
When cooking, it’s always a good idea to know as much as you can about the ingredients that you’re using. In fact, this is not just for cooking, even if you’re going to eat out at your nearest Italian restaurant, they should be able to extract most of the ingredients in your dishes.
Here are 5 tips to extract most of the ingredients when cooking:
1) Crush or grind spices before using
This is key if you want intense flavors. It may seem trivial, but it will definitely change the taste. It just makes it more intense; it doesn’t necessarily make it any different, it adds to it. You can experiment on your own too – try crushing some black pepper finely and then grinding it with a mortar and pestle or grinder, see what you notice in terms of intensity or flavor difference. You’ll probably find that it’s significantly more intense.
2) Heat up ingredients before adding them to a dish
As it’s obvious, it releases its flavors more effectively. This makes it easier for them to mix with other ingredients and it makes it taste better.
3) Store ingredients properly
This is so it remains fresh for as long as possible and so you can get the most out of it when it’s time to use it. It will also help protect it from going bad while exposed in your kitchen!
4) Know when it’s time to add salt
Don’t add it too early, it may have an adverse effect on the dish. The best way to know when it is ok to add it is if you taste it yourself and see what you think about it. If it tastes good, it means it needs no additional salt. But if you find that there are some flavors that could be more pronounced but are being suppressed by another flavor then that probably means it’s time for a little bit of extra salt!
5) Keep it simple!
The simpler it is, the easier it will be to extract all its flavors – experiment with different combinations of spices or seasonings, check what works best for you. This doesn’t mean that you should try complicating it as much as possible, but keep it simple enough so you can make something out of it the next day. Avoid overcomplicating things; it may end up in failure or wastage if your experiment fails.