10 Easy Techniques to Improve Your Cooking
Some obvious and not-so-obvious ways to take your cooking to the next level
Some people hate cooking, and some people live for it. I happen to be part of the latter and spend the majority of my free time learning new recipes and perfecting different techniques at home.
But I wasn’t always like this. Just a few years ago, I sucked at cooking. I’d constantly make up stuff on the spot, cook unbalanced and flavorless meals, and repeat the same boring recipes over and over.
That was until I decided to learn the basics of good cooking and the techniques that separate professional chefs from the average cook at home.
With just a few improvements to your process in the kitchen, you can level up your cooking to something that you’re really proud to show people. I made that change a few years ago and now I regularly host dinner parties, cook for all my friends, and I’m opening up new work opportunities for myself.
Some of these techniques you may already know, but sometimes it takes a reminder for them to stick. So here are 10 easy techniques that’ll improve your cooking.
1. Proper knife use
There are more types and shapes of knives than you need to know, and if you’re just starting to take your cooking seriously, you’ll be fine with the 3 must-haves:
Chef’s knife
This is your workhorse and will handle about 90% of your cutting tasks. If you don’t already own a decent chef’s knife, you definitely should. This knife should be used to cut, slice, and prep basically everything besides the small items like garlic, shallots, etc.
You should be looking to spend about $100 on a decent chef’s knife. Don’t worry about Japanese steel, or getting the best brand in the early days. What’s important is that the knife is comfortable to hold, the shape of the blade suits you, and it’s of decent quality steel. The rest is a luxury you don’t need to worry about right now.
Paring knife
A paring knife is light, sharp (because the blade is thin), and easy to maneuver for accurately cutting small foods or peeling fruits and vegetables.
Using a chef’s knife to cut small foods like garlic, shallots, and strawberries is a mistake most people make in the kitchen. By using a big knife to cut small foods you’re going to take longer to do the job and you’ll risk cutting yourself.
A decent paring knife should only set you back about $20 and if treated well, will last a really long time.
Serrated knife
While mostly associated with bread, a serrated knife will also help you out with things like cakes or waxy fruits and vegetables.
Serrated knives should only be used for slicing, not chopping, and never used on small foods or herbs. A good serrated knife is essential if you see yourself cutting a lot of breads, cakes, or difficult to cut foods like pumpkin or watermelon.
A decent serrated knife should cost between $30-$50 and will stay sharp for years.
Knife care and the honing steel
A knife is only as good as you allow it to be, by keeping it clean, straight, and sharp. Apart from the 3 must-have knives, you should own a honing steel to keep your chef’s and paring knives at their best.
A honing steel doesn’t actually sharpen a knife, it just straightens the edge. Think of the edge of a piece of paper that’s pulled really tight. If you ran your finger along the edge you’d definitely get a paper cut. If the paper’s edge is slightly bent, your much less likely to get cut. That’s effectively how a knife’s edge works. The straighter the edge, the “sharper” the knife.
You should hone your blade with steel every time you take it out to use it. This will make all your cutting tasks easier and faster.
If you find your applying pressure or gripping the knife harder to cut something, then your knife isn’t sharp enough. Run it along your steel and consider investing in a whetstone to actually sharpen the blades.
2. Have patience when preheating
Pretty much every recipe that exists calls for a pan or oven to be preheated. Most people think this takes about 1 minute and you’re good to go, but when you throw your food into a cold pan or oven, you’re actually just making it colder, and the food will absorb the oil in the pan because it begins to cook. This leads to soggy, unevenly cooked food without proper browning.
You should always preheat your oven for at least 5 mins, and pans for about 2–3 minutes, depending on the thickness (thicker is better for heat distribution and recovery).
When you add your food to a properly heated oven or pan, you won’t lose so much heat and the food will begin to cook straight away. You’ll also avoid soggy, sad-looking food that drowned in oil.
Side note: Don’t add oil to a cold pan. Wait until it’s fully preheated first. Add your oil, wait a few seconds, then toss in your food. This helps prevent food from sticking to the pan
3. Avoid overcrowding the pan
This extends from the preheating rant. Another all-too-common mistake is putting too much food in the pan when grilling or sauteing.
