Rules Of Cooking

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10 Fascinating Food Facts Embed This Infographic Source: Today I found out

Always add garlic at the end
Garlic can burn within 20 seconds (or less depending on how hot your pan is). If garlic burns, it’ll taste bitter and the aromatic flavor you wanted will be gone. If you want to add garlic to a dish, make sure to add it toward the end to avoid burning it.

Keep your knives sharp
It might seem counterintuitive, but you’re actually less likely to cut yourself with a sharp knife than with a dull one. The logic? Sharp blades cut more easily so you don’t need to apply as much pressure, and food is less likely to slip around in your fingers. You can sharpen your own knives with a whetstone at home, but if you don’t want to deal with the headache, kitchen stores like Sur la Table and Williams Sonoma have knife-sharpening services. It also speeds up the cooking process and who doesn’t like getting dinner on the table quicker?

Don’t crowd the pan
If you’re sautéing, pan-frying, or roasting, it’s important not to crowd the pan. You want to end up with a texture that’s cooked on the inside and slightly browned on the outside, and a too-crowded pan will make browning impossible because it creates too much steam (think about the difference between perfectly browned mushrooms, and soggy grey ones). Whether you’re using a sheet pan or a skillet, make sure everything is spread out into a single layer, instead of being piled up. If you don’t have enough room, cook in batches or use several pans.

When it comes to making food as flavorful as possible, salt is your friend. By adding a little bit of salt to both sweet and savory recipes as you cook, you’ll bring out the flavors already in the food, making for a tastier end product. In sweet recipes, add a pinch of salt to batters, doughs, and frostings to add richness to the sweet flavors. In savory recipes, add a pinch of salt every time you add new ingredients—for example, add salt to vegetables as they’re sautéing, then a few pinches more salt when you add meat, then another pinch when you add sauce—so that your recipe comes out well-rounded and balanced. This method will also prevent oversalting food at the end of the cooking process.