Cooking is a hobby for many while it is a chore for others. It’s not rocket science though and you don’t have to be a five-star restaurant chef to rustle up a nice meal. All it needs is a little common sense and some patience. If you are new to cooking, then here are some basic cooking tips that will help you prepare simply unbeatable food.
Planning
Planning your menu and lining up the ingredients accordingly is the best and most systematic way to start cooking. Arrange all the ingredients including the measuring, chopping and mixing parts and keep them at an easy-to-reach distance. Don’t keep them too far away as it would mean longer time to take the particular ingredient- you may risk burning your preparation in the bargain.
Order
When you start cooking, start with the dish that requires the longest time to cook. The dish that gets prepared quickly must be prepared last. You can utilize the time between for preparing other items.
Boiling Tips
If you are boiling milk or custard, grease the inside of the pot lid with a small amount of oil. This would keep your milk from boiling over. In case of double boiling, you can place a few marbles at the bottom of the water pan. When the level of water gets low, the marbles rattle warning you to fill it with more water.
Food Handling Tips
Corn
In order to maintain the same level of taste, boil corn by directly putting it in water with no salt. This would retain the taste of corn.
Cheese
If you plan to grate cheese, then freeze it for half an hour to make grating easier.
Eggs
While boiling eggs, add a pinch of salt or pour a drop of vinegar. This will keep the egg in the shell even if it cracks.
Wilted Vegetables
Wilted vegetables are not always spoilt. They sometimes wilt due to extreme temperature differences. Soaking them in water with a drop of vinegar in it would help the vegetables bounce back to life.
The above cooking tips minimize the work load on you especially the clean-up process after cooking gets easier with these. Find out more about cooking tips online. There are plenty of tips that will help you reduce your stress and enjoy the whole process.
What’s your best cooking tip?
This is a promotional post with images from Nicole Abalde.
Great tips….I’m a rubbish cook!
My best tip would be get someone else to do it….hehehe
Oooh good tips! I didn’t know about the cheese one. I’ve just learned to make caramel after years of getting it wrong. The trick is to hold your nerve and never stir the pan. It works!
Genius! How do I not know these?! I shall think of you every time I employ one of them from now on!
Top tips – would never have thought of freezing cheese though to make it easier to grate. I’ve got a huge lasagne to make later today so I’ll be testing this one out! Thanks x
Brilliant tips Carolin – I’ll be trying the boiling eggs tip as I often end up with egg floating round the pan when I’m boiling eggs. Now if you could just teach me how to make the perfect poached egg 😉
yes good tips…cooking isn’t my ‘thing’ these will help!
I’m not a pro either, but I try 🙂