The 5 Cooking Mistakes You Can’t Afford to Keep Making (and How to Fix Them)
You know that feeling. You’ve peeled. You’ve chopped. You’ve whisked. You’ve waited an hour, enduring the hungry looks of your children/partner/friends. Finally, the moment arrives, and you eagerly dive into that first bite, anticipating the explosion of flavor and….meh. It’s not bad, per se, but it’s not the culinary masterpiece you were striving for. When you’ve devoted time, money and effort to painstakingly assembling a meal, only to have it turn out mediocre, chances are you’ve made at least one of the following mistakes. Read on for crunchier, more tender food that bursts with all the flavor it was born (err…grown) to have.
Home cooking is better for your health (and your budget) than eating out. Period.
We all probably know we should cook more. If you don’t, let me break it down for you: you should cook more. Whatever form cooking takes, whether it’s from scratch, semi-homemade, or microwave mixtape, cooking your meals at home is healthier than eating out. Cooking at home results in a higher-quality diet for less money. Now, this is not me saying that everyone should love to cook. Not necessary - if you happen to be like me and find cooking to be a relaxing, sensual, creative outlet, great! But I want to validate that it’s okay if you don’t. However, that doesn’t mean it’s not still better for your health. I don’t particularly looooove flossing my teeth either, but I still do it. There are creative and thrifty ways and shortcuts that can make cooking for yourself a lot less work while still moving in a nutrient-dense, veggie-rich direction. As a culinary coach, part of my job is to help you find and develop your own personal strategy, one that works for you, fits into your life while helping you feel better and improve your health through food. I hope you’ll join me in the pursuit of vibrant, robust health - head here to learn more about becoming a client.
If your food doesn’t taste good, you wont want to eat it.
Hopefully you’re sold on the idea that you should be cooking your own food, but now the issue becomes flavor and enjoyment, a totally valid and necessary part of the human experience of eating. Which is why it’s such a shame when you cook a meal, one that looks OMGURD SO GOOD on that culinary account you follow, and it doesn’t taste like as good as it looks in the picture. The crust doesn’t crunch or the sauce doesn’t ooze, etc etc. Without diving down too deep a rabbit hole re: the decline of Western cooking culture and the diminishing inheritance of the skills our grandparents would have considered second nature (if you’re interested in that, read “Cooked” by Michael Pollan), let me just say this: it’s not your fault that you don’t know how to make food taste good. It’s a skill and an art form, and the techniques and recipes that were once common knowledge are common no more. Instead of throwing your hands up and ordering pizza…again, I invite you to lean into the journey back to nummy, nourishing food. Start by addressing the mistakes below, and leave me a comment if you want me to pass along some more of my favorite resources.
#1: Can’t dice an onion? You need to work on your knife skills.
Think back to pretty much any savory dish you’ve ever made. How does it start? “Heat the pan and add the diced onion.” Everything starts with an onion. But if you come to this recipe crossroads and you’re uncomfortable with a chef knife, you inevitably do one of 3 things: skip the onion, cut it improperly, or use a dried substitute like onion powder. All of these result in a less flavorful dish for different reasons, but suffice to say, nothing beats a freshly diced onion for flavor. More generally, the ability to break down an onion into small cubes of equal size is a good test of how well you handle a blade.
I submit to you that, along with a few other core skills, being competent with a chef knife is the foundation of flavorful food. Why? Because the best-tasting food is the best because it has layers of flavor, and, much of the time, those layers start with an onion. Onions are like having a flavor superpower. It’s the bedrock of so many recipes, the start of the process of building layers of flavor into your dish. And how do you think that onion goes from a smelly roly-poly on your counter to a neat pile of fragrant cubes? That’s right, by cutting it. Now, you could buy pre-chopped onion, and in a pinch, that’s a great option, certainly better than not including onion at all (oh the horror!!!). However, pre-chopped won’t stay fresh very long, and it’s more expensive than buying it whole. So whip out that chef knife (not actually - safety first) and start practicing, because even if you can get around the need to dice an onion, you’re eventually going to have to chop something, so you may as well work on your knife skills while you’re at it. Here’s an excellent resource I often recommend to clients: an in-depth video series on how to use a knife that covers everything from how to how to hold the knife (“what do I do with my hands??”) to using it to butcher a whole chicken, and everything in between.
#2: Not enough salt - Season yo’ shit!
Salt is transformative - it’s the linchpin around which all other flavors turn. When your food tastes bleh/flat, the most common reason is under-seasoning (read: under salting). It makes fats richer, corn sweeter, cucumbers cucumber-ier, etc. It has a greater impact on flavor than ANY other ingredient, and you must learn to leverage its power if you want to make your food taste good. Chefs are VERY serious about their salt, whether it’s the type (team Diamond Crystal for life, btw), sea salt versus kosher, or dry brine vs wet brine. And with good reason! Without getting too deep in the weeds about it, let’s touch on a few essentials to get you started. My own thoughts on the matter have been heavily influenced by Samin Nasrat, and I am deeply indebted to her work Salt Fat Acid Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking, which I strongly recommend to anyone looking to do just that.
