There are many ways to improve your cooking skills: reading great cookbooks, taking cooking classes, and good old fashioned practice in the kitchen are traditional methods. But these days, online cooking recipe videos are another excellent resource for aspiring chefs. Here's how to get the most from the cooking videos you encounter.
There are lots of cooking recipe videos out there, but not all are created equal. Before you spend time watching any, consider the source. If you want to widen your cooking horizons, videos featuring famous chefs are a must. Such chefs might include television personalities (who may or may not have formal cooking backgrounds), cooking legends (like Julia Child, Graham Kerr, and Wolfgang Puck), or Michelin star-awarded chefs who've impressed the cooking world with their expertise and talent.
Once you find cooking recipe videos by esteemed chefs, you will probably discover you learn the most if you watch the videos more than once. In the first viewing, you'll likely only get the overall picture of what the chef is doing. If you watch the video once or twice more, you may notice and remember details you didn't before.
Bear in mind that you're not just learning how to make a particular recipe. You're also hoping to learn cooking techniques you can rely upon for other dishes. For example, you might see a Michelin chef chop up food in a faster, simpler way than you've ever seen before. Or you might see how a meal is flambéed. Or you might learn a new way to cook meat so it's crisp on the outside and tender and juice on the inside. There is nothing quite like a live demo, to make those techniques stick in your brain and come to life next time you are in the kitchen.
Although cooking recipe videos are helpful and educational, they're also fun. You can make them even more entertaining by sharing them with friends. What does your best friend think about trying to make a flambéed meal with you? Does she have a funny story to tell about attempting this on her own? Does your work mate drool over gourmet desserts as much as you do? Are you and your friends inspired by a certain video to try a pot luck gourmet party? Let cooking videos be part of you and your friends online entertainment, and you'll have fun while you improve your cooking skills.
After watching cooking recipe videos, it's a great idea to make the recipes in your own kitchen. The best cooking video websites also have printed recipes to go along with their videos. Print one out and give the recipe your best go.
Or, you could just try out one or two techniques you learned by watching a great chef. For example, maybe you've never tried blanching vegetables before. After watching a chef demonstrate this on a video, you can try the technique almost any time you're preparing veggies.
Cooking Recipes
Perhaps all cook have, at one time or another, chosen cooking recipes an hour before dinner time and started cooking only to discover they don't have all the necessary ingredients or equipment. But when you find yourself doing this frequently, or if you find time in the kitchen leads mostly to frustration, it's time to get back to basics.
Here's how to make the most of cooking recipes, ensuring success every time.
Step 1: Choosing and Reading Cooking Recipes
Begin by selecting a recipe from a trusted source. That could be a cookbook by a favorite chef, a family member who is a great cook, or a quality website like Gourmandia.com.
Next, sit down and read the recipe. All the way through. Notice how much time it takes to prepare the dish. Should any part of the dish be prepared a day or more ahead of time? How long will prep and cooking take? Do you have all the ingredients on hand, or do you need to go shopping before you start cooking? Do you have all the necessary equipment? Do you understand all the cooking techniques?
If a cooking recipe doesn't explain a technique you're unfamiliar with, take the time to do an Internet search before you begin cooking. There are many excellent online resources for learning cooking techniques.
Step 2: Be Prepared
Before you begin cooking, set out all the tools and equipment you'll need, from mixing bowls and spoons to plastic wrap and mixers. Next, set out all the ingredients, except those that need to stay frozen or refrigerated. In addition, if any equipment needs prepping, (for example, the oven needs preheating), now's the time to do it.
Step 3: Prep
Prepping ingredients ahead of time makes cooking much more stream lined. So before you do anything else, wash and pat dry the produce, dice the onions, slice the vanilla pods, measure the flour, and do any other prep work the ingredient list and recipe calls for. If the recipe divides any ingredients, now's the best time to do that, too. For example, the recipe might call for 1 cup + 3 tablespoons sugar. To divide the ingredients so cooking can go more smoothly, place 1 measured cup of sugar in one bowl and 3 tablespoons in another.
Step 4: Cooking
All that's left to do is follow the step-by-step instructions given in the cooking recipe. Your preparation from reading up on unfamiliar cooking techniques, to ensuring you have all the ingredients ready and prepped, to having the oven fully preheated will pay off now, making cooking fun, easy, and stress-free.
P.S. Playing with Recipes
There's absolutely nothing wrong with experimenting with cooking recipes. This could mean something as simple as replacing a single spice called for in cooking recipes, or it could mean something as elaborate as creating a recipe from scratch. Just remember it can take at least several tries to get a recipe from scratch just right.
Fast and Easy Gourmet Cooking by Kristina Seleshanko
Although many people think gourmet cooking can't also be easy cooking, they are wrong. Gourmet cooking is primarily about using high quality, fresh ingredients combined with superior cooking techniques. A great many gourmet meals are actually quite easy and quick to cook.
So what do you do when you need fast, fun, delicious gourmet meals when you have little time to cook? Read on!
Freeze Em!
For future easy cooking, chefs should learn to freeze food. For example, next time you cook up chicken breasts for a meal, cook double. Allow the extra to cool, then pop it into a freezer bag. Then, next time you need chicken for a recipe, you can just toss the frozen chicken in the microwave or directly into the pan. What a time saver!
You can do this with nearly any kind of food. For example, if you're cooking a meal with beans, cook up the whole bag of dried beans and freeze the leftovers for future meals. Some meals (like soups, stews, and casseroles) are also excellent candidates for freezing, making a quick dinner literally a few minutes away.
For information on how to freeze nearly any type of food, from eggs to whipped cream, The National Center for Home Food Preservation website is an excellent resource. (http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/how/freeze.html)
The Right Recipes
Recipe selection naturally plays a big part in how fast and easy meals come together. For best results, avoid recipes requiring lots of preparation or in-the-kitchen cooking time. (Most recipes include estimations for each of these.) It's also wise to reserve recipes with unfamiliar cooking techniques for days when you have more time to linger and experiment in the kitchen.
Mise En Place
Save time and make cooking more speedy by preparing everything in advance. Before you begin cooking, wash and cut up all produce, and measure out all the ingredients. Professional chefs swear by this technique (http://lifestyle.gourmandia.com/community/blog/?p=253), which goes by the French name mise en place. (http://www.epicurious.com/tools/fooddictionary/entry/?id=3523)
Keep it Simple
The essence of fast and easy cooking is keeping it fun and simple. That means choosing wholesome, simpler foods. A good way to do this is to first select a meat, poultry, or seafood as the centerpiece of the meal. Next, select a side dish. Finally, select a quick dessert. For example, you might choose fish as the main ingredient for dinner. Royal Sea Bream with Sichuan Sauce (http://www.gourmandia.com/video-recipes-cooking-videos/royal-sea-bream-with-a-sechuan-pepper-sauce ), a simple and free recipe, is a good choice, then. As a side, you could simply steam some fresh vegetables, or you could make easy and quick polenta. (http://www.gourmandia.com/video-recipes-cooking-videos/polenta) Then you could end the meal with a delicious baked fruit, like Pear with Wine (http://www.gourmandia.com/video-recipes-cooking-videos/pear-with-wine-vanilla-ice-cream-and-pepper). Fast. Easy. And gourmet!
