Cooking is one of the most basic skills in life that everyone should learn. But that doesn’t mean cooking is difficult. There are many amazing chefs all around the world who specialize in many different cuisines.
However, you don’t have to learn how to make a fancy plate setting just to have a good-tasting meal. That’s why you should first focus on the taste of your food and the way you cook rather than how to present the meal.
If you’re eating by yourself, it won’t matter how it looks on your plate as long as it has the right color and it tastes amazing.
Whether you’re trying to be more active and start cooking healthy meals or simply trying to upgrade your cooking skills, here are some ways you can try to improve your cooking.
Contents
1Try To Get Out of Recipes
Every beginner cook starts by combing through recipes to find some tasty dishes and then following them to the letter. While sometimes it works out, most of the time they will fail.
The reason is that you may have different equipment, different cooking environments, or maybe your ingredients aren’t fresh enough. It’s near impossible to get the exact same taste.
While you can and should look at recipes if you don’t know how to experiment with ingredients yet, you should always try to improvise.
For instance, your recipe might say to cook the meat for four minutes to get a certain type of color. If you don’t have the color in four minutes, then you should cook longer to reach it. The same goes if you get the color before four minutes. Improvise and adapt.
2Have the Right Equipment and Tools
Most people go and buy everything they can find for their kitchen, even if they don’t know whether or not they will ever use it. Avoid making that mistake.
Instead, you can start with the basic cooking set and then buy the necessary things depending on the recipe you’re planning to follow.
These days, you don’t have to cook everything in a pot or fry food with oil. You can look into Kogan Australia – Rice Cookers Online to buy a rice cooker and make your job easier. But don’t stop there, you can also buy other equipment as the need arises. For instance, get an air fryer to eat healthier rather than deep frying in oil.
3Buy the Right Ingredients
Sometimes, you might order a simple dish in a restaurant. You might even make it home every now and then. But when you have it at the restaurant, it tastes so much better than what you made even on your best try.
The reason for that isn’t because the chef has magical hands. While the chefs are very talented and have years of practice, the reason could be as simple as the ingredients.
Restaurant prices are high for a lot of reasons. One of them is they don’t shop for ingredients at a supermarket. They buy fresh produce every day, which may even cost more than the stuff at the local supermarkets.
That’s why you should consider looking into farmer’s markets and other local shops selling fresh produce rather than buying lower-quality ingredients at the supermarket. You can combine that with healthy recipes to make it even better.
4Learn Cutting Skills
If you have ever watched a cooking show, you might’ve seen the chef chopping tomatoes perfectly at an incredible speed. While that may be impressive, you should not try to replicate it. Instead, learn to cut the right sizes and shapes slowly.
After all, it’s not like you are in any rush to shave a few minutes off your cooking time unless you are late.
By learning how to cut your vegetables in the same shape and size, you will have an easier time cooking. With different shapes and sizes, you might see some pieces burning while others may still be raw. When they are identical, they cook evenly.
5Don’t Rush Yourself
If you’re trying to improve yourself in the kitchen, you should take the time out to cook. If you feel that you’re in a hurry, you might mess up even a simple recipe or end up hurting yourself.
If you’re looking at a recipe, there should be a total cooking time on it. That time is usually for seasoned cooks. That’s why you should always add to it, some even double it to give themselves a comfortable cooking environment.
When you have enough time, you can take things slow and learn how to go through the process. This will also help you change recipes to suit them better to your liking and your kitchen.
For instance, you might dump all of your veggies in a pan together to cook them instead of preparing them separately. While it does save time to cook together, you will get more taste if you do things separately. Cooking slowly will help you feel and taste the difference.
6Understand the Flavors
Another thing that takes time to master in the kitchen is the flavors.
Sometimes, you will be following a recipe and adding all the right amounts of every ingredient. But, the dish might be too sweet, salty, spicy, or sour for your taste buds. That’s why you should learn how to balance the flavors so you can make the recipe to your liking.
To do that, you shouldn’t be afraid to season the dish to your taste. If something feels off, use the internet to describe what taste you need and add the right things.
Conclusion
No matter what you have in your kitchen and the number of recipes you have saved on your phone, you have to be confident and take a dive into cooking to learn how to make tasty dishes. The more you practice, the more you will learn how to make good food.
That’s why you should keep cooking and not be discouraged if you can’t get it right on the first couple of tries. You’re not supposed to get it right, you’re supposed to personalize and adapt the recipes. You will get that with practice.
