use timer and measure everything and note results
Toast your spices first. It will bring out more flavour.
Clean while you cook. Have something simmering on the stovetop? Wash your dishes. Chopped some veggies? Wash your board, wipe down the counter. Etc etc.
Having a clean kitchen as your meal is completed allows you to enjoy your meal in peace without the dread of having to clean a stack of dishes or messy counter
Read the recipe in full before you start.
Prep all the ingredients before you start. It helps make sure you have everything, speeds things up, gives you moments of leeway in the process, and avoids uneven cooking.
Airfryer
I’m veggie would it be worth it for me
Hell yes, the genius of the airfryer/small convection oven is that it is super good at bringing out the texture of food, it doesnt just microwave things into a blob.
This I would argue can be even more useful for vegetarian cooking than cooking meat chunks lol.
Excellent thanks
Keep notes.
No recipe will work identically in all kitchens with all the various equipment types. Temperatures will vary. Timing will be different.
If you are just starting out, ty cooking something that you really enjoy, which is more of a one-pan/pot dish. Something that should take less than an hour. Make notes on how it tasted, how the protein felt to the touch (hard, firm, bouncy, soft, etc.), timing differences, texture while eating (dry, wet, soft, hard, etc.), things you would do differently next time. If you are confused about how things went, ask for help and suggestions. Take notes on those. And then cook the same thing again soon after. It will probably be better. Repeat until you feel confident.
Celebrate the win!
Next make something different but with the same main ingredient. Repeat that until it’s to your liking.
Once you repeat this a few times with different dishes you will find that you build up some intuition about the ingredients. Then it’s easier to branch out to other recipes and other foods.
Lots of people talk about meal prep for a week. Don’t get sucked into doing that until you are confident with a specific recipe and how it keeps leftover. You will build skill if you cook one meal at a time. Limit the time needed and ingredient cost so that a bad outcome doesn’t feel so bad.
I suck at cooking. A couple of times I have tried, the kitchen was such a mess like you would see in a comedy movie or something. But a couple of really basic things that I have learned the hard way:
Get really familiar with the recipe before you start, prep your ingredients and measure things out. Most of my issues have come from trying to figure things out as I go, or neglecting one thing because I was busy trying to clean/prep in the middle of cooking.
It takes time for the pan to heat up, especially on an electric stove. Despite this, you almost never need to crank it up to high heat. Actually, lots of cookware specifically says don’t use high heat. When I have used high heat, it usually results in a bad time, with hot liquids or grease splashing all over myself and the kitchen.
Chopsticks are really useful to turn certain foods, like bacon or bite sized pieces of meat.
Get familiar with the recipe before you start
This deserves repeating many times. So many recipes are poorly written/arranged/organized. Ingredients should be listed in the order used, and be written specifically and clearly. None of this 3 Tbsp butter, divided. Wtf does “divided” mean in this recipe? Just tell me I need 1 Tbsp and 2 Tbsp, in different stages.
Reading through helps you find stuff like this, or the always-wrong “cook onions until translucent, 3 to 5 minutes”. I’ve never once sweated an onion in 5 minutes.
Invariably I have to re-write any recipe after reading through it.
The idea of setting everything up first is called mise en place. I can cook some simple things without doing this, but it really helps prevent getting part way through and realizing you don’t have something you need, or that you need to prep that something for a while (e.g. brining onions).
Thank you !
If you are frying almost anything do not overcrowd your pan, there must be space between pieces.
It makes your dish taste and look better.
Indeed.
Frying is all about keeping temps high. If you’ve ever had something fried that was greasy, it’s because temp wasn’t managed properly, so the oil could penetrate the food.
Alton Brown discusses this in a few episodes of Good Eats, like S02E09 Fry Hard.
When cooking TVP (textured vegetal proteins), a simple and quick way to remove the awful soy taste: just add a little bit of vinegar. Add the vegetables and spices you want and a little bit of water.
If everything is cooked but some of the water hasn’t fully evaporated, no big deal: just add a bit of corn starch and mix. The juices will become a sauce and you’ll feel like a chinese restaurant Chef.
Get a digital scale, and measure your dry ingredients by mass, not volume. It’s faster and more consistent.
Clean as you go. Sometimes it’s hard to find the time, but gosh it makes future you so happy when everything is nice and tidy as the dish gets done.
Also, let meat rest. I don’t know the science behind it, but it is so vital to let the meat rest after cooking it.
It’s like an art form, it won’t be mastered as a beginner and a lot of mistakes with happen along the way. That’s how to learn what doesn’t work. Don’t get butt hurt when you get negative honest feedback, that’s how you’ll get better. I’d rather have honest feedback than everyone thinking my food is terrible.
Season your food - aka salt your food. Not just once at the beginning or end. Completed dishes are pieces of a puzzle that come together and each piece needs its own attention. Salt/season things separately and when put together at the end it’ll create a more flavorful, dynamic dish.
Don’t know anything about seasoning or spices besides salt and pepper? Don’t be intimidated and don’t buy a pantry full of spices to start. Go to a store/market where you can smell the spices. If you plan on a specific dish, go smell spices with the dish in mind and you’ll know what to get. Then do some research on the right amount to put in - usually a little goes a long way.
Be kind to yourself when something doesn’t work! For every good recipe I know, there were a lot of missteps.
Lastly, cooking is an interpretive art form for the most part…baking IS NOT. I cannot bake to save my life bc i am terrible at precision.
Lastly, cooking is an interpretive art form for the most part…baking IS NOT.
Preach!
Baking is a black art of chemistry. There are strict rules, but you also have to sense the variability of ingredients and conditions. Alchemy’s got nothing on baking. 😆
My best cooking tip for new cooks: watch the original Cooks Country/America’s Test Kitchen on PBS (or your local library), and Alton Brown’s Good Eats. Both cover the how’s and why’s of cooking with clear, understandable presentations. Alton has a flair for silliness - such as the yeast sock puppets - but even now 20 years on, they’re what I think of when yeast is mentioned.
Also, the Americas Test Kitchen cookbook is about $20, and you can usually find it online or used bookstores for less. Just like the show, they explain how and why a recipe works.
