Have you ever wanted to learn how to cook like a professional? It’s not as difficult as you might think! With these cooking tips for beginners, you’ll be able to impress your friends and family in no time.
Whether you’re just starting out or you’ve been cooking for years, there’s always something new to learn in the kitchen.
Some procedures or tools are essential to the professional working kitchen that many home cooks do not take advantage of. Generally, these things are done or used to minimize the time factor or to be the most cost-effective. However, these are two things that any home cook can benefit from.
Professional chefs work by systems; things are done a certain way because they have to be. Otherwise, too much time or money is wasted- customers want good food at a reasonable price, without waiting ages for it!
Another factor that is a massive drive towards perfecting kitchen procedures is the food quality; there are simply some ways to do things that provide a superior end product than other ways, and the knowledge of these standard procedures is vital to any chef’s working habits.
Below are some examples of the best procedures and cooking tips for beginners who want to improve their work and the food quality they can produce. Follow these simple pointers, and you’ll be working the same way professional chefs worldwide work every day.
Rest the Meat
Many home cooks do not rest their meat long enough, which is a shame as it will not reach its peak tenderness or juiciness before being cut and served. The muscle fibers in meat contract when heat is applied during cooking, which tightens and toughens the meat.
After being removed from the heat, these muscle fibers relax, making the meat much more tender. You’ll also hold the juices inside by resting before slicing- the liquid in the meat retreats from the heat as you cook it and ends up pooling in the center.
As the meat cools, it redistributes itself, making the whole meat juicier. Cut too early, and those delicious juices will spill out and be lost, drying out your meat. The appropriate resting time for different meats varies.
Still, a general rule is to let it rest for as long as it has been cooked (for smaller cuts), and for steaks, 8-10 minutes is optimal. For roasts and large joints, you’ll need to rest them for quite a while, around 10 minutes per pound, or about half of the total cooking time.
Use Squeezy Bottles
Be sure to invest in two or three plastic squeezy bottles. Having a squeezy bottle full of your favorite cooking oil makes a huge difference when cooking at home. It cuts down on cooking time and makes things a lot easier.
They’re also great for adding purees to a plate. You can easily experiment with many different patterns. They’re also perfect for fixing garnishes or small meats to a dish while adding an extra flavor. For example, if you are cooking scallops, you can make an apple puree, and using the squeezy bottle, make little rounds of puree that you can rest each scallop on top of.
Not only will they not roll around when the plate is carried, but they’ll have a delicious sauce already attached to them. This method is ideal for fixing berries to a plate for a professional finish on a dessert.
Use Clarified Butter Instead of Oil
Cooking with clarified butter is an absolute must in higher-tier culinary establishments. The smoking point is still high, and using butter instead of oil gives you much more control over the temperature. This is not to mention the enormous increase in flavor that clarified butter brings to a plate.
Tossing your cooked vegetables into a preheated pan of hot clarified butter for a few seconds, then sprinkling them with seasoning will, in effect, glaze the vegetables and significantly improve their taste.
Creating clarified butter is easy. Simply melt a block of butter over gentle heat (or microwave it on medium for a few minutes). Skim any scum from the surface (sometimes a white crystalline film will appear) and then carefully pour or spoon out the top layer, leaving the fat behind at the bottom.
The clarified butter will be yellow, and the fat underneath it will be white. They have different densities, which is why they separate after being heated.
Prepare Everything Before You Cook and Keep it Fresh in Tubs
A working kitchen must have everything prepped up and ready to go. Still, it’s something people rarely do at home. Invest in some decent storage containers. Having an air-tight seal is essential here!
When you go shopping, spend a little extra time when you get back. Instead of just jamming everything into the fridge where it risks being forgotten or hidden behind the mayo for a week, start preparing it for use.
Getting into this habit saves you time later, and it will help you to become more creative, too, because you’ll have shortened the steps it takes for you to prepare something. For example, if you buy a cauliflower, remove the leaves and, break up the florets, store them in a bag or tub in the fridge.
If you are using leeks, get the root ends off and slice them into smaller batons ready for use.
This is especially true for onions and garlic; when you buy a handful of garlic bulbs, peel them, take off the ends, and store them in a tub or jar with a bit of oil (in the fridge).
So that you don’t have to do the same job of peeling them every single time you make a meal that includes them. For onions, chop up three or four and leave them in a box in the fridge to grab one when you need one.
