You found the perfect recipe for your dinner party and you’ve decided to try it before you spring it on innocent, unsuspecting guests and the result looks nothing like the pictures and it doesn’t taste like you thought it would. Why?
Fear not, dear novice of the nutrients, for I have a few troubleshooting ideas that could make all the difference at your next dinner party. Correcting the error of your culinary ways might be simpler than you think. Consider the following:
Measuring:
While savory dishes are much more forgiving in this department, there are a few ingredients that can quickly overpower a dish so pay attention to them. Generally speaking, it’s better to weigh your ingredients than to use measuring cups, but even then you probably don’t have to be that exact. Just be careful of the chili powder or the chili flakes. Tumeric, when overused, can also make your dish taste like dirt. Salt is in this category too, though it also depends on what kind. More on that later.
Check your appliances.
Just because you put the oven on 350 doesn’t mean its 350 inside your oven. Ovens, especially older ones, can vary by 20-50 degrees! This can make a significant difference in cooking times and browning. Get a thermometer built for ovens and check your settings.
Check your ingredients
Size Matters:
How large are the eggs? How big is YOUR turkey? All of these make a difference. The size of your protein affects the cooking time. If your eggs are larger or smaller than what the recipe calls for, you can still pull it off, but you may need to adjust the number up or down. Disregarding this can mean your dish is over or underdone at the specified cooking time.
Freshness:
Did you know Olive Oil only lasts about a year? In fact, one expert postulated that most Americans regularly consume rancid olive oil and they don’t even know it. Check the date on the label. Better olive oil shows the date of harvest. As long as you’re within a year of that, then you should be good. And while we’re on olive oil, don’t skimp. Know what kind of oil to use and get a good brand, preferably Italian or Greek.
Also, most people have herbs and spices that have long passed their best days. That means they’ve lost some or most of their usefulness. If you don’t cook a lot, odds are your pantry needs a spice audit. Throw out those that are older than a year. You’ll get better results if you use recent stuff. And while we’re at it, consider buying whole spices and grinding them in a coffee grinder or with a mortar and pestle. It doesn’t take much time and the results will be worth it!
Kind:
I’m mostly talking about salt here. If the recipe calls for two tablespoons of salt, the kind of salt you use matters. Most likely, if you use regular Morton Iodized salt, it will be too much and your dish will taste oversalted, because it is! Most recipes call for a good kosher salt, such as Diamond Crystal, or even Morton Kosher.
Check Your Equipment:
If your roasting pan is thin and light, your drippings will most likely burn to carbon instead of creating fond that makes gravy so delicious. You’re literally missing out on one of the best parts of the dish. Spend a little money and get a beefy one and you’ll be amazed by the results.
The same is true of your saucepan and sauté pan. Lots of sauces require even heating and cheap pans develop hot spots.
Then last, but probably most important: Technique.
Knife skills:
How you chop your food matters, because texture is an important part of flavor. If the recipe calls for finely chopped onions and you chop large pieces, or worse, some large and some small, the recipe will taste different. Either the onions will be under or overcooked, or you will have big chunks of onion in your meatball that wasn’t meant to be there. (Ummm… yeah… I did that.)
If you’re cutting meat into chunks, it’s also important to get them the same size so they cook at the same rate. Most recipes will assume you know how to dress meat. If you’re cooking a pork chop that has a large cap of fat around the edges, score the fat every 2cm or so, so the heat doesn’t cause the fat to deform the cut of meat. If you’re cooking ribs or tenderloin, take off the silverskin. It’s tough and will never really render out like the rest of the fat.
When to season:
Thick cuts of protein like roasts, thick-cut chops, and poultry can benefit from being seasoned a day before. If you allow the salt to draw out moisture and penetrate the meat, you taste more of the food. If you salt it late, you’ll just get a salty taste.
Be careful of most fish, however. These benefit from being seasoned at the last minute, because the delicate texture of the protein doesn’t need a lot of sodium harassment.
If you want to know more about how to add skill to your cooking repertoir, check out my blog post Cooking Deconstructed.
