As homemakers, we want to cook delicious meals for our families. We’re always looking for the best cooking tips, better yet time-saving cooking tips, that would improve the taste of our everyday home-cooked meals.
How do you feel when your kids curl their lips while eating the food you’ve made for them? Or when your family says the food was good but a lot of it was wasted because no one ate enough?
Do you feel it’s not worth the time you spent on planning & prepping the meals, the labor that went into cooking, and the money you spent buying healthier ingredients?
Cooking at Home is a laborious task. It implies lots of time and patience.
But did you know — you don’t need gourmet food recipes or fancy methods to cook delicious meals?
Everything you need is to follow certain prepping, cooking, and garnishing techniques, and learn which ingredients go well together to make your everyday meals taste good.
The importance of cooking
Cooking is the skill of preparing food for consumption. There are various methods of cooking. The basics include steaming, stewing, roasting, boiling, grilling, sauteing, pan-frying, deep frying, simmering, and so on.
The process of cooking is effective in making food highly digestible, killing bacteria (existing in raw ingredients), tasting flavourful, and looking attractive.
But why should we even bother that homemade meals are tastier? After all, HOMEMADE FOOD is healthy, right?
To your surprise, the way you cook (yes, even at home) can also be not-so-healthy for your family if you don’t do it right.
Is it not enough that the food is HOMECOOKED?
Yes my dear friends, still!
To back up my point on how important the taste of food is in maintaining good health I have some more information from Indian Food Wisdom & Art of Eating Right by Rujuta Diwekar.
In this video, Rujuta says “The first step of digestion is in the mouth and our mouth holds our tongue. Now if the food that you eat doesn’t interest your tongue then it won’t secrete the right kind of digestive enzymes and it will not welcome the food into your system“.
Hence, the taste of food deserves attention.
Also, when you’re putting so much effort into cooking why not ask your family – what would they like to have for dinner? And why not make some special effort to make those everyday simple meals taste yummier?
While cooking is a stress buster for some, others might dread the job.
If convenience food has made you forget the boons of cooking, then we have covered it.
Today let’s unpack some traditional yet simple cooking tips that’ll make our everyday meals taste better:
25+ BEST COOKING TIPS TO MAKE YOUR EVERYDAY MEALS FLAVORFUL
INGREDIENTS:
1| Use a fair amount of healthy fats. Butter, clarified butter, oils, and cheese are nutritious and natural taste enhancers. Adding an extra spoonful will give your food that rich and creamy effect.
2| If your recipe demands frying something apart from cooking, complete the frying part first. Then use the same oil to do the rest of the cooking. Never discard the oil since it contains all the flavor of your main ingredient.
3| Add a spoonful of oil while cooking lentils to help them cook tenderly.
4| Add a spoonful of oil to the flour while kneading for a nice and soft dough.
6| Use whole wheat flour instead of all-purpose flour for better taste.
7| Adding Coconut milk or buttermilk to recipes improves the taste.
8| Never opt for fat-free, low-fat, sugar-free versions of food. Use raw, real ingredients.
9| The standard ginger-garlic proportion is garlic 60% and ginger 40%.
PREPPING METHODS:
1| Marinating veggies in buttermilk makes it moist and juicy.
2| Soak the onions in plain water to chop them without crying.
3| Using fresh ingredients makes a lot of difference to the taste of your food.
4| Don’t peel the potatoes unless the recipe calls for them.
5| Use whole spices. Sauteing whole spices in the oil or butter at the beginning releases a natural aroma and flavor.
7| Finely chopped veggies and ground pastes lose their flavor. Always opt for roughly chopped or roughly ground variants.
COOKING METHODS:
1| Consider cooking on a low flame and covering to preserve the taste and nutrition of the food.
2| Nuts as a whole or ground into a paste can make a simple dish, rich and flavorful.
3| Always add warm water to curries, soups, or gravies to enhance the taste.
4| Use broths or stocks (as per the recipe requirements) to add an extra boost of flavor.
5| To jazz up your plain everyday rice, add a tablespoon of clarified butter, 1 or 2 bay leaves, and a teaspoon of cumin or caraway seeds to boiling water before cooking rice in it.
6| Add beaten eggs to thicken the consistency of curries or gravies and enrich the taste.
7| Once you master the correct proportion of sugar and salt, you’re never going to go wrong with any dish. They both make for excellent taste enhancers.
8| Use wheat flour in place of cornflour to thicken the soups or coat the veggies when frying.
GARNISHING METHODS:
1| A dollop of clarified butter/regular butter, or some extra grated cheese has proved to be the best garnish time and again.
2| Cilantro makes for a great garnish in terms of color and taste.
3| Squeezing a lemon over salty dishes enhances the taste.
4| Using Birista (fried onions) in gravies, curries, or certain kinds of soups really enhances the flavor.
5| Along with its health benefits Saffron can also be used as a food coloring and flavoring alternative.
Final Words:
Those were my time-saving cooking tips. Every homemaker wants their attempt to care for their family to be fruitful.
You feel it worthwhile when you receive compliments from your family. They absolutely love the food you cook for them.
If you’ve made it here, I know your hard work will pay off.
You might also find my friend Janae’s article Why Your Homemade Food Doesn’t Taste Good helpful. Be sure to check that out.
I would love to read your cooking tips and tricks. I hope you find these tips helpful. Thank you so much for reading. Happy Cooking!
