Folks Didn’t Realize How Helpful These 30 Simple Cooking Tips Can Be Until They Tried Them
While sharing a meal with a family, getting yourself a well-deserved treat after a long day, or feasting on simply being alive... feels great! The cooking process has its own pleasures and charm. Especially when keeping in mind some helpful tricks from people online, answering one Redditor’s question: "What’s one cooking tip that is extremely helpful?" to avoid the kitchen situation getting out of control. On the flip side, as brought up by one of the Redditors not being afraid to experiment and mess up one or two meals is a great tip on its own. Finally, those who try to avoid the kitchen altogether for the lack of certain skills may reconsider, as the key to unlocking the magic (and horror) of the cooking world lies in simply starting. Enjoy!
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ALWAYS use real butter, not margarine.
I had an ex that LOVED that margarine. I like the Irish butter, but I can't think of the name. So good.
- Boil your rice like pasta to get wonderfully fluffy rice
- Rest your food before eating (meat, casserole, lasagna, pizza, etc)
- A $4 meat thermometer is how you test, not cutting and releasing all the juices
- Understand the Maillard reaction to get flavor into food esp meat
- Under-salt your pasta sauce, over-salt the water when you boil the pasta
- Buy only high-quality oil. Not only for taste/freshness, but higher smoke point
- Fat has been wrongly maligned, save it and use it
- A touch of acidity (lemon juice, dry citric acid, pickle juice, etc) is required in nearly all dishes
- A pinch of cane sugar takes the funkiness out of many sauces
- Pressure cookers turn the cheapest cuts of meat into succulent, tender morsels
- Good food is mostly technique and appropriate seasoning, not expensive ingredients
There might be such a thing as "too much garlic", but I haven't found it yet
The MOST important tip I can give to anyone is to setup all of your ingredients before you even turn the stove on. Also known as 'mise en place' in the culinary world.
Everything. Salts, spices, veggies, proteins. Everything should be on your counter and easy to reach.
It's seriously probably the biggest thing keeping someone from becoming a 'meh' cook into a good one.
Ex. If you want to put chives into your omelet, you obviously dont want to start cutting them when your eggs are already on the pan. You'll overcook your omelet.
Another benefit to "mis en place" is that you won't risk contaminating your spice jars by grabbing them while handling meat.
This isn't a secret or anything, but I think a lot of folks don't realize how important acid is in a lot of cooking. When you've seasoned something perfectly but it still tastes like it's missing something, it's usually acid. A bit of citrus juice or vinegar will take it to the next level.
People who don't know how to cook think cooking is extremely difficult and that you need to rigorously "study" cooking.
Not true. Just follow a few simple recipes to learn the basics. After a couple of tries, you can wing a lot of your cooking.
You're 100% correct. I moved out at 17 and was very poor to start out so I bought my food rather than eat out so I followed recipes and was eating better than any restaurant can make. Soon, I was able to add additional ingredients to make the recipes more to my liking.
Always use cold water to mix with flour or cornstarch to make your gravy. It won't get lumpy. My dad was a chef & he always stressed this. He hated lumpy gravy.
Courtesy of great-grandma to mom:
To get the smell of garlic off your hands, grab your (stainless steel) faucet like it was your man.
:-D
**F**k up.**
Burn food. Overseason. Have a pot boil over. Make flatbread on accident. Make soggy latkas. Spice that curry up to lava temps. Just learn from it. Don't be afraid to ruin a meal. Be willing to ruin a meal so it ensures you'll make a better one in the future.
Nobody bakes a flawless souffle the first time. Pretty much everyone will forget to put eggs in brownies once or twice. I'm sure most people have put too much salt in their eggs, or cooked a steak to a brick. Don't let mistakes stop you from learning new things, and don't let the fear of f*****g up a meal prevent you from trying new recipes.
Edit: I don't even know what reddit silver does but thank you kind internet stranger. Keep cooking and making mistakes!
Epic fails are the best cooking memories. I once made gravy out of pancake batter because I didn't have flour ... Yep, epic fail.
When using a pan with a handle on a stove top, turn the handle inwards to avoid accidentally walking/knocking into it and causing disaster
If you’re young learn to cook before you leave home. You should be able to take care of yourself on your own. I knew so many people in college that had no clue how to function, like laundry, cooking and cleaning.
Yup, I taught my step Daughter and 4 of her friends how to shop and cook before they went to 4 different Uni's. They all spent way less than most of their contemporaries.
