My Kitchen Rules That Live By

Seven years ago cooking was a mere dream; I had a small collection of books, magazines and recipe cards. That collection has grown extensively, I have decent cookware, none of which was expensive, I love a bargain who doesn’t right? I spend literally hours reading; writing and practicing my cooking in the kitchen, well where else would I be? I’ll talk to anyone that will listen. It’s a huge part of my life one which I take great pride in and work at in some way every day,  I have learnt so much simply by meticulously reading each and every one of my books gleaning as much information as I can, any hints, tips and tricks, I find the more I read the more I learn. Quite often I will take something from one book and then a different technique from another book, somehow combining a little of both to come up with a method that suits me best. It all takes time and practice I guess a little patience too because trial and error can at times be a little frustrating, particularly the error. To be honest though the only mistakes I make are usually because I am being lazy, rather than not being able to cook something, failure to read a recipe properly, rushing and not paying proper attention to each step. Rule No/1 Always read a recipe through, before you begin. Then as you are cooking read every step properly all the way through again before proceeding – you can’t go wrong then. Well you can but it is less likely, I should probably practice what I preach, perhaps. I guess in some ways I have become a little complacent, cook sure of myself as of late – a few baking successes and I have become a kitchen tyrant, arbitrarily ignoring the rules. I suppose if you think about it there are six basic kitchen rules. Well my rules anyway.

1. Read the recipe start to finish
2. Read each step all the way through before you continue with the recipe.
3. Keep the kitchen clean and tidy as you go.
4. Either do the washing up as you go or use your dishwasher, or both.
5. Keep kitchen utensils, baking trays, pans etc. in some kind of order making things easily accessible, your kitchen should flow.
6. Keep your hands clean and your hair tied back.
    
   I reckon you could spend hours coming up with rules but if you manage to stick with these and, or any of your own you’ll be well on your way to some pretty cool kitchen antics of your own. It’s all pretty basic stuff and by no means time consuming. There’s no point in loads of kitchen tools and gadgets either, to begin with. You’ll slowly become aware of any extra kitchen bits you’ll need but it’s best to start off with the essentials and work up from there, there’s no point buying a food mixer unless you are going to make something often enough to warrant buying one, when you can buy a cheap hand held device that will do the job just as well and the same goes for blenders.