Learning to use acid as a seasoning has been life changing

A little splash of vinegar or lemon juice can really brighten up something without having to dump in a bunch of salt

That and MSG

If you’re cooking anything savory, you put some MSG in it and it instantly gets better

Get a kitchen scale. When baking, find recipes which go by mass, instead of volume. Shit like flour, brown sugar, bread crumbs, spices etc. have very inconsistent density. You constantly worry about whether or not a teaspoon is supposed to be heaping or flat, whether a cup of brown sugar is supposed to be loose or compressed. Fuck all of that shit. Do it by weight. It will come out perfect every time.

Alright comrades, buckle up

• Blanch your hard vegetables before stir frying. Broccoli, Chinese broccoli, pea pods, even mushrooms. Makes the colours more vibrant, and home stoves rarely reach the heat levels that Chinese professional stoves can reach so you can cook them through. Blanch for 15-60 seconds (depending on how hard/big the vegetable is), run it under cold water in a strainer of some description before throwing it into a stir fry.

• Specific to shiitake mushrooms, this may be more common knowledge in China, Japan, Korea, etc, but fresh Shiitake should be blanched for 30-60 seconds, cooled under running water then pressed against your strainer to get the excess water out. This gets the “grassy” flavour out. A lot of people who don’t like shiitake specifically aren’t prepping them correctly.

• Big chopping boards. Don’t cheap out, get a large wooden or plastic chopping board. Medium chopping boards are small, large chopping boards are mid.

• Have a scrap bin on your work surface. Even if you have a bin you can open with your foot next to you, it’ll save time. Just use a bowl or an empty container.

• Get a Chinese caidao. That’s it. You can use it as a bench scraper after cutting whatever you’re cutting, a shibazi works well and it’s cheap. I’m a cook irl, for a western cafe, and I own one (1) pairing knife and one (1) caidao. While other cooks/chefs own like a set of expensive European knives

• Don’t be afraid of MSG, tell your friends and family not to be afraid of MSG.

• If you think you’ve put in the correct amount of garlic, add another 15%

• Marinades that require over a couple hours are a scam, beyond that it’s not worth the effort 90% of the time. Overnight marinades are to food what top sheets are to beds. There’s a certain level of flavour penetration extra time can provide to a meat, but after a point it’s easier to simply cut it into smaller pieces to allow whatever marinade to coat more of the surface in less than half the time.

• Sharpen your knives, but don’t listen to r/knives or whatever when they tell you to use some expensive meteorite whetstone every other day. I sharpen via stone every… 6 months? And hone with a steel once or twice a day

• Google how to brunoise an onion. Dicing onions is common across many cuisines, and doing so efficiently will save you more time over the years than practically any other knife skill

• Pinch grip on your knives. Have the handle in your hand, and pinch the spine of the blade with your thumb and finger (or 2, for larger knives like the caidao)

• Making your own stock isn’t worth the effort most of the time, but when you do make stock, and it’s not intended to be a clear stock, add like a dash of soy sauce

• Steamed rice makes the best fried rice, day old rice makes the second best fried rice, cooked rice layed out in a thin layer over a sheet pan or plate makes the third best fried rice.

• If you don’t have a mortar and pestle, get a garlic crusher.

• If you do have a mortar and pestle, try crushing things with some coarse salt laid in. For example, if you’re crushing basil for a homemade pesto, huge salt flakes help break down the leaves. Doesn’t exactly hurt garlic, either.

• An air fryer is just a small oven, decide for yourself whether or not you eat enough baked goods to warrant purchasing one.

• Salting your pasta water is better than not salting it. That said, the difference is very minor so most people won’t be able to tell the difference. I can barely tell the difference.

• Asian noodles cook way faster than pasta, if you’re used to cooking pasta and you’re trying out a noodle recipe, be very careful not to overcook. The reverse is also true: if you’re more used to Asian noodles and you’re making pasta, start boiling water and cooking before you would normally.

• Learn to use spice. Straight up adding chili will probably not be a pleasant experience. Umami rounds out the heat (Loads of Chinese styles of chili use this, see: Laoganma chili crisp). Acid cuts through the heat (most American hot sauces I’ve encountered do this. Tabasco, Frank’s, Cholula, Tapatio). Garlic pairs well with heat (Sriracha). This knowledge is the difference between spicelords that eat carolina reapers as a flex and someone who actually enjoys spice.

