There are a lot of people that are either very intimidated by cooking in general or are not sure how to expand what they cook beyond the most basic things for any number of reasons. I thought I would offer up a handful of things that I’ve learned over time that make cooking in my house more relaxed and enjoyable. As a result, our food costs are much more reasonable as well because we aren’t beholden to paying others to cook for us. And let’s be very transparent that restaurant and take-out food is typically at least a little unhealthy (with a lot of it being very unhealthy).
Topic Types
You might see something and feel it’s a tip, a trick, a hack, or maybe something else. For me, I just sort of lump them all together into my general approach to cooking, storage, and cooking. If there’s something on this list that is new and helpful to you, that’s awesome. If you have your own tips and tricks to share beyond what’s here (or have ideas to make one of these even better), please share in the comments!
Cooking is an Art, Baking is a Science
When you are preparing a baked good (cake, pie, brownies, bread, muffins, etc.), the recipe matters a lot. While you may have opportunities to add something in or substitute for something else, it’s important to know what those changes mean and how they can affect the end result. Swapping all-purpose flour for bread flour is generally not something you can do because they behave differently in a baked good recipe. Adding chopped nuts to a brownie recipe is typically completely fine.
When you’re cooking a “meal”, even some or all of it happens in the oven, the recipe is often very flexibly modified to your liking. For example: the classic lasagna is prepared on the stove top but finished in the oven. You can swap out the ricotta cheese and use cottage cheese if you prefer and the specific meat you use is really up to you. Changing specific ingredients or even adjusting the quantities of some of them will have little impact on the end result (unless you adjust the quantity pretty significantly).
Keep this general idea in mind when you are looking for, and reading through, recipes when you are in search of something to make. Recipes for meals can easily be adjusted to your liking while baked goods generally have to be followed “as they’re written” – and you will need to find a recipe that is to your liking from the start.
Brand Name vs. “Other”
When might you want to pay more for a brand name version of an ingredient versus a store brand or “no name” type versions? The basic rule of thumb that I use for this question focuses on whether I’m buying the ingredient to eat it or use it as an ingredient. For example, I might buy Honey Maid graham crackers if I am going to eat them as a snack directly but I will look for less expensive store name versions if I am going to crush them up to make a graham graham cracker crust.
This is the base rule, though, which means there can be exceptions! A common exception is something like wine – even if you’re going to use it as an ingredient, buy one that you would drink as well so that you get one with a base flavor profile that you like. For boneless, skinless chicken breast, I almost never buy the name brand versions. Still, there are certain store brands around me that tend to be better than others as some are more tough than others or their trimming method results in much more (or less) fat left on the product I take home.
Don’t be afraid to at least try the less expensive options that don’t carry the big-dollar marketing name. I buy most of my canned goods and broths from Aldi with their store brand name and only opt for brand name versions when I can get them at a big discount on sale. Broth from Aldi, for example, is around $1.50 per quart. If I can get Swanson or College Inn for $1.00 per quart, I will buy them instead.
Take Shortcuts Where it Makes Sense
Cooking an entire meal completely from scratch is great. But, there are plenty of shortcuts out there that make cooking simpler, quicker, and don’t necessarily inflate the overall cost. A couple of great examples here are things like Rotisserie Chickens (completely cooked and seasoned, easy to remove the meat from the bones, and can be frozen for future use if you won’t use it all right away) and fresh-made “take and bake” type pizzas from the store. If you find a basic cheese pizza from one of your local stores that is a good price, a good size, and has the type of taste and texture you like, use it as a starting point. Add your own toppings onto it to make it into the pizza you want it to be instead of being disappointed that they don’t have one already topped with what you want. A small can of sliced mushrooms or some pepperoni are just a couple of things you could add to make the pizza into the meal you want it to be.
One other “shortcut” item I use is an electric pressure cooker. There are plenty of recipes created specifically for cooking with these, and two of my favorites are chili and chicken burrito bowls. By using the pressure cooking method, I can achieve “slow cook” type results in terms of flavoring and such in much shorter amounts of time. If I remember correctly, it takes about hour from when I start taking out ingredients until a very flavorful chili is on the table and almost half of that time is just waiting for the pressure cooker to do its thing.
