For any budding chef, the kitchen is a place for experimentation and learning, and it can also be a place where family recipes originate and evolve.
Whilst for some, cooking can be a chore after a long day at the office, for others it can be an escape and a form of joy to watch ingredients come together into something wonderful.
Whether you’re a beginner chef just getting started, or a veteran at making flavours blend together, here are five top tips for enhancing the flavour of all your home cooked dishes effortlessly.
1. Create a Challenge
For any beginner chef, creating cooking challenges is a great way to stay motivated and learn new skills. Why not try and create a “fakeaway”, or healthy alternative to your favourite takeaway?
This will create delicious results without the enormous price tag, and will enable you to stay on track if you’re currently on a health plan or diet.
Experiment with different seasonings, cooking techniques and textures to discover what you love.
2. Use Aromatics to Build Layers
Aromatics like garlic, onions and leeks are an excellent base to many recipes, and form most of the flavour that lifts the rest of the recipe. Onions and garlic also have significant health benefits for your heart and circulatory system.
To use aromatics in the base of your recipes, saute them slowly to bring out the flavour before adding in the rest of your ingredients. For tutorials on adding aromatics to your cooking, you can use YouTube to view the experts first.
3. Grow Fresh Herbs
Although it’s perfectly fine to use dried herbs, fresh ones can create additional dimensions of flavour, and you can create greater flavour by finely chopping, grinding or crushing your herbs.
By growing your own herbs you can also add gardening to your list of hobbies and skills. Many herbs are perfect for your kitchen windowsill or greenhouses and are very low maintenance to keep. However, some herbs like mint can be invasive to other plants, so keeping it in isolation will prevent it from attacking other plants in your garden.
If you’d like to grow your own herbs, you can find pots and seeds in garden centres like Dobbies to help you grow the best quality herbs for your dishes.
4. Make Small High Quality Swaps
Making small swaps to the way you cook and eat will both improve your diet and mean you can effectively create better tasting, better quality dishes effortlessly.
You can swap out the oil you use for healthier options such as extra virgin olive oil from high quality suppliers like the Artisan Olive Oil Company. Extra virgin olive oil is renowned for being enriched with vitamins and antioxidants. Additionally, by choosing to eat non-ultra processed food, you will help to protect yourself against some diseases such as bowel cancer and heart disease.
5. Season Gradually
By adding your seasoning gradually to dishes, you will be able to taste a subtle difference, and this will prevent over-seasoning.
Make sure you taste your dish at each stage of the cooking process to see how flavours deepen and develop. For certain seasonings like salt, adding too much can make a meal both unappetising and bad for your health.
Do you have any tips for heightening the flavour of home cooked meals? Share your tips in the comments section below!
