Cooking is a pure hobby since many creative minds choose to opt for it on account of their interest rather than a necessity to fill the stomach.

No matter if you like cooking for pleasure or out of boredom, you can do it better only when you make conscious and constant efforts to do it better.

There is always room for improvement in cooking the best of cuisines and we would like to contribute to your journey with the following tips:

Top 10 Essential Tips to Be a Good Cook

1. Get your ingredients in place

This is a basic approach for skilled chefs that they always make sure to haul all the Ingredients near the stove so that they don’t have to run amidst cooking. In French, it is called “ Mise en place” which means before you turn on the flame and concentrate on cooking, all the potential ingredients should be in reach of your hands and positioned by turns. Otherwise, you may end up overcooking or completely burn your Recipe while you are preparing, finding, or cutting the next ingredient.

2. Use a wooden cutting board

Since cutting is the primary step of cooking, you should cut all the vegetables as well as the regular salad on a wooden cutting board instead of a steel or plastic one. This is because wood is the kind of material that conserves the nutritional values of the food. On the contrary, when the vegetables, fruits, nuts come in contact with any other material than wood, they lose some of the important nutrients and some more while cooking so your prepared food is left a little healthier than expected. For this very reason, some of the chefs even suggest replacing plastic, steel, and ceramic spatulas with wooden ones.

3. Try different methods for one dish

If you are serious enough to be recognized as the best cook in your family and friends, master the art of cooking one dish in various ways with perfectly different tastes. To make it happen, you should begin practicing with the most cooked dishes at your home. To get different recipes, search on Youtube and I am sure every cooking channel will be telling each recipe unique than the other, either through the ingredients or with the process.

4. Sharpen your knives weekly

If you want to be quick in cooking, you will have to be quick in cutting the ingredients such as vegetables and meat. To cut them quickly, you need your knife to be following the swiftness of your hand movements which is only possible if your knife is sharpened by the edges. You can use a whetstone or sharpening steel at home to sharpen your knives at the end of the week or you can take them to some professional in the market who can sharpen the knives back to point. Because it is a cause of ease in the kitchen while cooking.

5. Avoid using pre-shredded cheese

Modern recipes require the presence of cheese in almost every second recipe and the best form to use it in is shredded form. If you use store-bought packet shredded cheese just to save your time from shredding it at home, you are simply doing worse to the taste of your recipes. This is because packed shredded cheese includes some unwanted ingredients to prevent the cheese from melting back into clumps. So when you add the same cheese in your recipe, it is not just cheese but few other things also, for instance, lots of starch. This results in reducing the natural taste of cheese.

6. Start with the easiest recipes

This tip is for our enthusiastic kitchen beginners who are aiming for high. Therefore, the honest advice for you people is to start from the very basic practices like boiling eggs and rice, making omelet, milkshake, pasta, few ingredient soup, and dalgona coffee, etc. After you are pro at it, you can start doing something extra and a little lengthy.

7. Haste makes food waste

One basic fact that even the professional chefs overlook sometimes is that your dish requires your patience in cooking. You know, even the two minutes Maggie takes more than two minutes in most cases. For letting all the ingredients induce their organic taste in the recipe, you need to let the recipe cook in its steam which means leaving it alone for some time. If you do not give time to your recipe, it will not develop the perfect taste and texture with half-cooked ingredients. The ignorance of this fact accounts for the worst kind of chefs than the good ones.

8. Let your meat dry

Always before cooking, frying, and searing any kind of meat, let it dry out completely. Because if you will not, the undried moisture on the surface will turn into steam when set on heat which will make the meat hard instead of soft and crisp. The best cookware to use for this matter is carbon steel. If you want to look for the best carbon steel pans available for daily use, checkout a great guide at Kitcheniest.

9. Preheat your pan

You can be a beginner but you should not be dumb enough to put the ingredients on a cold cookware surface. While you are assembling the required ingredients on the counter near the cooking range, just place the pan or pot on the medium flame for 5 to 7 mins and then start with putting in the oil afterward.

10. Put effort into dishing out

According to research, if the decoration of your dished out recipe is up to the mark, your food will taste 45 % better than it's original taste. The same is the case if you dish out good tasting food with zero presentation, it will get 45 % less tasty than it’s original taste. No matter if it’s just you and your partner at the table, put in some little effort to make it look and feel good so it can taste good.

Conclusion

Finally, Bon Appetit to all the foody fellows who realize the value of a well-cooked food at the end of a tiresome day, and for sure, it works as a therapy.