As the convenience food industry becomes more prominent in society, it is essential to understand the influence of cooking competence on home food production. Cooking competence allows a consumer to be self reliant and have a healthy diet, creates a less stressful home food production process and influences the consumer’s orientation attitude towards pre-prepared convenience foods. Through a literature review, it was found that mothers and cooking classes are the most important sources to acquire cooking skills, while factors such as gender, age, income, social/educational class, attitude and social environment determine how one acquires their cooking competence. A non-traditional definition of cooking competence was analyzed which strays from the traditional ‘task centered’ approach and instead encompasses a comprehensive set of skills used in domestic cooking. A cooking competence questionnaire was created to include this new definition.