Stop doing this while cooking!

There are a lot of things that one can do in the kitchen but the list of donts are equally long, if not longer. And for a beginner, this list can be especially long but helpful. 

This article is focussing on these rookie mistakes to avoid if you’re just getting the hang of cooking or thinking of venturing into the kitchen soon. 

Mise-en-place seems like a complicated word but in reality, a very simple concept. Keeping things in order before you start cooking or simply kitchen pre-preparations before you start cooking. This is an important step in the cooking experience, if not the most important. From a beginner’s (or not) point of view, it can also be the boring, hard part before the fun cooking part. STOP getting started without this. 

This involves simple tasks- reading the recipe and keeping your ingredients organized step-wise, measuring, cleaning and washing, peeling and cleaning, cutting and chopping and everything in between. 

Every cooking TV show host ever only shows the fancy side of cooking, throwing things into a pan and ending up with an amazingly beautiful and tasty dishes. 

Here is your reality check! STOP THIS! 

That takes years of experience and countless hours to perfect but here’s what you can do- measure your ingredients and follow a recipe- To. The. Dot. 

Of course, first, pick a reliable source to replicate a recipe from. (*cough* *cough* Cookd)

Now on to the actual cooking, finally huh? 

Three simple but effective tips to follow would be to allow the pan (or oven for baking) to preheat sufficiently, this is an important but often ignored step that can level up your cooking game and then learn to control the flame( or induction heat setting), let’s face it we’ve all burned a few pans in our culinary adventures. The best practice until you get a hang of the settings would be to maintain a medium flame throughout, it might take a little longer but hey! At least you end up with edible food and pans without un-removable stains. 

The next would be to season in parts, or in simple words, add salt a little at a time. Under seasoned food can be made right but salvaging over seasoned food is a herculean task unless you would like to eat and feed people food that tastes like it was cooked with water from the Bay of Bengal. 

In other words, if you do any of these, this is your sign from the universe to STOP NOW! 

Hope this article taught you a few things or at least made you feel like a pro for following all the points listed. Win-Win.

Be the person you needed as a beginner!