67
votes
What are some rookie mistakes you've made as a cook?
I'll start:
-
Cooking everything on high.
-
If you stick a meat thermometer all the way through the meat, you're measuring the temperature of the pan.
-
Thinking I disliked all cooked vegetables. Turns out I prefer them either raw or cooked until crispy.
It took me longer than it should have to realize that recipes lie. Prep and cooking times are almost always understated.
I can understand low-balling cooking time, since you can't uncook a dish. It takes experience to know when your preparations are actually done - how long to caramelize onions, when a baked good is appropriately set and browned, etc.
But as a former pro cook, I still find that most estimated prep times are unrealistic in ways which can make any beginning cook feel like an idiot. There are prep tricks for slicing, dicing, chopping, mincing, mixing, and otherwise processing ingredients, as well as tools/appliances that will get you part of the way there. [You will pry my mandoline out of my cold, dead hands.] But new cooks don't know any of this - it's easy to spend an hour chopping, tearing, and slicing your way to a simple salad. If I'd known at the start what I now know about techniques and tools, a lot more dinners would have gotten to the table on time.
I grew up watching my great grandmother and Food Network (before it became reality television) cooking and I learned really fast that the stated times on recipes when I tried things myself were only if you had made the recipe so often you have the ingredients on hand and already prepped, and you either know the recipe or you read it through and knew when to do what in the chronology to get it ready in one piece at once.
We did Hello Fresh for a while and those recipes would take my husband close to two hours to complete even with all of the items right there prepackaged because he would do one step at a time and wouldn't read ahead to a) prep everything ahead of time and b) know what to do when multitasking in the kitchen.
I miss having the easy and pre-portioned makes, but the cost doesn't work for us.
Thank you so much for saying this. I’ve run into this so many times, and I thought there was something wrong with me. I did Hello Fresh for like a year and a half, and the directions made it seem like you should be able to chop 5 different vegetables in 5 minutes. It’s a lot of work for one person, and it also used to take me at least an hour to complete one of the recipes. I feel a lot less incompetent now.
How long do you typically spend on cooking on a daily basis? Do you still make recipes even when you know it’s going to take a while? Or do you look for something certain that signals that it will be a faster recipe for you?
Honestly, I'm not sure. I tend to cook grandma style where you throw a bunch of stuff together and it makes a meal that is somehow confusing and also a full family dinner.
Don't feel incompetent because you're not at the level that others are, is the biggest tip I can give to newbie cooks. Don't give up. Practice and practice some more. You'll get the feel for what goes well together by experimenting. As long as you keep ingredients that you like on hand, it gets easier to experiment because you'll learn what things go with one another. But also, don't be afraid to try something new once in a while. just not a ton of new things at once. Like one new thing per cooking session.
I cook less now than I used to when I was younger and learning to cook. I often go through my cookbooks and see what looks interesting and get inspiration from them, then I make something else. Baking books are a little different lol. I much prefer measuring by weight than imperial. If you're struggling with baking, switch to weighing ingredients than measuring them by cups.
Sorry, that doesn't really answer your questions. I will sometimes make a recipe if I think it's going to take a while, I just start working on it earlier than I normally would. That requires advanced planning, so reading recipes ahead of time to see if you want to make it.
Must be relativity!
One of the big ones for me was that a lot of American recipes would list "1/X stick of butter" as a measurement of butter, in Canada or at least Alberta, sticks of butter are not very common, they are usually sold in bricks. I often would think to myself "no wonder there is an obesity problem in NA" trying to follow a recipe and adding 4x as much butter that it called for.
If it helps, a stick of butter is ~120ml
It does help! I'm not the person you are replying to, but until now I thought American recipes were calling for 250g of butter each time! Which is the standard size in which butter is sold in the UK.
Something I've found insanely handy to have in the kitchen is a little note where I'll jot down any random but relevant unit conversions whenever I come across them and a stick of butter to ml or grams (It's 113g, by the way) is a perfect example of that. I've even put a few common density/volume differences (eg. 1l of water = 1kg, 1l of milk = 1.032kg) on mine because I'm anally retentive when it comes to measurements in cooking.
My notes app has something similar. It also includes the ratio for making skim milk and heavy cream into whole milk and safe temperatures for different types of meat.