Prep, Prep, and More Prep
The more that you can do ahead of time, the quicker the assembly portion of the cooking can go. Simple things like pre-measuring ingredients and putting them into smaller bowls or similar to add when you’re ready is one that I use all the time. I have a chili recipe, for example, that has a variety of different seasonings that go in at two different times. I pre-measure each ingredient into one of two small bowls (depending on which batch they go in as part of) and then just pour the contents from each bowl when the timing is right to add them. If you’re actively cooking with medium-high heat, you simply don’t have time to stop and measure out teaspoons and tablespoons of five different seasonings without risking burning what’s in the pan.
Another prep step is to pre-measure portions and then vacuum seal and freeze them. I do this with rotisserie chicken, uncooked chicken breast, hamburger, sausage, etc. When it comes time to make a meal, I take out the items I need and thaw them. Lots of recipes call for one pound of various meats (or some multiple of that). I use a simple digital scale to measure either half pound increments (beef, sausage – sometimes I use half a pound of each so this is a good size for mix-and-match, too) or full pound increments (chicken). Also for chicken, I tend to chop it first for rotisserie chicken and most of the uncooked chicken breast simply because that works well in my recipes (soups, quesadillas, burrito bowls, etc.). I also keep a few full chicken breasts frozen in case I want that.
Freezing / Thawing
I often buy meat in larger quantities with the intention of portioning it down and freezing. I will buy a full pork tenderloin, for example, and cut the middle third into boneless chops and cut the outer thirds in half length-wise to create tenderloins suitable for grilling or making pulled pork. I use a Food Saver vacuum sealer so that I can get out as much air as possible before freezing which helps them last for months without issue.
When it comes time to thaw, a large bowl filled with hot water makes the process go quickly. Put the whole vacuum bag in, still completely sealed, and make sure it’s fully submerged. A half pound of meat can thaw in as little as about 20 minutes, a full pound takes about 45 minutes. Sometimes I have to dump the water and refill with fresh, hot water to keep the process going (or ensure it goes as quickly as possible). This means that I can decide on what to cook fairly last minute and still have dinner on the table in a reasonable amount of time.
Another way to leverage freezing is to vacuum seal things once they are cooked and then take them out when you want that for dinner but don’t want all of the prep time to cook from scratch. Doing this requires cooking more than you need for any given meal, so either double up your recipe (or similar) or leverage this if you’re cooking for a small household. I use this frequently for things like French Toast (I buy a couple of loaves of Challah bread and make a lot at once), quesadillas (I make roughly double what we can eat over a couple of meals, cut, vacuum seal, and freeze the rest), lasagna (I put a couple of pieces into a bag, vacuum seal, and freeze), chili, soups, and even things like leftovers (as a “full plate”) of Thanksgiving dinner. For liquid items like soup or chili, you can portion into something like a glass container, place in the freezer for a few hours to freeze, then bag, seal, and re-freeze as this is how you get all of the air out without drawing out the liquid as well. This is also an easy way to freeze extra broth or similar that might otherwise go bad.
Garlic
I’ve learned a couple of simple things with regards to garlic. First, very few recipes actually need garlic cloves that you peel and chop yourselves. If you’re sauteeing them in a sauce and want to extract mild flavor from unchopped cloves, for example, you need garlic from the produce department. If you’re adding it into a mixture of vegetables and/or meat(s) and sauteeing everything together, the minced garlic in a jar is perfectly acceptable to use. I have no issue with smashing, peeling, and chopping garlic for a recipe, but I seldom do it any more because the stuff in the jar works great and the work is already done. I just use a little more of it than if it were fresh garlic.
The second thing I’ve learned is that it can burn very easily. When your recipe calls for you to brown meat with onions and garlic (or similar), don’t add the garlic until the onions have become translucent and the meat is at least mostly browned. You will still get the garlic flavor you want, but you remove almost any risk of burning the garlic.
Browning Meats
Most of the recipes I have used will tell you that you need to brown meat in a pan until there is no more pink color visible. That is absolutely true. Maybe. Unless it isn’t that big of a deal. In other words, what does the rest of the process look like? If you’re browning the meat and putting it right into your taco dinner when it’s done, yes. Make sure it’s completely cooked. However, if that meat is going to have other ingredients added to it, it will simmer on the stove, or it’s all going into the oven to bake for an hour, then you don’t need to be as particular about getting every bit of pink out of the meat on the stovetop – that hour in the 350 degree oven will finish cooking it.
