Here are six of the best ways you can expand your cooking potential, starting today.
Re-Watch Your Favorite Cooking Shows
Who doesn’t love to watch a cooking show? They can be the perfect form of inspiration and entertainment, and you might find that you pick up a surprising amount from these TV shows. If you want to get even more out of them, one thing you can do is to simply re-watch some of your favorites. How many times have you tried to remember the specific instructions for something you saw on TV, only to fail? Just go back and re-learn what you need to for next time.
Upgrade Your Kitchen Tools
Most of the successful home cooks are simply those who have managed to acquire a decent collection of kitchen tools, and the ability to know how to use them. If you are keen to expand your cooking ability, you might want to think about upgrading your kitchen tools too. Just having some new tools in your life can suddenly make so many tasks in the kitchen so much easier - just think of the first time you used a piping bag rather than making your own makeshift version!
Study Some Food Theory
You don’t absolutely have to know about food theory in order to be a good home cook. But at the same time, learning just a little of the basics can help massively in improving the overall quality of the meals you are producing in your own home. If you are keen to learn more about general food theory, there are many places you can look. But for a start, why not try the award-winning theory from Samin Nosrat?
Samin has developed a theory based around what they consider to be four essential elements of cooking: salt, fat, acid and heat. By carefully balancing these four things, and being aware of where and how you are using them throughout the cooking process, you are going to produce much better meals before you know it.
It’s by learning about these things that you can really start to expand your cooking potential.
Try A New Cuisine
Good cooks know that one of the main influences on any meal is the overarching cuisine in which it is cushioned. If you want to expand the kinds of meals you are cooking, one of the most powerful ways to do it is therefore to try out new cuisines from time to time. Most of us have our favorite cuisines, and we tend to stick to them. That’s fine - getting really good at Italian food is no bad thing. But consider shaking things up from time to time, too.
That can be as simple as trying out a new Mexican shredded chicken dish, learning how to create the perfect paste for a red Thai curry, or finally finding out just what all the fuss is about when it comes to French snails. The further afield you push yourself, the more you are going to learn. Never cooked Mongolian? Why not try it today?
Buy Better Ingredients
A very simple way to improve the final result of your meals is to just buy better quality ingredients. You can do this regardless of what kind of budget you might be on. If you are on a strict budget, you just need to recalibrate things so that you have more to spend on your food. That could just mean cooking one fancy meal a week. But when you do - use the best ingredients you can afford. Just doing this is always going to improve your cooking.
And Finally: Experiment
Remember that cooking is all about being creative. The more you can apply your creativity to your meals, the more you are going to achieve. If you want to become a better home chef, you are going to find this a lot easier by simply taking the time to experiment and play around when you are cooking. Enjoy it! It should be fun, and it’s a process you should be putting your own personality into along the way.