Not adding enough salt and/or fat to home cooked meals. I had a friend who working in a fairly upscale restaurant describe the quantities of both (especially butter) in every dish. While it's not the healthy option, adding a bit more salt or fat to homemade food can be the difference between enjoying what you make or wondering why you always prefer to eat out / order in.
Salt, pepper, onion powder and garlic powder are my standard go-to's for any sort of meat.
I premix it into a shaker labeled SPOG, and just liberally apply to any meat before grilling.
Every meal should have some amount of fat, protein and fiber just to keep you full as well.
100%, my issue was always stopping short at "good enough" and not adding a little extra to enhance the flavor of any dishes I'd cook. The more different spices in a dish the more of a difference this seems to make as the salt acts as an "enhancer" for all the other flavors.
Your tongue has gate receptors that block signals from other taste buds unless they detect sodium ions. Salt makes other flavors more intense.
Salt, fat, or acid
If you want to brown meat when searing DONT TOUCH IT! It will unstick itself from the stainless steel/cast iron pan when it's done developing the bark.
The trick is to not burn it.
in addition to that - don't crowd the pan. sear the meat in batches if necessary.
browning meat, like so many other things about cooking, relies on the Maillard reaction. and a crucial thing to know about the Maillard reaction is that it happens above the boiling point of water.
with a crowded pan, steam escaping from adjacent items of food will tend to keep temperatures around 100 C / 212 F - plenty hot enough to cook the food, but not hot enough to develop any Maillard goodness.
Yo! I never understood the science behind not crowding the pan! Thank you for explaining it! It will help the advice stick.
This applies to ground beef and potatoes, not just steak. Let it form a good bark before stirring.
Piggybacking on two here already involving butter and burning… I used to toss butter in a super-hot cast iron skillet for searing steak, not realizing butter burns at a pretty low temp.
Not using a knife sharpener.
It wasn't until I bought an automatic grindstone sharpener that I was able to really get my knives decently sharp.
My local butcher offers professional knife sharpening for $5. 100% worth it.
Not understanding the difference between something burning and cooking (ie onions or spices burning while sauteing or steak seasoning/herbs burning)
Ahh, mine too. Early on I blasted everything into submission.
I was like why is it smoking??? It shouldn't be... Ohhhh shit, it's burning
Not sure if counts as cooking, but I recently discovered the importance of adding smoothie ingredients in layers of increasing size / solidity. Liquids first, followed by sweeteners, then add-ins, small fresh fruit, frozen fruit, larger fruit chunks, and ice last. I still don't understand the physics of how the blender can be roaring and still fail to actually blend anything, but getting the sequence right makes a huge difference and has improved the quality of my smoothies a ton.
I buy pineapples and strawberries from Costco, blend them, and freeze them in ice cube trays. When I make smoothies I usually add a few of those.
My blender has a crush ice mode which makes quick work of those cubes as long as there's at least a 4-1 ratio of liquid to ice. The blender doesn't seem to care where the ice is.
Ugh, so many come to mind. Simmering a soup until the water was all gone and it burned horribly; touching a pan to see if it was hot. But one time I was making chicken fricassée and didn't have white wine, so I thought, "I can probably replace the wine with this white wine vinegar; both ingredients are acidic and have 'white wine' in the name, right?" So I put like a whole cup of vinegar into my dish, and then didn't taste it until I was done. That was extremely embarrassing.
I tried using red wine vinegar instead of regular vinegar for pickled onions once. Turns out there's a reason recipes only call for a teaspoon at a time. The wine flavor was strong.
Hahaha, reminds me of one my good friend did this past weekend when making a dessert. Recipe called for condensed milk, but he used evaporated milk.
Back in college, I was trying to make mac and cheese. I turned the burner on and stepped away for a minute. I then heard a very loud bang and shattered glass. Turns out I turned the wrong burner on that had a glass or Pyrex dish on it, which exploded and sent hot chunks flying all over the kitchen. I cleaned it all up, turned on the correct burner, boiled the water, and added the macaroni. Then I realized I never changed the water after the explosion and had glass shards in the pot. I went out for food after that realization
This is the saddest thing I've ever read
It was a dark day. I’m a much better cook these days, which doesn’t say too much since the bar was set so low back then…
I used to microwave popcorn in a pyrex bowl. It worked well, until I decided to make a smaller amount than usual. The heat concentrated in the knob of the lid, and a little bit after I took it out, the lid exploded in the kitchen... Luckily my friend and I had realized how hot it was and left the area.
