I am not a chef, and neither can I boast that I am a very good cook but thankfully, what you are going to see here are easy and simple ideas to revolutionize your cooking and make it taste great every time.
Whether you like it or not, there are times when you need to show off your cooking skills. It might be to impress, or just to make food you can enjoy.
Cooking your own food saves cost, guarantees better food quality, and prevents reliance on junk food that predisposes to obesity and malnutrition.
Cooking tastier and healthier food gives better satisfaction and happiness. It preserves nutrients and ensures better health and well-being.
By the time you have read through these simple tips for cooking great meals, your food will begin to taste better and more delicious.
At the end of this post, after seeing the seven easy tips to make your food tastier and more delicious, we will try to argue who cooks better, men or women. Going to be a heated argument, right? We will see shortly later.
Getting Started
First thing first, before you begin cooking, you need to get your equipment and ingredients ready. Knowing the right ingredients and utensils to use will make the process easier and the food tastier.
Once that is done, it is time to begin cooking. The tips you are about to see will be your guide to making your food tastier and more delicious.
Note that this guide assumes that you already know how to cook. These tips will not only enhance your cooking skills but will give your hands the magical touch that makes the best chefs stand out.
10 Cooking Essentials to Make Your Food Tastier
This simple guide to making more delicious meals does not delve deep into the step-by-step processes of making different meals in the home. It describes in detail the essential ideas that can make your food taste better and more professional.
1. Use adequate fluids (water or oil) for cooking
To achieve the right texture for your food and to ensure that the food is well-cooked, you need to use adequate amounts of water or oil in preparing your food. Knowing the right amount of water or oil to use for every pound of food is what distinguishes the great cooks from the amateurs.
You want to achieve a texture not too hard or too soft but just good enough for the teeth and tongue. some foods have standard water measurements on their labels, but most other foods don’t. To be on the safe side, add a moderate volume of water to the food and monitor if there is a need to top it up.
2. Cook for an adequate time
This is where many people pay less attention to. If you are using a high heat, it will require less time to cook but for low heat, it will take longer. Whatever the case is, you want to ensure that you allow the food adequate time for the foodstuff to be well-cooked.
Of note is the fact that certain food ingredients require less time than others. For example, vegetables are easily destroyed when cooked for a long time. Thus, the timing of when to put your ingredients is key to achieving a well-cooked, not over-cooked food.
3. Pay attention to flavour
The final taste of any food is determined by the taste and the flavour. The flavour impacts how the food tastes but many people do not know this.
For example, if you add a food additive that smells like beef into your broth, you will get the perception of beef in your mouth when you are eating the food. To achieve the complete blend, you need to balance the taste as well.
Flavouring spices also stimulate appetite releasing digestive juices that make the food taste more delicious.
Spicing your food with flavouring seasonings can change how your food tastes to you and other people eating it. However, it is important to add that only the required amount of flavourings should be added as over-spicing the food can ruin it instead of making it taste better.
4. Focus on appearance
Don’t judge a book by its cover but this is something we naturally do on every normal day. We give so much value to first impressions.
But not only us, appearance also tricks our brain into believing that a food will be tasty or not. Though this is not always correct, the appearance of your food can stimulate salivation and appetite, making the food taste better when eaten.
The secret to optimizing your food appearance is to use food-colouring seasonings in the right quantities. Natural food colours like greenish-yellow, reddish-brown, and dull-yellow work better in stimulating appetite, as against artificial colours like blue, red, and yellow.
Another way to improve your food appearance is to garnish it. This is the process of decorating the food with other components prepared along with it.
5. Season to taste
Many people do not understand how to season food, hence, they struggle with making their food taste more delicious. The number #1 rule to seasoning food is that you need to add it to the desired taste, and not merely assume that one whole sachet/cube or two will do.
The amount of seasoning to add depends on the quantity of food you are cooking. Even though manufacturers package ingredients in fixed quantities, that does not mean you need to use them in those fixed amounts.
You should learn to use your discretion to apply seasonings to your food. If unsure, taste the food until you are comfortable with the taste.
6. Season food gradually/carefully
As you become better at cooking, you won’t need to be too careful with your ingredients anymore but you will still get it right. This comes from experience. However, for someone who is just beginning to apply these principles to make food taste better, you might need to do so carefully and gradually.
