From wrecking non-stick pans using metal tools to guessing baking measurements and only part-reading recipes, frivolous habits in the kitchen can add up to a heap of cooking disasters. While some are just down to impatience and laziness, others are downright dangerous and should be avoided at all costs. These are some of the most common bad cooking habits you should avoid.
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Not reading the recipe properly
You’ve laid out the ingredients for a recipe you’ve been eager to try, you start reading through the steps and realize you’ve had to marinate the meat for at least two hours, or similar. There’s almost no chance you can improvise at this point, especially if you’re expecting guests or are not willing to eat hours later than planned. Before buying your ingredients, read the recipe steps not just the ingredients list and plan your time accordingly.
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Opening the oven door mid-cooking
Impatience is the root cause of many kitchen nightmares, especially when they involve oven temperatures and baking. It’s natural to want to watch your cakes rise, but every time you pop the door open, the oven cools down and takes time to get back up to temperature. It’s inefficient and extends the cooking time. It also means that a variety of bakes, from meringues to bread, may fail entirely.
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Not getting the pan hot enough before cooking steak
A hot pan sears meat properly, caramelizing and browning it, which improves both the appearance and enhances the flavor complexity. Failing to get the pan up to a fierce heat means missing out on all that potential. In fact, this goes for almost everything, not just steak. There’s hardly anything you’d ever put in a cold pan straight away.
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Overfilling a frying pan
This is equally true of wok-cooking too, but much of the point of frying is to add color and cook food evenly and thoroughly. Overfilling the pan with ingredients means some won’t touch the bottom but will simply steam cook or boil in its own juice. Fine if you want steamed food, but in this case a steamer would be best.
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Guessing baking quantities
“A little bit of this and a little bit of that” can be a great approach to cooking savory dishes. But try this approach with baking, not measuring out ingredients and your dish is likely to completely fail. There’s a reason most recipes are triple-tested before they’re published: they often don’t work if you’re loose with the quantities. Baking is a very specific science, especially when it comes to ingredients reacting with each other to create rise, lamination, porousness and similar.
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Underestimating how slow a slow cooker cooks
A standard slow cooker instruction manual will divide recipes into high and low, but even the fastest of recipes on high will still take at least two hours and if the dish includes meat, you’re looking at four hours or so. To get the most from your slow cooker, you’ll need to embrace a leisurely approach and not rush the cooking.
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Using boiling water for coffee and tea
It’s a little-known rule that boiling water isn’t great for tea or coffee. It burns the grounds or leaves and increases bitterness in the cup. Using water slightly off the boil should result in a much tastier brew. The National Coffee Association in America suggests a temperature between 195°F–205°F (90°C–96°C) for your coffee.
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Under-seasoning during cooking
Whether it’s adding salt to boiling water for pasta or pepper to a rich stove-top stew, sometimes we forget the importance of seasoning. Seasoning mostly refers to just salt and pepper as they’re both essential in balancing the dish, plus enhancing herbs and spices used in the recipe as well as other flavors. Note how many times cookery show contestants fail, purely because they didn’t season their dishes correctly.
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Barbecuing when the flames are still kicking up
When we finally bust out the barbecue as the sun comes out, we often get a little over-excited and throw the meat on the grill while the coals are still kicking up massive flames. Cue meat – and vegetables – that are burnt on the outside and raw on the inside. Results will be much better if you wait for the flames to die down and cook using the hot coals.
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Forgetting to wash vegetables and salads
We often unintentionally forget to wash fruit, vegetables and salad leaves. But it’s good practice to wash everything, rinsing off any pesticides, bacteria and dirt, thus reducing our chances of getting ill. It also makes it much less likely that caterpillars and any other insects will accidentally end up in your salad.
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Washing chicken and other raw meats
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Not keeping meat away from vegetarian food
Anyone who has catered for a vegetarian or vegan will find themselves, at some stage, eyeing up two identical wooden spoons trying to remember which was stirring the meat pan and which the vegetarian pan. Sometimes we’ll replace both and start again, other times we might look over our shoulder, check no one is looking and take that 50:50 chance. Just don’t.
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Throwing perfectly good food away
Let’s not confuse best before dates with use by dates – the first is merely a guideline, while you should exercise caution about the latter. Food waste is a big issue around the world: not only is it morally questionable, but it means we’re paying for food we don’t eat, which doesn’t make much sense either. Plus, there are myriad ways how you can use food that’s a little past its best and you can discover genius ideas to rescue foods you’d usually throw away here.
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Not tasting the dish as you cook it
For some reason this is rarely a problem when baking biscuits, but for other dishes we don’t always taste as we go. Without tasting a curry sauce, how do you know when it’s reached the heat level you like or whether a broth is seasoned enough? How about whether a sauce needs a little acidity or sweetness? You might get lucky when cooking familiar dishes you know by heart, but if you’re trying something new, it’s essential to taste as you go.
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Licking the spoon you’re using to cook
It might be fine if you’re just cooking for yourself, but if cooking for others it’s simply unhygienic, especially during COVID-19. If you want to try the dish you’re making, use a teaspoon and don’t double-dip – wash it or put it away in the sink or the dishwasher as soon as it’s been in your mouth. Same goes for dipping your fingers in to taste food.
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Using old herbs and spices
We all have an array of herbs and spices that don’t always see the light of day, which means when they do come out they’re not always in great condition. If a spice mix comes out of the jar in a solid lump, throw it out. Use fresh flavorings when you can, especially herbs, chili and similar, and buy in small quantities for maximum flavor.
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Cooking the same dishes over and over
It’s a fact that it takes longer to cook a meal from a new recipe, not least because you usually need to buy ingredients you don’t already have. Maybe you’re not a confident cook or have especially picky eaters in the family. Whatever the reason, it’s easy to stick with what you know and miss out on a whole host of new dishes that might be brilliant, if only you had tried them.
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Using metal utensils on non-stick pans
Non-stick pans really are amazing. They’re easier to cook with, serve from and clean – and a godsend for making dishes such as omelets and fish. They’re also exceptional if you want to cook healthier meals, using less fat like oil or butter. Yet there’s one very quick way to ruin them: metal utensils cut the non-stick layer so that it flakes off, quickly shortening the life of the pan. Get a few nylon, silicone and wooden spatulas, spoons and fish slices to have on hand every time you cook.
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Using extra virgin olive oil for frying
Extra virgin olive oil has a lower smoke point than other types of oil so while this high-grade stuff tastes great drizzled over salad or mozzarella, it’s useless and even dangerous for shallow-frying steak or deep-frying fries. For these, try oils with a higher burn point, like vegetable or sunflower oil. Confused about which oil to use when? Check out our comprehensive guide.
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Not resting meat before serving
Back to our tendency towards impatience again. Searing a pork or lamb chop adds lots of flavor but it also tenses the meat. For the best results, remove your meat from the pan or the oven once cooked, loosely cover it with tin foil and let it rest for about 10 minutes. In that time the meat will relax and the juices will redistribute evenly. It will also prevent medium steaks from bleeding out on the plate when sliced.
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Using blunt knives
Blunt knives not only require more effort to achieve the same effect as a sharp knife but make it harder to cut as you intend. With a blunt knife, the more pressure you apply the more likely you are to injure yourself. Counter-intuitively a sharp knife is actually a safer knife as you have a lot more control and precision over the cuts you’re making.
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Over-stirring a pan as you cook
A lot of foods benefit from contact with the bottom of the pan for flavor and color. But constantly churning ingredients with a wooden spoon deprives them of that contact making it more likely you’ll end up with a shapeless mush. Let the ingredients fry and when ready, use the pan to mix them. This will take some time to master, but lift your pan at a slight angle, push it away and then bring back up in a circular motion to mix.
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Cooking meat straight from the fridge
It’s a mistake we all make, mostly because of our forgetfulness, but something we can easily fix. Taking steak and other raw meats from the fridge and putting it straight in the pan means the risk the meat will be overcooked on the outside and still raw in the middle is high. Instead, take your meat out of the fridge about half an hour, depending on its size, before cooking so it can come up to room temperature.
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Leaving butter uncovered
Sure, it’s easier to have it uncovered, but butter absorbs smells so can pick up the taste of anything with a strong aroma that’s left in the fridge. To avoid this, refrigerate butter in its original packaging within a re-sealable plastic bag or use a butter dish with a cloche.
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Pre-cooking lasagna sheets
Even though we’re impatient cooks who often want to cut corners to make cooking quicker for some reason many decide to add the unnecessary step of pre-cooking lasagna sheets. The jury is somewhat out on this one as some say it’s essential, however, if you have plenty of liquid in your sauce and you bake it for at least 20 minutes, you run the risk of overcooking the pasta and it turning into a mushy mess.
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Using the same chopping board or knife for raw meat and vegetables
Sure, they might be going in the same pan, but you should have a separate chopping board for raw meat, so food doesn’t cross-contaminate. Raw or undercooked meat is one of the main causes of food poisoning and having different chopping boards and knives for vegetables and meat will reduce the risk. At the very least, be sure to give your cutting board and knives an extremely good clean after they touch raw meat.
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Letting your animals near food
Do you know where your cat’s paws have been all day? Don’t let your cat, dog or any other animal walk on the table or kitchen surface and don’t let them lick produce or cooking utensil if you want to avoid picking up bacteria.
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Not wiping surfaces after cooking
This is especially important if you’ve prepped and cooked raw meat but is generally a good habit to have. Disinfect surfaces after cooking every time and wipe them down to avoid bacteria spreading. The lack of crumbs, sugar and other bits of food on your counters will also keep things like ants and fruit flies at bay. Same goes for sponges that are starting to smell a bit. Change your sponges and dishcloths regularly so they don’t pick up bacteria and spread it all around your kitchen. Find out how to rescue burnt pans and other cleaning tips here.
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Putting non-stick pans in the dishwasher
They might claim to be dishwasher safe but high temperatures and strong cleaning chemicals will start to wear down the non-stick coating on your pans and you’ll have to replace them much sooner than you’d like. Just stick to washing them by hand.
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Using the wrong knife
One of the biggest mistakes home cooks make is not using the right knife and just using one we’re most used to for everything. A serrated knife cuts bread but is also good for slicing soft produce such as tomatoes and strawberries, and sawing through larger, tough items such as celeriac. Paring knives are ideal for fiddly jobs such as peeling, removing seeds and de-veining shrimp, while a good-quality chef’s knife is perfect for general slicing and dicing tasks.
