You’ve probably seen famous chefs on television cooking up delicious meals and wished that you could enjoy gourmet dishes. The good thing is that you can, if you make it. Cooking is like any other activity; if you hone and develop your skills, you can be a very good chef. Here are some great cooking tips that every good chef knows.
The most difficult and time consuming thing about cooking is doing all of the prep work. You can buy pre-prepped vegetables or prep your ingredients the day before to cut down on the time you are in the kitchen. This is very helpful if you need to get dinner out in a hurry.
When cooking a big meal, try to do your prep work the night before. This saves you time when you’re getting things ready for your dinner the next day. Have everything washed, chopped, and ready to go. You’ll thank yourself because there is less stress the night of the big meal.
Make sure that you never give up when you are cooking, as it is going to take a lot of practice and failures before you get it right. If you burn something, keep trying. You will only become a great cook if you maintain your persistence.
A good tip to do when it comes cooking and preparing food is to prepare all the necessary ingredients that you need at night, that way when morning comes you are not stressing about them. This will help you concentrate at the task at hand which is preparing food in the best way possible.
Flouring the baking pan is called for by lots of recipes. It is necessary for the baking, but leaves an unattractive white coating on the side of the cake. Change the recipe a little and use dry cake mix instead of flour. The unattractive white residue from the side of the cake will disappear.
If you would like to bake a berry desert in the winter (when most berries are out of season), use frozen berries as a delicious and more eco-friendly alternative to fresh ones! Thaw your frozen berries for 45 minutes, drain the excess, then use as you normally would when making a berry pie or cobbler.
Having trouble with your meats sticking to your pan or grill? This is an easy thing to fix. Just spray your pan or grill with a spray oil before you begin to cook. This will put a coating on the surface of the pan or grill, and will keep your meats from sticking to a dry surface.
When you are cooking meat and adding seasoning to it, use an even sprinkling gesture to apply the seasoning. You should season from a decent height and aim to produce an even “snowfall” effect. Executed properly, this technique ensures consistent coverage and avoids leaving over-seasoned clumps or seasoning-free areas on the meat.
You need to store your flour in a waterproof container. If flour gets wet, it becomes a huge mess and cannot be used for cooking. There are some waterproof containers that can be sealed so that there is no way for water to get into it, which can save you a lot of money in the long run.
You can save time and energy by cooking larger batches of a meal at one time, and then storing some of it in the freezer for later. Divide the meal into several serving-size containers and put them away. On a night when you don’t have time to cook from scratch, just pull a container out and defrost it.
Use either a steaming or a stir-frying technique to cook your vegetables. These two methods help the vegetables retain both their color and their nutrients, providing your family with a healthier side dish that also looks attractive. Your children, in particular, are more likely to eat their vegetables if they look nice.
An organized cooking area is where you should focus to avoid costly mistakes while cooking your meals. Being organized with your cooking station can make it more productive. If you are unorganized, it is easy to lose track of things and waste your money and delicious food that you could have been eating!
Use your hands to cook the perfect steak. Pressing the fleshy pad at the base of the thumb, when your hand is making an OK sign, will give the same resistance as steak will during cooking. Start with the index finger OK sign and the thumb base will resist at “rare” temperature. Moving towards the pinky you will register medium-rare with middle, medium with the ring finger and well-done with the pinky. Look for the resistance in your steak to match the resistance when pressing your hand.
Never use oil in the water when you are boiling pasta. Conventional wisdom is that using the oil makes the noodles not stick together. While this is true, it also prevents your sauce from sticking to the noodles after they are cooked. The best pasta dishes are those where the sauce sticks to the noodles to provide delicious flavor in every bite!
When cooking anything in a pan it’s ideal to add a little bit of oil to the pan, even with non-stick pans. Oil is a great conductor of heat and thus eases the object into heating up without burning the external portions. It helps the dispersion of heat across the entire object, rather than having the exterior burnt while the interior remains frozen or cold.
To add a little extra special flavor to a plain vanilla or yellow cake mix, use the liquid from any canned fruit that is packed in water instead of the plain water called for when making the mix. Most every variety of canned fruit around comes packed in syrup or water. Choose a water-packed can of fruit your family loves to make a plain cake extra tasty. Frost the cake using vanilla or butter cream and add the fruit chunks as decoration on top.
Use these tips as a blueprint, paving the way ahead for you as a home chef. Don’t stop learning and getting ideas about cooking anywhere you can. If you make something once, and it doesn’t come out well, try it again. Keep trying. Anyone can be a terrific chef if they just keep at it–even you!