Cooking Tips That’ll Change Every Home Cook’s Life

Whether you’re a hesitant beginner or a consummate professional, everyone who sets foot in a kitchen needs a refresher on the basics sometimes. Here, in no particular order, Delish editors walk you through the cooking tips that changed their lives—and the ones they know will change yours, too.

Buy an instant-read digital meat thermometer

The quickest way to ruin a perfectly marbled $25 steak? Cutting into it to figure out if it’s medium rare. Yes, the Thermapen is $95, but four steaks later, you’ve broken even.

Write in your cookbooks

Soup could have used more tomato? Chicken needed ten more minutes in the oven? Make a note of it and you’ll never make that mistake again. If visual notes are more your style, you can create a collage of step-by-step pictures for any recipe you like using a free photo grid maker.”

Toss most of your spices—especially that ground cumin

Ground spices die quickly. So give them a whiff—if they don’t smell like anything, they won’t taste like anything. And if they don’t taste like anything, you’re cooking with a flavorless, brown powder.

Save the schmaltz

Chicken fat is amazing stuff, whether you’re frying onions in it, sautéing greens in it or spreading it on toast. So after eating your roast chicken dinner, drain the now-cooled liquid fat into a plastic container and store it in your freezer. (Pro tip: This also holds true for bacon fat.)

Toast your spices…

A quick stint in a dry skillet over medium heat wakes dry spices up and releases their oils, which means your paprika will taste a lot more paprika-y. Use whole spices, watch the pan like a hawk, and stir constantly until the spices are fragrant, then transfer to a plate to cool before using.

Always keep lemons in the fridge

They’ll keep longer that way, so you’ll always be able to add fresh lemon juice to everything from dressings to cocktails. Plus, you can use the squeezed rinds to clean and deodorize your wooden cutting boards.A lot more—you’ll use the extras in omelets and sandwiches; on chicken, steak and pork; in pastas and stews.