Tips To Become A Good Cook

            I became a cook literally after marriage. Before that, I hadn’t an opportunity to cook food or to be frank to stay at home. So when I became a housewife, it was not only a nightmare for me but also for my husband and his family too. And during my life from then on I learned a few lessons, which I would like to share with you all.    

1.     Plan your meal a day before. It would save time and energy. For persons to have to go to office with lunch, the meals should be ready before 8. Preparing breakfast, lunch with curries and if it had to be done single-handedly, then planning could help relieve some work.

2.     When you cook try to use as little utensils as possible, you can save on washing. And the wash load which piles after cooking can be reduced.

3.     Never cook dishes with lots of ingredients and difficulty when everybody is on the run, they would never appreciate your hard work and would never have the time to savour the taste. Its better to serve it in the evening or during holidays.

4.     Don’t think that you have to get all the ingredients ready to start cooking. If you have the first two ingredients diced and ready, you can start cooking and while the two ingredients are being cooked you can get the next ingredients ready. For eg:- If you have to prepare beans curry. Get the onion and chilli cut. Then you can place the pan on the stove, pour the oil and sauté the onion and chilli. And let it on fire by then you can get the beans diced. But don’t forget to stir the onion on fire or else you would have a burnt onion.

5.     Onion is a very important ingredient for all Indian recipes. So what I do is I cook all my curries like beans, carrot and sambar/Rasam without oil and onion. Then I sauté  onion, with chilli, curry leaves and a dash of mustard  in one go and share it with all my curries for the day. Its much more tastier, because the flavour of curry leaves, mustard, onion, etc. stays fresh. Its also healthier because we don’t need to use a lot of oil to sauté or deep fry onions and reduces cooking time for all dishes and reduces cooking gas consumption too.

6.     Don’t cook for the whole day in one go. Just do it for 1 ½ part of the day, there are chances for visitors and if not we can use it for the next part of the day, i.e. evening.  So we can avoid wasting food which could help us save money a lot.

7.     Don’t always on and off cooking gas, if you are planning to use it immediately. For that, keep the next food item ready to be cooked close at hand, thus helping us save both time and money. But that doesn’t mean that you have to let it burn until the next food item is being set.

8.     Try to be innovative in the kitchen, there is no set of rules or criterias in cooking. Taking risks in the kitchen, helps bring a family who can face any adventure in life.

To be continued...

Meena