Fixing Oversalted Dishes
If you’ve over salted a meal, it’s probably one of the easiest cooking mistakes to reverse. The key is understanding that you have several options depending on what type of dish you’re working with. For soups and liquid-based dishes, dilution works wonderfully. Soup is easy, because with soup you can just add additional liquid to dilute the additional salt. Water or broth (low sodium will work best) will do, and all you need to do is slowly add more liquid while stirring.
Acid is another powerful weapon against excess salt. My first go to is to add an acid. I typically go for lemon or apple cider, but really any vinegar will do depending on what your flavor base is for your meal. Foods rich in acids are good for toning the salty flavor down a notch or two. The beauty of this method is its versatility across both sweet and savory dishes. But, while sugar and dairy have limited uses, acid is versatile: It works with sweet and savory dishes. Add a dash of lemon juice.
For cream-based dishes, dairy products offer another excellent solution. Luckily, there is a remedy fixing over-salted food; excess salt can be tempered with the addition of a fatty ingredients, such as sour cream, heavy cream, butter, or milk. The richness helps balance the saltiness while maintaining the dish’s intended texture and flavor profile.
Rescuing Burnt Food
When food gets burnt, your first instinct might be to throw it away, but professional chefs know better. Transfer the unburned food to a clean pot / container. ASAP. The thing I’ve learned is usually the burnt food stays attached to the bottom of the pot so it’s usually easy to separate off the good remaining food. The key is acting quickly before the burnt flavors penetrate the entire dish.
Just resist the urge to stir and see ‘how bad it is’. You can always add back the bottom layers later if they’re still edible. But the sooner you cut your losses, the more likely you’ll still have something edible at the end. This simple technique can save dishes that seem completely ruined at first glance.
Once you’ve separated the good from the burnt, you can mask any lingering smoky flavors. Taste and season with strong flavours, if needed. But if there’s a bit of a lingering burnt flavour, I like to try and camouflage it. For example with my bolognese sauce I added some more tomato paste and a little smoked paprkia and some butter to ‘smooth’ everything out. Strong spices and rich ingredients work wonders for covering up minor burnt notes.
The Overcrowded Pan Problem
One of the most common mistakes even professional chefs make is overcrowding pans. You may think you’re cutting corners when you’re pressed for time and pack your pan full of meat, but you’re doing more harm than good. You need to space out your food to ensure adequate cooking. Overcrowding your pan means your food will not receive the proper cooking it needs to be ready. The result is usually steamed, soggy food instead of beautifully browned ingredients.
Steam starts rising and food stops browning – it’s a surefire way to end up with pale, soggy bites. Crowded pans trap moisture, leaving no room for crisp edges or seared flavor. The solution is surprisingly simple: cook in smaller batches. The fix? Cook in batches and give those ingredients some breathing room. Though this takes more time initially, the improved texture and flavor make it worthwhile.
What happens is, all the moisture comes out of the vegetables … and it steams rather than browns. So if you keep what’s in a pan minimal, you can get this beautiful browning because it stays hot; the liquid evaporates as soon as it comes out of the chicken and vegetables. This technique transforms ordinary vegetables and proteins into restaurant-quality dishes with proper caramelization.
Not Reading Recipes Thoroughly
One common cooking mistake that many chefs make is failing to read the recipe all the way through before starting to cook. Often, this leads to unexpected surprises and mishaps along the way. By not fully familiarizing yourself with the recipe beforehand, you may miss essential steps, overlook ingredient substitutions, or underestimate the required cooking time. This seemingly minor oversight creates chaos in the kitchen when you realize halfway through cooking that you need an ingredient you don’t have.
When preparing a meal, it’s always best to read the recipes beforehand – thoroughly. Some recipes call for a long list of ingredients and you don’t want to have your meat simmering in the pot while you frantically raid your pantry looking for the right herbs and spices. Professional chefs call this “mise en place,” and it prevents most kitchen disasters before they happen.
