Photo by Anna Tarazevich
For most people, their kitchen isn’t just the part of their home where they prepare food: it is also where they host guests, dine with family, and teach their children. It is also a place where you can channel your inner chef and start developing your cooking skills.
Becoming a professional chef requires years of hard training and rigorous experience, but that doesn’t mean you can’t enhance your family meals with a few expert tips. Whether you are already a confident cook or need a lot of practice, this article will outline how you can elevate your skills and your kitchen to impress your family and friends.
Master the Basics
When you start to feel more confident about using basic kitchen techniques, you will be in a better position to start experimenting with your recipes. There are a few fundamental cooking techniques that it’s worth practicing to ensure you can develop further. Here are a few examples:
- Using sharp knives safely and effectively to prepare ingredients for cooking;
- Timing your use of heat and understanding how different temperature methods affect different ingredients;
- Roasting, grilling, simmering, and sautéing to bring out the complex tastes in each ingredient and change their textures.
Once you have come to grips with the basic skills you need to handle yourself in the kitchen, you can start trying out more complicated and challenging cooking methods.
Rethink the Flow of Your Kitchen
Your kitchen plays a role in how you cook. Professional chefs work in kitchens that are specially kitted out with the best equipment and in a layout that gives them the most room to move around easily.
You can rearrange the layout of your kitchen and give yourself more space for access. Think about what the most convenient arrangement would be so that you can perform all your separate cooking tasks in a safe, hygienic, and comfortable manner.
Invest in the Best Equipment
If you are exceptionally keen to start perfecting your cooking skills, it might be time to invest in high-quality kitchen equipment. Professional chefs use different equipment to those used in a domestic kitchen since they must serve higher numbers of people in shorter periods of time.
However, a powerful and efficient oven or upscaled refrigerator could help you get in the zone and take your cooking more seriously. Even small gadgets such as standings mixers and electric chopping devices can give you greater control in the kitchen.
Try Out New Recipes
Once you are feeling more confident in your basic skills and have all the tools you need, you should venture into unfamiliar territory and try preparing meals that you’ve never attempted before; look online or in books for recipes that intrigue you. If you want a challenge, find a recipe that demands different methods that you haven’t tried before, as this will force you to learn new skills and accept mistakes.
Perfect the Family Favorites
Of course it’s satisfying to teach yourself unfamiliar recipes to demonstrate your newfound skills. However, you should turn your talents towards creating the favorite dishes of your loved ones. Ask each member of your household what their favorite meal is then teach yourself how to make it for them—they will definitely appreciate the effort and the delicious home-cooked meals.
Stock Up On Important Ingredients
Keeping your pantry well stocked with the most important ingredients will give you greater freedom to experiment in the kitchen. Some ingredients are harder to store long term than others, so be considerate about which items can be kept and which must be used quickly.
Some essential ingredients might pop up in many of your recipes. For example, buying bulk onions will keep you prepared if this is an ingredient you use in a lot of dishes. Not everyone will have the same need for the same ingredients, which is why it’s useful to know what kind of cook you are—do you need a lot of spices for different curries, or are you more of a baker who needs a steady supply of different types of flour?
Prioritize Organization
To truly mimic a professional kitchen, you must maintain exceptional organization. Keep all your tools and ingredients stored in convenient and logical places; too much clutter on the counters and a pile of dirty pots is not what you would see in a restaurant kitchen.
With accurate and thoughtful timing during the cooking process, you can clean up as you go. Make sure countertops and other surfaces stay clean to avoid cross contamination between different ingredients, especially meats.
Learn How to Present Dishes
Food presentation is a skill that many professional chefs spend years perfecting. People eat with their eyes before even tasting their food, so it’s important that your dishes look appetizing when you serve them up. Consider how to plate your food so that the shapes, colors, and textures interact well together.
Expert chefs suggest that you should only garnish a dish with an ingredient that was used in the main recipe for the meal rather than a completely foreign ingredient, as this enhances the overall sensory experience.
Build Confidence by Experimenting
When you allow yourself to make mistakes, you will learn more skills and tricks along the way. Cooking can be much more enjoyable when you let yourself experiment, even if it means occasionally making a meal that is unappealing. Figure out different flavor combinations and how to create them; learn which textures complement each other and how to achieve certain effects. The more you practice with a focus on curiosity rather than perfection, the better you will become. All it takes is patience to learn and a willingness to make mistakes.
You don’t need to aim for perfection when developing your cooking skills—learning to prepare food for yourself and your loved ones is all about passion, confidence, and experimentation. You can adopt the basic principles of a professional restaurant-level chef to use in the comfort of your own home, and impress your family and friends with your new and improved abilities by embracing the art of cooking and giving your kitchen a professional twist.
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