Top 5 cooking tips that will make you cook.

I had always been interested in baking and cooking. And never really cared about perfecting any of the recipes I made. They always came out a little different, and even if I had prepared the same recipe a lot of times, there would always be something that could have been better. 

I recently took some cooking courses and I have learned a lot of things that have totally changed my cooking.  This are the TOP 5 COOKING TIPS THAT WILL MAKE YOU COOK.

 1. Read ALL the recipe BEFORE starting

There’s nothing worse than mixing 2 ingredients that were not supposed to go together. Doing this will prevent you from doing something that you were not supposed to do and help you be better prepared for what you are going to do. What if you missed an ingredient? Or a utensil?

2. Take NOTES while you cook 

This will prevent future mistakes from happening and you will be able to remember the alterations that you have made on your recipe to make sure that you get the best results always.

3. CLEAN as you go 

I cannot stress enough how important this is for your recipe and your peace. I used to be always stressed because I would leave the cleaning until the end. This would end up in an accumulation of dirty dishes + a huge disaster everywhere. When I took my cooking courses I learned that it’s actually better to clean as you go. That way there are:

- Never a lot of dishes to wash.

- You can reuse the same utensils.

- It’s so much easier to clean at the end.

4. There will never be free time while cooking 

My chef taught me this. You can always do something else (kitchen related) while you’re waiting for a step of your recipe to be done. Let’s say you’re waiting for the rice to cook, or for the bread to rise. If you’re making sushi, and you’re waiting for your rice to cook, you can start cutting the carrots, shrimps or cucumber that you’re going to put on your sushi. 

If you’re waiting for your bread to grow, you can start cleaning the table or washing some dishes. Theres always something to do. Procrastinating and doing other things while you cook might seem productive at times, but it will only make you take longer on at the end since you will have a tremendous disaster to clean up. 

5. Follow the EXACT MEASURES of the recipe 

I used to add whatever amount of ingredient. I didn’t care about anything. I thought that if I added more sugar than what the recipe actually called for, my cookies or brownies were going to taste better. That I could just add as much butter as I pleased expecting excellent results. 

Well, that did not go well at all. I discovered that cooking is just chemistry. You have certain amount of sugar on the tomatoes to cancel the acidity. You have to add certain amount of something that works with an specific amount of other something to achieve good results. There is an order that must be followed in order to to get the best results.