Salt to taste (use enough salt)
This is perhaps the most challenging part of the salt conversation, and a skill that must be developed and refined over time. Pay attention to how much salt you used when cooking, then assess when you are eating it if it had that “wow!” factor that only salt can give. As a general rule, I’ve found that folks who haven’t cooked a lot in their lives tend to be wary of adding salt, even though every piece of takeout, fast food or professionally prepared meal you’ve ever eaten has been amply salted, much more so than you probably realize. So don’t be scared of salt! Food needs salt. The ultimate rule here is: salt to taste. Your tongue is the final judge and jury on how much salt something needs, but, chances are, you’re probably not adequately salting your food, or doing so in the right way at the right times (see below), and it’s keeping you from culinary bliss. Samin Nosrat gives us a suggestion on where to start when calculating how much salt your food should have: “1 percent salt by weight for meats, vegetables and grains, and 2 percent salinity for water for blanching vegetables and pasta.” As an example, that translates to 2/3 tsp table salt or 1 3/4 tsp Diamond Crystal Kosher salt PER POUND of boneless meat. If that seems like a horrifying amount of salt, I assure you, it’s not. Try it for yourself with side-by-side taste comparison and I promise you’ll never eat undersalted food ever again. Salt water for pasta, potatoes, grains, legumes and blanched vegetables until it tastes, as Samin writes, “as salty as the sea (or, more accurately, your memory of the sea…).” If you do this correctly, you won’t have to add more salt again before serving.
Note: Without going off the deep end of the low-sodium-diets-yay-or-nay pool, I’ll say this: low-sodium diets are widely recommended for a number of different ailments based on ASTONISHINGLY little and poor-quality evidence. See here. and here. and here. It’s not as clear-cut as it’s made out to be. Salt contains essential nutrients, and it would be exceedingly difficult to exceed the threshold of what’s considered a “high-sodium diet (5g-7g/day, depending on the study)” when cooking your food at home. Unless you’re drinking soy sauce in place of your morning coffee, in which case, please stop.
Salt in advance
Salt needs time to do its work. Osmosis is a passive, slow process, but the results are worth it. I remember the first time I made roasted chicken thighs that had been salted the night before. LIFE. CHANGING. Seriously, each bite was juicier than the last, so much so that I kept sticking the thermometer into the meat to make sure it wasn’t undercooked! Salting in advance is magical. How far in advance, you ask? Well it depends on the food, but here are some starting guidelines:
Meat: at least several hours but up to 1-2 days for large, dense things like whole turkeys (think of that uncle who brines the turkey for 2 days at thanksgiving and reminds you about it every 10 minutes).
Veggies: depending on the cooking method, salt up to 15 minutes before cooking for things like tomatoes and eggplant. This gives the salt time to do its osmosis magic. Toss roasted vegetables with oil and salt immediately before going in the oven, and add salt to sautéing vegetables while they’re cooking (remember to taste and add more as you go).
Legumes: tough beans are the worst. Okay, plenty of things are worse, but there’s no better way to ensure an aversion to these healthy, delicious lil’ guys than serving a rubbery, bland bean. While the problem is most often undercooking, salt does play a role, as salt weakens the pectins that help keep vegetables and beans tough and stiff during their growth and storage. So, salt the water when you soak your beans, or be sure to salt the cooking water (but take care not to over-season, since they’ll absorb a lot/all of the cooking liquid).
Salt as you go
Whatever you do, PLEASE don’t leave it to the very end and then dump a bunch of salt on after your food is done cooking. More broadly, it’s crucial to be constantly assessing a dish’s flavor as it cooks, with one of the most important metrics being: is it properly salted. Taste and adjust as you add ingredients/progress through the steps of cooking.
#3: Meet your meat where it’s at
Have you ever overcooked a steak and subsequently gnawed through rubbery sadness until you thought you were going to sprain a jaw muscle? Pulled some pork carnitas out of the crock pot after 3 hours and wondered why it felt like eating jerky? The reason you struggled was because you probably didn’t understand the crucial difference between gentle heat vs. intense heat when cooking meats (it applies to everything, I have just seen folks mess it up most often and with the most severe consequences when cooking meat). So what’s the difference, and how do you know which type of heat to use on a given cut of meat?
