The Best Cooking Tricks We've Ever Heard
People don’t just wake up one day and know how to cook. Like any other skill, cooking is a learning process. Whether it’s cooking your way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking, watching cooking shows on TV, or observing professionals, you slowly collect an arsenal of skills and tricks for making better food. But everyone has that linchpin technique, trick, or tool that instantly changed the way they approach food. Here are 15 of our staff’s aha! moments.
Finishing Pasta in the Pan: “Learning how to finish pasta in the pan was a life changer. One day, I was at Street & Co. in Portland, Maine, and saw chefs dumping cooked pasta into the skillet of sauce, stirring it around for a bit, and adding a splash of the water they were cooking the pasta in (and maybe a knob of butter), then serving it. So I ripped off the technique at home. It made sense: Why not cook pasta (at least the last minute or so) in the actual sauce? That way the flavor infuses the pasta. It was the addition of cooking water that proved to be the secret weapon. That starchy elixir created an emulsified, ‘creamy’ (note quotes) sauce that bound everything together, making it a complete dish, rather than two thrown-together elements. I’ve never looked back.” —Scott DeSimon, deputy editor
Don’t Be Afraid of Heat (and a Little Smoke): “Lesson #1 I learned from being a professional cook: Do not be afraid of heat. There’s no way to get a good sear on a steak or any piece of meat without cranking it up. And if you’re cranking the heat, then you are going to generate some smoke when the meat hits the pan. It’s OK—don’t panic! Just be prepared to open windows and disable the smoke detector before it starts blaring. Lesson #2 can be summed up in a little game I like to call, ‘Go ahead, just try and over-season this burger.’” —Alfia Muzio, test kitchen contributor
Microplane—Not Just for Cheese: “Discovering I could be using my microplane for more than just citrus. Now, instead of painstakingly mincing garlic and ginger, I’ll microplane them into salad dressings or a sauté.” —Belle Cushing, editorial assistant
SEE MORE: 25 Quick and Easy School Lunches to Pack for Your Kids
Use Your Scissors in the Kitchen: “Use scissors to cut your kid’s food. I mean right there in the bowl. I cut EVERYTHING with scissors when it comes to kid food.”
—Alex Pollack, photo director
Use Salt to Clean Your Cast-Iron Pans: “Cleaning a cast-iron pan with salt. It’s a fast and easy way to soak up the oils that could go rancid in the pan without using soap that will break down your seasoning and make your pan rusty. It will also help dry out any stuck-on bits for easier removal.” —Mike Ley, deputy art director
Give Your Veggies Space: “Not overcrowding the roasting pan. My roasted veg always came out only ‘fine,’ and I didn’t realize it was because I was cramming in as many veg as I could fit. Now I give them a little room—and my roasted veg have gotten twice (three, four times?) as good.” —Meryl Rothstein, senior associate editor
Get Yourself a Fish Spatula (to Use for Everything): “The discovery of the fish spatula. I use it for everything from omelettes to fried eggplant rounds to getting cookies off the tray to, well, fish. They should rebrand it as the Everything Spatula, maybe more people would own one.” —Alison Roman, senior associate food editor
SEE MORE: The Normcore Diet: 10 Foods for People Who Don’t Want to Stand Out
Soak Your Brown Rice: “Soaking brown rice overnight so it’s faster to cook.” —Kaitlyn Wong, project manager, BonAppetit.com
Use an Immersion Blender: “I’m a pretty big immersion blender evangelist—I don’t know how I ever made soup (did I? Those just seem like dark times now) before purchasing one about two years ago. Food processors are great and all, but for $30, you can have perfectly creamy soup with way less hassle.” —Carey Polis, senior web editor
A Pressure Cooker’s a Dream for Beans: “It’s not that I don’t like soaking beans—really, I do!—but when I used my pressure cooker to make the best dried chickpeas I’ve ever eaten, I became a crazy proselytizing weirdo about it. It now takes 40 minutes of unattended cooking time—instead of 3 hours plus overnight soaking—to make perfectly tender, creamy throughout, impeccably seasoned chickpeas (or any beans). I’m never going back.” —Carla Lalli Music, food & features editor
Salt, Salt, Salt: “How to use salt! I grew up with a salt-averse (but completely lovely!) nutritionist mother, and wasn’t schooled on the awesome power of NaCl until I took my first line-cooking job. Specifically: The more fat a dish has in it, the more salt you need to make the flavors really shine (think a burger or rich, cream-based sauce). Magic.” —Amiel Stanek, assistant to the editor in chief
SEE MORE: 14 Butter Recipes to Consume with Wild Abandon
For Dressings, a Jar’s Your Best Friend: “I used to do that precarious bowl-balancing-whisking thing when I made vinaigrettes, but my life (or at least my salads) were changed forever when I finally made good use of the fact I’m a mason jar hoarder. I toss vinegar, Dijon mustard, seasoning, and oil in half-pint or pint jar, screw on the top, and shake, and I’m good to go. Plus, I can make extra and store it in the same jar. Seriously, what was I thinking before this!?” —Rochelle Bilow, writer, BonAppetit.com
The Best Way to Clean Your Greens: “I remember one time, I was about to wash off some lettuce and my dad told me to wash it from the leaf side down the the stem side. If there’s dirt on the stems—where dirt usually is, of course—you’re spreading the dirt to the leaf if you’re doing it the other way around. I think of it every time I wash greens. Plus, it was a tip from my dad, who did only a fraction of the cooking at home.” —Matt Gross, editor, BonAppetit.com
Chop Your Onions the Right Way: “Learning how to dice an onion properly. Google it, and thank me later.” —Danielle Walsh, assistant Web editor
See more from Bon Appetit:
9 Tips for Eating While Naked
5 Ways to Totally Screw Up Popcorn
27 NON-Boring Chicken Recipes