When I first moved out and started cooking for myself in college, I had no idea how to season food. So I went to sautee some bite-sized pieces of chicken, and being from a WASP household, seasoned them with just salt and pepper. But a LOT of salt and pepper, because I'd had too many instances where it was way too bland. Suffice it to say I wasn't able to finish that meal.
Learning to make a simple stir fry was the real turning point for me. I love meals with a lot of acid and aromatics, but since I'd never learned much about cooking I had no idea that was what I wanted or how to add it. The classic soy sauce + rice vinegar + garlic combo kept me going for years.
I have many regrets... But I've learned a lot in the meantime.
Not using the metric system and weighing my ingredients sooner. Weighing ingredients is a game changer and allows you to be able to replicate recipes way better. If a recipe online does not have metric available, I will often just ask my Google home what the conversion is rather than actually use the cup value.
Not considering temperature as an ingredient - I've made the mistake of taking a bag of flour out of the freezer and immediately using it with a sourdough starter and then was surprised and flummoxed when nothing rose. Temperature is super important when it comes to so many things - cold butter and ice water for pie crusts, room temperature eggs for cakes, warmer water for sourdough breads, etc.
I learned to cook "grandma style" with feelings and adding what felt right so unlearning that to start making replicable recipes for things like cookies and breads to share with friends took a lot of work. I still cook grandma style at home for myself and husband, but if it's something I think someone will ask for a recipe for, I always use my kitchen scale.
I bought my scale originally for breadmaking in 2016 when we first moved in together so I could make as much or as little bread as I want but learned to expand to other things. it made sharing treats with friends so much easier during covid lockdowns too, I just shared the recipe and people made their own things.
I got a kitchen scale recently. Even as an American, trying to do math in ounces sounds like a horrible idea.
Scales are incredibly important and I use mine regularly when cooking and preparing meals. That said... I also throw spices in by feel and adjust as I go. Important to be able to do both
When I first started making bread I didn't trust the process, I would add a table spoon(usually more) of flour or water depending on if the dough was too dry or too wet. It lead to subpar loafs, what I should have been doing was continue to mix and keep to the recipe and their measurements.
Cooking is an art. Baking is chemistry.
I consider myself a good cook, but baking always has it's way of putting me in my rightful place.
Believing the untruth that making onions "golden brown" only takes 5-7 minutes. Recipe writers are such liars.
Looks like they must have accidentally slipped a dash into the minutes count there.
Depends on the size for sure. Tiny minced, I can see 5-7. Straws for onion jam? Probably 12-16.
The technique is to use a non-stick pan. Low heat, add salt, and 2 tbsp of water and steam covered for most of the time. Techniquelly on YouTube did a great video on it.
Following the amount of spices listed in a recipe. I am not sure why, but most recipes on the internet, even for international foods, vastly understate the amount of spices needed to create good flavor. They're almost always bland as hell if you follow the recipe to a T. I'll see something like "rub the whole chicken with 1/4 teaspoon of garlic powder" and just guffaw now.
I usually do about four times the quantity of spices as any given recipe calls for, sometimes more. I usually do 10x garlic powder and 2-4x everything else.
I can explain this!
People who tend to make cookbooks cook a lot. They also tend to use higher quality spices. So their spices are both fresher AND replaced much more frequently than those you might have in your own kitchen. Same with some aromatics like fresh garlic. Good garlic from a farmers market or a private garden or a high end supplier is much more intense in flavor than the 69 cent a head stuff you can buy at your local grocery store. Their ingredients (fruits/vegetables/meats) also tend to be much higher quality so they're not needing quite as much seasoning to bring out the flavors as you might if you're getting grocery store hot house veggies, for example.
Fresh, local garlic — preferably heirloom — is about twice as strong as imported garlic. It's still pungent, but far less sharp despite being far stronger. The complexity is easily worth the money.
Spice preferences vary pretty widely. Same with salt. A recipe with enough seasoning for my tastes would taste like drinking hot sauce to my mom.