The solution is simple but requires discipline. People who don’t read the recipe all the way through often wind up making mistakes that can ruin their dish. Make sure you know exactly what you’re doing before starting any kind of cooking project, and always follow the directions step-by-step. This will ensure that everything comes out as it’s supposed to and nothing goes wrong. Taking five minutes to read through everything saves hours of potential frustration.
Improper Knife Handling
Most people hold a knife by wrapping all their fingers around the handle or with their pointer finger on the top of the knife blade, but these grips aren’t only wrong (big kitchen mistake!), they are very unsafe. According to Robert Ramsey, Chef Instructor at the Institute of Culinary Education, you’re actually supposed to hold your kitchen knife with your thumb on one side of the blade and your pointer finger on the other side with your remaining three fingers wrapped tightly around the top part of the handle.
Beyond safety concerns, proper knife grip dramatically improves your cutting precision. If you’re holding your knife properly, you’ll be able to make straighter cuts. This translates to more even cooking since uniformly cut ingredients cook at the same rate, preventing some pieces from being overcooked while others remain underdone.
If you’ve been cutting with dull equipment, then you’re making a mistake that the professionals sometimes make as well. Constant use in the kitchen can dull knives quickly, and chefs might overlook frequent sharpening during busy times. Sometimes chefs don’t realize their knives are dull until it’s too late. Believe it or not, using a dull knife to cut presents a bigger safety hazard than using a sharp one. Sharp knives require less pressure and give you better control over your cutting.
Not Letting Meat Rest
Allowing meat and poultry to sit for a while after it is removed from the stove, grill or oven not only lets it finish cooking but ensures that the juices stay inside, where they belong. When meat cooks, its protein fibers contract, and if you cut into it right away they won’t have had a chance to relax and reabsorb the juices. This is why you might cut into a steak right off the grill and see it perfectly cooked to a beautiful rare or medium rare, and then a few minutes later it seems to have lost its rosy hue, and all its juices are on the cutting board.
The timing varies based on the size of your protein. Let thick steaks rest 8 to 10 minutes before cutting. Big roasts or whole birds should rest between 20 and 30 minutes before carving. This may seem like a long time, but rest assured the meat will still be warm. This waiting period makes the difference between dry, tough meat and juicy, tender results that rival expensive restaurants.
Cutting too soon after cooking sends all those savory juices running out onto the board. Resting lets the meat relax and hold onto its moisture, making it way more tender. Five to ten minutes makes a big difference, even for chicken breasts or burgers. The patience required for this step pays dividends in both flavor and texture.
Skipping Mise En Place
If you’ve ever made the mistake of starting to cook without having all the important stuff prepped, you’re not alone. George Duran, celebrity chef, cites this as one mistake professional chefs can often make. He says, “In busy kitchens, chefs sometimes assume they can prep as they go but end up miscalculating the time needed.” This, he explains, can lead to other cooking mistakes or result in necessary ingredients being missed.
The French culinary concept of mise en place literally means “everything in its place.” To avoid making this mistake, Duran recommends measuring and chopping the necessary ingredients before you actually start to cook. “I know it’s tempting to just rush through, but being organized makes your cooking process 10 times easier,” he says. Cross-reference the recipe that you are following to double-check you have everything ready – then you’ll be able to actually cook without rushing around to grab an ingredient while something on the stove comes close to burning or boiling over.
However, not every ingredient needs complete preparation before you start. There’s no need to pre-chop every ingredient before you start cooking. To save time, just chop whatever ingredients you will need to begin the recipe – then prep the rest of the ingredients while the first ingredients are already sizzling away. “Just start cooking,” Bittman said. “So, you would normally cook an onion first, right? So you start, you chop your onion, you put it in the pan, then you chop your garlic, you put it in the pan, you chop your carrot, you put it in the pan. And then by the time you’ve got everything in the pan, it’s all cooking.” This balanced approach saves time while maintaining organization.
