Beginner Cooking Tips

Cooking can be intimidating when you don't know what you're doing. There's a lot of knowledge and skill that goes into it! It's a perfect blend of both art and science. However, that means you'll have to be good in both areas. In this roundup, I'll first go over my first five fundamental beginner cooking tips to help you either get started or feel more confident in the kitchen.

Then, I'll list a series of articles that you can visit, that will further deep dive into the topics and skills. Before we do that, let's dive into the five beginner cooking tips.

Prepare All of Your Ingredients Ahead of Time

If a recipe calls 3 different chopped vegetables, sliced meat, and minced garlic, please prepare all of these ingredients before you start the cooking process. By preparing these ingredients ahead of time, you can reduce or eliminate the risk of food burning or making other mistakes.

By having your ingredients all laid out before you already prepared, you can better time everything. Imagine if you had been cooking your garlic in the pan for 2 minutes, and needed to put the chopped vegetables in next. What would you do if you still needed to finish chopping the bell peppers? You would probably burn the garlic and ruin the dish.

Buy and Use Only the Best and Most Quality Ingredients 

Growing up, my mom would teach me all of her cooking knowledge. The first thing she would often say is, "Use only the best ingredients. That will go a long way in how your food tastes." She's not wrong. She's very right, in fact.

Here are some examples of how you can choose quality ingredients. First, focus on buying quality produce. Buy fresh fruits and vegetables that are in season. Don't source produce that's about to go bad or looks wilty. The produce won't be as fresh or flavorful.

If you're using spices, make sure they are relatively new. If you have ground spices that have been sitting in your cupboard for 10 years, then you might want to get new spices. This is because spices lose their potency and flavor over time, especially when exposed to oxygen. They can get stale. Buy spices in small batches so you reduce how long your spices sit in your cupboard. You want to actively rotate through your spices.

Out of all of the beginner cooking tips, this is one of the tips that will have some of the greatest impact on your food.

Plan and Read Your Recipes Ahead of Time

Plan what recipes you want to make ahead of time, make a list of the ingredients you need, go buy the ingredients you need, and make sure to reread the recipe a couple of times before you start the cooking process. Again, this ensures that you are prepared before the cooking process, and you reduce any chance of mistakes happening.

Stay in the Kitchen While Food is Cooking

Another important beginner cooking tip, stay in the kitchen while the food is cooking. Oftentimes, we think we can multitask, so we'll leave something cooking on the stove to go to another room to do another chore - only to come back to the smoke detector going off and burnt food. Avoid being ambitious, and stay in the kitchen while food is cooking.

The exception to this beginner cooking tip is food you cook in appliances that automatically go off when the food is done cooking. Examples include pressure cookers, slow cookers, and air fryers.

Learn How to Be Adaptable 

Have you ever started making a recipe, and then realized you don't have one or more of the ingredients the recipe calls for? You don't have time to run to the store, because maybe something is already cooking, or you don't have time. You have to find something in your kitchen that will work as a good substitute.

That's why it's so important to be familiar with your kitchen, and common cooking skills, and understand how foods come together in flavor and texture. This way, you can be more adaptable and flexible in the kitchen. This is one of the most important beginner cooking tips because it allows you to move forward with your cooking without perceiving a major obstacle.

In order to adapt, it's first really important to learn how different flavors and textures of foods blend together. Which foods go well together, and which don't? Books like The Flavor Matrix or The Flavor Bible deep dive into this topic. I recommend reading these books.