20 tips for how to be a better home cook
Do you think Julia Child scoffed at the sound of someone giving her a cooking tip while she worked in her kitchen? Would José Andrés fire his chef de cuisine on the spot for suggesting something new on the menu? Do you think James Beard never had a question about a technique?
We don’t think so, and we don’t think that any other legendary culinarian would act in this way, either, because learning the craft of the culinary arts is never complete. With varying opinions, different training, and new techniques and ingredients being introduced every single day, there is never an old tip or suggestion when it comes to cooking, and we as cooks are committed to an unending quest to discover how to be better in the kitchen.
The Cook editors at The Daily Meal never stop asking questions about cooking. In fact, we have contributors telling us new tricks of the trade on a daily basis. While cooking advice can be narrowed down to the most specific questions (like, say, how do you use a pressure cooker?), we also want to know what those overarching skills and qualities are that make so many talented chefs, cookbook authors, and bloggers as great as they are today.
Want to know how we found out? We just asked them, and now we have a neat and easy list of their thoughts for you to refer to. We didn’t just go to one expert, but to several, from big names like TV personality Sara Moulton and legendary inventors like Nathan Myhrvold to talented and hard-working chefs that are, probably right now in fact, ferociously working away at the stove to create beautiful and delicious masterpieces with food.
These tips range in topic and scope; some are ones you should remember every single time you’re in the kitchen (like salt!), and others are things like roasting a chicken, because if you don’t know how to do it, then you can just forget about being a good cook. Some had us going “right, right…” and others had us raising an eyebrow, but at the end of the day, the tips listed here are things that we think you should know (and pass along to others) if you ever want to join the ranks of Child, Andrés, and Beard. So put your pride aside for a moment and take a look, we think some might surprise you.
Be CreativeEveryone can agree on this, but we heard it first from the mouth of chef Chris Peitersen, executive chef of Johnny Carino’s in Fort Collins, Colo., and one of only 75 people in the country who is a Certified Research Chef based on his culinary experience and background. Just as how cooking is never perfected, it also knows no limits, so if you’re able to experiment and investigate new things with cooking and recipes, you’re a good cook.
Put Your Ingredients on Display.Blogger and author of Secrets of the Best Chefs Adam Roberts picked up on a few things while doing research for his book, and eye candy was one of them.
“When I went to various chefs’ homes for my cookbook, I noticed that many of them had baskets and bowls full of gorgeous farmers’ market ingredients out on their counters.
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