Have you ever heard the phrase, now you are cooking with gas? I bet you have and have always wondered just what it meant and why anyone would use it. But if you have ever had to look at and compare stoves that use gas such as you would get from lingas.com to the kind of stove that uses electric burners, you would see right away. That is because when you cook with gas you get to see exactly what it is you are doing, how much heat you are applying and you can control it second by second.
This is probably why most of the great chefs of the world prefer to cook with gas. Yes indeed, if you want a big tip to start of your cooking career, I would say that cooking with gas is one you really shouldn’t miss. But this isn’t the only great cooking tip that many great chefs like to share with each other and brag about. Looking for some sure-fire tips to improve your own cooking? We are always happy to share a few with you right here.
Measure with Care
Measurement of your ingredients is one area where so many young cooks make errors that it has become a mantra among chefs, just as with carpenters, to measure twice and cut once. What this means for cooking is to take your time to make sure that all your measurements are done precisely and with care.
All too often we look at a recipe and think we know that we need a tablespoon of an ingredient when what we really need is a teaspoon of it. That may not matter much in a stew, but when baking you want to be sure that when the recipe calls for two teaspoons that is what you use, instead of two tablespoons.
Substitute with Wisdom
We all love to leave our own mark on what we cook, and for many of us who love to get creative that can mean making a substitute in a recipe to suit our own tastes. Of course, it all depends on the recipe and what you are substituting to know the impact this can have.
When looking at dry ingredients it is important to make sure that what you substitute will not change the dry to wet ratio in your final product. You can often look up how much to substitute for simple things, such as changing the kind of flour you use when you bake. But if you are going to stray very far from the original recipe, be prepared to have your experiment fall flat from time to time. All you need to do then is note what worked or didn’t, and substitute with that knowledge the next time.
Preparation is Everything
While I am definitely the kind of cook who loves to create on the fly, that doesn’t mean I don’t prepare for what I am going to cook first. I find that I can be my most creative if I measure out my ingredients before I start, prepare my cooking pans ahead of time and read through my recipe twice before I ever start. Being prepared means you can shift gears without worrying that you have forgotten something when you pop it in the oven. Because no cook ever wants to have that sinking feeling of failure at the end of a session.