Improve Your Cooking The Easy Way

There are three main ways to improve your cooking:

1. Improve your cooking techniques.
2. Improve your judgment in the kitchen.
3. Improve your ingredients.

Which one do you think is easiest?

Image by Jeremy Keith Even in today's economy, I'd go with #3.

Garbage In, Garbage Out is as true in cooking as it is elsewhere. Better ingredients alone won't make you a great cook, but they will help. In addition to making your food taste better, you'll begin to get a feel for how changing inputs has an effect on your end product.

Besides, it isn't hard to upgrade your ingredients, especially if you do it incrementally. It doesn't even have to be that expensive.

If price is a concern, consider the following tips:

• Check out your farmer's market for in-season produce. You might want to also consider a CSA. In either case, you're paying for what the farm has when it has a lot of it. Not only will you be getting a good deal, but you'll also be getting the freshest produce you can.
• Look to upgrade your condiments and sauces. A lot of the things available in stores are mostly composed of near-tasteless corn syrup. Besides not being all that good for you, you're mostly paying for filler. Consider picking up, say, real maple syrup instead of imitation maple-flavored syrup. Try making a quick sauce from fresh (or even canned) tomatoes instead of jarred tomato sauce. These things might cost more by volume, but it packs a stronger flavor. You don't need to use nearly as much of it.
• Similarly, with good oils and vinegars a little bit can go farther than you would expect.
• Pick up some kosher salt and whole peppercorns that you can grind yourself in a mill. Whole spices in general are a good idea. If you grab them at an ethnic grocery, they're often cheaper than the pre-ground stuff. They last longer and taste better. There's no excuse not to get them.

Image by pointnshoot Some ingredients you will need to pay substantially more for if you want high quality. Meats and cheeses come to mind. Still, the difference between a good Parmigiano-Reggiano and the powdery stuff that comes in the can (again, mostly filler) is incredible.

Real butter is a must. There's no substitute. No, that spread you use isn't really indistinguishable... or even close enough.

Similarly, fresh herbs are nearly always preferable to dried herbs. While they do cost more (unless you grow them yourself), they tend not to be too expensive. In addition, I'll be posting later this week about how to get the most out of the fresh herbs you do buy.

Alternately, you can substitute out type instead of quality. When you're using a recipe or making something familiar, try replacing onions with shallots, carrots with parsnips, or apples with pears. Last night, I was on the phone with my father and he told me about the chicken marsala he'd made in which he'd used shitakes instead of white button mushrooms. He said that the difference was impressive.

Last Sunday, I wanted a snack. I grabbed a few shrimp from the freezer and set them to thaw. I was having a cocktail sauce craving, but I don't keep ketchup in the house. Instead, I grabbed some good plum sauce and added a little balsamic vinegar until it got the right balance of sweet and tangy. Then I added this nice mix of horseradish and real wasabi that we found. The texture was glaze-like, but I was happy with that. The taste was incredible.