A preview of the picks below. Full recommendations and notes throughout the article.
I’m a terrible cook. The rice will either be too crunchy or too mushy. The eggs come out of the pan gray. My chicken always ends up dry. I follow the directions and measurements on the recipes faithfully, but somehow it never turns out the way it’s supposed to.
Then my husband bought me a (very inexpensive) meat thermometer for our anniversary, and all of a sudden I realized that the chicken had been ready to pull off the heat ten minutes earlier, every single time, for as long as I can remember. Can you imagine? All those years of dried out chicken breast because I didn’t own a $20 thermometer?.
It’s been a long journey to the kitchen. A slow, slightly humbling journey of replacing bad cookware with good cookware and learning that many of my cooking failures were actually cookware failures. A dull knife can ruin tomatoes, a pan that doesn’t heat evenly can ruin risotto, a flimsy spatula can ruin a burger, and measuring cups with illegible numbers (thanks, dishwasher.) can ruin recipes. As I’ve slowly replaced my kitchen tools one bad piece at a time, my cooking has gotten better not because I’m a better cook but because my tools no longer work against me. And so here they are, twenty-seven of the biggest mistakes I’ve made with my kitchen tools and twenty-seven ways to fix them so your cooking can get better, too. And hopefully so that we can all start enjoying being in our kitchens again.
The Heat & Temperature Mistakes
Cooking chicken without a thermometer.
The ultimate test came with chicken breasts. I’d slice into one and peer in, trying to figure out if it was cooked all the way through. I’d add five more minutes, just in case, and end up with rubbery, spongey chicken. Or I’d pull them out a little early and get nervous when I opened up the container the next day and saw they hadn’t completely cooked. One way or the other, chicken breast never went well for me.
Invest in a good instant read meat thermometer and use it often. Once your chicken reaches 165 degrees in the thickest part of the breast you know it’s done. No more drying out that chicken breast and no more wondering if the chicken is done when you’re sitting around the table anxiously awaiting someone’s first bite.
It reads the temperature in about three seconds, the backlight means you can use it at the grill at night, and it is waterproof, so the rare time you drop it into a pot of broth, you have not just ruined a thermometer. Mine has paid for itself in saved chicken alone, probably five times over.
View Pricing on AmazonSearing in a thin, lightweight pan.
I’ve been trying to get a sear going on my steak and have been getting steamed, gray steak instead of brown steak. Finally, I figured out my problem. My pan was too light (lighter than a paper plate, in fact). I thought I had my burner cranked high enough, but when I put the steak in it, the heat of the pan plummeted and I was steaming, not searing. Moral of the story: if you don’t have a heavy pan, get one.
If you don’t already own a cast iron skillet, you should consider picking one up. The reason I love them is because after getting them hot for five minutes, the sear you can get on a steak is incredible because the pan temperature doesn’t change all that much when you add the steak in. It can take cooking from cafeteria to steak house.
Pre-seasoned out of the box, lasts essentially forever, and works on the stove, in the oven, on a grill, or over a campfire. The 10.25-inch size is the right size for almost everything: two steaks, four pork chops, a batch of cornbread. Mine cost about twenty dollars and it has outlived three nonstick pans.
View Pricing on AmazonEggs that stick to the pan every single time.
My nonstick pan was well and truly past its sell-by date (three years past to be exact). Whenever I tried to cook eggs the coating in my pan would claim them. Half of my eggs would stick and the other half would tear into dozens of ribbons when I tried to flip them. I’d scrape together what was left and sit at my kitchen counter eating what was left feeling rather defeated. I’d always thought that eggs were a tricky thing to cook.
I’ve always thought of eggs as a challenge. It was never quite as difficult as I imagined, however. If you use a nonstick pan (that’s actually nonstick.) on medium-low heat and use a small amount of butter, eggs glide around a pan like skaters on ice. I was stunned that a breakfast I’d struggled with for years could be accomplished in three minutes with the right pan.
This is the same pan a lot of professional kitchens use, which I find quietly reassuring. The aluminum body heats evenly, the nonstick coating actually performs like new for years if you do not put it in the dishwasher, and the riveted handle means it never feels wobbly. My eggs slide. That is the whole review.
View Pricing on AmazonRice that comes out crunchy on the bottom.
For about 15 years I made rice on the stove. Success (that is, not-burnt rice that was actually cooked through, as opposed to one of the other two possibilities) could be counted on perhaps one time out of three. Instructions printed on the box proved little help. Nor did a timer. In the end I resorted to boil-in-bag rice.
Rice had been nemesis until recently when I acquired a rice cooker. Put the rice in, put the water in, hit the button, walk away and BAM. Perfect rice EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. I don’t even remember what bad rice tastes like anymore. My Sunday Dinners are forever changed. (Looking for a great use for all that perfectly cooked rice? Check out these easy instant pot chicken fajitas.)
It cooks white rice, brown rice, sushi rice, and oatmeal, and it has a slow-cooker function and a steamer tray for vegetables, which I use more than I expected to. The 20-cup capacity sounds like a lot until you start meal-prepping, at which point it is exactly enough. Hands-off rice every time.
View Pricing on AmazonNo air fryer, so frozen foods always come out soggy.
Frozen nuggets that emerge from the oven soft and sad, resembling nothing so much as wet paper towels. Limp french fries. Floppy reheated pizza. These are the kinds of foods that have given frozen cuisine a bad name, and are likely the reason most people who don’t own air fryers picture frozen food as inherently sad and soggy.
Frozen fries turn into french fries, leftover pizza turns into pizza, and chicken thighs get crispy skin, all in eight minutes. An air fryer has saved me from turning on my oven and waiting forty-five minutes to heat something up so many times that it has more than paid for the counter space it takes up.
The 6-quart basket is big enough for a whole chicken or dinner for four, the ceramic coating is PFAS-free for the people who care about that (which is most of us), and it has nine cooking modes that I have actually used: air fry, roast, bake, broil, dehydrate, and a handful of others. It is fast, quiet, and easy to clean.
View Pricing on AmazonNo Dutch oven, so braising never quite worked.
When it came to cooking beef stew at home, I tried every pot I owned (or thought I owned). A thin saucepan. A regular stockpot. One time, I even tried cooking it in a glass casserole dish on the stove (not recommended). The meat never came out tender like it does at restaurants, and the sauce never got that deep flavor that only comes from cooking a dish for hours. I always followed the recipe, but still ended up with a mediocre, disappointing bowl of beef stew at the end of the night.
Braising was my least favorite kind of recipe to make until I started using a Dutch oven. Braised dishes rely on long, slow, low-temperature cooking to tenderize tougher cuts of meat and meld together flavors. In a Dutch oven, the thickness of the pot helps maintain a consistent temperature, so your pot can braise away for hours and hours without burning your sauce. The heavy lid also seals in all the moisture, so your braise stays succulent and the meat practically falls apart. And when the braise is done, you’ll have a beautiful glossy sauce. I made my first beef stew in a Dutch oven and I haven’t been the same since.
It does everything a Le Creuset does for about a third of the price. Enameled cast iron means no seasoning to maintain, the colored exterior is pretty enough to bring straight to the table, and it goes from stovetop to oven without you thinking about it. I bake bread in it now, which I had previously assumed was a thing other people did.
View Pricing on AmazonThe Knife & Cutting Mistakes
A dull chef’s knife that crushes more than it cuts.
The last time I properly sharpened my chef’s knife, bought with great ceremony some ten years ago, must’ve been a while ago. Like, a while ago. Garlic is more mashed than minced these days. Onions get hacked and shredded rather than chopped. Tomatoes are almost beyond the pale (in more ways than one). And now that I’m cooking a lot more than I have in the last several years, the realization that my knife is shit is starting to chafe at me.
I never knew what it was like to chop onions until I got my new knife. Now onions are as easy to chop as butter and don’t sap away your energy like they used to. With a good knife, I can get dinner prepped in 8 minutes instead of twenty.
This is the knife that cooking schools recommend to students who do not want to spend three hundred dollars on a Wüsthof. It holds an edge beautifully, the Granton edge means food slides off instead of sticking, and the Fibrox handle stays grippy when your hands are wet. Sharp out of the box. The single best forty dollars I have ever spent in this kitchen.
View Pricing on AmazonNo honing steel, so the good knife went dull within months.
The first time my knife wasn’t cutting well, it wasn’t my fault, the knife wasn’t sharp enough. Lesson learned #2: buy a honing tool and hone the knife regularly. The second time my knife wasn’t cutting well it was because I hadn’t been using the honing tool regularly and after several months the knife wasn’t cutting well. Lesson learned #3: knives need to be honed regularly to keep them cutting well.
I also honed my knives before using them. A honing steel does not sharpen the blade, but realigns the microscopic edge, which can get bent over during use. I would run each side of the blade down the steel five times. This took about 10 seconds total and helped keep my knives sharp for a year instead of three months between actual sharpenings.
German-made, properly weighted, and the right length to hone any knife in your kitchen including a long bread knife. The handle is comfortable and the rod has the kind of fine grooves that re-align an edge without taking metal off the blade. Buy one of these once and you will use it for the rest of your life.
View Pricing on AmazonA flimsy plastic cutting board that slides around.
This board held memories, too. Not just the flavors, the garlic on Wednesday always had a hint of Tuesday’s beets, but also the colors. Beet purple, tomato red, herb green, this board sported a watercolor palette of stains. And as my chopping continued, so did the memories. Memories of the board’s flimsy, warped surface (the result of too many trips through the dishwasher, bad idea, on a wooden cutting board); of the precarious one-handed knife-stabbing necessary to keep the board from sliding away as I attempted two-handed chopping (bad idea, on a slippery counter top, with a too-sharp knife, lesson learned, don’t do that).
A good cutting board makes your job faster and easier (and safer.). Look for one with a good grip and a juice groove around the perimeter (so your floor doesn’t have to soak up all the extra juice). Bonus points if it’s reversible (so you can keep using it longer) and has some heft to it (cheaper, flimsier boards will tend to warp over time).
Three sizes so you have one for fruit, one for everyday vegetables, and one big one for raw meat (color-coded so you do not cross-contaminate). The non-slip edges grip the counter, the juice grooves catch everything, and they go in the dishwasher without warping. This is a set, not a single board, which means you finally stop using the same board for chicken and lettuce.
View Pricing on AmazonChopping vegetables by hand when a chopper would do it in three seconds.
Say I come home from work and I’m tired, but I figure I’ll start cooking so I have chili for the week. Except by the time I’ve diced the onion, the three carrots, and the four bell peppers, I’m so tired I don’t feel like cooking anymore. Now we’re ordering takeout. It’s not that chopping vegetables is inherently bad, as I can see how it could be meditative, but there’s a difference between mincing an onion hypnotically and staring down the barrel of dicing an onion, three carrots, and four bell peppers on a whim.
Invest in a good chopper. Those little lever things you push down for 30 seconds instead of chopping for 5 minutes when you’re tired? Buy one. They really do save time and make uniformly sized pieces, which means your food cooks evenly. Give up take-out. Really. You’re going to be cooking again.
It dices, slices, juliennes, and spiralizes with interchangeable blades, and the catch container underneath means the diced onion is not flying across your counter. I use the dicing blade about four times a week and the spiralizer for zucchini noodles every couple of weeks. Cleans up easily and stores in a single small footprint.
View Pricing on AmazonThe Measuring & Mixing Mistakes
Eyeballing measurements in baking.
My flour measurements ranged from heaping cups of tightly-packed flour to lightly spooned cups of flour. I was eyeballing my flour measurements with differences as great as forty percent. This accounted for my lopsided baking results: one loaf would be dense and gummy and the next would be crumbly and dry. I didn’t realize it at the time, but baking is much more science-based and requires accurate measurements. You can’t just wing it.
