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Cooking meals at home and eating out less can improve your health, as you have more control over the ingredients added and the amounts on your plate. You don’t need to be a professional chef to eat well, but there are some tips you can borrow from them. Judge your cooking success by whether the food tastes, smells, and looks good to you–not by whether it matches a styled and staged photo. Don’t forget each individual brings their own likes and dislikes, cultural reference points, strengths, and weaknesses to the kitchen.
5 essential rules for cooking great-tasting food at home:
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Use a good knife and cutting board. Owning essential kitchen tools is crucial. Ideally, you want at least two knives and a non-slip cutting board. A chef's knife is particularly indispensable, serving as the workhorse in your kitchen. If you do not have a non-slip cutting board, you can place a damp paper towel underneath to prevent slippage.
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Prepare your space and your ingredients. Clean and ready your space before you cook. Then, pull all of your ingredients out of the pantry, refrigerator, or freezer. Measure, chop, or prep as needed before cooking. This is called mise en place—or put in place.
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Cook a lot. This essential rule is about cooking in volume. Double that soup recipe or make extra roasted vegetables and use them in salads, omelets, or snacks. Cooking twice as much as you need does not take twice as long, and you will have leftovers for other meals throughout the week or in the freezer.
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Cook with ingredients rather than recipes. Cooking with ingredients, not recipes is a challenge for beginners. But the more you let ingredients guide your meals, the better. Recipes are helpful and we all use them but don't be afraid to experiment. For instance, if a recipe calls for asparagus but the store only has sub-par asparagus, be willing to experiment with the produce that is on sale and looks fresh. Try this for at least one fruit or vegetable each week; soon, it will become second nature.
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Find YOUR food. Find 5-10 recipes you like, your family likes, and you enjoy preparing. Repeating a dish over and over will help the process get easier and quicker. Making a dish multiple times allows you to change the recipe based on seasonal produce or what you have on hand.
For a lot of people, whether because of chronic illness or disability, cooking can be exhausting. If you struggle with this, you may want to search for recipes that have keywords like “low-prep” or “no chopping”. A slow cooker and a food processor can be very helpful kitchen tools. Don’t worry you can still make great food even if you have a hard time with some kitchen tasks like chopping, grating, or slicing.
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