This does two things:
- The heat of the pan drops significantly and recovers so slowly that the food won’t brown properly
- The water loss from all the food actually begins to steam/boil the food, giving you the wrong flavors and textures
If you’re looking to get a nice browning on things like burger patties, chicken, or salmon, it’s best to cook in batches so each piece is evenly browned.
4. Use salt properly
You’ve heard the rant — salt enhances flavor. But what does that actually mean?
Well, in low concentrations salt reduces bitterness, and increases sweet, sour, and umami flavors, which is necessary are sweet recipes. At higher concentrations, it suppresses sweetness and enhances umami for savory recipes.
You’ve probably heard about umami before. It’s the savory taste that makes Asian cooking, specifically Japanese, taste so good.
Don’t be shy with the salt when you’re using it for a savory recipe, but make sure you taste as you’re salting. You can always add more, but you can’t add less.
Another important tip is to always salt your meat before cooking it. Properly seasoned meat stays juicier and tastes better overall.
Salting helps the proteins retain their own natural juices. Salt draws the interior liquids to the surface, then dissolves in those juices, making a brine that is eventually reabsorbed by the meat.
5. Set up your workstation properly
You know why most people get stressed out while cooking? Because they’re not organized.
We’ll apply the ‘6 Ps’ rule here…
Proper preparation prevents piss-poor performance
Simple, right?
The best thing you can do for yourself when cooking is to make the process easier by being organized. Have everything you think you’ll need in front of you and have all your produce and meats prepped before you start preheating the pan.
When everything is prepped and within reach, you’re never scrambling at the last minute to get something in the pan or oven. Cooking is often down to the minute, so you don’t want to waste time cutting a vegetable that should have been in the pan 3 minutes ago.
Preparing your workstation properly will help you get into a flow state.
6. Taste, taste, taste
One of the most obvious things that separates professional chefs from amateur cooks is their habit of tasting literally everything during every step of the process.
You should do the same.
Are you guilty of cooking an entire meal, not tasting it at any point, then sitting down and ending up disappointed?
I’ve done this more times than I can remember, and it’s really frustrating.
A bad tasting meal isn’t the end of the world, and normally it’s still very much edible, but it’s the damage to your confidence and the discouragement that’s a big deal.
The easiest way to mitigate disappointment from a crap meal, is to taste, taste, taste.
Just added the tiniest amount of salt? Taste.
Not sure if something is missing? Taste until you work it out.
Finished cooking and ready to serve? Taste. Something could be off.
No matter how small the amount of a particular ingredient, it can make big changes in the meal (we’re looking at you, salt), so tasting before and after you add the ingredient will help you understand its effect.
7. Let meat rest before cutting/serving
Another tip (not going to call them rules) that nearly everybody knows but seems to ignore like they enjoy dry meat or something.
This logic applies to all types of meat, especially chicken. Dry chicken breast has become so normal that a lot of people drown it in sauce or just avoid cooking it.
The solution? Let it rest for at least 10 minutes.
There’s a pretty simple explanation as to why you should let your meat rest before serving.
As meat begins to cook, the muscle fibers firm up and internal liquids get pushed out. That’s the sizzle you hear when grilling or pan roasting meat.
When you take your meat off the heat, the fibers need time to relax so the liquid can be redistributed through the meat. If you cut into it while hot, all that liquid will escape and you’ll be left with dry meat.
Ideal resting time is about 10 minutes, so you can tent the meat with foil to prevent too much heat loss.
Next time you cook meat, be patient. You’ll be glad you were.
8. Let baked goods rest too
Similar to the meat advice, letting the baked stuff rest is another important thing to remember.
This especially applies to homemade breads like sourdough. Everybody loves hot bread, and it’s tempting as hell to cut into a hot loaf of sourdough straight out of the oven, but it’ll cost you good bread.
Cutting into hot bread allows more of the steam to escape than if you let the loaf release steam slowly, at its natural pace. So you’re setting yourself up for a drier bread later on.
As bread cools, another process called starch retrogradation is going on. Water continues to move outward, drying the bread and firming up the crumb. If you cut into the bread while it’s still warm, before this process completes, you’ll find a doughy, gummy texture as the starch molecules are still dense and water-logged.
This logic also applies to all other baked goods: cakes, pies, cookies etc. Letting them rest allows the cooking process to finish, develops the right outer texture, and also helps develop sweetness. This really applies to pies. Letting a pie (that probably has fruit in it) rest, helps the filling to set, so you end up with nice firm slices when you cut into it, and not a soupy mess.
9. Basic salad dressing rule
A lot of people I know don’t even bother making a salad at home, or they stick to one recipe because they think salad is boring.
Let’s get one thing straight. Salad is as boring or as exciting as you allow it to be.
The backbone of a good salad is the dressing, and a good dressing is nothing more than the perfect marriage of oil and acid.
The ratio for a vinaigrette is 3–1 oil to acid. The acid can be whatever you like: white vinegar, balsamic vinegar, lemon juice, or even another citrus juice.
Put the two in a small jar, add a little salt, and shake to emulsify. There’s your vinaigrette. You can also add dijon mustard, black pepper, herbs, and basically whatever the hell you like that complements what’s in the salad.
After washing your greens, and before adding the dressing, make sure you remove as much of the excess water as possible. This helps the dressing cling easier to the leaves of the lettuce. A salad spinner will make your life so much easier and I really recommend the investment.
10. Understand the basics of salt, fat, acid and heat
Taking a page from Samin Norsat’s book here. Having a basic understanding of how salt, fat, acid, and heat change your food will turn you into a way better cook than you thought you could be.
Salt — amplifies flavor and affects texture.
Acid — Lifts and balances flavor and sets off chemical reactions in food that change its color and texture.
Fat — makes food satiating, flavorful, and adds texture.
Heat — Heat cooks food, duh. What I’m referring to here is more around using heat to change ingredients into something more exciting. Things like caramelization and slow cooking can take regular ingredients to a new level. Think about a regular bowl of oats with caramelized fruit instead of the standard apple or banana.
Our entire concept of food is based around these 4 elements, so the more you understand them, the more you’ll understand why certain foods are the way they are, and how to achieve certain outcomes.
Better understanding these 4 elements also gives you a roadmap while experimenting with new techniques and flavors. Instead of just aimlessly adding ingredients to a dish, you’ll know what you can add and exactly why you should add it.
11. Bonus — Fermentation
Fermentation is definitely not a necessary skill to have in the kitchen by any means, but it’s a fun one.
You’re already more acquainted with fermentation than you probably realize. Things like soy sauce, miso, kombucha, kimchi, sauerkraut, and yogurt are all fermented foods. Fermented foods have delicious, complex flavors, and are rich in beneficial probiotics.
If you have filtered water, salt, and a mason jar, you can ferment basically any fruit or vegetable at home.
The general rule of thumb is 2% of the food’s weight in salt, dissolved in water to make a brine. Add food and brine to a jar, add something to weigh it down if necessary to keep the food under the water, and seal for 5–10 days. The time will depend on the temperature of the room, so check after 5 days and make a call. This process is called Lacto-fermentation and allows good bacteria like lactobacillus to thrive while inhibiting bad bacteria.
If you want to take your fermentation game a little further, I suggest the book The Noma Guide to Fermentation by David Zilber and René Redzepi of the world-renowned restaurant Noma in Copenhagen. These guys are absolute geniuses at what they do and have a wealth of knowledge to share.
By no means are any of these suggestions rules, nor should they be treated as such. They are simply tips and tricks taken from professionals that know a lot more than the average home cook.
Mastering your cooking is a long road ahead, but it doesn’t have to feel like that. Using some, or all, of these tips will help the process feel smoother, easier, and overall more enjoyable. Cooking is meant to be fun, not stressful, and it’s up to you to make that happen.
Whether it’s something simple like resting your meat properly, leveling up your knife skills, or even playing around with the 4 cooking elements, there’s always something small that’ll take your cooking to the next level.
The best part about all of this? The better you cook, the more you’ll want to cook.
And for me personally, few things feel as good as giving people a positive experience through food.
📝 Read this story later in Journal.
🍎 Wake up every Sunday morning to the week’s most noteworthy stories in Wellness waiting in your inbox. Read the Noteworthy in Wellness newsletter.