Instead of adding a whole teaspoon of salt at once, add it bit by bit while you taste if the quantity is enough or if you need to add a little more.
Whether you are a pro or not, it is not always possible to add a single shot of an ingredient and expect it to be optimal. It is based on estimates.
Also, some food items take ingredients differently from others. Hence, you might need to adjust your seasoning to the particular food you are cooking.
7. Spread seasonings evenly and stir
This is one of the major tips that make great cooks excel more than the rest of us. You don’t want your seasonings clumped together in one part of your food.
You can achieve that by spreading your ingredients in small quantities over every portion of the food as it is in the cooking pot or pan.
Before you stir, allow some time (like 30-60 seconds) for the ingredients to melt first. That way, it can dissolve easily into other areas that it didn’t get to initially.
Stirring too early can make your ingredients leach into the fluid and none of it is retained on your food items (broth, veggies, cereal, etc.)
8. The importance of order
There should be an order if you want your food to taste great. Very raw foods should come at the beginning. Nearly cooked food components should come close to the end. The idea is that you want the integrity of the food to be maintained as much as possible after cooking.
As discussed under texture, softer plant-based components like vegetables should come close to the last. Raw animal-based components should come early enough or even pre-cooked.
Aside from order, whenever any ingredient has been added, ensure that it is optimally cooked before you add the next. This is because newly-added food components tend to draw heat to themselves preventing the older components from receiving enough heat to properly cook.
9. Use the right cooking temperature/heat
Cooking with the right cooking temperature can make your food taste great in many ways.
Once you have started cooking, it is important to ensure that your cooking heat is preserved without allowing the uncooked food to get cold before you continue.
The primary reason why people put off heat in the middle of cooking is if the heat is too high they have to stop it temporarily. To prevent this, ensure that all your ingredients and seasonings are ready before you start cooking, and use a cooking temperature that will not put you in such a hurry.
Moderate heat is the best for cooking tasty foods except if you are in a hurry and wouldn’t mind if your food turns out different from how you expect it to be.
With time and experience, you will be able to cook faster and more efficiently. But before then, slow and steady wins the race.
10. Take standard measurements for reproducibility
If you want your cooking to be reproducible by you or someone else, use standard measurement devices in your cooking. Things to measure include quantity, cooking temperature, and time.
Reproducibility is particularly important if you are running a commercial cooking business. You want your food to taste great and similar every day.
If you are using moderate heat, you can record the quantity of food being cooked and calculate the ratio of seasoning to food. The time to cook, or to add the next ingredient should also be recorded.
Recording quantities and time is important to obtain consistent and reproducible results whether for teaching purposes or for commercial reasons.
Professional chefs do not need to measure every time they add a new ingredient but an amateur cook might need to do so.
Also, adding the same amount of seasoning to the same quantity of food does not guarantee that food cooked by two different people will taste the same way. Again, the order, spread, timing, and amount of fluid can determine the final taste of the food.
Cooking principles for baked and fried foods
If you observe closely, you will observe that the above principles and tips apply mainly to food cooked by boiling, or steaming. But they pretty much also apply to baked and fried foods as well.
The same principles and tips apply to baked and fried foods but with a little variation.
For baked food, you apply your ingredients to the dough first, then allow it to dissolve, then stir and bake in the oven.
For fried foods, you apply the ingredients to the unfried food, mix well, allow to stick, and then fry.
Aside from the minor variations, when applying your ingredients to the food, you can observe the same principles discussed above to give your food a better and more delicious taste.
Which of the sexes cooks better? Male or Female?
On the argument of who cooks better between men and women, there is really no straightforward answer to that. It depends on how much of the above knowledge you have about cooking.
Generally, guys are not very domestic people and society does not expect much culinary skills from them. But when they put their mind to it, they are some of the best cooks you will ever find.
While most people assume that ladies will naturally cook better than guys, a lot of ladies are horrible cooks. Thus, lending support to the fact that cooking skills are not dependent on the sex of the individual, but on their knowledge of cooking as discussed in this post.
Conclusion
I hope the above tips help make your food tastier and more delicious. If you want to start a cooking challenge and you want some guidance, drop your comment in the section below. I will link you up to one of the chefs in my contact list or social media connections.
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