Think of the jobs you often do or the jobs you repeat for each meal. Prepare enough to last a few days without over-preparing and risking discoloration or waste. It’s a delicate balance but is quickly learned with practice.
Keep a Cloth Nearby and Clean as You Go
Cleaning as you go is of utmost importance in a working kitchen, and often it is merely a case of keeping a plastic tub half filled with hot soapy water and a sponge or cloth inside ready to use. This will also dramatically cut down on the washing up you have to do.
For example, if you make a bowl dirty, a few swipes with your soapy sponge and a quick rinse under the tap render it ready to re-use, instead of stacking up among the other dishes and utensils in the sink. Most people hate cleaning up the aftermath of an afternoon’s cooking, but if you clean as you go, you’ll have hardly anything to wash up.
Have a Variety of Vinegars and Oils
The more you cook, the more you realize that it’s not a case of one size fits all, so try to keep a wide variety of oils and vinegars in your kitchen. They will all add different dimensions to the food you cook.
Vinegar stores very well (keep it in the dark place), as do most oils, although high-quality olive oil will lose some of its health properties over time.
Having a range of vinegars and oils will open you up to different cooking styles. You may even discover new combinations of things you love and hadn’t even thought of before.
Batch Cook and Portion Later
If you decide to make a lasagne, try making a larger batch than usual so you can portion some off and keep it for another time. This practice will provide you with a healthy homemade ready meal later when you’re tired or busy.
This is especially useful for soups or casseroles. Even some desserts will freeze well, like a chocolate brownie or fruit pie, which are also great to have stored for unexpected guests.
Make Your Own Stock
A well-made stock will make all the difference to any meal or sauce. They freeze well, so you can make a batch that will last you for many meals. All good restaurants make their own stock, which is why their sauce tastes so good!
Stocks are simple to make, but ideally, you will need some chinois or fine strainer to create the end result clear. Make sure that it always stays below a boil as you cook it, or you risk mixing impurities back into the stock instead of skimming them from the top and discarding them.
Have a Variety of Fresh Herbs on Hand
If you have enough space in your home for a herb garden, as a home cook, you would be very wise to invest in one! Having fresh herbs to hand for your dishes will make a massive difference to the quality of the taste you can produce.
For example, when roasting (vegetables or meat), always include rosemary, thyme, or oregano in the pan. Their aromas will permeate the food and leave a much fuller flavor.
Similarly, when finishing a dish, a generous sprinkle of fresh parsley, chives, or dill will boost not only the freshness and taste of the dish but also its visual appeal. Remember that we eat with our eyes first!
Toast Your Spices
Spices should be bought whole and then toasted in a dry pan over low-medium heat or on a tray in an oven on low-medium heat. This really brings out their available flavors and will mellow out the more bitter spices like cardamom.
It is also possible to gently toast the spices in oil, which many Indian recipes call for. However, be careful not to overheat them as they will lose a lot of flavor or even become bitter.
Start Dishes Off With Mirepoix
Starting the cooking of a dish with a mirepoix can boost its flavor. In classical French cooking (the basis of much of modern western cuisine), you will find that a large amount of the dishes begin with the cooking of a mirepoix as a base for the ingredients that follow.
Soups, risottos and many meat dishes are hugely affected by this addition, the flavors will be deeper and the sauce will have much more substance. A basic mirepoix consists of carrot, onion and celery cut into small, diced equal pieces.
Try to be Seasonal, it’s Cheaper And Fresher
Paying good attention to the seasons can significantly affect your cooking at home. Vegetables in season contain much more flavor as they are much less likely to have traveled very far to reach your table.
For precisely this reason, you will also enjoy a difference in price for the vegetables that are in season; their transport costs are low.
In addition, they cost less for suppliers because they are in abundance- you can even find huge bargains for those ingredients of which there is an influx in the markets.
Source Your Food Locally as Much as Possible
If you can buy from a market, do so. Many restaurants seek local growers for specialist products like samphire or wild mushrooms. Visiting markets to talk to suppliers may broaden the ingredients you can obtain.
Market prices or prices direct from growers are often much lower than those you will have to pay in a supermarket or specialist store. In addition, you will sometimes have access to vegetables or fruits picked hours before they are available to buy.
This makes a massive difference in taste and quality, especially for summer fruits or herbs.
Try to Get a Chinois
A fine strainer, or chinois, will give a very professional finish to whatever you make, be it sauce, soup or puree. It also cuts down on your work time as you won’t have to check your item after straining- it will always be smooth and without bits.