My kitchen now has a scale. And I understand what following a recipe is. My loaves of bread turn out consistently, my cakes rise every time. 200 grams of flour is always 200 grams of flour, regardless of the measurer. The first time I weighed out all of my ingredients (for cookies), it was also the first time my baked goods resembled their photographed counterparts.
The pull-out display is the secret feature: when you put a big mixing bowl on the scale, the display slides out so you can still read it. Stainless steel surface is easy to wipe down, the tare button means you can zero out the bowl weight in a second, and it switches between grams and ounces. Eleven-pound capacity handles anything you would actually weigh.
View Pricing on AmazonA whisk that does not actually incorporate air.
I used the whisk from our utensil set (a flattened-out balloon animal) to beat eggs but when I looked into the bowl after my tired arm protested too long, I couldn’t tell if anything besides the temperature of the eggs had changed. Cream I tried to whip ended up slightly thicker. I must have been doing it wrong, I thought, as I had searing and chopping and everything else.
You’ll also need a round bowl for mixing. When you’re whipping cream (it takes about two minutes), beating eggs, making vinaigrettes (they’ll emulsify), etc., you’ll use a wide, round whisk. This type of whisk incorporates air into whatever you’re beating. The round bowl will help you out here, instead of getting in your way like a square or rectangular bowl does.
Stainless steel wires that are sturdy enough to push through pancake batter but flexible enough to whip cream, the comfortable rubberized handle that does not slip even when your hands are floury, and the 11-inch length that fits any bowl. This is the only whisk I keep in the drawer now and it does everything the others were supposed to do.
View Pricing on AmazonA spatula that bends when you try to flip a burger.
Make sure to invest in a good spatula, I got a spatula with a pan set as a “freebie” and the first time I used it, it bent under the weight of my burger, allowing the spatula to slide completely underneath my burger. As I raised the spatula to retrieve my burger, the spatula returned to its unbent position and off fell my burger, splat. Ten minutes of perfectly formed, deliciously crusty goodness was gone.
For flipping burgers I like to use a spatula that is somewhat stiff but still flexible, and I find that a silicone spatula works best for this (and won’t scratch your pan, if you’re using a nonstick pan). This allows the whole burger to flip at once, instead of the bottom half being flipped but the top half staying in place. And you’ll get better crust on the burger if you use a spatula like this instead of something too bendy.
The silicone head is heat-safe up to 600°F, the thin leading edge slides under fish without tearing the skin, and the handle has the same comfortable grip every OXO tool has. The flex is just enough to scoop without flopping. Mine has been in nightly rotation for two years and still looks new.
View Pricing on AmazonA drawer of mismatched, melted, and broken utensils.
My utensil drawer was filled with a mishmash of spoons, spatulas, tongs, etc. Many of them wooden spoons that had cracked. Plastic spatulas that had partially melted in the dishwasher. Tongs whose springs had given out long ago. It was like a museum of failures from previous kitchens. It was depressing in a small, quotidian sort of way to dig through all that crap every time I wanted to whip up something to eat just to find something that wasn’t broken.
Matching utensils with silicone tips that are heat and dishwasher safe (and don’t melt/warp/get that garlic smell that’s imprinted forever). It’s something small, but having utensils I like to cook with and that all match and go together made me feel like cooking was just a tad bit nicer. I didn’t expect this to be the case, but I’m happy to be pleasantly surprised.
Fifteen pieces covers everything you actually use: tongs, ladle, slotted spoon, spatulas, whisk, pasta server, even a measuring spoon set. The silicone heads are heat-resistant to 446°F so they will not melt against the side of your pan, and the stainless handles are dishwasher-safe. They look intentional sitting in a crock on the counter, which is a small thing that turns out to matter.
View Pricing on AmazonThe Baking & Roasting Mistakes
A warped, dark, lightweight baking sheet.
My baking sheet was old and warped. It would pop and rock in the oven. One side of my cookies would brown before the other side would even start to spread. The color of my baking sheet was so dark that it would absorb extra heat which meant the bottoms of whatever I baked on it were always slightly burnt. I’ve been blaming my cookies this whole time.