In other words, if there’s a lot more time and heat to come, you don’t have to be as stressed about being “perfect” in pre-cooking the meat before it goes into the main dish.
Lasagna Noodles
There are two general rules for pasta that most people don’t follow and they are just as important here – use a large pot with plenty of water and add salt to the water. Don’t add oil or any of the other things that are so commonly passed along – they do nothing to keep the water from boiling over or the past from sticking. They can also make clean-up messier and you should be pouring oil down your sink drain anyway. Instead, get a large pot that will hold at least 5-6 quarts of water and still have a couple of inches of space below the top of the pot. You want the water to -boil- with the pasta in there.
Speaking of boiling, make sure you add salt to the water and do this after it starts boiling. Plain pasta doesn’t have a lot of flavor by itself, so you want to cook in salty water to give it a little more taste. I use Kosher salt and typically add three or four tablespoons of it to about six quarts of boiling water.
Once you reach the end of the boiling time for lasagna noodles, don’t dump the pot into a strainer. Instead, use tongs to lift each noodle out of the pot, let it drip the water off for a few seconds, then lie it flat on parchment paper. Lying the noodles out in a single layer like this will allow them to stop cooking (because they’re out of the water), dry slightly, and (most importantly) not stick together before you can put them into your pan.
Bonus tip: Use kitchen shears to cut them down slightly if they are a little too long for your pan. And don’t overlap them in the pan – place them so that the edges are next to each other only.
Cleaning / Clean As You Go
One of the biggest “hacks” for cleaning is to limit how much cleaning you have to do in the first place. I cook bacon by baking it in the oven. This method means there is zero stove-top splatter to contend with, AND by using non-stick foil on the baking sheet, I have very little to wash off of the baking sheet.
Leftovers go into glass containers with locking plastic lids. Glass is extremely easy to clean, but plastic isn’t always so simple. If the leftovers are being taken out of the house (packed lunch), I put a piece of plastic wrap over the glass before I snap the plastic lid on. This keeps the plastic fully protected from anything in the container whether it be soup (can be greasy/oily), pasta (red sauce stains plastic), or anything else with strong flavors (which can also “stain” plastic and leave traces of the flavors behind).
Cooking doesn’t always require my full attention from start to finish. And if I have a small break where I’m letting something boil or similar, I will take advantage of that time to wash something that I’ve used along the way. I do try and immediately rinse everything before it goes into the sink, but taking a few minutes to wash things here and there makes the final clean-up at the end much less overwhelming AND it might free something back up for me to use again later on if I need it again.
Another thing I do is use various pots, pans, dishes, and utensils that are easier to thoroughly clean. I have Scanpan pots and pans with non-stick components integrated into the material directly (metal utensil safe) and fats and proteins clean up very easily (starches are sometimes more tricky to clean). I also have glazed stoneware baking dishes and enameled cast iron cooking pots that are very easy to clean via various methods. My utensils are mostly hard plastic or silicone and don’t stain or retain anything from the cooking process.
Absolutely NOTHING that I use to cook with, except for when I might use a fork or something from the silverware drawer, goes through the dishwasher. Everything is washed by hand, every single time. Dishwashers rely on harsher detergents and higher temperatures to get things clean. If hand washing doesn’t completely remove everything, I can use a little liquid Bar Keeper’s Friend to help things along and get the last bits off.
Special note on knives – A couple of high quality knives will serve you far better than a drawer full of “As Seen on TV” stuff that doesn’t last / won’t hold an edge. Care basically consists of periodically honing the edge, cleaning them after you use them (hand wash with warm water and soap), then drying them before putting them away.
Wrapping Up
Those are just some of the things I’ve learned and have made my habits over the years. There are plenty of others that I’m quite certain I do so automatically that I don’t even realize I’m doing them! What are some of your best-kept kitchen secret tips that YOU use regularly to make your cooking better, less expensive, or just generally feel like less of a chore? Let me know in the comments!