They are perfect for stocks as they sift out the finest bits of debris and hold a muslin cloth very well. Try to get one with a good handle and opposing hook or nib for resting the chinois over a pan. This means you’ll be able to set it and leave it to drain while you focus on other tasks.
If you’re pushed for time and need to strain something quickly, use a spatula, or even better, a spoon to press down on the liquid to force it through the chinois faster.
Have a Dumping Box
This is simply a plastic box or a bowl that you keep close to hand while preparing vegetables from scratch. You use it to dump all of your peelings and skins, or the parts you cannot use like the ends of carrots.
Having this will save you running back and forth to the bin as you work; use the box until it fills, then empty it.
The time you’ll save won’t seem like much, but when you’re preparing for many or making a big meal all those trips to the bin add up, and in the end, you’ll save yourself a lot of time, and make working a little easier.
Keep Your Pan Use Minimal
In a busy kitchen, there may only be a few of one kind of pan available, so if you get one dirty and put it in to be washed you may have to wait around for a while before you see it again, so many chefs will try to keep their pans as clean as possible to avoid the chaos of having to keep washing them.
This translates easily into home cooking, especially as the one cooking will generally be washing up too!
Investing in cast iron or non-stick pans will help you out here, as they will generally become spotless with only a few swipes of oiled cloth. In addition, you won’t have to keep breaking from cooking to rewash the pan you need.
You’ll also help yourself out with the final job of cleaning down the kitchen- after cooking for hours, the last thing most people want is a sink full of dishes and pans to contend with!
If a pan has something stuck to it, like a cheese sauce or sugar syrup, soak it in hot soapy water immediately.
Keep a Pot of Tasting Spoons on the Side
Essential for tasting and spooning things out onto plates, no chef is complete without a trusty pot of spoons! Even an old jam jar will do. Simply half-fill it with water and leave a couple of good spoons in there so you can grab one quickly when you need to taste something.
Use Separate Boards for Different Foods
Have at least two chopping boards within reach. This will not only ensure that you don’t mix raw meat with salad greens (which can be pretty dangerous), but it will also save you from accidentally cutting some bread in the same spot you cut onions. Unfortunately, it happens to the best of us.
Use Metal Rings for Plating
Suppose you’re the sort of cook who likes to dress up your plates. In that case, it could be worth investing in tall metal food rings. These will allow you to create a perfectly circular base of vegetables (for example) onto which to place potatoes or meat.
You can even get away with not forking out any money, simply cut some plastic piping to size and use that instead!
Keep a Folder of New Things to Try or New Recipe Ideas
There are many dishes in the world, too many for one mind to keep track of, so get yourself a folder to store clippings and pictures of recipes or plating ideas. This way you will not only build up your culinary repertoire, but you will have a stock base of ideas for those days when you want to be creative but can’t think of anything to make.
Write Yourself a Prep List
In a working kitchen, every service requires a prep list to prepare everything you will cook during the dinner or lunch service. It is followed meticulously and is usually ordered in a way that allows for the most time-consuming things to be done first.
This is an excellent example for the home chef; you will have a solid plan and will be much less stressed in preparing big meals with a few different courses.
Freeze a Box of Chocolate Dessert Garnishes
If you like presenting desserts nicely for friends or just for yourself after a long day, try keeping a little box of chocolate dessert garnishes.
You can make these garnishes in several ways. A straightforward method is tempering chocolate and drizzling it onto greaseproof paper into a pattern.
You can do this with a piping or zip-lock bag with one corner cut off, then cutting them out after they dry (keep them on the paper for ease of storage).
Invest in a Palette Knife
A palette knife is the best tool for flipping things in the pan or lifting things from one place to another. Of course, spatulas or fish slices work too, but a palette knife generally gives you much more control over what you are doing.
You’ll also avoid burning things or dropping them mid-transfer. For more oversized items, use a fish slice or something similar.
Otherwise, you’ll be wobbling all over the place, especially if the item is heavy enough to bend the blade down! They’re also great for carefully sliding underneath things that may have stuck to the pan, like scallops or bits of fish.
Summing Up
If you want to learn how to cook like a professional, then following these tips will definitely help you on your journey. Just remember to be patient, keep practicing, and don’t be afraid to experiment with new recipes and ingredients. With a little bit of effort, you’ll be surprised at how quickly you can become a pro in the kitchen.