I don't blame recipes for erring on the side of bland. You can always add more seasoning.
This is also my ADHD getting in the way, but sitting down. I have burned or somehow ruined dinner more times than I'd like to admit by walking away. It has to simmer for 10 mins? I have plenty of time for some doom scrolling. Then I forget about it for a bit too long and now dinner is going to be weird/ bad.
Try setting a timer on your phone before walking away. I do that any time the slow cooker is running.
It took me far too long into my professional cooking career to start using timers.
I had worked for a lot of chefs who felt that a "real chef" shouldn't need a timer, they should just know when something is perfectly cooked. Although I eventually developed a decent sense of timing, I had to get over my pride and realize that relying on my phone to remind me to check on something isn't a knock on my ability to cook.
Ethan Chlebowski has a video on proper sandwich construction that's worth a watch.
What do you mean by boiling pasta water jacuzzi style?
Yes, Ethan is great. It was actually his video on sandwiches, that made things for me click. I had been making sandwiches, croques and tortas for years but never had anyone pointing out how important the layering is.
Re the pasta water. My rookie mistake was to boil the water to the point that it is bubbling strong. Only later I figured out to keep the water just at the simmering point.
What’s the benefit of keeping it at the simmering point?
I might be using the wrong word here actually, english being a foreign language to me. What I mean is just at the boiling point, is that simmer?
What I am getting at is to avoid the pasta being smushy outside while raw on the inside. I found, that avoiding high heat when cooking the pasta makes this easier.
Disclaimer, I am not a professional cook nor did I take classes more than once. Just been cooking almost daily for a family of 4 for the last 10 years.
A rolling boil is pretty common for pasta, are you using enough water? Also stirring regularly when it first goes in is important.
Thanks! I think you're using the right words at least I believe I understand what you mean.
I typically cook pasta with the water with the rolling boil (the water is bubbling strong) and haven't had a problem, but the next time I cook Pasta I'm going to try keeping it a little lower and see what difference that has. Maybe I've been missing out on leveling up my pasta cooking.
The water temp shouldn't made much of a difference. You can start pasta in cold water while bringing it up to a boil (just stir it more) or toss it in at a rolling boil.
If the pasta is smushy outside but raw inside there's a good chance it was dried too quickly and isn't reabsorbing the water evenly. What brands of pasta do you use?
After stating this tip and the following discussion, I came to the conclusion, that the thing with the temperature was a urban myth that had been passed down in my family and is in fact not based in reality.
Thanks for the input, by now my pasta game is good enough that the kids ask for seconds.
When I had an electric range top I typically had my temperatures too low. Now we have a gas range and I typically have temperatures too high. I've been cooking for 30 years and still making adjustments!
Hard Boiling Eggs.
I put the eggs into boiling water vs starting with cold water and slowing bringing it to a boil. Some eggs were nice and only cracked, but others were mildly explosive. There were recipes using the microwave that I learned to avoid. It is almost like people on the internet are secretly snickering in the corner knowing someone will attempt their 'Perfect Hard Boiled Egg Recipe'.
Put the room temperature eggs in boiling water. Boil for 7-11 minutes depending on desired doneness. Remove and put in cold water. Crack a line around the eggs and put them back in the water. Take out and remove shell
Ezpz ;)
Putting in garlic too early so that it burns, although I feel like this one is not really my fault and probably quite common. Recipes used to say to put it in early, before the onions even. Now you find they usually say to put it in just as the onions are done to protect it from burning.
Similarly some chefs used to tell you to put olive oil into the pasta water - at best you’re wasting good oil and at worst it stops your sauce sticking to the pasta
I suspect that recipe sites put the garlic and onion in at the same time to make it look simpler. Detailed recipes might scare people off which means less ad revenue.
I would say this was way back before SEO and ad revenue was really thought of! I think I used to see it on cooking shows. Regardless, I certainly think you’re correct about simplifying
I don't make a lot of basic mistakes because I only do very simple things in the kitchen. But I've ruined several pots and pans and created fire hazards by forgetfully leaving them in the fire for hours on end.
I've made too many mistakes to list, so I'll just share some things I've figured out after 20 years of making mistakes. I came up with a couple very rough categories that cover some of the highlights.
Setting the right foundation
An important part of cooking is what happens before the food meets heat.
