Gastronomically Impressive: 5 Ways to Elevate Your Cooking Skills

Around 36% of Americans cook daily at home. Considering one person in the household is often responsible for cooking at mealtimes, that’s not a bad figure.

Making the effort to learn to cook is a rewarding task. Not only is cooking at home often cheaper than eating out, but it’s healthier too. Having cooking skills means you can care for (and impress) your loved ones with your delicious dinners.

But as with any skill, you can always improve your cooking. Read these cooking tips to discover simple ways to fire up your foodie delights!

1. Take a Cooking Class

Most keen home cooks are self-taught unless they had a parent or grandparent who showed them the ropes. Even if you had a cooking mentor, there is still a lot you can learn to boost your cooking skills by taking a course.

You can learn how to hold a knife like a professional chef and how to chop food finer and faster. You could take a cooking class in a type of cuisine that you don’t know much about to expand your repertoire too.

2. Use the Right Tools

Emmert Wolf said, “a man is only as good as his tools.” This is 100% true with cooking.

Without a sieve, you have lumpy flour. And without a muffin tin, your bakes will never hold their shape.

To improve your culinary skills, know when to scrimp and when to save with the tools you need to have. Buying a $10 whisk instead of a $5 one won’t make much difference. But you need pristine, sharp knives and high-quality pans.

You’ll notice the difference straight away when you chop onions with a Japanese steel chef’s knife or cook steaks in Grizzly cast iron pans.

3. Lacking Flavor? Add Salt

This is one of the best tips to start enhancing your culinary skills today. If you’re making a stew or soup and it’s missing something, add a little more salt. Salt always heightens the other flavors in a dish so it’s an essential ingredient.

4. Experiment With Recipes

There’s nothing wrong with following recipes to the letter when you are a beginner. But if you want to progress, you need to take your cooking practice to the next level.

Try adding different spices and swapping out ingredients to see if you can improve the recipe. Challenge yourself to adapt existing recipes for different dietary needs. For example, gluten-free or vegan.

5. Shop at a Local Market

Sometimes, it’s not your cooking that needs improving, but your ingredients. Instead of buying fruit and vegetables in your grocery store, try a farmer’s market instead. The produce at markets is more likely to be fresher, tastier, and in season.

Spice up Your Cooking Skills With These Tips

There are 1,001 ways you can improve your cooking skills. But these tips will help you build a good foundation of culinary techniques and knowledge so they are a great place to start.

One of the great things about gaining culinary skills is that you can never learn too many. Browse our food articles for recipes and more meal inspiration!