6 tips to make every cooking session run smoothly
Working in an organized way makes cooking a lot less stressful. With these six tips, you’ll be a smooth operator in the kitchen in no time.
Dishes
Make sure all the dishes are out of the way before you start cooking. Empty the dishwasher so everything you dirty can go straight back in. You’ll also know for sure that all your favorite kitchen gadgets are clean and ready to use.
Cooking something particularly elaborate? Make sure to wash up a few times along the way, too—nothing is more annoying than cooking in a kitchen that looks like a bomb just went off.
Tea towel
Your tea towel is your best friend. Always put one under your cutting board so it doesn’t slide across the counter. But also make sure to keep one with you at all times—it has more uses than you might think.
You probably don’t need us to tell you that you can wipe your hands on a tea towel. But you can also use it to take hot things out of the oven or hold pans.
It’s also handy for wiping things down during the cooking session or for placing a mixing bowl on to give it some extra stability. If you’re working like a true pro, you can also clean the edges of your plates with a damp tea towel—flawless presentation guaranteed.
Trash can
Always put a mini trash can on the counter; this can simply be a mixing bowl or small container. As long as you have somewhere to dump all those onion skins and avocado pits right away.
Bowl of tools
Place a bowl or tall glass in front of you to hold all your reusable tools. Wooden spoons, a garlic press, a Microplane—put everything in the bowl. This keeps you from finding your wooden spoon behind the oven at the end of the evening, after you’ve already dirtied three others.
Mise en place
Not necessarily needed for a portion of fried potatoes. But as soon as you’re cooking something more elaborate, mise en place is indispensable. In other words: first chop all the ingredients, prepare the sauces and mix anything that needs mixing, so that everything is ready to hand when the crucial moment arrives.
Storage
Estimating portions remains difficult; it often happens to us that we have an extra lunch portion left for the next day. Great, but it’s important to store everything properly, so you don’t find a shriveled container of soup in the fridge two weeks later.
It’s therefore best to store everything in transparent containers or wrapped in plastic, so you can see what’s in your fridge. If you use different containers, at least buy a roll of tape you can write on. That way, you’ll always know what it is and when it was prepared.
Also read:
