Foolproof handbook to cooking at home
Whether it’s shoddy prepping or dull knives, even gourmets make mistakes in the kitchen
Cooking at home can be a rewarding endeavour and a lifelong pursuit. The more time and effort you invest, the more likely you are to reduce your flubs and minimize your disappointments.
Along those lines, we’re always learning something. But maybe you’re just starting out and don’t have the benefit of skills and years of trial and error. If so, you’ve probably made some of the mistakes listed below (or are about to make them). Even if you’ve been at it for years, surely there’s something here you’re doing wrong. How many kitchen missteps are you willing to own up to? In random order, here are a bunch.
1. You don’t preheat your oven adequately. While preheating is not always necessary, it is crucial for many baked goods like cakes, muffins, pies and breads. To get the oven fully heated to 350 F usually takes 20 minutes. Also, finishing a thick steak in the oven (after searing it on the stove top) mandates that the oven be preheated (usually to 450 F / 232 C).
2. You don’t check the interior temperature of the food you are cooking. If you want to make sure your dinner guests don’t eat nearly raw chicken you just plucked off your backyard grill, use an instant-read thermometer and save yourself some grief.
3. You don’t preheat your frying pan. Are your omelettes a mess? Are your pancakes gooey in the middle? Do delicate foods stick to your nonstick pan? You’re probably not patient enough heating it up.
4. You don’t prep before you cook. Watch what happens in a professional kitchen. Before lunch or dinner service, prep cooks come in and get everything ready: They peel potatoes, chop celery, mince onions, slice tomatoes, peel garlic. Home cooks tend to do everything at once and the results can be chaotic. Prep, then cook. It’s more relaxing and you’re less likely to make mistakes.
5. You don’t read recipes all the way through. This is similar to prep. You should understand the recipe before you dive in and start cooking from it. The better recipes are often complex and have recipes within recipes. There’s also the issue of timing. Say you’re making a chocolate mousse an hour before dinner guests arrive, only to read the final step: Chill said mousse for eight hours.
6. You don’t let your meat rest after cooking. You’re hungry. The kids are famished. Let’s just pull those steaks off the grill and dig in. Wrong. The pros let their steaks rest at least 10 minutes before slicing to avoid the dreaded loss of juices all over the plate. Tent the steaks with foil, set your timer and leave them alone.
7. You use dull knives. When was the last time you’ve had your knives sharpened? Dull knives are actually dangerous, especially for doing things like slicing onions. Here’s a quick test: A sharp knife should easily cut through a sheet of paper. Sharpen your knives about once a month, depending on use.
8. You don’t use a cutting board. This one seems so basic we hesitated to include it, but it turns out that a lot of people use their countertops to chop, slice and mince. That’s a big no-no. It’s bad for your knives and can potentially cause cross-contamination. Glass cutting boards also are a bad idea for your knives.
9. You avoid wood cutting boards because you think they trap bacteria. That’s a myth. Keep your cutting board clean and oiled (with mineral oil), and it’s very safe.
10. You don’t label and date the food you refrigerate and freeze. Those fish sticks in the freezer won’t last forever. Was it 2005 or 2007 that you stuck those things in there? Go to healthycanadians.gc.ca and search “Safe Food Storage” for a list of tips. The one thing in your kitchen that won’t spoil no matter where you store it? Honey. It might last for centuries.
11. You always cook from a recipe. Yep, while it’s good to follow recipes and learn how ingredients work to- gether, you’re not really cooking until you create your own dishes. 12. You think baking and cooking are the same thing — just wing it. Sure, you can adjust the flavours or sauces and soups on the fly, and seasoning chicken, beef and poultry is more of a feel thing. But it’s not that way with baking, where precision is paramount. You need to measure carefully and consistently.
13. You don’t use a kitchen scale. The most accurate way to bake and cook is to weigh the ingredients. More and more recipes, especially for baked goods, are providing weights in the list of ingredients.
14. You don’t chill your chocolate chip cookie dough before baking. This is not the secret it used to be, thanks to a spate of recent articles celebrating this crucial step. Yes, your cookies will have better texture and flavour if you chill the raw dough for 24 hours before baking. This is the key step for excellent vegan chocolate chip cookies, too.
15. You don’t use parchment paper. It’s the best for cakes and cookies and makes cleanup a breeze. Take it from Martha Stewart.
16. You overstir your pancake batter. This is a rookie mistake and can lead to pancakes as pleather. This is not like a cake batter, where you whip and/or mix at high speeds. Put the whisk away, grab a silicon spatula and stir, or fold gently just until the wet and dry ingredients are combined. Interestingly, this gluten buildup doesn’t happen to the same extent if you’re making whole-wheat pancakes. If that’s the case, stir on with abandon. 17. You buy things you could be making and make things you probably should be buying. Mayonnaise, almond butter, granola, cookies, salad dressing, soup? They’re easy and better when made at home. Bagels? You probably need some mad skills, but it’s doable. Beef, chicken and veggie broth? Best at home — if you’ve got time. Pizza? It can range from awful to decent at home, but unless you have an 800-degree oven you’ll have a hard time getting that Neapolitan-style crust the way you want it. Drip coffee? Yes. Espresso? Unless you’ve dropped $2,000 on a decent machine, leave it to the experts. 18. You thaw and marinate food on the counter at room temperature. The U.S. government’s food safety guide calls it “one of the riskiest things you can do.” Instead, thaw meat in the fridge. Same with marinating. If you thaw food in the microwave, cook it immediately.
19. You don’t think about time and sequence before you start cooking. Let’s say you’ve got four different dishes to pull together for dinner. Starting them haphazardly could lead to chaos. Start each recipe in the proper sequence and finish everything at the same time (remembering to rest that steak for 10 minutes).
20. You’re still soaking dried beans. This is a controversial one, because most recipes for dried legumes call for soaking, often overnight. But Russ Parsons, food writer for the Los Angeles Times, has long insisted that soaking does nothing to improve flavour and texture and only marginally decreases cooking times.
21. You always brine, or never brine, your chicken, turkey and pork. Brining is big these days, thanks to advocates like the science nerds at Cooks Illustrated. Sure enough, brining can work magic on ho-hum boneless chicken breasts, giving them better texture and an infusion of flavour. But as Harold McGee notes in Keys To Good Cooking, brining has its limitations: “They dilute the meat’s own flavourful juices with tap water, and usually make the pan juices too salty for deglazing into a sauce.”
22. You under-salt everything. Eric Veldman Miller, owner of V. Miller Meats in Sacramento, Calif., says the most common mistake home cooks make with steak is under-salting the meat. Be assertive. The salt brings out the flavour of the beef.
23. You overcook everything. Last but not least, this may be the biggest blunder of all. Your pork chops have all the tenderness of a foam roller. Your steaks are dark grey and brutally dry in the middle. And that plate of mushy veggies, as Joy of Cooking puts it in the “Introduction to Vegetables” section, “is drained of all life force.”
The great tome goes on to advise home cooks to “do very little to them.” Obliterating food is a sign of an insecure cook. With skill and experience comes an understanding of when food is cooked properly.