Whether you are new to cooking or have decades of experience in the kitchen, you’ll probably encounter one or more of the following notions at some point. They might crop up in an offhand remark by someone who has been cooking for so long that it is second nature to them, or in a sarcastic comment by someone who doesn’t share your culinary interest, or even from a voice inside your own head. Whatever the circumstances, these negative ideas can easily morph into discouragement—if we let them. Let’s take a closer look at some of these stifling myths so that you will be prepared to squash them when they arise.
Myth #1:
If you are using X (a microwave, canned or frozen vegetables, a boxed cake mix, etc.), you are not really cooking.
Reality: The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines the verb cook as to prepare food for eating, especially by means of heat. According to this definition, simply making a grilled cheese sandwich with store-bought sliced white bread and processed cheese is cooking.
Yes, it can be much tastier and health-promoting to use natural, fresh foods, and the use of traditional tools and techniques often produces results superior to new-fangled options. All of that, however, is learned little by little, not all at once. Your success today at creating, say, a simple cream of vegetable soup using bouillon cubes makes it all the more probable that you will feel up to making your own delicious homemade chicken broth sometime in the future. If you start out making a boxed macaroni and cheese dish, you just might eventually move on to invent the perfect made-from-scratch version.
- Do this: Enjoy your little triumphs with gusto and pay no attention to any disparaging voices.
Myth #2:
If you have to follow a recipe, you don’t really know how to cook.
Reality: Everyone who cooks uses recipes, whether these be formal ones that are written down or informal ones from memory. A recipe is simply a list of ingredients for a dish and directions on what to do with those ingredients. It used to be that most people learned how to cook from their mothers and grandmothers; they rarely needed to consult a written recipe because they had acquired great skills early on. Nowadays, however, it is not at all unusual for the flame for acquiring kitchen skills to remain unlit until adulthood, and today’s teachers are often cookbooks, videos, and blogs such as this one.
- Do this: Never be ashamed of using a written recipe! (And see my advice on how to successfully follow a written recipe.)
Myth #3:
As long as it tastes good, it doesn’t matter how the food looks.
Reality: The Chinese have a saying: You eat first with your eyes, then your nose, then your mouth. Although the most basic purpose of consuming food is to refuel our bodies, we also expect eating to be a pleasant experience. It’s always wise to pay attention to the visual aspect of the food we are preparing—even when we eat alone. (Never mind if we are into posting pics of the food on social media!) There is no need for the elaborate food styling used in glossy magazine spreads, but it doesn’t take too much effort to distribute the food on the plate in an attractive manner or sprinkle some herbs over a dish.
- Do this: Strive to make your food attractive to more than just your sense of taste.
Myth #4:
Leftovers should be avoided.
Reality: Most any food left over from a meal can be used to great advantage. Some dishes tend to be even tastier the next day than they are when first prepared. Sometimes it even makes sense to deliberately cook more than you need in order to produce “planned leftovers”—that is, food that you can incorporate into a different dish on another day. Making pollo con mole? Cook a little extra chicken so that you can make chicken salad the next day; you´ll be saving time and cooking fuel. The same leftover mole sauce will be delicious tomorrow poured over a fried egg or cooked rice. Sometimes you are going to have leftovers, no matter how hard you try not to; you might as well get them to work in your favor.
- Do this: Keep an open mind about leftovers and you may become a pro at producing something wonderful from elements you might otherwise have discarded.
Myth #5:
There is only one correct way to make a traditional dish.
Reality: Cooking is a creative adventure, and each person adds his or her own touch to every dish they make. It is definitely important to maintain yesterday’s culinary traditions alive so that future generations can enjoy them; however, we must not become simply repeaters of what has gone before. Don’t be afraid to adapt a recipe—even a long-revered one—to your needs, tastes, and current possibilities. After all, which is worse: paring down the list of ingredients in great-grandma’s complicated, time-consuming holiday stew, or allowing the memory of that dish to fade away altogether because the recipe, unwieldy for our times, is considered untouchable and unchangeable?
- Do this: Respect tradition by adjusting recipes to today’s realities.
Photo credit (main photo and dividers): “Cooking Kitchen” by Kurt Bauschardt, is licensed under cc by 2.0, cropped, colorized, distortion effects added
All text copyright by Robin Grose.