Food stories

13 of the biggest kitchen mistakes other people make

chefs in keuken

Experience makes you wiser. That certainly applies to cooking. If you’ve ever turned on the food processor without putting the lid on, you’ll never forget it. And trying to catch a falling knife? Try it just once. These are thirteen tips from experienced cooks—make the most of them.

Foto van culinair journalist Sabina Posthumus

Singeing your eyebrows with a crème brûlée torch (guilty), pouring the stock down the sink and being left with a pan full of bones (yep, me) and dipping a finger into hot caramel sauce to taste it (you guessed it): I hope everyone is a little clumsy in the kitchen sometimes. Advice from more experienced chefs can help, although some things are best remembered after you’ve made the mistake yourself once, right?

1. Don’t pour oil down the sink

Hot fat down the sink is a bad idea because it will congeal somewhere and then you’ll have one heck of a blockage. Next level: an inexperienced cook who thought they could flush frying oil down the toilet because the pipe is bigger. At a beach bar. In the middle of summer. Uh…

2. Don’t use a fork in a non-stick pan

Because of course that damages the non-stick coating. In any case, non-stick pans aren’t ideal, as became clear recently.

3. Chicken shouldn’t be raw

There are people who dare to eat chicken sashimi, but we’re not among them. Eat raw chicken and you run a serious risk of a delightful case of salmonella poisoning. An effective way to lose a few kilos before bikini season, but still: don’t.

4. Never try to catch a falling knife

In a reflex, you try to catch something that’s falling. If it’s a kitchen knife, that’s a bad idea, and the same goes for a hot frying pan or a pan full of boiling water. Kitchen rule: if something falls, step back and don’t try to catch it.

5. Keep raw meat away from cooked meat

Make sure raw meat and prepared dishes never come into contact with each other. Because of that same salmonella contamination from tip 3, for example. Different cutting board, different knife, different refrigerator compartment.

6. Drain pasta (and eat it)

Is the pasta cooked? Drain it and serve it as quickly as possible. Don’t turn off the heat and wait until the rest of your dish is ready. Pasta waits for no one—that’s the rule of thumb.

7. Let your meat rest for a while

Have you cooked a delicious steak? Let the meat rest for a while before slicing it. This obviously doesn’t apply to a meatball, but only to red meat.

8. Wash your hands

You really don’t want to know how many people don’t wash their hands before preparing food. Scrub and lather!

9. Flames? Don’t panic

Has the pan caught fire? Is your kitchen towel going up in flames? Stay calm, please. While the flames are licking at the extractor hood, you need to keep a clear overview. Turn off the extractor hood—that’s step one. Then put it out (if something has caught fire) or cover the flames with a lid or fire blanket (if it’s an oil fire, such as a pan of oil or a deep fryer).

10. A knife is for cutting food

Use a chef’s knife for nothing other than cutting food. So don’t use it to rip open packaging or cut through string. You already knew never to put it in the dishwasher, of course.

11. Use the scales

As intuitive as cooking can be (once you’ve mastered the basics, at least), baking is just as precise. Weigh all the ingredients to the exact gram, or the result will be a disaster.

12. Leave that pan alone

Frying mushrooms? Sautéing onions? Don’t stir the pan like a maniac; leave it alone. The food won’t brown if it’s being tossed around the pan the whole time.

13. Use salt wisely

Don’t add salt to the food just because it says so in the recipe, but taste it and adjust the amount of salt according to what you taste. There’s no point seasoning something if you’re still going to reduce it, because then it will become far too salty. In any case: taste first, serve later.

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