8 Ways to Make Food Taste More Delicious

According to statistics, 28% of adults don’t know how to cook. That’s over a quarter of Americans. Of the 72% who know how to cook, a significant percentage don't know how to cook well, which is more than disappointing. Can’t seem to cook foods that end up tasting good?

If yes, no worries because I’m here to give you a few easy tips that will definitely help improve your cooking. Let’s get started with the tips now.

1. Use Spices, Herb, Flavors, and Seasonings

The most basic way to make your food taste better is to use spices, herbs and seasonings. These ingredients have been used in cooking for centuries to achieve the above purpose. It’s worth noting, however, that some of them (such as salt, pepper, and sweeteners) have nutritional values, unlike the others. As such, they are preferred to their non-nutritious counterparts in food making, thanks to the benefits that are attributed to their nutritional properties. Growing your own fruit and veg can also help with this. We recommend using these growing guides to get your vegetable patch journey started.

2. Overnight Foods

There’s no denying the fact that overnight foods tend to be more tender, juicier and tastier. That’s because the additives e.g spices, herbs, flavors, and seasoning used in them have had enough time to soak in, resulting in a more pleasant-tasting dish. Also, overnight foods have an improved taste and flavor due to complex chemical reactions that continue to take place after food is cooked. Notably, these reactions result in more and/or new flavor molecules in the additives, making the food taste much better.

3. Add Milk to Your Vegetable Stews

You might just not know it but using milk can help make some of the foods you cook (e.g vegetable stews) taste better. Yep, you read that right, milk adds a pleasant creamy flavor to your dishes. You can even cook a whole load of veggies that will sustain you for several days, at once. Just make sure to add some milk every time you warm the veggies to eat them. 

4. Use a Meal Kit Delivery Service

Meal kit providers can be a great way to make your favorite dishes taste just as they should. Not only do these companies provide the necessary ingredients for homeowners to make their delicacies, but they also accompany those ingredients with the appropriate recipes for cooking them.

Some brands such as Sunbasket, Home Chef and Hello Fresh even go the extra mile to give you valuable tips on how to make your food taste the best it can. For example, for their Catalan chicken with green romesco and Spanish green beans recipe, Sunbasket gives you an invaluable tip on how to cook the green beans to get a better flavor.

That among other reasons has made me love the meal kit provider dearly.  You can find other reasons why I use the service by reading this truthful and non-misleading review of the company. By the way, something else that makes Sunbasket stand out from the rest is the fact that it mostly offers organic ingredients. That ensures good health for their subscribers who avoid consuming toxic and harmful chemicals that are otherwise often used in producing non-organic foods!

5. Let Your Dishes Cook Through Fully

Allowing enough time to ensure food cooks through is another sure-fire way to make your dishes taste the best way possible. By the way, if you compare a plate of vegetables that was given a sufficient duration to cook through with one that wasn’t, you’ll notice a big difference in how each plate tastes. Actually, you’ll find that the former tastes far better than the latter simply because all the ingredients had enough time to mix as they should.

With that in mind, be sure to let your foods cook through for the entire duration stipulated in their respective recipes. For instance, if a recipe says “let the stew simmer for 10-15’’, don’t be too impatient to remove the pot from the fire before that duration has elapsed, even if you think that the stew is ready. After all, there’s a reason why recipes specify cooking times. And that reason is none other than to ensure that you get the best taste and flavor that the dish you are cooking can offer.

6. Avoid Cooking Your Food on High Heat

High heat will make your foods boil and dry up faster than expected. Consequently, your dishes will start burning even before the ingredients’ molecules mix properly with the stews and enter into the foods. The foods will actually lose their ultimate flavors or tastes as a result of that. By the way, what I said is especially true when it comes to boiling rice or spaghetti.

7. Always Cover Your Foods When Cooking If Possible

Covering food when cooking certainly can have a substantial positive impact on the taste of the food. By preventing the vapor that comes out of your cooking food from escaping, a positive effect occurs that results in a deeper flavor. How does that work? Well, first, putting a lid on dishes slightly increases the temperature within the pot. That causes the ingredient molecules to blend better. Secondly, it keeps the vapor from evaporating, which could otherwise take away some of the flavor found in the food. 

8. Let Your Cooked Food Sit Off the Heat a Little Bit While Covered Before Serving

This is especially true when it comes to cooking certain foods like rice. When you let cooked rice sit off the heat while covered and undisturbed for a few minutes before serving it, you are going to have a more delicious dish that’s characterized by a deeper flavor and more uniform texture. That’s simply because covering food allows moisture to redistribute, resulting in all the above effects.

Final Thoughts

Subjecting yourself to bad-tasting foods because you don’t know how to cook well can kill your appetite, resulting in a myriad of health issues. For example, it can lead to malnutrition, vitamin deficiencies and electrolyte deficiencies that can pave the way for life-threatening complications. These include having a fast heart rate, irregular heartbeat, seizures or convulsions, suppressed immune system, etc. To avert these life-threatening conditions, you need to eat properly, which takes having an improved appetite. Speaking of an improved appetite, cooking foods that taste better will definitely boost your appetite. To cook foods that taste more delicious, you can start by using the tips above.

Image Courtesy myfoodstory.com