Things I wish I knew

Everyone had their first, terrifying time in the kitchen. My first time, when I was actually trying to achieve something, was somewhere around my 13th birthday. I've decided to make a giant choc chip cookie in a round tin to slice it after the bake and share it with my family. I didn't want help from anyone, just wanted to do it all by myself, without doing any research and using probably first recipe I found on the internet. As you can imagine, it was a mayor fail. My family was trying to act all nice and happy, but then they told me it wasn't any good. I was quite upset at first, but them they gave me some tips how to make dough like that and what possibly went wrong. At that point I wasn't sure if I want to bake again...

But as you can see I didn't give up at the end and I actually spend last few years working with food and cakes, and now I'm running a food blog.

This post is dedicated to people that are staring their journey with cooking or just feel completely lost in the kitchen. It's a list of tips and tricks that helped me to feel less lost and made my life easier. I hope you will find some of them useful!

1. How to cook perfect rice

If you are cooking white rice, the ratio of rice to water should be roughly between 1:1,5 to 1:1,75.

For brown or black rice it will be more water, usually the ratio of rice to water should be 1:2.

2. How to make your soup or sauce more flavourful

To easily improve the flavour of your sauce or soup, you don't necessarily need to stay in the kitchen all day or keep your pot on the hob for 6 hours. There is few things that can help to improve the flavour. First, you can try adding liquid smoke or any kind of smoked spices, like smoked paprika to deepen the flavours in your food, but add small quantities not to overpower the flavour of the dish. Dried mushrooms will do similar job, but with less smokey and more earthy effect.

There is another trick that doesn't require fancy liquids - if you roast your vegetables before using them in the soup it will make it more flavourful and less sweet, remember to roast your garlic and onions too!

Another key element to a flavourful soup or sauce it's to season it well. Remember to season your food with salt and spices as you go and taste it every now and then to make sure it has a desired flavour.

3. Sifting flour

I hate sifting flour, it's always messy, it creates more dishes to wash. Hate it. BUT! In some cases it's very important. If you are baking light or fluffy cakes such as sponges or anything similar to it. It breaks up the lumps of flour and makes it lighter, so it won't kill as much air bubbles from the egg and sugar mixture as if you just dumped it in there.

If you are baking dense cakes, such as brownies or blondies - I find it completely useless to sift the flour.

Unless, you have food moth problem, then you should probably stick to sifting...

4. Cooking a perfect egg

For a medium/large-sized egg it takes 8 minutes. Boil the water, put your eggs in gently and cook for 8 minutes. When ready, run them under cold water to stop cooking. You will get beautiful egg yolk, not too runny, not to hard, perfect breakfast egg.

5. Perfectly green vegetables

Don't overcook your vegetables, almost all vegetables have the best flavour when cooked al dente. It of course doesn't apply to vegetables that are toxic or hard to digest while eaten raw.

Don't cover them with a lid, it will cook them way faster, they will become soggy and they will loose their colour in seconds.

Your veggies will taste the best when you saute, steam or roast them.

6. Can I check my cake every 5 minutes while baking

NO. I wish we all could do that, because it's exciting to see the progress and smell your cake, but unfortunately it can destroy your masterpiece. When baking a cake you should wait until at least half of it's baking time is gone, then in most cases you are safe to peek inside to turn the tin around for even baking. For muffins it's even longer, you should wait until 3/4 of baking time is gone before even slightly opening the oven. If you do it too early you could destroy all the work that it have done. Cake is usually quickly rising after going into the oven and it needs time to bake itself before it's "construction" is solid enough to hold itself up if temperature changes. Opening the oven even for a moment can release so much heat that the oven temperature will go down by 20'C! Please, just be patient when baking and it will payoff.

7. Spicy food

I had plenty fails with making food too spicy, there is few tricks that could help. One of them is diluting it with more of the ingredients that you have used, minus the spice. But what if you don't have more? You can try adding something fat and relatively sweet, like some coconut milk or butter. Another way to make it taste less spicy is adding a drizzle of yoghurt or cream on top of each portion. If you didn't cook anything yet that needs to be fixed, but you are planning to, a good rule to remember is - the longer you cook chilli etc. the hotter it will get.

8. How to line a round tin (spring round cake tin)

Sounds easy, doesn't it? Just cut out a circle. BUT! It's way easier to put down the bottom of the tin, put parchment paper on top of it and put the ring back on with parchment paper between. and there you have it - parchment paper that perfectly covers the whole base. Then you can cut excess paper around the tin.

9. Baking sponge cake (fat free)

When making classic sponge cake (eggs, sugar, flour and baking powder), you should be careful not to use greasy tin for it. This kind of cake needs something to hold on to while rising and fat will make it difficult. It's definitely a good idea to use parchment paper on the bottom, but clean the sides of the tin perfectly before putting your cake batter in. I quite often apply this rule to other spongy cakes and just cut the cake around with small serrated knife, few minutes after taking it out of the oven, to release it.

10. How to thicken a sauce

This one is quite simple. You can use flour, cornstarch or potato starch as your thickener. If you want to avoid lumps, it's the best to mix flour with water in a small container 1:1 before adding it to your sauce, goulash or soup. It's best to start with one tbsp of flour and water mixture and then add more if needed. It can quickly change the consistency of your sauce as temperature is changing, so better to increase the amount of thickener slowly.

Let me know if you knew any of those tricks or if you want to see a part 2 of this post! Until then I hope you will enjoy your time in the kitchen a little bit more.

Cheers!