Terrible kitchen habits that are ruining your cooking
You lay out the ingredients for a recipe you're eager to try, you start reading through the steps – and then you realise you should've marinated the meat for at least two hours. There's almost no chance you can improvise at this point, especially if you're expecting guests
Impatience is the root cause of many kitchen nightmares, especially when oven temperatures and baking are involved. It’s natural to want to watch your cakes rise, but every time you pop the door open, the oven cools down and takes time to get back up to temperature.
A hot pan sears meat properly, caramelising and browning it, which improves its appearance and enhances its flavour complexity. Failing to get the pan up to a fierce heat means missing out on all that potential – and this goes for almost everything, not just steak.
Much of the point of frying is to add colour and cook food evenly and thoroughly. Overfilling a pan or wok with ingredients means that some won’t touch the bottom, but will simply steam-cook, or boil in their own juice
'A little bit of this and a little bit of that' can be a great approach to cooking savoury dishes. But if you don't bother to measure out your ingredients when baking, it's likely to end in disaster.
A standard slow cooker instruction manual will contain recipes for cooking both on high and low, but even the fastest of recipes on high will still take at least two hours – and if the dish includes meat, you're looking at four hours or so.
It’s a little-known rule that boiling water isn’t great for tea and coffee; it burns the grounds (or leaves) and increases bitterness in the cup. Using water that's slightly off the boil should result in a much tastier brew.