Looking for good Cooking Advice? You’re not alone…Learning to cook and provide wholesome, nutritional, and comforting meals for yourself and others is a beautiful thing. Just like with any skill, those attempting to master cooking can sometimes reach plateaus.
There are weeks where it feels like they’re making the same old thing, ingredients they want to incorporate more or specific recipes that never entirely turn out as desired. The following will explore how you can overcome these hurdles on your cooking journey and continue to push yourself and develop as a chef.
5 Tips on How To Find Great Cooking Advice:
1. Speak To People Who Grew Up In Different Cultures
One of the fastest ways to improve your cooking is to get out of your cultural bubble. There are countless cultural cuisines in the world, and each one of them has something fantastic to offer. Speaking to people who grew up in different cultures about their favorite meals and recipes is one of the easiest ways to bring a fresh feeling to your cooking.
In particular, you might want to speak to older adults who have lived through multiple eras and experienced many different stages of trends in the home-cooking world. Grandparents and friends’ grandparents are a fantastic place to start.
2. Read The Books
Yes, the internet is full of recipes and blogs and videos related to cooking, but many articles are just repackaging something we’ve read before. Cookbooks will always be places of great learning. There’s nothing quite like flipping through the pages and deciding to make something you’ve never heard of before.
Make sure to leaf through the classics but also newer books to learn as much as possible. As you’ll quickly discover, good cookbooks are pretty easy to find once you start looking. As a bonus, given the thematic focus, many cookbooks have, studying several recipes from the same book can help build your cooking instincts.
You will begin to see how one particular chef or expert approaches many different dishes and gain a better understanding of the methods they use that can also be applied to recipes, not in the book.
3. Intensive Courses
If you’re someone who travels, you may already know about the magic of cooking classes as these are a common thing to do when you visit a new country. Even if you aren’t planning on leaving town, take a moment to research any cooking classes available near you. There are countless options in most bigger cities, and many of these classes focus on making elements of recipes from scratch.
This could mean learning how to make your own chocolate from raw beans or learning to make your own pasta noodles. It could mean learning about recipes using only local, in-season ingredients. It could mean learning to cook one of your regular dishes in a whole new way.
Understanding how ingredients come together can really change how you approach tried and true, classic recipes. There are cooking classes for every possible situation, including learning to cook for people with severe allergies, learning to cook when you have a difficult relationship with food, and learning to cook using unusual appliances and tools. Cooking classes are also a great place to meet people who are just as enthusiastic about food as you are.
4. Eat Out
This one might not seem like it provides cooking advice, but it does. Try out the new restaurants or different dishes at your favorite places to gain an understanding of the creative ways recipes can be made and remade. Sometimes advice comes in the form of inspiration.
Most menus come with a list of the main ingredients in a dish, and if they don’t, there’s no harm in asking what is in something you loved. We once had salmon cooked with grapes, which sounds crazy but was magical. Sometimes you need to see and smell and taste how others are preparing meals before you can apply these ideas in your own kitchen.
5. Ask About The Dishes You Loved
Similar to eating out, asking friends, colleagues, and family members how they made something can reveal to you a whole new way of looking at a familiar food. Everyone who cooks regularly has developed their own tips and tricks, their own tweaks on the classics, and their own methods of preparation. More than this, asking people to share their recipes is an excellent way to connect and bond.
By exploring some of the avenues mentioned above, you’ll be able to find great food advice out there. This will put you well on your way to improving your cooking in no time. Preparing food is both a science and an art, meaning it’s a difficult thing to master. There’s always more to learn and experiment with. But, as your taste develops, so will your cooking.
Want to read more of our cooking tips? Check out our post about cooking wild game in NYC, our post about tips for baking at home, or the one about baking with wine.
