5 Genius Cooking Tricks That Everyone Needs To Know

Think you’re a bit of a whizz in the kitchen? You might reckon you make the best, juiciest steak in all the land, but there’s always a few sneaky tips you can learn from.

Chefs on Reddit were asked what were their top tricks and tips for cooking up a storm, and they gave some pretty genius suggestions.

Here’s the five you need to know.

1. Season as you go along

“Always, ALWAYS taste your food while cooking. I always have like 5 spoons beside me while cooking. This allows you to accurately adjust seasoning, flavours, and cooking time.

“It is tough at first to know what to adjust, but you get better at it with time and it will really improve the quality of food you make (especially over-salting).”

2. Don’t crowd the pan 

“Whatever you’re sautéing, don’t crowd the pan. Get a bigger pan or cook in batches but the reason your potatoes/veggies/etc. aren’t getting brown and crispy is because they’re drowning in their own juice.”

3. Learn your flavours!

“Match flavors. If you’re cooking something with bacon, use the bacon fat to saute your vegetables. Cook a steak with butter. Use white wine if the food you’re cooking is light in color. Use red wine if the food is dark in color. Don’t use butter if you’re cooking vegetarian. Don’t add chicken stock to a beef based dish. (There are, or course, some exceptions to this rule. That is for a later time though…)

“Learn some basic flavor combinations. A good way to figure this out is to read the history of the spice trade. That way you will know what spices and flavors go with what.

A few examples:

French- lemon + parsley; and/or carrots, onions, celery. Tarragon, chervil, sage, herbs de provence

Italian- tomatoes, basil, garlic, olive oil, hot peppers, oregano, bay leaves,

Mexican- Lime + Cilantro, coriander, cumin, hot peppers

Thai- Lime, Mint, Cilantro, shallots, garlic, ginger, lemongrass, galangal, Thai basil, green pepper

4. And peel garlic like a pro

“When peeling garlic cloves use a chef knife to stab any mother fucker that mentions that god damned self evident nonsense about using the flat of the knife to help peel garlic.”

Easy peasy!