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Whether you’re a beginner or a pro, one never stops learning, especially in the kitchen. Every day is a new adventure, a new challenge and every day you learn something that makes life simpler. So, this Teacher’s day, we’ve got 7 cooking tips from the master chef’s kitchen that every new cook or for that matter even an experienced one must follow to have a safe and glitch free cooking experience.

Read the recipes beforehand thoroughly

When you’re browsing the net and come across a really simple and interesting dish that you would love to make. Before jumping straight into the kitchen and firing those burners, read the recipe carefully twice or thrice – look for the necessary ingredients and keep them on your kitchen table. It’s better to be prepared than run around the kitchen looking for things while your food is burning relentlessly on the gas.

Prep before you begin to cook

Once you’ve got your ingredients well, prep them before you start the actual cooking process. Keep all the veggies chopped and masalas blended before-hand. You think you can chop veggies simultaneously while you cook, and you surely can. However if these are still your initial days in the kitchen – prep will go a long way in keeping the entire cooking process glitch free and your nerves calm.

Always pick the freshest produce available

I can’t stress enough on how important this is. The taste of your final dish depends largely on the quality of ingredients you use. Low-quality or stale produce won’t ever be able to create the magic fresh ingredients can. A dish can taste amazing even with the simplest ingredients as long as they’re fresh and will also ensure that you get the best nutrients from your food.

Keep pan handles to the side

This might seem like a no-brainer; however, it is always recommended that the pan handle must be pushed to the sides of the pan to minimize errors and potential accidents. Since you’re going to be moving around in the kitchen, you don’t want your body to accidentally hit the handle; resulting in the pan or the vessel to fall off the gas stove and scar you with piping hot food. Better to be safe than sorry.

Don’t put food in a cold pan

When you plan to cook something, make sure that your pan is well heated before you add the ingredients. Cooking in a cold pan and waiting for it to heat up, especially when searing things like meat, will make the ingredient lose all of its moisture and leave you with a dry and chewy final dish. Just like how you keep track of temperature in an oven, you must do the same on a gas burner too.

Treat your spices well

Be generous and thoughtful with spices, they not only bring flavor but also texture to the curry, but you need to find a balance between the heat and flavour.  Allow the whole spices to crackle and pop before adding other ingredients - this releases the flavours into the cooking medium. Fry the ground masala on a reduced flame, so that it retains its color and taste. Try to use ghee instead of vegetable oil.

Never give up!

You tried something for the first time and it tastes awful? Congratulations! You’re now one step closer to being a great cook. You just have to learn from the mistakes you made, keep your spirits up and cook on! Failure doesn’t mean you hit stop, it just means you’re not done yet.