Some habits can be tough to break. When it comes to cooking, you may have some bad habits that you’re not even aware of. Some may be keeping your meal just short of reaching perfection while others may actually behazardous to your health. Below are 10 common badcooking habitsthat you should break:
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1. You Don’t Properly Preheat Your Cooking Surface
When you’re hungry, “Preheat the oven or grill” may seem like a step someone added just to annoy you, but it’s necessary.Bakingorroastingin an oven that hasn’t been properly preheated will throw off the cooking time or may cause your food to cook unevenly or even burn. Dittowith the grill. Adding food to an improperly heated grill grate causes sticking and eventually burning.
2. You Dip and Sweep the Flour
How to do it right: The correct way to measure flour is scooping it lightly into the measuring cup with a spoon and leveling it off at the top.
3. You Overfill Your Pan & Stir the Food Too Much
Sometimes cooking requires a little patience. It may be faster to fill your pan to the brim with ingredients, but doing that can actually slow cooking and give you a big pile of mush at the end. If you want to sauté, filling your pan too full will cause your food to steam and not give you the crispy results you are looking for. The same goes for cooking meat. Shoving too much meat in the pan lowers the temperature of the pan too quickly, which can cause sticking and a whole host of other problems. Your best bet is to cook in batches. The extra time you put into it will make your meal much better.
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4. You Don’t Let Your Meat Rest
You’re hungry and you want todig into that steakyou just pulled off the grill. Wait! Let yourmeat rest before you cutinto it. By resting, the juices redistribute through the meat and you’ll get juicier results. Cut it too soon, and all the juice runs out on your cutting board and doesn’t end up in your meat. Rest smaller cuts of meat for shorter times (say 5 to 10 minutes or so) and rest larger roasts for longer (up to 20 minutes for a whole turkey, for example).
5. You Rinse Meat Before Cooking
Rinsing meat off in your sink may get rid of the slime factor, but it contaminates your sink with bacteria that could potentially cause foodborne illness. Pat your meat with a paper towel instead to remove any unwanted residue.
6. You Use Nonstick Pans on High Heat with Metal Utensils
Turn down the heat when usingnonstick pans. High temperatures can cause the nonstick lining to release PFCs (perfluorocarbons) in the form of fumes. PFCs are linked to liver damage and developmental problems. Check with your pan manufacturer to see what temperatures they recommend.
Another thing to keep in mind when using nonstick is to steer clear of metal utensils. You can inadvertently scratch the surface of the pan, which could lead you to ingest the PFCs in the nonstick lining. Use wooden or heat-safe rubberutensilswhen using nonstick pans.
7. You Cook or Store Acidic Food in Reactive Pans
Aluminum is often used in cookware because it’s a great conductor of heat, but isn’t so good in your food. How would it get there? Cooking or storing something acidic in reactive pans, such as aluminum and cast-iron, can eat away at the metal and impart an off color and/or off flavor in your food. Use a nonreactive pan (stainless-steel,enamel-coatedor glass) when cooking with acidic foods like lemon juice or tomatoes to prevent the food from reacting with the pan.
8. You Blend Hot Liquids (without Removing the Stopper)
9. You Put Pyrex Dishes Under the Broiler
Pyrex pans are great formaking casseroles, but use a metal pan if your recipe requires broiling—even for a short amount of time. Pyrex pans are not designed to withstand the heat from a broiler. If they get too hot, they shatter, and you’ll have to start the recipe from scratch and have a big mess to clean up in your oven.
10. You Overmix Batter
When you’re making batter for baking (or anything with large amounts of flour) you want everything to be well combined. And to combine, you mix. But too much mixing isn’t good. The mechanical action of the mixing causesglutento form in the flour, making baked goods tough. So gently mix until the batter is uniform, then put down your mixer.
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