Practical cooking tips for home chefs

I’m sure it’s no surprise, but I really enjoy cooking shows. TV chefs make cooking up elaborate dishes seem like a breeze, but if you’ve tried to copy them at home, you’ll know it’s not always as simple as it looks! I certainly can’t claim the expertise of those seasoned professionals, but I have picked up some practical cooking tips and tricks along the way that anyone can use at home. Read on to up your kitchen game with these handy and practical cooking tips.

Recipes

When we try a new recipe, it’s easy to miss some steps or forget important ingredients. To save yourself a whole lot of time and effort and avoid a dinner table flop, always take the time to read the recipe carefully from beginning to end. Make sure you have all the ingredients you need and that you fully understand the instructions in each step. I must admit that I’ve come unstuck here myself, where halfway through a recipe I’ve realised I didn’t have a key ingredient! To help better understand recipe instructions, here is a list of some of the most common cooking terms and what they mean, to help you get it right every time.

Sear: Searing means cooking an ingredient over very high heat for a brief period of time. Unlike sautéing, the food is not moved until it has become fully browned. Searing seals in the flavour and gives your food a crusty exterior and a tender interior.

Braise: This is a combination cooking method that uses dry cooking techniques in the beginning to brown the meat followed by moist cooking methods to finish cooking it in liquid.

Stew: Stewing is really another kind of braising. When cooking large cuts of meat, it’s called braising. When you cut the meat into smaller pieces and completely submerge them in the liquid, then it’s called stewing.

Boiling: This means bringing water to a boil before adding the ingredients. Boiling is a common cooking technique for pasta and rice. Many recipes will instruct you to bring water to a boil and reduce it to a simmer. Boiling is also essential for steaming and blanching.

Simmering: This refers to cooking in a liquid that is just below the boiling point. You should see bubbles forming, but they should be gentle and not at a full roll. Simmering is one of the most common moist cooking methods.

Poaching: Coming in a little lower on the heat scale,you want to use water that is just barely simmering to poach something. There should be very few or ideally no bubbles in the water, although the water should gently ripple to maintain its heat. This method is perfect for cooking delicate foods like fish and eggs that would be disturbed or destroyed by aggressive bubbles.

Steaming: This method uses boiling water, although the ingredients never touch the water itself. By placing a steamer basket above boiling water, the ingredients cook at boiling temperature without losing any flavour to the water.

Blanching: This also involves boiling water and is when vegetables are plunged into boiling water for a brief time before being removed to an ice bath. This process brings out a vibrant, bright colour without cooking the vegetables all the way through.

Seasoning

Seasoning can often make or break a dish and it gives an opportunity to add your personal touch to any dish.

Bigger is better: When seasoning meat, try to use coarse salt rather than finer-grained table salt. The larger grains distribute more easily and cling well to the meat’s surface.

Season from the start: Always season your vegetables when you add them to the pan. This prevents over seasoning at the end and makes the flavour even better than if you only seasoned at the end. You really should be seasoning the whole way through your cooking process though, so remember to taste, taste, taste. Dried herbs are added during the cooking process to infuse their flavour into the dish. If you only add them at the end, they don’t have time to infuse the dish and you will hardly be able to taste them.

Fresh for the finale: Fresh herbs, on the other hand, are added at the end of cooking and can become bitter if overcooked.

Slip of the wrist: Over-salting dishes is a mistake every one of us has made at one time or another. Before you throw your oversalted dish in the bin, try to save it by balancing the flavours with something acidic like apple cider vinegar or lemon juice. As I mentioned in my kitchen hacks article  Top 10 Kitchen Hacks  a few months ago, another good trick is to throw in a peeled potato to soak up an overly salty stew or soup.

Utensils

Practical cooking tips aren’t always food-based. Invest in some wooden cooking utensils to up your cooking game. Wood utensils are always a good option as they will not scratch the surface of your cookware while also being safer and healthier to use since they do not conduct heat or leach harmful chemicals into your food. On top of that, wood is eco-friendly, natural and a renewable resource.

It’s also important to make sure you use the right tools for the job, as each utensil is designed with a specific purpose in mind. Here’s a list of some items that you most likely have in your kitchen already and how to use them.

Wooden spoon: While some may remember their mother’s wooden spoon for entirely different reasons, this kitchen standard is used for mixing and stirring hot foods.

Slotted spoon: This is used to stir foods that are in liquids and to separate solid foods from liquids when serving.

Wire whisk: Use this to whip eggs or cream or add air to a batter. Avoid using a whisk when you are working with a thick mixture.

Rubber scraper: This multipurpose implement is used for mixing and folding soft ingredients and to remove ingredients from a bowl or plate.

Spatula: This is used for flipping foods in a frying pan such as flapjacks, eggs or burgers.

Cooking protein

The meat portion is usually the centrepiece of a meal, so it is very important to get right here are some more practical cooking tips to help you nail it. Different meats cook differently though, so here are some basic tips for meat and fish to ensure your main course is always mouthwatering.

Steak: Cooking a steak directly from the fridge means that once it hits the hot pan, the fibres in the meat go into shock, tense up, and result in a tough steak. Because of this, it’s best to remove your steak from the fridge for about 20 minutes before cooking to let it get up to room temperature.

Pot roast: Before seasoning and searing the meat, remove surface moisture by patting it dry with a paper towel. Drying the meat results in a better sear. Go slowly – whether you cook your pot roast using a stovetop, oven, slow cooker or a pressure cooker, you’ll always get the most tender and flavorful results if you use lower temperatures over a longer period of time.

Fish: When cooking fish, care must be taken not to overcook it or you risk having it dry up and becoming somewhat tasteless. A general rule is to cook a fish 10 minutes for every of thickness. Similarly to meat, fish continues to cook once it has been removed from the heat. So for a more moist and flavourful result, begin checking for doneness a few minutes before the end of the estimated cooking time.

Chicken: When dealing with chicken, the best advice that I‘ve been given is to allow your bird to rest after it has been cooked. All the natural juices will soak back into the meat instead of being left on the cutting board. As with red meat, when it comes to serving, don’t slice the chicken with the grain. Instead, rather slice against the grain of the meat for even juicier cuts.

Pork: Pork has a tendency to dry out; prevent this from happening in the refrigerator by keeping it tightly wrapped in cling film. When cooking pork, lightly coat the meat with vegetable oil. Do not overcrowd pork cuts as leaving space between them lets them brown and cook more evenly. Lastly, do not partially cook pork and then store to use later. It must be cooked until done to prevent any risk of trichinosis, a parasitic disease caused by roundworms sometimes found in uncooked pork.

There are so many practical cooking tips available out there but I hope this list covers some of the basics and helps you dish up delicious meals from the comfort of your kitchen. Bon appetit!