Gentle heat:
The aim of gentle heat methods like steaming, stewing and braising is always tenderness, whether it’s steaming to preserve the tenderness of a delicate cut of fish or the long hours a pot roast spends in the crock pot, the flavorful but tough connective tissue slowly rendering until it yields that characteristic “melt-in-your-mouth” sensation. When it comes to meat, generally speaking, the tougher it is to begin with, the more delicious it will be if gentle heat is applied for a long enough time. Think pot roasts, Mexican pork adobo, or lamb curry. Low, slow cooking, often while partially submerged in liquid, is the way to draw out the deliciousness of the larger, tougher cuts of meat that tend to contain more fat and connective tissue, both of which render and soften over those hours to majorly add to the flavor and rich mouthfeel of a dish. They also have the advantage of being the “set-it-and-forget-it” champions, so they’re ideal to throw together and go off to do something else for a few hours while that heat and moisture works its magic. Note: the best recipes combine a quick, intense heat method like searing followed by a long, slow braise to create that finger-licking depth of flavor our taste buds crave.
Intense heat:
On the other hand, tender cuts of meat like a ribeye or filet mignon will NOT play nice with the long, slow cooking methods discussed above. They will hate you for it, and they will let you know. Instead, we use quicker methods like searing, sautéing and frying to capture that meat’s already tender, juicy qualities. By browning them relatively quickly over high heats, you’ll cook them without giving them time to toughen. So watch them closely and, if necessary, have a meat thermometer handy.
#4: It’s called “medium-HIGH” for a reason, people.
Sauté means “to cook food quickly in a small amount of fat over a relatively high heat,” but a lot of folks are nervous to turn that stovetop dial up. Be brave, and crank that baby up to at least 6 or 7! Here’s why: If the heat is not high enough or the pan is overcrowded, you end up steaming your food instead of sautéing it. This results in soggy, limp veggies and meat that tastes meh, which is not ideal. We typically want at least a little browning, which adds richness and another layer of flavor to your dish. So set yourself up for success and turn up that heat! Also, to sauté things properly, it’s best to choose tender cuts of meat that’ve been cut into portion-sized pieces and vegetables that cook quickly, like asparagus or snap peas.
Remember: don’t overcrowd the pan. When sautéing meat, for example, there should be at least a half-inch of space between each piece. Again, we don’t want to steam the food - we want the steam that is released by cooking to have enough room to escape quickly and efficiently, or the food won’t brown. Cook large amounts of food in batches to ensure it all gets cooked to perfection.
#5: Strip em’ and Shred em’: Don’t skip the fresh herbs.
If a recipe calls for fresh herbs, Use. Fresh. Herbs. Lots of them! If it’s in your budget, of course. If not, dry herbs are absolutely better than no herbs. But if you’re able to do fresh, it adds a whole new layer to a dish’s flavor profile - one that’s bright, punchy, spicy or refreshing, depending on the aromatic herb in question (or all of the above in the case of fresh ginger!). What makes fresh herbs so special? In many cases, it’s the aromatics: the volatile oils found in abundance in plants like mint, oregano, basil, etc. When you dry an herb, you inevitably lose a percentage of these precious flavor-boosters, changing the way that herb flavors the dish. Some recipes call for dried herbs specifically, it’s true - the volatile oils that remain become concentrated when you remove the water, making them, in some ways, more concentrated than fresh. But in my experience, nothing beats the complexity and brightness of a mound of fresh cilantro on top of a taco - dried would just not be the same.
For many recipes, we don’t use the stems of herbs in a dish (the exceptions are things like broths or braises, where you’ll scoop out and discard the herb after cooking). This is especially true of woody-stemmed ones like rosemary. To prepare fresh herbs for cooking, you can pinch or chop the leaves away from the stem, like with cilantro. With something that has a sturdier stem, like thyme or rosemary, it’s much faster to “strip” them from the stem: flip the sprig upside down and, holding the sprig with one hand, slide the fingers of your other hand up the stem. Here’s a video for my visual learners. Now you can take your pile of oregano and chop it or (shred it with your fingers if a coarse chop is all that’s required). Pro tip: this is an EXCELLENT task for kiddos to help with in the kitchen, and one that helps them develop fine motor skills! With their smaller hands, the little ones I’ve spent time cooking with excel at this task (Best for ages 4-ish and up).
Bonus! You can now use this trick for anything “stemmy” when you just want to use the leaves. Not that there’s anything wrong with stems. We love stems. #stemsforlife. Sometimes, though, I separate them out of a recipe because I don’t plan to cook the greens long enough for the stouter stems to soften (say that 5 times fast). In those cases, I strip em’ and stick em’ in a ziplock in the freezer to make DIY vegetable broth later on.
If this got your wheels turning and inspired you to improve your chef skills, but you want some 1-on-1 guidance, come see me for an appointment. I’ll strategize with you to create a cooking plan that works for your situation, whether you are a seasoned cook (see what I did there?) or a culinary newbie. I’ll shower you with resources and support along the way and you’ll have everything you need to start a habit of healthier home cooking, regardless of budget, dietary considerations, or time constraints.