Home Cooking Tips for Beginners: 10 Things Every New Cook Should Know

As we head into summer, maybe you’ve decided that you finally want to learn how to cook. If that is the case, congratulations and welcome! Everyone needs to start somewhere, which is why for this post, we’ve put together a list of 10 home cooking tips for beginners that anyone can incorporate into their kitchen knowledge that will not only help you cook delicious food, but they will also help the cooking process to be as fun as possible.

1. Clean as you go

   
   

   Everyone knows that the worst part of cooking is the dishes. Make it easy on yourself and clean as you go. During almost all recipes, you will have a good deal of downtime. Instead of doomscrolling on your phone, start cleaning. It gets rid of most of the dread that people have with cleaning after cooking and prevents things from stacking up.

   
   

2. Have a waste container

   
   

   This is the best practical tip that we were given as we were learning to cook. If you are using a knife, you are almost always going to have some amount of waste from meats, fruits, vegetables, etc. Keep a bowl that is exclusively reserved for all of these scraps. To level this up even more, use one of the plastic wraps for produce inside the bowl. Keep your board clean, and make your trips to your trash infrequent.

   
   

3. Prep things in advance (segment your cooking)

   
   

   Regardless of whatever you are about to cook, there is almost always some amount of prep that you can do either the day before, hours before, or minutes before you start. Cooking meat? Trim and salt the meat ahead of time, not only does this save time, but it will help you get great sears. Need to chop vegetables? Chop them up a couple of hours in advance to be able to use ingredients as you need them in your recipes. Put simply, prep as much as possible. There’s a reason why restaurants do it!

1. Don’t be afraid to overuse salt

   
   

   First, you should be using kosher salt as your salt of choice. It’s the best for essentially all salting purposes while cooking. Keep table salt and flaky salt for after your cook is over. Second, use that salt! Too many people underestimate the amount of salt that most ingredients can take, especially meats and fish. If your food tastes bland, it is likely because you don’t use enough salt. It enhances all flavor and helps your other seasonings pop.

   
   

2. Use the right pan for the right job

   
   

   There’s a trend recently to switch everything to cast iron because of the potential harmful effects of non-stick cookware. While there is likely truth to that sentiment (please stop cooking everything on teflon), cast iron is not the best for everything, regardless of how good your seasoning is. The best for all-around cooking is stainless steel, but it will never be as nonstick as nonstick and never as good with heat retention as cast iron or carbon steel. The best for hard searing is cast iron, but it has a tendency to promote sticking and can fail with acidic foods, which will eat away at the seasoning and potentially leech iron into your food. Carbon steel suffers the same woes as cast iron, although it is quite a bit lighter to carry. Copper is the best at precision heat control, but unless your pan has a non-copper interior lining, it also struggles with acidic foods and is prone to tarnishing unless you upkeep the pan well (also, very expensive). Enameled cast iron pans fix most of the issues that regular cast iron struggles with (acidity, seasoning, etc), but these pans are prone to chipping if treated roughly. Finally, nonstick cookware is awful at high-heat cooking, but its undeniable that it is useful for incredibly sticky foods like eggs, and it can definitely have a place in low-to-medium heat cooking. In short, different pans have different jobs, and it affects how your food turns out.

   
   

3. Food thermometers

   
   

   There seems to be a lot of anxiety about undercooking meats and fish, especially things like chicken. This fear is so deeply engrained in some people that they only know chicken to be dry, tough, and stringy. You need a thermometer, it takes all guess work out of the equation. Want to know if your meat is done? You can find out. The only tip when using one is to account for carryover cooking- the process by which food continues to heat up after taking it out of the pan.

1. Pull your food early

   
   

   Going together with the previous tip on thermometers, you need to be pulling your food, specifically your proteins, earlier than you think. The residual heat from your pan or oven continues to cook your food even after you take it off. This concept is called carryover cooking. If you have ever pulled a steak at medium-rare only to cut into it and see medium-well, this is almost certainly the reason why. I routinely pull my meats at least a few degrees early and allow them not only to rest but also to carryover cook. You should too.

   
   

2. Keep your most-used tools close

   
   

   This tip follows the theme of making cooking as painless as possible. Have a container that contains all of your most commonly used tools, and keep it near you as you prep and cook. It will allow you to focus more on what you are doing, ultimately leading to a more enjoyable cooking experience. Moreover, it will prevent you from overcooking food as you frantically look for your utensils.

1. Taste as you go

   
   

   Every Italian Nonna knows this one by heart. Taste as you go! You can get a better idea of how what you are adding changes the dish. When you taste as you go, you drastically limit the chances of you ending up with something bland or inedible at the end of your cook. This applies doubly so when following recipes (even ours). Your palate is different from everyone else’s and you may want more or less seasoning than is called for. Cater to what tastes good for you and your guests! Bonus Tip: if you are adding seasoning to stocks, soups, stews, or anything liquid, add the seasoning to a spoonful first. This way, you can be sure that you are not adding in flavor that you don’t want.

   
   

2. Just do it! 10 home cooking tips for beginners

   
   

   Cooking can seem incredibly daunting for some. There are so many foods, techniques, tools, etc., and it can get overwhelming. Get over it and just start cooking. It’s totally possible that some of your first cooks turn out a little worse than what you hoped for. Don’t worry, just keep going. Start simple and work from there. Not every dish needs to be perfect, nor does it need to be a super complicated or technical endeavor, as long as you continue getting back in the kitchen it will get easier and easier.

With these tips, and a couple of recipes from Our Catholic Kitchen, you should be ready to get in the kitchen and make something delicious. If you’ve learned anything from this article or want to support us, please consider subscribing to our email list or following us on Instagram, Youtube, and Tiktok at @OurCatholicKitchen. Till the next time!