Before I went to culinary school and cooked every day for my job as Associate Food Editor at EatingWell Magazine, this used to happen to me a lot—what I thought was a perfect execution ended up with a flawed result. Now I know there are a few pitfalls that you have to avoid while cooking.
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Here are 4 bad cooking habits you should try to break:
Bad habit #1: You dip and sweep the
flour
When measuring flour, plenty of people fill their measuring cup by
dipping it into the bag, leveling it off and dumping it into the
bowl. This is a common mistake. Here’s why it doesn’t work: The
dipping motion packs the flour into the cup, giving you more than
you really need. The result? Dense baked goods.
How to do it right: The correct way to measure flour is scooping it
lightly into the measuring cup with a spoon and leveling it off at
the top.
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a perfect cake from scratch here
Bad habit #2: You cook or store acidic food in reactive
pans
Aluminum is often used in cookware because it’s a great conductor
of heat, but isn’t so good in your food. How would it get there?
Cooking or storing something acidic in reactive pans, such as
aluminum and cast-iron, can eat away at the metal and impart an off
color and/or off flavor in your food. Use a nonreactive pan
(stainless-steel, enamel-coated or glass) when cooking with acidic
foods like lemon juice or tomatoes to prevent the food from
reacting with the pan.
Bad habit #3: You crowd the pan
If you’re looking for a nice, brown crispiness to the outside of
your food, don’t put too much in your pan at once. When cooking
meat or tofu, adding too much to the pan at once causes the
temperature of the pan to drop quickly, resulting in the food
sticking to the pan. In the case of vegetables, if you add a pile
of them to a hot pan, they are more likely to steam and become
soggy as opposed to browned. So consider cooking in batches
to avoid sticking and steaming.
Bad habit #4: You don’t properly preheat your cooking
surface
When you’re hungry, “Preheat the oven or grill” may seem like a
step someone added just to torture you. But it’s necessary.
Baking or roasting in an oven that hasn’t been properly preheated
will throw off the cooking time or may cause your food to cook
unevenly or even burn. Ditto with the grill. Adding food to
an improperly heated grill grate causes sticking and eventually
burning.
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What bad cooking habits would you like to change?
EatingWell Associate Food Editor Hilary Meyer spends much of her time in the EatingWell Test Kitchen, testing and developing healthy recipes. She is a graduate of New England Culinary Institute.
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