Aluminum reflects, rather than absorbs, heat, so cookies bake more evenly in an aluminum pan than in a darker-colored pan, and veggies will roast and crisp as they’re supposed to. And sheet pan dinners will actually live up to their names, rather than coming out looking like they should’ve been called “unevenly roasted dinner.” Aluminum conducts heat very well, which also promotes even baking. Thick aluminum half-sheet pans won’t warp, so food will heat more evenly (and you won’t have to worry about spilling oven juices all over your range).
USA-made, commercial-grade aluminum, the same kind professional bakeries use, and the rolled edges keep them from warping even after hundreds of trips through a 425° oven. Mine are five years old and still flat. Buy two so you can do a sheet pan dinner and have one ready for the next thing.
View Pricing on AmazonNo oven thermometer, so you do not know your oven runs hot.
I’ll bet you’d get different results if you used a cookie sheet. I just learned that my oven runs 30 degrees hot. Who knew?? And who knew that an oven thermometer was a thing?? And who knew that it would only cost four dollars and only take two minutes to learn that my oven runs 30 degrees hot?? I blame my oven. For YEARS, my cookies were burnt on the outsides and still doughy on the inside. And I set my oven to 350 degrees and everything, but it’s really 380 degrees. It’s the oven’s fault. Not mine.
Buy yourself an oven thermometer (they’re not expensive), pop it in your oven, turn on the oven to preheat and see what kind of temps you’re getting. I adjusted my baking according to my oven’s hotness and my cookies now come out looking like cookies.
Not having a cast iron in the oven for bread or pizza.
I recently discovered that the problem with my under baked pizza crusts and bread bottoms wasn’t my oven after all, it was my baking sheet. I’d always figured that if my pizzas and breads didn’t turn out as well as they did at restaurants or bakeries, it must be because their ovens were superior to mine. The bottoms of my homemade pizzas and loaves of bread never browned as nicely, and seemed to lack a certain crispiness (they were often a bit pale and even slightly moist in comparison). So when I saw a suggestion to bake bread and pizza on a pizza stone instead of a baking sheet, I figured it couldn’t hurt to try it out. And what do you know, my pizzas and breads came out with wonderfully browned and crispy crusts. Turns out a pizza stone really does help heat distribution in the oven. Who knew? Now I’m off to look for a pizza stone of my own.
The crust became the same crackly, crispy, delicious crust you’d expect from a loaf or a pizza baked in a proper wood fired oven. How? It’s because preheating your cast iron gets it close to 500 degrees so when you add your bread or pizza, the formation of the crust is almost immediate. This made bread baking demystified. And just like that, bread baking just became something we did on Saturday afternoons.
Roasting on a flimsy nonstick pan.
But roasting is more complicated than I expected. One day I was trying to roast a chicken in my nonstick pan and I found out that the skin on the bottom didn’t brown the way I wanted. That surprised me, because I had browned meats successfully in my nonstick pan before. But a chicken releases fat and other liquids as it cooks, and those liquids don’t stick to a nonstick pan, so no fond develops. And when I tried roasting vegetables in my nonstick pan, they steamed instead of caramelizing.
Chicken roasted on heavy-gauge aluminum, cast iron (like my Lodge skillet) or stainless steel (like my Nordic Ware sheet pan) browns better than chicken roasted on lightweight pans and gives you that golden chicken skin you see all over Instagram. Veggies also caramelize better on these types of baking sheets and skillets.
Lids that do not seal, on cookware that is supposed to braise.
In retrospect, this dish should have been called baked chicken with rice and vegetables. I thought I was poaching the chicken, but the sad truth is that my old stockpot lid doesn’t seal all that well and allows quite a bit of steam to escape. Add to that the fact that I walked away for about an hour, doing other things, and when I came back half of the liquid had evaporated. Thus my chicken was more baked than poached, leaving it dry and a bit stringy. The moral of the story? Don’t leave your food unattended (or perhaps the moral should read, buy a new stockpot lid).
