10 Cooking Mistakes That Ruin Your Food


10-cooking-mistakes-that-ruin-your-food

Make sure to avoid these cooking mistakes to ensure your dish is as close to perfection as possible.

Adding too much salt

Adding too much salt to your dish doesn’t only make you want to chug a glass of water, it’s also really unhealthy. Add a little sprinkle of salt as you cook your food and taste it to know when you’ve added the right amount. Watch out for these cooking mistakes that can make your food toxic.

Adding-too-much-salt

Not sifting the flour

If you don’t sift your flour when cooking it can lead to lumps. People often run into this problem when making gravies and sauces. If your sauce has a lot of lumps, throw it in a blender to smooth it out.

Overcooking pasta

Nothing ruins a dish like mushy pasta. If you let the water boil for a little too long run your pasta under cold water for a few minutes to stop the cooking process and contract the starch. When you add tomato sauce it will make the pasta warm again. If your mushy pasta is beyond repair, add it to a batch of minestrone or chicken noodle soup.

Overcooking-pasta

Adding too much water to rice

Adding too much water to your rice when cooking can make it turn out soggy. But don’t worry; your meal isn’t completely ruined. Add some cooked shrimp or meat to it, for little balls, and fry them or wrap them in wontons and steam them.

Forgetting to stir

If you forget to stir your stew—or whatever dish you’re cooking on the stove—the bottom of the pan can burn and become completely black. You can save your stew by transferring the part that isn’t burnt to a new pan. Make sure to do this as soon as you notice some has burned, though, because it could ruin the taste of the whole dish.

Forgetting-to-stir

Ignoring the commas

If you don’t read a recipe closely it could ruin your dish. For example, if a recipe says “1 cup walnuts, chopped” this means measuring one cup of whole walnuts and then chopping them. “One cup of chopped walnuts” means that you would chop the walnuts before measuring.

Using a small pot to cook pasta

If you add a large handful of pasta to a small boiling pot of water it can cause the water’s temperature to drop fast, and it will take longer to start boiling again. As the noodles sit in the lukewarm water they will start to get mushy and clump together.

Using-a-small-pot-to-cook-pasta

Adding ingredients in the wrong order

Recipes have you add ingredients in a specific order for flavor development. If you add them out of order it could ruin your dish or taste different than the original recipe.

Using cold ingredients

It’s very important to use room temperature ingredients when baking (unless the recipe calls for otherwise). Warmer ingredients are not only easier to mix together, but it will also make the end result fluffier.

Checking on your food while it’s in the oven

It’s very tempting to open the oven to check on your food and get a whiff of what’s to come, but it could cause your food to be undercooked. Every time you open the oven door it releases enough heat to change the temperature. If you want to be able to see your food, turn on the light and look through the oven window.

Checking-on-your-food-while-it-in-the-oven

Source: Reader’s Digest


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