8+ Kitchen Skills to Know for Fearless Cooking

学习一些简单的烹饪基础知识和技能的厨房可以更容易地拥抱在家里做饭。虽然它可能不会是天生的你，深入了解一下这些烹饪技能开始使用有益健康的家常菜，将节省您的钱呢！

Once you’ve learned some of these basic cooking skills, try replacing some of yoursupermarket favorites with homemade recipes.

As someone who cooks from scratch pretty much daily, the idea of not knowing how to cook is completely foreign to me.

Turns out, there are plenty of people out there who just never learned the cooking basics I did.

Cooking basics: Traditional skills to learn

Generations of packaged foods and the demise of Home Ec classes in schools has really left a generation behind. We’re sending young people out into the world without some of the most basic kitchen skills.

随着对指导新手厨师的舒适厨房一定程度的眼，我分享了一些简单的烹饪基础，将授权门外汉能够超越开水和拉面。

How to separate an egg

Sometimes a recipe calls for an egg white. Or just the yolk. There are special tools for making this task easy, but really, you don’t need one.

裂纹蛋在柜台上。轻轻打开鸡蛋啊ver a bowl, allowing the yolk to settle into one half of the shell. Carefully slide the yolk back and forth between the eggshells a couple of times. The white will fall into the bowl, leaving behind the yolk.

Be sure to save the蛋壳为您的花园。

How to peel garlic for cooking

If you’ve ever battled the thin skins of garlic and the garlic won, here’s a shortcut for you. Pull a clove of garlic from the bulb and set it on a cutting board. Hold the flat side of a broad knife on top of the garlic with one hand and give it a good whack with the other fist. The skin will pop right off.

Save money by reviving wilted produce

Whoops! Forgot about the fresh carrots, lettuce, celery and now it’s all limp? Salvage them by submerging them in ice water for 15-20 minutes. Drain revived produce on a towel and you’re back in business.

了解如何剥离西红柿

If you dislike the peels of tomatoes in your cooked dishes, take a lesson from my mom. Here’show she peels tomatoesfor making salsa.

Related:My Top Essential Kitchen Tools

How to cut round fruits and vegetables

It’s hard to cut produce that has a curved bottom and wiggles all over the place.

To make it less likely that you’ll cut a finger open while trying to slice curvy produce like potatoes, use a sharp knife to cut a thin slice from the length of the potato. Set the flat edge on your cutting board, and voila! No more wiggles.

如何使一个简单的辣酱

Probably the easiest homemade salad dressing you can make, a vinaigrette can be as simple or complex as you’d like. For a basic vinaigrette, you need only remember a ratio of 3:1, oil to vinegar. Say, 3 tablespoons oil to 1 tablespoon vinegar. Add a pinch of salt and pepper and whisk with a fork. Or shake in a jar. Change it up with flavored oils or different types of vinegar.

How to roast veggies

Roasted vegetableshave a flavor like no other. Better? They’re easy to make. Cut vegetables into similarly sized pieces, place on a sheet pan, toss with olive oil to coat, and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Bake at 400 degrees for about 40 minutes or until tender and lightly browned.

We like roasting sweet potatoes, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, and onion. Here’s a more detailed recipe forroasting carrots.

Get Organized in Your Kitchen: 12+ Easy Ideas to Streamline Cooking

How to roast a chicken

There are exactly five billion recipes for cooking chicken on the internet (I counted). And they’re great! In the end, one of the easiest ways to prepare chicken is to roast it.

• Heat your oven to 450 degrees.
• Check the inside of your chicken (both ends) for the little bag of innards they sometimes come with. Save for making broth.
• Sprinkle the whole chicken with a teaspoon each of salt and pepper.
• Place chicken in a roasting pan and seal with tin foil.
• Bake for 45 minutes.
• Remove foil; bake for another 15 minutes to brown the bird.
• Done!

Cooking basics: How to make broth

Broth is the basis for making soup. By the mug, it’s a healthy stand alone snack. And it’s simple to make.

Remove as much meat as possible from the roasted chicken you just made. Place the chicken carcass in a slow cooker or stock pot. Add some vegetables: Carrots, an onion, some garlic, or celery are all good options. Fill pot with water. Cook on low heat for 24-48 hours. Need more detailed instructions? Gohere.

Homemade broth is the basis for homemade soups and stews, like thisDIY Cream of Mushroom Soup要么Sausage Lentil Soup. And it’s like finding free food!

Cooking basics and kitchen skills for fearless cooking!

The Kitchen Counter Cooking SchoolbyKathleen Flinnwas not the book I expected it to be. And yet, when I sat down and started reading I was hooked.

可能是因为作者通过admittin开始g that she stalked one woman in the grocery store. You know the one: cart full of Lunchables, boxed pasta mixes, jars of gravy, frozen waffles.I have stalked a similar shopper out of sheer curiosity.

What I didn’t do, though, is what the author did. Kathleen Flinn managed to strike up a conversation with this woman and ultimately discovered that she shopped the way she did because shedidn’t know how to cook.

Zero kitchen skills.

A graduate of Le Cordon Bleu, the author definitely knows how to cook — and cook well. Her encounter with the lady in the supermarket inspired her to share cooking basics with others who simply couldn’t find their way around a kitchen.

随着她的谦逊，笔者坚信名健康志愿者参加着她的“工程”。

Kitchen counter cooking skills

The lessons – from knife skills to cuts of meat to spices and seasonings – are chronicled in a narrative format that introduces readers to the volunteers and their shortcomings in the kitchen and follows them as they learn to master cooking basics so they could make food for themselves and their families.

Each chapter concludes with a recipe or two, and there are bonus recipes included in the back of the book.

Unlike a lot of other narrative non-fiction books I’ve picked up, this one held my interest from beginning to end. I even found myself taking mental notes about improvements I could make in my own kitchen.

This book would be agreatgift for a new bride or for a young person heading out into the world, but it’s an enjoyable read even for folks who are comfortable with a skillet and grill.

Originally published in September, 2011; this post has been updated.

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