“When the rice boils, the water boils, loved ones return home, life is warm, love is overflowing,” this proverb speaks to the importance of cooking skills in life. Cooking is not only necessary to maintain health and life, but also a way to express love and care for loved ones.
What Are Cooking Skills?
Cooking skills are the ability to prepare and process food, from selecting fresh ingredients, preliminary processing, to using appropriate cooking techniques to create delicious and nutritious dishes.
10 Benefits of Cooking Skills
1. Maintain health:
Cooking at home helps you control the amount of sugar, salt, fat, and additives in food, thereby reducing the risk of chronic diseases.
2. Save money:
Cooking at home is usually cheaper than eating out, especially when you buy ingredients in bulk.
3. Strengthen family bonding:
Cooking and eating together is a great opportunity for families to gather, chat, and share stories of joy and sorrow in life.
4. Satisfy passion:
Cooking is a creative activity that helps you satisfy your culinary passion and discover new flavors.
5. Enhance life skills:
Cooking skills make you more confident in life, self-reliant, and effective at problem-solving.
6. Expand relationships:
Cooking is a great way to connect with friends, colleagues, and family by hosting parties, BBQs, or sharing homemade dishes.
7. Help you relax:
Cooking can be an effective stress-relieving activity, helping you free your mind and reduce stress.
8. Boost self-confidence:
When you know how to cook well, you will be more confident in entertaining guests and sharing your delicious dishes with everyone.
9. Improve time management skills:
Cooking requires you to plan and arrange time reasonably, from listing ingredients, searching for recipes to allocating time to prepare dishes.
10. Enhance creativity:
Cooking allows you to freely create and transform recipes to your liking, creating unique dishes with your own style.
Tips for Delicious Cooking
1. Choose fresh ingredients:
Fresh ingredients are 50% of the success of a dish. Choose fresh, clean ingredients with clear origins.
2. Pre-process ingredients carefully:
Carefully pre-processing ingredients makes dishes tastier, easier to digest, and ensures food safety and hygiene.
3. Use appropriate cooking techniques:
Each type of food is suitable for a specific cooking technique, from boiling, stir-frying, grilling, frying, stewing… Learn these techniques carefully to create the most delicious dishes.
4. Season with just enough spices:
Spices are the soul of the dish, however, seasoning too much can lose the natural flavor of the ingredients and harm your health.
5. Decorate dishes attractively:
Delicious food needs to be presented attractively to stimulate the taste and sight of the diner.
Common Mistakes When Cooking
1. Not pre-processing ingredients carefully:
Not washing, chopping, or leaving ingredients whole can lead to food that is tough, chewy, or loses nutrients.
2. Using too many spices:
Using too many spices can make the dish too salty, sour, or spicy, affecting the flavor and health.
3. Not controlling the temperature while cooking:
Cooking at temperatures that are too high or too low can cause the dish to burn, char, or not cook evenly.
4. Not using appropriate cooking utensils:
Using inappropriate cooking utensils can affect the quality of the dish and safety during preparation.
Expert Tips
Small Tips For a More Delicious Meal
1. Use fresh spices:
Fresh spices like ginger, garlic, chili… will bring a more natural and richer flavor compared to dried spices.
2. Cook with olive oil:
Olive oil is a healthy oil that makes dishes more fragrant and nutritious.
3. Cook slowly:
Slow cooking helps ingredients cook evenly, become tender, and retain maximum nutrients.
4. Explore and apply new recipes:
Regularly search for and apply new recipes to enrich your family’s menu.
5. Share and learn from those around you:
Share your cooking experiences with those around you and learn from good cooks to improve your skills.
Cooking Skills – The Secret to a Happy Life
Remember that cooking skills are a valuable skill that needs to be cultivated and developed. Besides learning from experts, you should also experiment, explore, and create to make delicious dishes that suit your family’s taste and preferences.