Happy Easter! (if you do that sort of thing). A big holiday for me means one thing: An opportunity to cook a big meal for a bunch of people. This year I’m making roasted leg of lamb with grapes and a lemon-saffron rice. I thought about baking bread but then decided I’d rather hang around the house and just drink coffee this morning.
Cooking is my advocation. Perhaps it’s because I’m diagnosed ADHD, but the intensity of pulling together multiple dishes and then enjoying a suite of flavors really puts me over the moon. I couldn’t be happier than when I have two, three, four! dishes all cooking at once.
But it isn’t always like that. Sometimes the pleasure of a good peanut butter, honey, and banana sandwich on good bread does it for me. Or making fresh lemonade in the summer. Hot chocolate in the dead of winter. A bit of flavor transports me to a different place, and the joy of knowing I can do that for someone else is empowering.
As politics has encroached into my life more and more, cooking has become my respite. It forces me to use my hands, my body, distracting me from the world for an hour or two. When I’m done, I get a tasty reward. It’s a positive feedback loop with immediate results, breaking the chain of negativity I get from reading the news – which is a big part of the job that pays me every day.
I’m also convinced that cooking is the most accessible art. We all know what tastes good and with some repetition, we can get better at making food that pleases each of us. So, as I wait for the lamb to roast and my guests to arrive, let me share some of my best cooking tips with you. You too can make great food and create your own positive feedback loop.
- For the most part, fancy cookware doesn’t do anything to make your food better. There are exceptions: All Clad pots and pans and Le Creuset dutch ovens take a beating and last forever. But otherwise, buy your cookware from garage sales and restaurant supply stores. Look for durability, like you could use it as a weapon as well as cookware, because you want to be able to smash, heat, cool, and do all kinds of damage to it.
- Get to know restaurant supply stores. They have all kinds of useful things that are inexpensive.
- Invest in containers for leftovers – preferably metal (because we’ve learned plastic is not recyclable and scraped microplastics seep into your food) – this ensures you’ll always have a great next day lunch.
- Don’t buy anti-stick pans. They’re coated with silicone and chemicals that gradually peel off – into your food. Plus, the coating doesn’t last very long. Instead, use cast iron and stainless-steel pans. Copper is great but is expensive. Aluminum won’t take a beating. Avoid.
- If you’re wondering how to keep meat and eggs from sticking to a pan, the key is super high heat. If you use a metal spatula, you’ll be able to lift it from the pan after a couple minutes.
- Wooden spoons are great. A spoon with a flat edge at the bottom is the killer tool. It’ll help you scrape browned bits off the bottom of pans without scratching (crucial for that dutch oven) and will become your favorite tool.
- Durable metal tongs are also great. You can move and stir with them.
- Have you heard of Bar Keeper’s Friend? Miracle cleanser for stainless steel and porcelain pots. Find it on Amazon and restaurant supply stores. I do not understand why grocery stores don’t stock it.
- Big kitchens are a time killer. Give me a galley kitchen anytime.
- Stainless steel countertops are the best. Marble and other stuff is just expensive, pretty stuff that can break, chip, get marked, cost money. Look at what commercial kitchens do. Copy that.
- Get as big a cutting board as you can find. That extra workspace is useful for putting things aside as you cut, season, and prepare them.
- Expensive appliances with giant burners, wifi, or fancy knobs don’t cook your food better.
- If you’re in a small kitchen without a hood (which is most of us) investing in a window mounted fan will change your life.
- Cast iron skillets are great and last forever. Get the biggest one you can find, preferably through a garage sale. Don’t pay a lot of money. People with old cast iron are usually paying you to haul it away.
- Sharp knives make everything easier. Find a knife shop or learn how to sharpen yourself (it’s not hard). Big knife sets are usually a money suck. Two good sharp knives – one big, one for paring – are all you need to do great work. It’s fun to use expensive knives, but they don’t make much difference for amateurs.
- Get the biggest slow cooker you can find. Preferably at a garage sale. Use these to make roasts and soups. Set it up before you go to work, let it go all day, come home to a glorious smell and an awesome dinner. Heaven.
- There is only one kitchen gadget I endorse, the Joule sous vide machine. Pop your steaks or thick pork chops with herbs into a large Ziploc with the air pushed out. Let the Joule do its work in a large pot of water. Then a quick sear on a blazing hot cast iron pan. You’ll make some of the best meat ever – perfectly cooked every time.
- Compost your scraps or get a composting service. You’ll be amazed at how much waste you divert. Food in your trash becomes methane, which is eight times more harmful to climate change than CO2.
- Repetition – the same day if possible – is the key to getting better at cooking. I once made cinnamon rolls three times in two days. My third batch was infinitely better than the first and I really leveled up in my roll making.
- If you feel like you’re not good at cooking, start with basic things. Get comfortable with messing up. When I first started baking bread, I literally made three or four bricks – they didn’t rise – before I finally got something edible.
- Online cooking videos are great. I still watch a ton of them. Basics with Babish, Bon Appetite, Kenji Lopez-Alt, the New York Times, Claire Saffitz, Priya Krishna, America’s Test Kitchen. Watch, then try it for yourself. I’ve actually made recipes from some of these. Also Korean street food videos – Yummy Boy – are fun to try too!
- I’ve generally found cookbooks with big photo spreads and florid prose to be not as useful as dense ones that get down to the cooking. The Joy of Cooking is still as useful as it was fifty years ago. My new favorite is Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Food Lab. It’s like a textbook for your kitchen and will change your game.
- Learn to make cocktails you like. They really can be wonderful and add a whole other dimension to food. There are good virgin cocktails too!
- To buy seafood, go to a place with lots of sales turnover – this ensures freshness and variety. Inevitably, it will not be your local supermarket. If you don’t have a good fish market nearby, look for an Asian grocery store. East Asian food uses lots of seafood and a wide variety of fish. It’ll be fresh and probably cheaper than your supermarket.
- Find a real butcher. Supermarkets are fine for standard cuts, but hanger steak, tri-tip, short ribs, thick pork chops, frenched chops, inner skirt steak, leg of lamb, and so many more cuts are generally more available, cheaper, and better at a real butcher.
- Avoid the butchers with lots of fancy extras. These are built for people who want to spend lots of money to prove themselves. Find an ethnic spot. If your town (in the US) has a Greek neighborhood, or German, Polish, Brazilian, or Argentine, go here. It will be better!
- Get to know local ethnic groceries – Indian, Mexican, Asian. There will be a wider variety of spices and grains. Rice will be better and cheaper. Produce is often better and cheaper too, because the store owner likely goes to the wholesale market more often. Don’t be afraid to ask for help – even if there’s a language barrier (although Asian markets can be gruff!)
- If you’re in an ethnic grocer, make sure to try whatever sausage they have. Chorizo, brats, andouille, etc. It’ll likely be a revelation.
- Make recipes that terrify you. Then do it again. You’ll level up.
- You can make an argument that pricey wine makes a difference in cooking, but you won’t convince me.
- If you have space, grow your own herbs. Many, like chives, sage, and thyme, are perennials, so they’ll just keep coming back without much work. Annuals like parsley and basil can be bought as small seedlings at garden stores for a couple dollars each. By mid-summer you’ll have more than you know what to do with. For me, the pleasure of not paying a grocery store extortionate prices for herbs while taking a short break to pick what I need, is a tremendous pleasure.
Got a tip of your own? Drop me a note! I’d love to hear it.