Cooking at home comes with its benefits like saving money, eating healthier, and bringing you joy, but it does have its challenges. Common concerns like what ingredients you should use, how much time a recipe is going to take, and if it will even taste good can cause a home cook to skip the fridge and head to the rotation of unhealthy fast food options. Cooking at home doesn’t need to be complicated. You can keep it simple with these seven resources that will make you a better chef.
Stay In Control, Get Organized
The first step in being a better chef starts before you even turn on the stove. It’s essential to plan out what dishes you’d like to make for the week. Once you have that, you can take inventory of what ingredients you have at home and then make a shopping list of what you need.
1. Meal Planning Apps
There are plenty of phone apps that can assist you in planning your meals for the week. Some have databases you can search from that will automatically populate your shopping list for you based on what recipes you choose. You can find more about those apps here.
2. Pinterest
Pinterest is a tool to use when looking for variations of simple meal ideas and just about everything else that comes to cooking. Whether you want to cook dinner for your friend group or need to find a vegan alternative to your favorite meal, it is a home chef’s go-to resource.
3. Kitchen Tools
As you cook more from home, you’re bound to find a missing tool in your cabinet or want to find ways to navigate the cooking process quickly. You may have cut yourself too many times trying to peel a potato, or you want to make sure you measure out the perfect amount of pasta per person without anything going to waste. For some inexpensive life-changing kitchen tools, check out this list.
Master The Basics
Great cooking doesn’t come from expensive hard-to-find ingredients or prestigious culinary education. It comes from practice and cooking simple meals well. There are abundant amounts of delicious dishes that are made with less than five ingredients and using one pan.
4. Gordon Ramsay
This celebrity chef may be famous for his excellent control over the kitchen and endless TV shows, but he is also a strong advocate for home cooking. He has an array of cooking videos that are simple, quick, and easy to understand. You can then have the benefit of saying the legend himself trained you. Check out his cooking videos here.
5. Italian Cooking
Italian food is easy, tasty, and great to make for larger quantities of people. An excellent resource for fresh and simple Italian recipes is Gennaro Contaldo. You can find his page here.
6. Inspiration
It’s normal to get tired of the same meals and resort back to eating out habits. For inspiration, there are numerous shows on Netflix and other streaming apps that have food documentaries, cooking challenges, and more. You are bound to find something new and appealing from these great shows. You can also try meal delivery kits, which offer you new recipes to try each week and eliminate the need to spend time at the grocery store. Kits like Hello Fresh, Blue Apron, and Home Chef, can take you out of your culinary rut.
7. Think Locally
Lastly, use the resources around you. A quick search of your city will show you what grocery stores offer cooking classes, when like-minded home chefs are getting together, and dates of farmer’s markets. There’s no better way to become a better chef than to learn from those around you.