You don’t need to be a professional chef to cook tasty meals for dinner. All you have to do is spend some time in the kitchen, get a recipe online or from a cookbook, and follow the instructions that have been tried and tested by someone else.
But suppose you feel confident enough in a kitchen to improvise a recipe or modify an existing one. In that case, you might be wondering what you can do to turn your culinary creations from ordinary to extraordinary.
How can you make the most of the ingredients you use? And how can you add more flavour to your dishes? These simple cooking tips will show you how to make meals more delicious, so you can feel like a professional chef any day of the week.
Here is how to make easy tasty meals for dinner:
Use fresh and tasty ingredients
Whether they work for a restaurant or meal plan delivery services, all chefs try to use as many fresh and wholesome ingredients as they can when they cook.
If you want to prepare your meals with the best tastes, textures and colours possible, look for the freshest ingredients. Consider using locally grown, raised and prepared products, and cook with the vegetables and fruits in season.
Get familiar with spices
Do you have a few spices that you always go back to, or do you only use salt and pepper to season your meals? Using a variety of spices is an easy way to make your meals more delicious, and it won’t break your budget.
Learn about the types of flavours you can add to your meals with ginger powder, paprika, cumin, turmeric, cinnamon, cloves, curry powder, and chilli pepper, and get creative.
Learn how to use herbs
Whether fresh or dried, herbs can also help you make your meals more delicious, as long as you know how to use them.
Parsley is a common herb that can add flavour to salads, soups, and sauces. Basil, oregano and thyme are herbs that are used in Italian dishes. Cilantro leaves are often used in Indian, Mexican, and Chinese dishes.
The more you learn about herbs, the more you want to try them in your meals.
Season your dishes with flavoured salt
We all know consuming too much salt isn’t good for our health. But when we use flavoured salt to season our meals, we can use less of it without sacrificing taste.
Think about sriracha salt, curry salt, garlic salt, celery salt, lemon salt, matcha salt, or bacon and parmesan salt. And the best part is, you can make your flavoured salt by grinding the ingredients together!
Make your own broth or stock
Instead of buying vegetable broth, chicken, turkey, beef, or shrimp stock, you can make your own. It isn’t that complicated and will add a lot of flavour to many dishes.
You can make soup, baste meat, cook rice or couscous, prepare stew or sauce, and more with your delicious broth or stock.
Don’t chop onion and garlic in advance
Onion and garlic can add flavour to a variety of meals. But you should only chop them when you need them, as they start slowly losing their flavour as soon as they are cut.
However, if you chop too many, be sure to seal your leftovers and keep them in the fridge to help preserve their flavour a little longer.
Finish cooking your pasta in sauce
Cooking your pasta in the sauce will make your pasta dishes more flavourful. Simply cook your pasta in water until it is almost perfectly cooked, then strain it, and finish cooking it in a saucepan full of delicious sauce.
Grill your bread before making a sandwich
Even a simple sandwich can be made more delicious with a simple tip: grill the bread before adding your condiments and toppings.
Grilled bread adds texture to a sandwich, and it helps release the flavours and aromas of the other ingredients.
Experiment with stir-frying
Trying something else will surprise and delight your tastebuds if you always use the same cooking methods to prepare your meals. Stir-frying, for example, is a method that instantly adds flavour to vegetables and meat.
Get a wok, some sesame oil, and some fish sauce, and start experimenting with stir-frying to discover new flavours.
Take a few seconds to deglaze your pan
Finally, if you have never deglazed a pan before, you need to try it. After cooking some meat or sautéing onions or garlic, remove them from the pan, add a splash of vinegar, wine, liquor, lemon juice, or even simply water to your pan, and stir.
The goal is to remove the brown crud left in your pan, which you can then baste your meat or prepare a delicious sauce.