Pots with lids that aren’t snug fit will ruin your cooking. Soups won’t get soupy enough. Stews won’t get tender enough. When you’re simmering something for a long time like a soup or stew you want to keep the heat and moisture in the pot to ensure even temperature and even cooking. Invest in pots with lids that seal well. Try cooking up a pot of my zuppa toscana recipe in a pot with a lid that doesn’t seal well and then in one that does and see the difference for yourself.
Pan and lid storage that destroys your cookware.
Stacking cookware in cabinets, this may work for some, but in my case the lids would all be together and form a rather precarious tower that would tumble down each time I opened the cabinet door, nonstick pots and pans would get scratched from the bottoms of whatever I placed on top of them, my cast iron would get nicks galore, and I’d have to unstack and re-stack everything each time I wanted to use anything. Not ideal.
Pots clatter less. Lid-filled cabinet doors no longer threaten avalanche. The rack itself has grown over the years, but now each lid and pot has its assigned spot. And opening cabinet doors no longer comes with that little hit of fear you get if you’ve been hoarding pots and pans in cabinets sans a rack for a few years.
It expands to fit your cabinet, the steel wires are coated so they will not scratch the pans, and the dividers slide to accommodate everything from a small saucepan to a 12-inch skillet. I have one in the lower cabinet for pans and one inside an upper cabinet door for lids, and the difference in the kitchen’s overall calm is real.
View Pricing on AmazonThe Storage & Sauce Mistakes
Pouring olive oil straight from the bottle.
Olive oil comes out of that bottle either in a sudden gush or not at all, leaving a sticky ring around the neck of the bottle, drips down the side and a puddle in my pan or on my counter top. I’ve used this particular bottle of olive oil for years and I’m finally getting fed up with trying to control the amount of oil that comes out. Half the time I get too much, half the time I get too little. There is no in between and no control.
Oil sprayers/dispenser bottles allow you to apply a controlled amount of oil (great for misting a salad or spritzing a pan). Bonus, you use less oil than you would without the sprayer/dispenser (typically half the amount is called for in a recipe), which automatically makes your food healthier. No more sticky bottles either.
Glass body so the oil does not pick up plastic flavors, a fine-mist spray that coats evenly without pooling, and a 16-ounce capacity that lasts a couple of weeks before refilling. I use it for olive oil on salads, avocado oil on the air fryer basket, and the misting is so even that I have cut my oil use roughly in half.
View Pricing on AmazonLeftover containers with lids that do not actually seal.
Instead of tossing those leftovers and subsequently ordering (read: overspending on) takeout, I now feel confident knowing they’ll still be just as delicious come dinnertime. And since the lids actually create an airtight seal (unlike the pathetic plastic containers I’ve been using for years), sauces won’t dry out and soups won’t leak out of my lunch bag on my commute to work.
Containers with proper four-sided locking lids change the entire equation. Soup makes the trip. Leftovers stay fresh for four or five days instead of one. The fridge stops smelling like a dozen competing dinners. (When I have leftover chicken from my shredded chicken tacos, these containers are the reason it is still good for lunch on Thursday.)
Crystal-clear so you can see exactly what is inside, four locking tabs on each lid that create a real seal, BPA-free, microwave-safe, freezer-safe, and dishwasher-safe. The set has twelve containers and twelve lids, all the same brand, all stackable. Mine has lasted three years of nightly use and the lids still snap on tight.
View Pricing on AmazonNo good kitchen scale, so portions are inconsistent.
Pasta portions ranged from sad (two strands on a plate) to obscenely gigantic (enough pasta for everyone at the table and to spare). Ground beef portions ranged from “too much” to “too little.” There was no rhyme or reason to portioning out ingredients, because there was no scale to weigh out ingredients. Leftovers were hit or miss because everything depended on my estimates and guesses, and no two meals were ever exactly the same.
