7 Simple Ways to Improve Your Cooking Right NOW

Improve Your Cooking - Today!

There’s a lot of, “I’m not a good cook,” or “I wish I could cook like (insert name of famous TV chef or perfect neighbour who masters everything she touches here)” going around and if you’ve said those words, you need to stop now. Seriously. No one is born a good cook. Nobody has an innate ability to sense what flavours will pair well together and which ones to leave out. The greatest chefs in the world are born of interest and passion and practice. Lots and lots of practice. Good home cooks are no different than the Michelin-starred chefs in the nicest restaurants of Paris; they’re interested, they watch, and they practice.

All we want to do is prepare a meal our families won’t turn their noses up at, maybe a meal that will silence an in-law whose favourite sport is one-upmanship, or best of all, a meal we can sit back and say, “I made that and it was freakin' awesome!” To get us all to that point we need to hone a few skills, but rest easy, these skills are easy and don’t involve extra time in cooking school or extra money at the grocery store.

Read the Recipe BEFORE You Cook

Simple, right? It’s the very first thing Lynn Crawford said to me recently. By reading the complete recipe — ingredients and directions — from start to finish you’ll understand what the chef has put together, how the flavours should blend, and what the end result will be. If you follow the recipe step-by-step like an Ikea instruction sheet (without reading ahead), you’ll end up with the same result: a cabinet with three legs and a meal that falls flat.

Salt (and Season) As You Go

Not all salt is created equal, so start with good quality salt. Look for sea salt or coarse grain and Kosher salts. You won’t regret it, the flavour is nothing like heavily processed salts. Season at the beginning of your cooking time and build the flavours up slowly. When salt is added at the end, or at the table, it acts as a coating or a cover up instead of being a part of the meal’s overall taste

Scrape That Pan!

The scrapings from your pan are cooking gold! Scrape the bottom of the pan, add a splash of liquid (wine, water, or broth), and include the scraped combo into your dish. You’ve spent all that time cooking, so use those flavours to make your meal even better.

Don't Saute a Mountain

Refrain from throwing all your ingredients into the pan at once (no matter the rush you’re in); all your nicely cut up vegetables will break or get mushy, and won’t cook properly. Begin with harder vegetables like carrots and move to quick cooking ingredients like snap peas and bean sprouts. If there’s a heap of vegetables, it’s too much. You should still see the bottom of the pan when ingredients are moved around. And please…move the vegetables you’re sautéing gently. Wax on wax off.

Choose Your Fruit and Vegetables Wisely

Plan your meals and then look for ripe ingredients at the store. When we fill our fridges with fruits or vegetables that need time to ripen some of us forget them at the back of the crisper where they wither away, or worse turn into sludge. You probably don’t do that, but it happens. Bonus tip: Clean out your fridge. A clean fridge that houses ingredients you’ll use is an inspiration to create meals that make the most of the natural deliciousness of ripe vegetables.

Bake Longer. Or Shorter.

Cookies need less time than you think or than is often called for (except the ones we’ve shared at YMC because we’re all about the cookies) and pies longer than you think is necessary. The best pies are properly browned and allow the juices from the fruit to bubble up and caramelize, and the best cookies are crispy on the outside and chewy and molten on the inside. Cookies keep cooking for minutes after they’re removed from the oven, so if they stay overlong in the oven they’ll be great hockey pucks, but terrible for your dental work.

Choose Good Wine

Good doesn’t mean expensive. Check online — Vintages is a great resource in Ontario — to read up on ratings and descriptions, and then buy flavours that appeal to you. Good wine improves cooking, in the pan and at the table.