5 Simple Cooking Tips- Basic Cooking Principles for Any Recipe

Cooking requires some patience and concentration on your job. Nothing more. Take care of the minute to the minutest factors and the elements of cooking. Treat it as a pleasant hobby rather than an unpleasant task. Apply some artistic skills and prudence. Employ your attention while blending the ingredients in suitable proportions. Don't be afraid to experiment. You will find it so easy and smooth going job. Your cooking job will be just like an artistic presentation of food supported by a proper administration of the ingredients involved in it.

There are some basic, fundamental principles involved in the cooking task that is to be familiarized with before stepping into your kitchen.

The basic steps involved in cooking are as follows:

1. Plan your Food
2. Get things ready for the Cooking
3. Look for some Easy and Quick Recipe Ideas
4. Maintain Cleanliness
5. Be Conscious of the Cooking Time involved and Affordable

Any kind of performance requires some planning. You can't abruptly jump into your cooking process. You need to think well regarding for what purpose you are going to do a particular job.

• What is the aim of your action?
• To serve whom or how many persons?
• What are his/ her/ their likes or requirements?
• What to prepare? How much and how many dishes and with whatever side recipes?
• Is it a Breakfast, Lunch, or Dinner?
• Is it for one time or two times or a full day?

You must decide all these factors before settling to prepare the food. Only then can you have a complete idea of whatever is required to be cooked or prepared.

After planning your items to be cooked, you should procure the ingredients necessary for cooking the items. You may also need to keep the kitchenware items, that are to be used for the cooking, at hand. You should check that you possess all the required ingredients sufficient to prepare your menu or, otherwise, you may amend your menu according to your available stocks.

• Better keep things ready on your kitchen platform by measuring the required quantities and other ingredients required either in some plates or bowls. Otherwise, if easily accessible, you may directly take them from your storage racks and containers that are nearer to you as and when you prepare the recipe.
• You may make the ingredients ready for cooking the next dish also, beforehand, by cutting them preferably into very small pieces and keeping ready in their required quantities (while you are cooking other dishes) so as to save the time and fuel.
• Wash and keep items ready for cooking that next dish during the intervals when you may be free while other items are being cooked on the flame.

Try to make your daily cooking simple and easy to prepare, but never compromise on health factors. Special dishes can be prepared at weekly off or other celebrations. But daily meals should not consume much of your energy and time, keeping in mind other workloads.

• The videos linked here give you some simple ideas for daily cooking which are good for health and also supply full calories of energy needed for your daily routine.
• But, always keep in mind that you should keep all things ready at hand when cooking, so that time and fuel are never wasted.

A clean cooking platform or space is desirable for better cooking. Clumsy places distract your concentration or hinder your efficiency as you may feel tense and discomfort.

• Keep ample space for your job by removing unnecessary things from the workplace. You can keep your cooked items even on your dining table if space is not ample in the kitchen.
• If cutting vegetables, place some paper or anything underneath so as to keep the place clean after your work. You need to simply dump the waste into your dustbin without the headache of cleaning the place. You may cut the vegetables in the other room or on your dining table also.
• Place your spoons, spatula, or turners on a plate while using them for the cooking task so that oily and sticky substances do not spoil your workplace or your oven.
• If anything spills out by mistake or by way of overflowing from the container or due to overheating, try to clean it immediately with a cloth, dry or wet, so as not to hurt your joyful spirit.

While cooking food, it will be easier for you if you know how much time each dish requires for cooking or for the preparations required prior to cooking it.

• Keep awareness while preparing each item.
• Calculate the time taken in preparations like washing ingredients, cutting vegetables, preparing other ingredients required like grinding spice powder, or extracting juices used for cooking or warming cheese and other refrigerated stuff used for cooking.
• Knowledge of the time required and efforts put forth and tools applied all these give you much help in planning your future cooking.
• While cooking in steam cookers, count the whistles taken by the cooker for cooking any kind of stuff. Some recipes require lesser whistles while others require more whistles from the cooker. For example, the milk boiling requires a single whistle, vegetables may require 2 whistles, rice may take 3 whistles, and pulses may take 4 whistles. So keep some knowledge of it and you can be free with your other occupations during that counts.
• While cooking in micro ovens, watch the time taken in cooking or roasting of each item and the heat that is maintained in achieving the required cooking. By experimenting for some days, you can easily know and calculate these points and become a master chef.
• Sauteing is a better way of cooking food which is both healthy and energy-efficient as it saves fuel and your cooking time.

A quote from Wolfgang Puck, an Australian American celebrity chef, and Restaurateur-

"Cooking is like painting or writing a song. Just as there are so many notes or colors, there are only so many flavors. It's how you combine them that sets you apart."

A quote from Marcel Boulestin, a French chef, and Restaurateur-

"Cookery is not Chemistry. It is an art. It requires instinct and taste rather than exact measurements."

Jennifer Lee, the celebrity Film Maker, quotes on efficient cooking like this-

"With wok cooking, you chop things up into little pieces for a maximum surface area so they can cook in minutes, if not seconds. Sauteing is energy efficient, baking is not."

P.S. Wok cooking is the way of cooking vegetables and other stuff in long-handled fry pans whose bottoms are deep round. You cook using techniques such as stir-frying, pan-frying, steaming, deep-frying, poaching, boiling, roasting, stewing, searing, and many other techniques.