• Temperature control is extremely important but is hard to do on electric stoves, so may not be possible to turn heat up or down rapidly. I’ve made do by having a burner on low and one on high if I have to go between starting the aromatics to cooking the main ingredients.

• Deep frying at home is only worth it if you do it often, don’t buy a deep fryer.

• Conversely, steaming at home is worth it regardless of if you do it once every 6 months or every day, buy a bamboo steamer that fits over one of your pots. Mainly due to how cheap bamboo is.

• Dark and light soy aren’t remotely the same thing

• Neutral oils can be seasoned ahead of time. For example, on the lowest setting your stove can go, heat up some neutral oil, roughly chop some scallions and a shallot, drop them into the oil, and fish them out after they darken (if they’re blackened, you’ve gone too far). Fish out the solids, pour into a bottle of some type, and you have a relatively stable onion oil that can be used for a lot of dishes that call for onions. See: Scallion pancakes, scallion oil noodles

• A small amount of vegemite/marmite will improve brown gravy in a way I have a hard time believing. Like 2 teaspoons is enough, I don’t know how it works.

• If, for some reason, you prefer your mashed potatoes slightly drier than usual home made stuff, you can sub out milk/cream with powdered milk, which is shelf stable and could be more useful than buying milk/cream just for one dish

Did you add too much garlic? No you didn’t. Add more

Mash your garlic, don’t just chop it. The flavour is in the pores you rupture. If you just chop it you don’t get as much flavour out. The same is basically true of lots of herbs. Basil is a good one for that

Onions take ages to caramelise, like 30 mins plus. Get them going early so they’re ready in time for the rest.

If you’re pan frying pasta with sauces after cooking (boiling) it. Cook it to before it’s al dente. It will continue to soften while frying.

If you’re making a stew or sauce, having some corn/potato starch mixed through water in a cup to one side is handy if it isn’t thickening to your desired level.

You can always add, you can never remove (which is why it’s important to Taste As You Go.

if a recipe says to use between 2-4 cloves of garlic, double it. if it says more, use a whole bulb
roast your garlic first if viable for the recipe (cut the top off a bulb, wrap it in tinfoil and shove it in the oven)
a dash of cinnamon is good in a chilli
grated apple is good to add a touch of sweetness to a lot of recipes

If your dish has enough fat, salt, spice, but it still feels flat like it’s missing something, add some acid at the end, like lemon juice, balsamic or wine vinegar. It will brighten the taste and bring out other flavors.

Some things dont cook properly in acid though (like beans!), so add it at the end.

That shit that looks a little burned on the bottom of the pan is flavor! Deglaze that shit. Use some water if it’s all you have, but some cheap drinkable wine will probably be better. Saves a lot of scrubbing at the sink, too.

salt and fat will make almost anything taste good

Maybe not a tip but learning how to make a quick roux for gravy from scratch was a game changer for my dinners.

It’s been my job for a decade so I don’t really know where to start. I do have a lot, so if anyone has any questions or dishes you have issues with or make often and wanna streamline or kick up a bit I can probably help. My most general one is have a really good and super fucking sharp knife and know how to use it. Look up cutting techniques on YouTube, there is a safer and faster way to chop just about everything. Even when you’re making trash, make the best trash you can. Sorta counter-intuitively, chill the fuck out, learn to get a spider sense for cooking times and shit so you can balance different parts so they all come together at once. Walk away from the kitchen and just let shit cook when it needs to, it’s something you pick up on fast when you’re Making 10 dishes at once but the same ability to just leave shit alone can make cooking less of an ordeal. Also if you look up super early Julia Childs on YouTube, like her TV show for housewives in the 50s, you will legit get incredible advice, she really goes holistic on it cause the idea was to teach real professional chef techniques to housewives and most of the core principles are the same and she goes over how to sharpen and treat knives, different cookware and how to use it best and all the side stuff you need to know but you don’t get taught unless it’s your job along with the recipe stuff. Even if you don’t wanna cook the dish she’s doing for the episode there’s really really good general technique to be learned in them.

Dropping a comment here. Leftists are objectively better at cooking than any rightoid, it’s not even close.

Double the amount of garlic in the recipe.

Use soy sauce, fish/oyster sauce, MSG, and a sweet chili sauce. You could make gravel delicious with these.

A bay leaf in some plain white rice makes all the difference for a lot of Occidental dishes.