Tips for the New Cook

We all learn from our mistakes, as they say–I thought I might as well share some wisdom I’ve gained from my oops-es:

• Never, ever wear your best clothes while cooking; it’s better to stain a shirt you’re not overly attached to.  Or you could use an apron–even Jacques Pepin wears one when he’s cooking!
• Read all the directions before you start.  I remember my fourth-grade teacher handing out a set of instructions and asking us to follow them.  We all eagerly jumped in–except for the one student who read the entire page and found out that the final instruction was to disregard all the previous ones and do nothing.  (Nope, sadly that student wasn’t me…)  The exercise was a good way of illustrating how few people read directions all the way through.  When you cook, you have to know what’s coming next.
• Make sure you have all the ingredients and pans/pots that you’ll need.  Are you baking brownies?  Be sure you have a 8×8 glass pan if that’s what the recipe requires.  Don’t have capers for those stuffed tomatoes?  That might be okay, depending on how much you like capers and whether or not they’re a main ingredient in the dish.
• When it comes to food receptacles, you are much better off super-sizing them than trying to scoot by with the bare minimum–if in doubt, choose the bigger pot, pan, or bowl.
• Clean as you go! I can’t emphasize this point enough.  There are often pauses in cooking–the sauce has to simmer, the bread has to rise–and you might as well take advantage of that time to clean up whatever mess you’ve made.  Not only are utensils much easier to clean before the food adheres to them like super-glue, but then when your dish is ready, you will be, too!  It’s also a lot easier to cook if you have plenty of clean counter-top space to work with.
• Have a care with your glass-ware.  If you pour boiling liquid into a glass measuring cup that isn’t meant to handle high temperatures, it will crack and you’ll have boiling liquid everywhere.  Likewise, if you’ve heated an empty glass container in the oven and you pour cold water into it, it will shatter.  These rules also apply to the glass coffeepot at work!
• Always use a timer, and if you go into another part of the house where you won’t hear it go off, take the timer with you.  I knew a guy who put a frozen pizza into the oven for dinner and forgot about it until the next day.  By then, it was ash and partly-molten slag.
• If you’re using potholders with loops on them, be mindful of where you’re reaching–you don’t want to get them caught on anything.  (Those who use gas stoves with the hooking burners need to be particularly careful about this one.)
• Wash all of your produce–you don’t know where that produce has been!  It’s also a good idea to rinse your rice.
• Be very careful about handling raw poultry:  use only plastic cutting boards that you can put in the dishwasher and be sure to wipe down the counters with a throwaway paper towel when you’re done.  Wash your hands thoroughly after handling raw poultry!
• Keep your cutting boards separate:  use wooden ones for produce and cheese and your plastic ones for meat.
• Keep your knives sharp!  You are much less likely to cut yourself with a dull blade than with a sharp one–you won’t have to press as hard, and you’ll have greater control over exactly where it’s going to cut.  Some people swear by electrical sharpeners, but I prefer the hand-held variety, such as the DMT Diafold Knife Sharpener.  I’ve seen it at several hardware stores.

And here’s a final bonus tip:  if you do stain your clothes, immediately blob cold water onto the stain and use your fingers to rub it with liquid dish soap.  Rinse the spot and throw it in the to-be-done-soon laundry pile.  This has worked for me about 90% of the time.

Tags: cooking, kitchen tips, new cook, safety