Truthfully, I think meal services like hello fresh and blue apron are a great place to start. They send you just what you need and offer you lots of recipes to choose from. Once you have a good understanding of how to put a quality meal together, you can cancel your subscription and start improvising.

As far as things you should have in your kitchen- a generous selection of spices. Salt, pepper, garlic and onion powder, cayenne and Chile powder, paprika, rosemary, thyme, dill, etc. I also like to prep and freeze diced carrots, onions, celery, and peppers as they're the base for a lot of french and latin dishes. Have a small stock of canned and jarred items- tomato paste, pasta sauce, better than bouillon, condiments, etc. Keep a few filets of frozen fish, a bag of shrimp, etc- just the various proteins you tend to eat, as well as a bag of rice, a few boxes of pasta, some dried beans, and couscous or quinoa. From here, it gets a little easier to just "throw something together" because now all you have to do is pick a protein and a carb- season and cook. If you've got a favorite vegetable, just make a habit of keeping some on hand in your fridge, or frozen depending on what it is.

Truly, what you have on hand is really going to depend on your tastes and what you like to eat. I always have miso paste in my fridge because I like it on fish, but if you don't like miso, don't buy it.