Most Common Cooking Mistakes

Ingredients:

Directions:

1. YOU DON'T TASTE AS YOU GO.
For most cooks tasting is automatic, but when it's not, the price can be high. Recipes don't always call for the "right" amount of seasoning, cooking times are estimates, and results vary depending on your ingredients, your stove, altitude and a million other factors. Your palate is the control factor. Knowing that the strawberries you bought are more tangy then sweet tells you to boost sugar a bit. Tasting, not time in the pot, tells you when dried beans have become tender, or haricots vents have reached the point of perfection.

2. YOU DON'T READ ENTIRE RECIPE BEFORE YOU START COOKING.
Even the best-written recipes may not include all the headline information at the top. Three-fourths of the way down a recipe for Lemon-Garlic Roast Chicken may be a note to brine the bird for 24 hours. A wise cook approaches each recipe with a critical eye - studying, not skimming, looking for unfamiliar ingredients, specialty equipment, problematic steps - and reads the recite well before it's time to cook. Have then ingredients gathered, prepped, and ready to go before you turn on the heat.

3. YOU MAKE UNWISE SUBSTITUTIONS IN BAKING.
Substitutions are a particular temptation, and challenge, with healthy cooking. When it comes to baking, this is as much science as art, and it requires a lot of trial and error. Applesauce makes baked goods gummy, too much whole-wheat flour can make them fence, and sugar substitutes don't react the same way as sugar. All three of those mistakes in one cupcake recipe make clay, not cake. Best practice: Follow the recipe, period. And if you want to experiment (as we do all the time), regard it as an experiment and expect a few failures along the way.

4. YOU BOIL WHEN YOU SHOULD SIMMER.
The is one of the most common (and perhaps least recognized) kitchen errors. First, let's clarify what we mean by simmering: A bubble breaks the surface of the liquid every second or two. More vigorous bubbling than that means you've got a boil going. And difference between the two can ruin a dish. When you boil chicken stock, you churn fat and impurities all throughout the liquid when you simmer, though, those undesirable elements float to the surface when they're easily skimmed off, so the stock turns out clean-tasting and clear. Boil a chuck roast, and it becomes tough simmer, and the connective tissue gently melts to produce fork-tender meat.

5. YOU OVERHEAT CHOCOLATE.
The best way to melt chocolate is to go slowly, heat gently, remove from the heat before it's fully melted, and stir until smooth. If using the microwave, proceed cautiously, stopping every 20 to 30 seconds to stir. If using a double boiler, make sure the water is simmering, not boiling.

6. YOU OVER-SOFTEN BUTTER.
We've done it: forgotten to soften the butter and zapped it in the microwave to do the job quickly. But it's a baking error to excessively soften, let alone melt, the butter. Better to let is stand at room temperature for 30 to 45 minutes to get the right consistency. Properly soften butter should yield slightly to gentle pressure, but you don't want to be able to sink you finger way down into it. Too-soft butter means you cookie dough will be more like batter, and it will spread too much as it bakes and lose shape. Butter that's too soft also won't cream properly with sugar, and creaming is essential to creating fluffy, tender cakes with a delicate crumb.

7. YOU OVERHEAT LOW-FAT MILK PRODUCTS.
The solution is to cook lower-fat dairy products to a temperature of only 180° or less.

8. YOU DON'T KNOW YOU OVEN'S QUIRKS AND IDIOSYNCRASIES.
Ideally, every oven set to 350° would heat to 350°. But many ovens don't, including expensive one's and some change their behavior as they age. Always use an oven thermometer. Next, be aware of hot spots. If you've produced cake layers with wavy rather than flat tops, hot spots are the problem.

9. YOU'RE TOO CASUAL ABOUT MEASURING INGREDIENTS.
If you add as little as 2 extra tablespoons flour to a cake recipe, for example, you may end up with a dry, tough texture. And adding to much flour is easy: One cook's cup of flour may be another cook's 1-1/4 cups. Why the discrepancy? some people scoop their flour out of the canister, essentially packing it down into the measuring cup, or tap the cup on the counter and then top off with more flour. Both practices yield too much flour. Lightly spoon flour into dry measuring cups, then level with a knife.

10. YOU OVERCROWD THE PAN.
All Food will release moisture as it's cooked, so you need to leave room for the steam to escape. Trapped moisture turns a browning exercise into a steam bath. Most cooks know this, but it's easy to overcrowd a pan when you're in a bury, particularly if you have to brown a large about of meat for a beef stew. But the brown, crusty bits are critical for flavor, particularly with lower-fat cooking. A soggy batch of beef going into a Dutch oven will not be a beautiful, rich, deeply flavored stew when it comes out, even if it does get properly tender. This browning principle applies equally to quick-cook foods like crab cakes, chicken breast, and so on. Leave breathing room in the pan, and you'll get much better results. If you need to speed things up, use two pans at once.

11. YOU TURN THE FOOD TOO OFTEN.
Learning to leave food alone is one of the hardest lessons in cooking it's so tempting to turn, poke, flip. But your breaded chicken or steak won't develop a nice crust unless you allow it to cook, undistrubed, for the specified time. One sign that it's too early to true You can't slide a spatula clearly under the crust. "I'll release from the pan when it's ready," "Don't try to pry it up - the crust will stick to the pan, not the chicken."

12. YOU DON'T GET THE PAN HOT ENOUGH BEFORE YOU ADD THE FOOD.
A hot pan is essential for sauteing veggies or creating a great crust on meat, fish, and poultry. It also helps prevent food from sticking. Only add the oil when the pan is hot, just before adding the ingredients. Otherwise, it will smoke, and that's bad for the oil.

13. YOU SLICE MEAT WITH - INSTEAD OF AGAINST - THE GRAIN.
For tender slices, look at the meat to determine the direction of the grain (the muscle fibers), and cut across the grain, not with it. This is particularly important with tougher cuts such as flank steak or skirt steak, in which the grain is also quite obvious.

14. YOU DON'T USE A MEAT THERMOMETER.
Small, inexpensive, thoroughly un-glamorous, the meat thermometer is one of the most valuable kitchen tools you can own. Using one is the surefire way to achieve a perfect roast chicken or beautiful medium-rare lamb roast, because temperatures don't lie and appearances can decieve.

15. MEAT GETS NO CHANCE TO REST AFTER COOKING.
Plan your meals so that meat you roast, grill, sear, or saute has time to rest at room temperature after it's pulled from the heat. With small cuts like a steak or boneless, skinless chicken breast, five minutes is adequate. A whole bird or standing rib roast requires 20 to 30 minutes. Tent the meat loosely with foil to keep it warm.

16. YOU TRY TO RUSH THE COOKING OF CARAMELIZED ONIONS.
True, sweet, creamy caramelized onions needs to cook over medium-low to low heat for a long time, maybe up to an hour.

17. YOU PUT ALL THE SALT IN THE MARINADE OR BREADING.
A chicken that is marinating in, say, citrus juice and a teaspoon of salt will actually absorb only a tiny amount of marinade. When you toss out the marinade, you also toss out most of the salt and its seasoning effect. It's better to use a little salt in the marinade, then directly sprinkle the majority of the salt on the chicken after it comes out of the marinade. The same goes for breaded items: If all the salt is in the panko coating for your fish fillet, and you discard half of the panko after dredging, half of the flavor goes with it. Instead, sprinkle on the fish fillet and then coat it with the breading.