When it comes to good tasting food, there’s nothing better than knowing that you’ve done it all yourself. But, it can take a lot of trials and experiments to learn how to properly balance and flavour food correctly. You need to know the details of the ingredients you are cooking with and how they work together in a dish. Some flavours, such as lemon and fish, work really well together, but other flavour combinations don’t, and you don’t always realise this until you try it.
A lot of people who are interested in cooking start off by over-flavouring their food, or choosing the wrong textures to compliment a dish – all of which can greatly impact the flavour of your foods. With that in mind, here are 3 easy ways that you can enhance the flavour of your foods.
Learn To Use Salt Correctly
It’s something that a lot of people do, without even realising it, but adding salt to your food after cooking and before tasting is a big no-no when it comes to properly flavoured dishes. In cooking, salt doesn’t just make the food saltier, but it actually enhances the profile of other flavours in the foods. Imagine unsalted chips, or mashed potatoes without a good sprinkling of salt. There is almost no culinary scenario where salt isn’t welcome, for example adding a pinch of salt to a sweet chocolate dessert can really bring out the sweetness, without being overly sweet.
It’s Ok To Get Help
Not everyone is a professional chef, but that shouldn’t impact your desire to cook. If you want to get in the kitchen more, then start off with small, simple focuses. Instead of instantly worrying about flavour, instead work on how best to cook food items, such as meat, rice and vegetables.
These techniques will stick with you for years to come, and then once you’ve got to grips with the basics, you can start experimenting with flavour profiles. In the meantime, it’s ok to use pre-mixed flavour packs, seasoning sachets and savoury sauces to cook with instead. These will usually be perfectly balanced, so you can enjoy the flavour profile whilst also working on your cooking techniques.
Follow The Golden Rules
There are a few golden rules when it comes to cooking and flavouring, all of which you should keep in mind when starting out. One of them is that when it comes to naturally enhancing flavour, you should look to keep foods crunchy on the outside and tender on the inside. Ensuring that foods are crunchy on the outside comes from technique, like when you grill a steak that has a flavourful crust but is soft and tender on the inside, or when you roast cauliflower and it gets a lovely golden brown colour, yet is still wonderfully soft.
Some other golden rules when it comes to flavours is to use only fresh lemons and garlic in cooking, buy freshly ground spices for baking to mimic the flavours in your favourite bakery products and always save the rind from parmesan, or other hard cheeses, and then use to flavour stocks and sauces.