Do you recognize these things that make your cooking inconsistent?

Today’s cooking tip: Guessing does not help to make cooking easy. In fact, guessing doesn’t help your cooking at all and will make your cooking inconsistent. Think about it… people don’t guess at things they’re sure and confident in:

• You don’t guess whether your left foot will follow your right in walking
• You don’t guess how to drive your car today, you’ve practiced
• You don’t guess how successful you’ll be, you plan it and work the pla

If you’re like most people that are frustrated with their cooking, it’s because of the guessing. Guessing helps to put mystery into cooking, causing fear and disappointment.

It may help to take a deeper look at this cooking dilemma. In fact, there are two things that people guess at, things they can’t see and things they can see.

“I’ll believe it when I see it” versus “I’ll see it when I believe it”

If you change the way you think about cooking, you may be able to stop the guessing and make cooking easy. Let me help you by taking a look at some of the things that you may be guessing while you are cooking.

1. “Medium Heat” – How do you test to see if the heat is “medium heat”? Do you hover your hand over the burner?
2. When meat is done – Do you poke or gash your meat to take a look inside?
3. How much of an ingredient to use – Do you tell yourself, “this LOOKS like enough”? Do you often wonder if you should be adding one more pinch?
4. What spice and how many spices to use – You can’t SEE flavor, how do you know? (Cooking Tip: Eventually, with some practice, you will be able to attach your palate to the amount that you eye can see to help you to stop guessing.)
5. How much to cook for portions – Are you guessing on how much dry rice to cook? What about dry pasta? Do you know how much chicken you should be cooking or are you guessing?
6. What your food tastes like - Most people, especially when following a recipe, won’t taste the food that they’ve cooked until it’s on a plate already served at the table. You should be tasting as you cook to help you to take the guessing out of cooking and make it easy.

If you guess at things you can’t see, you can’t quantify your cooking. Cooking is all about being able to quantify. In the next blog post, I’m going to give you some visual tips or clues to help you to stop guessing and reduce stress and frustration while you cook.