If you can smell anything bad jn your meat at all. Throw it out.
Think about what you're throwing away. People discard so much when it can be repurposed.
Got a dried out lump of cheese? Make mac and cheese with it. Dont throw it away.
The stem from a head of broccoli, once that gnarly bit at the very end has been removed, is great if finely diced or sliced in soups or stir fries.
Bones and carcass can be made into stock with no effort. Just a bit of salt and water, dont be intimidated by recipes that ask for $20 worth of other stuff.
Pies and stews are great for sad looking veggies and bits of meat that are close to being off.
Even potato skins can be fried into delicious treats. Cold rice is perfect for egg fried rice. Old bread is good for breadcrumbs. Dont have a blender? Grate them instead.
It frustrates me when I see how much good food goes to waste, food that can be re-used and cooked into recipes that even a total amateur can cook.
Also, people need to stop frying food on maximum heat, if your stove dials go to 8 for example, frying an egg should be on 5-6.
I have a bag in my freezer for vegetable scraps. When the bag gets full, we make stock. It's nice to always have stock handy, and it tastes better than store-bought.
Wash your hands before preparing ready to eat foods and after handling raw meats, especially chicken.
Or in between items, when I'm doing meat prep I'm always washing them between doing things, especially dry rubbing after a brine.
Residual heat will continue cooking more than you imagine. That hot pan doesn’t stop cooking just because ou turned the stove off, and meat can cook internally as well once already hot.
I do this when I flip over easy eggs. I flip and turn off the stove to cook them perfectly without over cooking
Don’t pour water on a grease fire.
Always have the lid to the pot by you. And a kitchen fire extinguiser is always handy.
There is no such thing as cooking chicken "rare". Beef and pork have some granularity in how "done" the meat is, but chicken is either "done", "overdone" or "salmonella".
Edit -
Yes, sous vide changes these rules somewhat, and all ground meats should generally be cooked through.
Don't depend on what it looks like to determine if it is "done"! My instant read thermometer is an indespensable tool in my kitchen. They are cheap, work great and allow you to cook things to perfection.
If you’re searing a bunch of little things in a pan, like scallops, set them in the pan in a clock-like circular pattern. That way, you’ll be able to easily keep track of where to start flipping, and then you can just move clockwise down the line.
Seems obvious, but I was just haphazardly throwing pieces of meat or seafood in a pan prior to seeing this done on a cooking show.
Dont crowd the pan.
Always scrape the ingredients from the cutting board into a pot with the back of the knife, it will help the blade stay sharp longer
Absolute tosh ; Ex Chef here with 35 +years in front of many ovens including 5* and Michelin. Unless your boards are made of glass or marble, a knife will keep its edge on pretty much any other board although I have met many (mostly young) idiot Chefs who think that chopping / carving directly on to a stainless steel worktop won't affect their knives ......... I used to make a decent amount of money sharpening their knives without telling them what to do to stop them being blunt. If they showed promise, I'd tell them, if not, f**k 'em, if they're that thick they deserve to dig ditches for the rest of their lives.
S**t I learned while working in a restaurant:
The quickest way to defrost something is just let a stream of cold water run over it for a bit until it defrosts.
Cool down your hot pans in hot water, not cold water, because it'll f**k up your pans
Throw that pasta water in your pasta sauce and you're golden
If you're going to make a big meal or a dish with a lot of ingredients, do ALL your prep first and then cook otherwise you're going to struggle
Always wash your hands after touching meat
Vegetables always go over meat when you're storing them, not the other way around
Sometimes guessing your ingredients is okay, but it's better to underestimate than overestimate
Clean and wash your dishes as you cook so you have less things to do later.
Edit: I meant pasta sauce, not pasta because it'll thicken your sauce and help your sauce cling to the pasta better.
Taste, taste, taste. Everytime you add something to your dish, taste it!
My brother once accidentally made peppermint cookies with essential oil instead of peppermint extract. We didn't find out until he had made, cooled and frosted the whole batch because he never lets anyone taste when he's cooking. I couldn't eat peppermint without feeling sick to my stomach for weeks.
Buy and try a lot of spices. it's a cheap and easy way to improve almost anything. salt, pepper, garlic, basil, oregano and smoked paprika are in my opinion a must
If you're not used to spices, some groceries and dollar stores will have jars of spices for around $1 and it's a good way to buy and experiment. Later on, when you realize how to use them, go for the more expensive ones. Spices can make bad food good, and drab food much better. Spread Italian seasoning all over your next frozen pizza before putting it in the oven. It will taste much better.