Poor Temperature Control
Preparing the perfect meal all boils down to cooking your food at the correct temperature for the right amount of time. Whether you slap your meat on the pan too early or leave your pots in the oven for too long, ensuring temperature control is essential to preparing a delicious meal. Follow the guidelines of your recipe and invest in a digital thermometer for precision. Many home cooks rely on visual cues alone, but temperature is often the most reliable indicator of doneness.
Starting food in a cold oven or pan leads to weird textures and uneven cooking. Heat helps create that beautiful crust on meat or a perfect rise in baked goods. Always give your oven or skillet time to get hot before adding anything. This preheating step is crucial for developing proper texture and color in your dishes.
Whether you’re adding spaghetti to a pot of water or slapping some meat onto a grill, you always want to effectively heat your stovetops, ovens and grills before adding your food. When cooking your favorite meat, for instance, you need to wait until your cooking surface is hot before adding it to the pan. The sizzle you hear when food hits a properly heated surface indicates that the Maillard reaction is beginning, creating those complex flavors and appealing colors we associate with well-cooked food.
Underseasoning Throughout Cooking
One the most common mistakes made by beginner cooks is under-seasoning the food. To ensure your food is properly seasoned, add salt and pepper throughout the cooking process, and not just at the very end. Professional chefs understand that seasoning is a process, not a single event. Building layers of flavor creates depth that can’t be achieved by salting only at the end.
You should be tasting at every step of the process. The people who say that you should not taste your food until it’s done are without a doubt wrong and I don’t think you’d find a professional chef in the world who would tell you not to taste. Ramsey recommends tasting after each major ingredient change. This constant evaluation allows you to adjust seasoning gradually and prevents over-salting disasters.
Waiting until the end to season often means you’ve missed a hundred chances to make it better. Flavors change as things cook, and little tweaks along the way make the dish shine. Keep a tasting spoon handy and trust your tongue. Each ingredient added to a dish changes its flavor profile, requiring ongoing adjustments to maintain balance.
Constant Stirring and Flipping
Of course, it’s super tempting to flip and move your food around and check if it’s done every few seconds. But patience is key here, and letting the magic happen without disturbing the ingredients in the pan will allow for a nice golden color to develop, which also means a better texture and flavor. This patience is particularly important when searing proteins or vegetables where caramelization is desired.
If you want to brown meat, let it sit in the pan until it “releases” – which it will do when a crust forms. “When meat is ready to be turned, it tells you,” Bittman said on TODAY, demonstrating his technique on a perfectly seared steak. “Many people would be like, OK, I’m going to turn this thing now.” However, he said, “if we wait a minute or two, it’ll be brown, it’ll release because the brown surface is slick, and then you turn it.”
Constant flipping doesn’t help anything cook faster – it just stops it from forming a golden crust. Letting meat sit still in a hot pan gives it that deep, seared flavor. The same principle applies to vegetables and other proteins. Trust the process and resist the urge to constantly check on your food. The beautiful golden-brown crust that develops naturally creates complex flavors that can’t be rushed.
Using Wrong Oils for High Heat
It’s worth repeating: You shouldn’t use olive oil for everything. That’s because olive oil has a low smoke point (extra virgin olive oil ranges from 325°F to 375°F, while refined olive oil can reach 465°F), which means it’ll start smoking if you try to use it at high heat – to deep-fry or sear meat, for example. Learn more about smoke points and the right oils to use depending on what you’re cooking here. Understanding smoke points prevents bitter flavors and potential health concerns from overheated oils.
Different oils serve different purposes in cooking. Extra virgin olive oil excels in low-heat applications and finishing dishes, while neutral oils like canola or grapeseed work better for high-heat cooking. Choosing the wrong oil can transform a perfectly executed technique into a disappointing result with off-flavors and unpleasant aromas.
The fix is simple: match your oil to your cooking method. For searing, frying, or any high-heat application, choose oils with higher smoke points. Save your expensive extra virgin olive oil for drizzling over finished dishes, making vinaigrettes, or low-temperature cooking where its flavor can truly shine without being damaged by excessive heat.
