Some of us first learn cooking by following a recipe from start to finish. And this seems pretty straightforward in the beginning because you are given instructions as to what to do and how to proceed, and usually, you get it right the first time. But it is a very limited skill. You cannot cook unless you are following a recipe or you do not know how to add spices. Or you do not know how long to cook your dish. Or how a particular dish should taste when done.
Cooking is not about following recipes, it is about understanding how foods behave. If you can get the general principles of cooking down, then you can almost cook any meal without fear of failure. Recipes are not a rule. They are merely an example.
One of the best examples of this is how ingredients respond in the kitchen. Each ingredient has its own particular flavor. Onions, for instance, can become sweet and caramelized. Garlic can be cooked to a golden brown or it can burn and give a burnt flavor. Chicken can taste different when cooked at different temperatures for various periods of time. Vegetables, similarly, can either get mushy and lose texture or they can become firm and retain their original look. Once you get this general knowledge, you are no longer cooking with blindfold on. You can see where the outcome of the dish will be.
Next, it is also important to realize that food must be built in flavor. The tastiest foods do not happen by throwing everything in the pan. Good cooks usually start by building a flavor foundation. For instance, the best dishes usually have a base of onion or garlic. Once you’ve cooked those, they can then build the flavor with spices, or stock, or even water. This is the difference between food that tastes flat and food that tastes great. You can take any dish, whether it be a soup, or a stew, or a salad dressing, and create great flavor if you build it step by step. It’s all about intention.
Heat, too, is a powerful element in the kitchen. Different levels of heat can completely transform a particular dish. The same ingredients cooked at high heat could end up different than the same ingredients cooked at a low heat. With higher temperature comes crisp texture, whereas with lower temperature is a more uniform texture. This is just another element for you to consider while cooking; you need to know when to use heat for a desired result. It’s all about technique.
Tasting along the way is also one of the key tips to becoming a great cook. Beginners will usually taste their food when it’s done. Professionals, on the other hand, taste their food while it’s still being cooked so they can make sure the flavor of the food is what it is supposed to be. This is especially important because sometimes, a bland dish can get a boost in flavor by adding a pinch of salt, or a squeeze of lemon juice, or a few drops of fish sauce. This makes cooking an exercise in trial and error as opposed to an all or nothing gamble at the end.
Also, mistakes need to be made because learning is an important part of becoming better. You need to understand what went wrong. The over-salted dish or the over-cooked pasta are examples. But they are not failures, because they are lessons. And once the lessons are learned, there is no reason to repeat them. The more you cook, the less things will surprise you.
But finally, presentation matters. There is also the matter of presentation for a dish, even if it is just home cooking. If it is going to look good on the plate, you are more likely to enjoy it, especially if you’re serving it to others. You just need to look at food on plates to know this is true. If all of your dishes can look as good as they taste, you’re golden. You don’t need special plating techniques for this, you just need to think about it and you’re good.
This, ultimately, is what we focus on at FlavorCore. You’ll stop relying on recipes and you’ll start knowing how and why food cooks. We’ll show you how it all works and then you can cook whatever you like. You don’t have to memorize steps. You just need to understand the principles. And when you understand the principles, that’s when things really click.
That’s the point where we get to the why, and once you see the “why” behind what you’re cooking, you can just cook. And it’s then that cooking becomes more fun because you’re not just following instructions. You’re creating.