I like to spray my measuring spoon with Pam before I scoop up some honey. Comes right off the spoon
Tip for chili: Undercook the onions. Everybody is going to get to know each other in the pot.
Or don't saute the onions at all -- just dump them in with the rest of the chili ingredients. I will even do that with the hamburger. That way, the juice and flavor of the beef goes directly into the chili -- instead of scraped out with the pan. (Add a beef bouillon cube for even more meaty flavor.)
1/2 a cup of uncooked Rice per person. I always see people mentioning they can never get their portions of rice correct. You either end up with enough to feed a tribe, or barely enough for one meal. 1/2 per person, and every now and then I'll add in an extra 1/2-1 Cup if I'm cooking for a large group.
When browning ground meat only flip it twice. Flatten it out and cook it till it is half done flip over like a giant burger then cook till done. Crumble it once its cooked. And never again eat gray tasteless ground beef.
Wash your rice before cooking it, it will be fluffier. Don’t put olive oil in your boiling water if it’s for pasta, the sauce won’t stick much on the pasta if you do. Olive oil is good for salad but burned it can both taste nasty and be unhealthy. It has a a burning point lower than other oils, therefore will burn more easily. To check if your oil is hot enough to fry, put the tip of a wooden spoon. If small bubbles form, the oil is hot enough. Don’t throw away your vegetables waste while cooking, put them in a bag and then in the freezer. Use it anytime you want to make some vegetable stock. This one is quite know but still great: when baking don’t forget to line your pan with butter then flour. I used to only do butter, my brownie never wanted to come out of the pan. rip all the brownies...
Olive oil has a smoke point some where in the middle of the oils, virgin being a little higher than refined. Extra virgin olive oil and a very low smoke point and is commonly used for salads and dips and is not cooked. The extra virgin olive oli is not interchangeable with the other 2.
Oatmeal turns into rock if you leave it out after adding hot water and difficult to wash
The amount of times I've been eating porridge at work and been dragged off to do "something urgent" only to come back and find a concrete oat mix in my bowl.
Ovens are like a cooking hack. Want a good dinner? Take your meat, chicken, pork chop, whatever. As long as it’s not super thin. Put it in a baking pan. Surround it with root vegetables of choice. Potatoes, carrots, onions. Whatever. Season and set oven to 350. Put it in set a timer for 45 min and walk away. You now have a fully cooked dinner with a meat and vegetables. If you want you can leave it for an hour instead to cook it all a bit more. This works for most meat and vegetables and you can make enough food for the week for under $35.
edit: to be a bit clearer you need to use vegetables that can handle an oven. Root vegetables are good for this cause they won’t dry out so fast. Also for the meat you want a thicker cut of meat again so it doesn’t dry out. Chicken wing/legs, Shanks, Roasts all work well. Don’t use this for a strip steak though.
This used to just be called... y'know, cooking. Nothing fancy, no expensive appliances or gadgets or doodads.
when i was a teen I worked my way through my moms 20 years of herbs collection by scrambling a single egg with a single herb or spice. It was a good way to get to know what each tasted like & how much was required. Later i tryed 2 or 3 herbs mixed. If it bombed, the dog got 3/4 an egg.
List for cooking tips that "nobody knows" ... filled with cooking tips the VAST majority of people know and that have been posted on BP over and over and over again. Do better BP. I went through the whole dang list looking for something original. I'm not mad, but I am quite disappointed.
Hoorah! BP's lazy àss "writers" have added their bi-monthly repeat of basic cooking tips!!! I'm SO glad they get paid to do basically nothing!
when i was a teen I worked my way through my moms 20 years of herbs collection by scrambling a single egg with a single herb or spice. It was a good way to get to know what each tasted like & how much was required. Later i tryed 2 or 3 herbs mixed. If it bombed, the dog got 3/4 an egg.
List for cooking tips that "nobody knows" ... filled with cooking tips the VAST majority of people know and that have been posted on BP over and over and over again. Do better BP. I went through the whole dang list looking for something original. I'm not mad, but I am quite disappointed.
Hoorah! BP's lazy àss "writers" have added their bi-monthly repeat of basic cooking tips!!! I'm SO glad they get paid to do basically nothing!
