Ten Tips To Make You a Better Cook

1. Sanitation is the most overlooked step of good cooking. There are over 70 million cases of food borne illness in the U.S. every year. Two simple steps could prevent many of them. The first step is to wash your hands thoroughly before starting to cook, after eating or using the bathroom, after handling meat or fish, and regularly throughout cooking. The second step is to ensure that counters and work surfaces are clean and sanitized by thoroughly washing and sanitizing as necessary and by heating wet sponges and dishrags in the microwave for 1-2 minutes every 3 days.

2. Cooking presents numerous opportunities to practice quality control. Look for opportunities to monitor quality when you choose food, when you trim or clean it, during preparation and cooking, and before you bring it to the table.

3. A key method to becoming a better cook is to practice the fundamental techniques of cooking. The faster and more efficiently one can prepare food, the more likely one is to prepare it more frequently, which leads to becoming an even better cook.

4. Unless you are a very experienced cook, don’t try out new recipes on guests. Published recipes may not be tested adequately. Even if they are, your tastes are likely not the same as the author’s.

5. Less experienced cooks hoard recipes as if they were the crown jewels. But just as a map is not the landscape it represents, a recipe is not the dish it describes how to make. This is not meant to imply that recipes have no value. On the contrary, if you don’t know how to get somewhere, you will want to use a map. But the best cooks and navigators are those who pay attention to the conditions in front of them, especially when they contradict the representation. If a map indicates there is a bridge up ahead, but you see a yellow flashing sign that indicates the bridge is washed out, you don’t want to keep going or you will likely end up in the river.

6. Prepare before you start cooking. Cut vegetables and meat; open cans or jars, have all needed equipment and utensils near at hand before you turn on the heat. This will enable you to put all your attention on the cooking process itself and will help to prevent over cooking or burning.

7. Rarely put raw food into a cool pan. Instead, heat the pan until you can clearly feel heat when holding your hand an inch or so above the bottom of the pan. Add the oil and swirl to coat the bottom of the pan. Add the food and be ready to stir, as the food will start cooking immediately. A sautéing pan should “speak” to you in most cases.

8. Weight is a much more accurate way to measure than relying on the volume of an ingredient. This is particularly true with ingredients whose weight/volume ratio can be compromised by compacting ingredients. Flour, in particular, is prone to being mis-measured because it can be compacted so easily. Make a volume measurement of flour as follows: fluff flour in its container, spoon lightly into a dry-ingredient measuring cup, and level off with a straight edge.

9. Grind peppercorns fresh. Never use pre-ground pepper. It takes so little time to grind and it will make a world of difference. Add pepper at the end of a recipe to maintain its flavor.

10. “Adjust seasoning to taste” should be one of the last steps in every recipe, whether it is listed or not. It is not much of an excuse to say to your guests: “I don’t know why it doesn’t taste very good, I followed the recipe.”