Start with small steps. Consistent cooking starts with consistent portions. Weigh ingredients. Even if it’s just a kitchen scale and eyeballing when things look about right, this will help immensely. 80 g pasta per person. Ground beef weighed by the pound. These little changes will make a world of difference when it comes to repeatable results in the kitchen.
A cluttered counter that makes cooking feel like an obstacle course.
My counter was home to a broken toaster waiting to be replaced, an empty fruit bowl, piles of mail, and a coffee maker that hadn’t worked in months but that I kept meaning to repair, so couldn’t bring myself to toss. There was no room to do any kind of food prep, and cooking involved first clearing a runway. Too much effort, and so I ordered pizza.
Decluttering isn’t as expensive of a habit as you may think. Get rid of anything you don’t use on a weekly basis and put away items that don’t get used that often (in a cabinet instead of on the counter). Counters should always be clear. Think of it this way… if your counters are always buried under stuff you’re sending yourself the message: order take out. If you keep them clear you’re saying: I should cook tonight.
Trying to bake bread without the right vessel for steam.
But that crust. It’s been one of my goals to recreate that wonderfully crackly crust outside of the oven. I tried making no-knead bread on a cookie sheet for years, trying to figure out what I was doing wrong since I never got the crust that was promised in the recipes. Pale, yes. Soft like a dinner roll? You bet. It wasn’t the recipe. I just didn’t have the right equipment to make those crusty loaves of bread happen.
The steam from the dough gets trapped under the lid of the enameled Dutch oven and that’s what gives the bread its crackly, blistered crust. When I made my first loaf with this method it looked like I’d taken it out of a bakery. I brought it home for dinner one night and my parents actually thought I’d bought it at a bakery.
Putting a hot pan on a cold stovetop.
Thermal shock is when you take something that’s very hot and suddenly put it in contact with something very cold (or vice versa). The difference in temperatures can be enough to cause problems. For example, if you take a cast iron skillet off of a hot burner and place it on a cold burner or the counter top, the pan can warp from thermal shock. This may also explain why your food sticks more after you’ve done this. Thermal shock can affect cast iron, glass, and even some stainless steel cookware.
Don’t set a hot pan directly on a cool countertop, put a trivet, cooling rack, or even a folded towel underneath, this helps your pans last decades instead of just a few years This is one of those tips that all cookbook authors know, but rarely tell.
Keeping equipment that secretly does not work, out of guilt.
My crock pot lid was taped back together after it cracked. My hand mixer’s beater was bent. My rice cooker’s cord was frayed (I’d check on it one of these days). My blender had given up the ghost two years ago. I kept all these because I’d paid good money for them once upon a time. All of these small annoyades were adding up and making cooking more of a hassle than it needed to be. I was paying for my guilt in inconvenience.
Donate or recycle appliances that are broken. If you love using an appliance but it’s not working properly, replace it. Clean out and declutter the cabinets and drawers in your kitchen. Donate or recycle anything you no longer need and make room for new goodies. When I cleaned out my kitchen this past spring, I was surprised at how much better I liked cooking. Three days after finishing the project I made my first pot roast in years.
Those are the twenty-seven. None of them are going to magically turn you into a better cook. They’re just going to give you some of the same helpful tools that better cooks have been using for years. Tools that make cooking easier and more enjoyable, and take some of the work out of what you may have been fighting against every time you cooked, whether you realized it or not (like a dull knife, or warped pan, or lid that doesn’t seal properly, or a lack of a cooking thermometer). These fixes aren’t Instagram-worthy, but they will make a huge difference in your cooking (and most of them cost about twenty or thirty bucks, and if you tackle them a couple at a time over the course of a few months, you shouldn’t break the bank). Here are some easy ways to start using your new (or new to you) tools. I make these instant pot chicken recipes, these weeknight instant pot dinners and this slow cooker whole chicken over and over again. These recipes are forgiving and make use of helpful cooking tools, and they helped me to regain my cooking confidence, one Tuesday dinner at a time.
The cooking did not need me to try harder. It needed me to stop fighting the kitchen.