Cooking food is a daily and troublesome process. Some housewives try to do something like that to please their household, others simply limit themselves to a set of standard dishes. But it often happens that both those and others' dishes do not come out the way they intended. We have collected 17 common mistakes in food preparation that every second makes.
1. Change ingredients
Each product has its own unique taste and chemical properties. Therefore, before you independently change one or another ingredient in a recipe for another, even a very similar one, think carefully about how its taste will change during cooking, and also read about compatibility with other products. Otherwise, you will get an unpleasant aftertaste and the dish will be spoiled.
2. Cold frying pan
If during frying food sticks to the pan or remains soggy for a long time, you are most likely making one of the most common mistakes - cooking in an unheated pan. Before cooking, place the pan over high heat and wait a few minutes. To check the temperature, you can drop a few drops of water on its surface, if they hissed and evaporate, the pan is hot enough. After that, pour in the oil, wait for the bubbles to appear, and only then lay out the ingredients.
3. Abundance of fluid
Many people pour too much water or wine into the skillet, confusing the braising process with cooking. As a result, the dish does not turn out as expected. Remember, when it comes to stewing, the liquid should cover the ingredients no more than half.
4. Reading a recipe on the go
If you start to cook a new unknown dish, first read the recipe to the end, making sure you have all the necessary ingredients and resources to prepare it. Otherwise, during the cooking process, you may discover a lack of something or suddenly realize that you simply cannot finish cooking due to the lack of one or another device.
5. Share one board
The biggest mistake is to have and use only one cutting board for working with meat, fish, bread and vegetables. It's even worse if this board is made of wood. The thing is that after cutting raw meat or fish, a smell remains on the surface of the board, as well as bacteria that can lead to digestive upset. The best option is three cutting boards: for meat, fish and a board for fruits and vegetables.
6. Store opened coffee packaging
It is absolutely impossible to store coffee in an open package on one of the kitchen shelves. Firstly, without sealed packaging, this product very quickly loses its taste and aroma, and secondly, coffee, like a sponge, absorbs all the aromas of which there is a mass in the kitchen. It is best, after opening the pack, to pour the coffee into an airtight bag or glass jar with a tight lid.
7. Excess flour and starch
Many sauces contain flour or starch. However, be careful with these ingredients. Excess flour and starch will make your sauce too thick and can lead to lumps that completely ruin the flavor.
8. Wrong knife
Having only one knife in the kitchen is a gross mistake. It is unlikely that you will be able to cut the meat with a serrated knife, and fresh bread crumbles and falls apart under a sharp carving knife. Each knife has its own purpose and if you know about it, your ingredients will always be perfectly cut and neat.
9. Small frying pan
Another mistake is trying to brown the meat in a small skillet. A large amount of meat will give a lot of liquid that will not evaporate from a small frying pan and the product will simply be stewed, which means that a golden brown crust will not work.
10. Do not taste the dish
Even experienced chefs do not neglect tasting while cooking. Moreover, you need to try the dish at different stages of its preparation. After all, this is the only way to determine the excess or shortage of spices and quickly correct the situation. Believe me, it is much more difficult to correct the taste of a finished dish.
11. Cooking with frozen food
You cannot fry frozen foods, unless we are talking about semi-finished products. Most likely, you will end up with a burnt on the outside and raw on the inside. Also, do not rush to defrost meat or fish in the microwave. By speeding up the defrosting process, you steal the taste of the ingredients from the ingredients with your own hands. Better to put off cooking and leave the meat on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator overnight.
12. Busting with spices
Inexperienced chefs try to use almost all the spices available on the farm during cooking and make a big mistake. A large amount of spices will kill all the flavor of the ingredients. In addition, not all spices interact well with each other, and their illiterate combination can make the dish simply not edible.
13. Scratched frying pan
Unfortunately, modern Teflon pans are not as durable as their cast iron predecessors. When the Teflon coating is scratched and cracked, the pan will automatically become unusable. Further use of such a frying pan is dangerous to health, as high temperatures heat up the metal and activate the process of evaporation of toxic substances.
14. Dry meat
Are you surprised that meat turns out tough and dry? Most likely, the reason is that you salt it during the cooking process. Remember that the pieces of meat are tender and juicy, especially when it comes to large pieces, salt it after turning off the burner. Five to ten minutes in a skillet under the lid and the meat will absorb the required amount of salt, while remaining tender, juicy and aromatic.
15. Fried potatoes
Whenever you try to fry potatoes in a pan, do they stick to the pan and stick together? There is one little trick to avoid this. After cutting the potatoes into wedges, rinse them in cold water and pat dry on a paper towel.
16. Meat in the oven
Don't like to cook meat in the oven because it turns out tough and tasteless? Such a nuisance happens due to the cold water with which you water the pieces during the baking process. Try using hot water or broth to make the pieces tender and juicy.
17. Bursting sausages
One has only to slightly overexpose the sausages on the fire, as they immediately burst and turn inside out. A small cut in the center will help to avoid this. You can also prick the raw sausage with a fork. So, during the cooking process, the appearance of the sausages will not change.