Everything can seem kind of overwhelming when you are starting out on your journey as a home cook. What equipment do you need? What kind of ingredients should you buy? How do I find quality recipes to try? What if no one likes my cooking? And so on. Added to all of that, there are fundamental things that many new home cooks don’t get quite right that can add to the frustration level. Here are nine of the most common mistakes that new home cooks make, and how you can avoid them to give yourself the best chance for success. Listen to the episode for my complete thoughts on these 9 cooking mistakes and how to avoid them.
You don’t understand the most simple fundamentals
This is a technical one, and It’s a bit tricky to explain in a basic post just what the fundamentals are. Suffice it to say you should understand the techniques and equipment that the recipes you most often make call for. Understand the difference between a boil and a simmer, a saute and a sweat, and a dice and a mince, for example. Also take some time to learn how your equipment works and how it best functions when cooking (like preheating your oven and pans before use, for one example).
You don’t read recipes through before starting
This is huge. Recipes can be tricky buggers depending on how they’re structured and written. The best thing you can do is to read a recipe through completely (maybe twice) before you even dream of starting on step one.
Imagine preparing the dish in your head as you go through the steps and you’ll catch things that can trip up the unprepared. You won’t waste precious minutes in the heat of cooking trying to decipher what exactly the recipe is asking you to do. You will also find out right away if you are missing a critical ingredient or piece of equipment.
You don’t “mise en place”
This is probably as important as reading and understanding the recipe before you start cooking. Mise en place is a fancy French term for assembling and prepping all the ingredients for your recipe so they can quickly and easily be used.
Imagine this: you have a beautiful salmon filet that you just dropped into a sizzling hot pan with a little oil. Now the recipe calls for a pat of butter dropped in the pan. You head to the fridge. “Hmm where is the butter? It was here this morning when I made toast…” Meanwhile as you are digging through the leftovers and expired milk, your salmon is overcooking by the second. Wouldn’t it have been nice to have that butter right by the pan, measured and ready to go when you started? Yep. Get a lot of little bowls and plates, and get in the habit of prepping all your ingredients before starting any recipe. Your life just got way easier.
You try to make overly complicated dishes
Here’s a fact: a lot of really complicated recipes taste awesome. Here’s another fact: a lot of really simple recipes taste even better. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking the more complicated the recipe, or the more ingredients it calls for, the tastier it will be. Ask anyone if my mom was a great home cook and they’d all agree, and I can’t think of many of her recipes that have more than a handful of ingredients.
Complicated recipes offer more opportunity for failure, which can derail your cooking passion when you are just starting out. Keep it simple.
You like to attempt a huge variety of recipes, but try to master none
The number of recipes available at the home cook’s fingertips is astonishing. Get this: there are so many recipes available on allrecipes.com that even if tried one new recipe every day, it would take you something like 9,000 lifetimes to try them all. Whoa. The point is that you can be tempted to always be trying new things, and never try to master anything. That makes it really hard to grow as a cook and build your skills consistently.
If you were learning to play guitar, would you try a new song once, then move on to another and another? No, because you’d never get good at any song. Same with cooking. Figure out what you love to cook and go deep.
You expect that your food will turn out looking like something from food network or top food blogs
Here’s a little secret about the food media world: most of the food they show on the food network or slick blogs never look like that in real life. I’m not saying they are faking the food, I’m just saying they take a LOT of time making their food shots look good. In some cases, they make multiple versions of the recipe just to get one that looks good enough to photograph. That makes it nearly impossible for a home cook to measure up.
It’s easy to look at the dish on TV, and then look at your version of it and say “mine looks terrible.” Don’t worry about it. The food you make is beautiful so don’t get discouraged. But if you do need a chuckle, check this out (don’t worry about it–we’ve all been there).
You don’t give your complete attention to the process
Cooking generally isn’t something you can just sort of do at the same time as a bunch of other stuff. It requires attention. Many new home cooks let themselves get distracted by the kids, or text messages, or reruns of Bachelor in Paradise and it results in burnt or overcooked food, or even forgotten side dishes. Do your best to focus on the cooking; be present. Have your partner play with the kids, or better yet, have the kids help you cook. DVR the reruns and zero in on whatever you are cooking.
You fall too in love with the equipment
I know some of you will relate to this: I am kind of a “serial” hobbyist. I get the idea that I want to learn to do something so the first thing I do is go all in and get a bunch of the gear. So much so that by the time I am ready to dive into the actual hobby itself I either a) figure out I don’t really want to do it after all, or b) I’m no good at it. I’m then left with a bunch of equipment I don’t want or need. Cooking can be the same way.
Don’t substitute practice and progress for just acquiring the nicest pans, or the coolest blender, or a million bowls. Start simple and save money. Learn if you will be cooking long term. An unbelievable number of recipes can be made with nothing more than a skillet and a wooden spoon or spatula.
You don’t take food safety seriously
I wouldn’t say that cooking is the most dangerous activity out there, but let’s face it, you are working with flames, blades, and even potentially nasty little microbes. Food safety is so simple to master that there really isn’t any excuse not to take it seriously. Trust me, spending the night in a hospital because you ended up with a knock-down case of food poisoning is no laughing matter.
Take a little time to learn the basics like proper cooking temperatures, safe ingredient storage practices, knife safety, and so on, and you’ll stay one step ahead of the safety problems that can derail your cooking joy. The US Department of Health and Human Services food safety website is an excellent resource!
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