Cooking any kind of meat in a pan or on the grill? Rinse it off, pat it dry, and season well with salt and pepper. Season both sides if it's thick, or just one side if it's thin. Let it sit for a few minutes before you cook it.
Same goes for vegetables. Roasted broccoli or asparagus? Make sure it's clean and dry. Toss in a generous amount of oil and season with salt and pepper. Other seasonings as desired. Season a little too much because you'll lose some to the pan.
Speaking of the pan, heat it up before the food goes in. The food will cook better and stick less. A steak pan should be good and hot, enough so a drop of water sizzles. For scrambled eggs, aim for medium hot or a little less.
Bacon is an exception to that rule. Start with a cold pan. You can add a spoonful or two of water to help the fat start to render.
Saute stuff to get a more flavorful base. Stews and soups, for example. Onions, celery, carrots, tomato paste. Saute it all and don't let the brown stuff in the pan go to waste. This works for sweet stuff too. The other day, I made "luxury oatmeal." Sauteed some apples in butter, added some cinnamon and lemon juice, and then oatmeal as normal.
The four S's
Salty, sweet, sour, and salty balance each other out. You don't need to put all of them in everything you make, but using different combinations of them will take your cooking to the next level.
Sweetness doesn't have to come from sugar. Carrots add sweetness to a stew. Or wine for a sauce or roast.
No wine? Substitute with fruit juice and vinegar or lemon juice. Or vinegar and sugar. Just a little bit of each.
A splash of vinegar can brighten up a heavy stew or anything greasy.
A little sugar goes well with spicy chili. Like Korean fried chicken.
A like acid and sweetness add depth to salty things. My favorite roast chicken: rub butter and salt under the skin and in the cavity. Then stuff the cavity with half a lemon, onion (adds a little sweetness), and fresh herbs.
Some great tips here but you’ve said “Salty, sweet, sour, and salty balance each other out.” probably you meant one of the “salty”s to be “savoury”?
I meant to say salty, sweet, sour, and spicy. That's what I get for posting late at night.
But you're right, umami is a magical fifth element. Browned meats, tomatoes, mushrooms, soy sauce, cheese. Sometimes I add a dash of soy sauce to chile. Or toss a parmesan rind in a veggie soup.
One time I was making stock and simmered chicken bones and veggies for hours, when it was finally done I went to pour it through my strainer but I forgot to put a bowl or something under the strainer. I watched as the stock I spent hours on went right down the drain. It was soul crushing.
We've all been there. The good news is that you never do it thrice.
When melting chocolate I've ruined far too much of it by overheating and seizing it. First try in a saucepan, seized. Second try in a microwave, seized. Third try by double-boiling, seized. I tried all the methods of fixing it but nothing (warm cream, water, vegetable oil) can truly fix it. Double boil it, low and slow, remove from heat just before it's completely melted, give it a stir so the residual heat will melt the remaining chunks and use it immediately.
I generally melt chocolate in the microwave. Stick to 5 second bursts and stir after each one. It's possible to burn chocolate before it looks melted otherwise.
I had no clue you could actually burn it that way. If I recall correctly I did a couple short cycles in the microwave, saw that nothing had melted and went all in for a full minute... big mistake.
Microwave in a thoroughly dry bowl, in 5 - 10 second bursts depending on quantity, stirring after each. Easiest way in the world to melt chocolate without risking it seizing from steam or water contamination.
I've found that adding a little bit of heavy cream into the mixture can help fix seized chocolate in most cases.
When I was making pesto for the first time I followed a recipe. It called for two cloves of garlic, which seemed weird. I was used to seeing things like 1tbsp of garlic in a recipe.
Anyhow, I used two whole heads of garlic. It was very strong.
For some reason I feel compelled to share this recipe:
https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/chicken-with-forty-cloves-of-garlic-recipe-1944216
At least it specifies that it is three heads of garlic. Also, that seems like a good amount for two chickens…. Not 1 cup of pesto
I’m going to try this recipe though. It sounds good.
One of my rookie mistakes was not realizing that fresh herbs and dried herbs can't be directly exchanged. After that intense meal I did some research and found out that it's more of a 3:1 ratio.
Also some herbs dry better than others. Dill and rosemary are great. Parsley loses 90% of its flavor.