How To Quickly Build Kitchen Skills

 How do you feel about your current cooking skills? Good but could do with some improvement? You’re not alone! And whether you want to cook more varied meals for your family or you just want to spend less time in the kitchen, improving your skills with kitchen equipment and techniques is a great way to get started. Not only that - when you know how to cook something, it’s a lot easier to experiment and come up with new, delicious plates you’ll come back to time and time again! 

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Master the Basics

Foundational skills are just that - a surface to build the rest of your kitchen knowledge off. If you know how to use a knife fast and safe, you’re going to get through a dish in half the time someone else would. If you know how to safely store and prepare meats, you’ll never have to worry about contamination or potential food poisoning issues later on. Simply put, the more you know now, the better your results will be later. 

Get to Know Your Favorite Ingredients

If you like a few ingredients better than any others, and are always finding a way to include them in a dish, it’s time to do a bit of research. What’s their flavor profile? How do they change a dish? What do they add, and what substitutes can use if you’ve not got any in the cupboard? 

After all, you can easily learn how to make shrimp stir fry when you’re aware of how the ingredients influence and balance out the flavor of the meal. And don’t stop there; consider the smell and texture as well. 

Use Seasoning to Full Effect

The way you season a dish has a lot to do with the final outcome. When an ingredient lacks, you can use a bit of salt and spice to pick up the slack! Dig out all the jars in your spice cupboard or rack and go through them; how do they smell, and what flavor would they add to a dish? 

Paprika, for example, would be smoky and rich, whereas dried chives would make a dish feel a lot fresher in the mouth. And how could you use these spices when coming up with your own recipes? Feel free to experiment here! 

Have an Organized Approach

Lay your ingredients out ready to use. Make sure they’re washed, peeled, and chopped or cut beforehand, and then set them out in bowls. If you’ve got everything in front of you, it’s a lot easier to move as fast as you can and get just the right temperature and timing on the dish you’re making. 

Similarly, make sure your knives are sharp enough to cut effectively. A blunt knife can make a real mess of the ingredients you’re using, and you don’t want to set yourself up to fail when you’re trying to improve! 

If you want to improve your kitchen skills, set up right and get the basics first of all!