basic cooking knowledge would be transmitted within the family--daughters learned by helping their mothers in the kitchen, and sons, well, they'd go through a brief bachelor period of poor nutrition, but people married early and getting hot meals again would be a good inducement towards "settling down."

When this cultural context died, cookbooks were slow to catch up--they were still mostly written for people (women) who already knew their way around a kitchen. However, this has changed, and there are now excellent cookbooks available that will explain all the things other recipes assume you already know. Mark Bittman's "How To Cook Everything" and Alice Waters' "The Art of Simple Food" are two good ones.

The "America's Test Kitchen" show on PBS is also good for seeing what the cooks are doing when they talk about julienning carrots or making an herb chiffonade or whatever.

(1) When I first started cooking for myself I didn't understand the true purpose behind browning meat, and of course none of my cookbooks explained the Maillard reaction directly. I noticed that all recipes involving meat would specify that the meat be "browned on all sides" in separate batches over high heat, but I thought the purpose was simply to get it cooked more quickly. As a result I would sometimes skip this step, or even if I performed it I would crowd as much meat into the pan as I could--resulting in meat that wasn't truly brown, but grayish because it had actually been steamed rather than seared. It also tasted dull, for which I blamed the cheap cuts of meat I was buying. Actually it turns out that some of the cheaper cuts of meat have the most flavor, if you cook them right. (Filet mignon is pricey because it's a very tender cut of meat, but it has much less flavor than a cheap sirloin steak.)

Find a cookbook, which often contains more fleshed-out recipes, instead of searching online. You can of course evaluate a cookbook for this property before you buy one. I find watching Alton Brown (Good Eats) helpful, in that he covers things too simple to be a recipe (eggs), mentions specific problems you might have, explains such things, and of course you can see it being done, which helps. He also explains some of the science behind cooking, which is fun. I assume other cooking shows fix many of these same problems (Julia Child? I haven't watched). I often cook Alicorn's recipes, and can ask her for help if something is underspecified. Finding a somewhat experienced cook to help (preferably in person) might be useful?

German recipes are even worse. They don't specify things like pans, oil, how to combine ingredients, or sometimes even baking temperatures. They're basically a list of ingredients and assume you know... well, more than I do. Plus I don't speak German very well, so I had a nightmare making the one recipe I properly translated.

Yes, this is part of what I am tring to get at. What's needed are not cookbooks but cooking textbooks. Though apparently these exist now - I recently got one - but since I've not yet had time to actually start learning to cook I can't personally vouch for it.

Intellectual types often find basic household chores as the kind of things that aren't worth wasting their time and smarts on, not when there are more interesting / important things to do.

Cooking is applied chemistry, and at the higher levels, it's art.

I definitely used to have the same attitude towards cooking, back when my dad and I were first learning to cook. There's a few things I did to alter my perceptions (in no particular order):

1. Start thinking of cooking as nifty biology/chemistry. There's a lot of books out there that go in-depth on this, but I think my favorite is "On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen" (Harold McGee 2004), which covers pretty much every foodstuff I've ever used.

2. Think of the last time you went out to a nice restaurant to eat, specifically of the best portion of food you got. Imagine being able to eat food of close to this quality multiple times a week, at much lower cost (I generally pay as much to make an 8-serving dish as a restaurant charges for 2). This probably only helps if you're big on food and/or eating fairly low-quality food now, but I found it a big motivator when I was learning.

3. If you're one of the many people posting in the dating advice comments above, consider the fact that cooking is an attractive skill in a romantic partner, so the time taken to learn it could be a useful investment.

4. Try starting with recipes you don't need to pay much attention to, such as stews; this helps to minimize the feeling of wasting time, as you just combine the ingredients and leave.

As always, your mileage may vary, especially if you don't think with your stomach like I do.

Alicorn and I aren't the same person, if that's what you're asking!

I didn't see her comment before I started writing mine.