The transition from novice cook to self-assured chef is a transformation we are constantly encouraging. When you’re just starting out, the world of cooking seems incredibly daunting, as the techniques are daunting, the timing is intimidating, and the flavor combinations seem mysterious. The average cook relies on the recipe, and the recipe can only take them so far. If you don’t understand why you’re doing something, you will eventually struggle and make mistakes, which will only make things harder and less enjoyable, especially when compared to professional chefs and experienced cooks.
The secret to great cooking isn’t memorizing tons of recipes. It’s actually understanding the ingredients, flavors and techniques used in creating meals and cooking, so you can create your own, or adapt other people’s. The first part is understanding ingredients and how to use them. This is the basics of cooking: understanding how to store, prep and use different ingredients. If all you do is chop all the vegetables to the same size and know how proteins react to heat, you can ensure perfectly cooked dishes.
Then you have to understand the flavor. All great cooking is about flavors and layers of flavor. Cooking is a process, and every step you take in that process brings something to the dish that changes it and gives a better flavor. If you learn this, you will be able to change recipes to create different flavors, or add missing spices or flavors. The next step is temperature. All ingredients are different. They react differently when cooking, which is why different ingredients are cooked at different temperatures for different lengths of time. If you do it wrong, the dish won’t turn out right. It all comes down to understanding when, and for how long, to cook each ingredient. You will be able to gauge temperatures, which can range from high to medium to low, and cook your food for the appropriate amount of time, so it tastes and looks great. This means that when you cook, you will start to know exactly how your food will taste and how you will adjust it, instead of guessing all the time.
Another aspect is to taste as you cook. You shouldn’t taste at the end, but throughout. Taste is how you balance flavors and season, and this is the first skill that you will learn to develop in your taste buds. It all has to do with the different flavors of food, and this will improve as you practice more often. Lastly is plating. Though it may seem less relevant, good food looks as good as it tastes. It just takes some basic plating techniques, and then the food looks even better.
At FlavorCore, we teach you how to prepare, cook and enjoy your meals. Our curriculum gives you the information and tools to become a confident cook, and we offer courses so you can get started on that journey. First, you start by learning some basic cooking techniques, such as how to use a knife properly, which is a great skill. Then you will learn how to cook some basic meals. From there, you will advance into more complicated meals. Our goal isn’t to just show you how to cook a dish; we want to teach you about the entire process, which will be helpful when you make other dishes and you will always know how to handle the ingredients. We use a hands-on technique where you will actually do each exercise in a lesson. This will reinforce the information better than just reading the text or watching a video. Cooking isn’t just following instructions; it is a skill, it is an art. You have to understand how food works before you can start to get creative with it. Once you understand how to cook and how to use ingredients, you will be confident in your ability to cook whatever you want to cook. Then you will stop relying on recipes and you will start to make your own meals.