Ok I might get downvoted to oblivion but I use MSG. It enhances the flavors so much that I have stopped going to restaurants.

Edit- I did my research and found no credible source that says MSG is harmful.

Edit2- If you go to a restaurant or order KFC chances are they use MSG as well

Biggest hack? Realizing that humans have been cooking for millennia, and that it’s in the best interest of big business to convince you that it’s difficult/expensive/extremely complicated.

You don’t NEED the fancy equipment every company out there is trying to sell you.

Not everything needs to be gorgeous on the plate, or a whole production to make.

The poorest people in the world cook delicious food every day.

For instance, you don’t need NEED a +$150 Japanese chef knife to cook at home. What you need is something that can hold an edge through general maintenance, a whet stone, a kitchen towel to dry off your blade immediately after you hand wash it, and a little bit of patience.

IKEA sells some surprisingly great single construction (steel blade, steel handle) knives, and their single body chef knife is like $25. Just get an honing rod for use before you start slicing, and a whet stone for periodic sharpening (there’s TONS of YouTube videos of all the different ways of sharpening your knife), and remember to wash and hand-dry after you’re finished. My chef knife cost me barely anything, and I’ve used it for years and years, and it still slices through a tomato without a problem. Also, I only cook for myself, so I can absolutely 100% guarantee my whet stone will “outlive” me.

Don’t be afraid of spices. Use more than you think is necessary. Onion and garlic can make a meal 100x better.

1. Nothing goes on a plate without being tasted
2. If it’s too sour, add sugar
3. if it’s sweet and you haven’t added acid, add a splash of vinegar.
4. if it’s too hot, add fat
5. if you burn it, throw it out.
6. IF you taste it early, it should taste weak. If it’s fantastic when when it starts to simmer, it’ll be too harsh once it’s reduced.
7. Taste it and it tastes empty or boring? Smell it. Smell all your herbs/spices on hand, which ever one it smells the closest to, add a healthy pinch and salt if it doesn’t taste salty already.
8. know your oils and use the right ones. Olive oil can handle some heat and is great for savory, grapeseed is almost flavorless. Canola has a distinct flavor that doesn’t go with everything.
9. season your meat before you cook it.

Replace everything plastic with glass.

pay attention. stay with what you are cooking as you are cooking it. don’t let yourself become distracted. taste as you go. take notes. use unsalted butter. know your equipment and its pros/cons. shop at different stores for the best ingredients. fresh herbs are waaay better if you can swing it.

Mandolines are not you friend. They thirst for blood.

Seriously if you get one get a safety mandoline like the once for all brand.

Adding Knorr brand Caldo de Tomate to your rice cooker turns your plain old rice into Spanish rice. Blew my mind when I tried it.

chicken (or vegetable) broth in lieu of water to cook rice.

Bake bacon on cookie sheets at 375 for about 20 minutes. You can make a ton of bacon very quickly, with almost no mess, and all the bacon is perfectly flat. We have a double oven and we can make about 4 pounds of bacon in about 30 minutes this way. :)

Clean as you go, don’t just leave it all for the end. Onions are sauteing and you’re done chopping everything? Good, wash your cutting board and knife and clean up any messes before the next step. Sausage is done browning and you’re dumping it in with the onions for a minute with the garlic and some herbs? Great, wash that pan and spoon and set it down to dry and wipe up all the oil splashes.

Just makes clean up so much easier after you’ve eaten and you’re much more efficiently using your time.

Often recipes are really inefficient and sequenced wrong… Read the whole thing and find the “long pole” , and do that first… could be starting the oven preheat early, starting the rice cooker right away vs at step 6 or run things in parallel.

If you cook by using a cooking recipe you can be creative (within reason). If you BAKE by following a baking recipe stick to the letter!

By far my favorite is to have a squirt bottle of water next to my stove. It’s great to have throughout the cooking process, especially if you’ve moved on from Teflon bullshit and are using a pan you pre-heat. To start, you put the pan on the heat and squirt a little water in it. When the water evaporates, the pan is usually in the 350F-400F range. Then when the pan is dry and heated a little more, you can squirt a few more drops in to see if the Leidenfrost effect has taken, uhhh, effect. The way you tell is that the water just dances around on the pan instead of behaving like water normally does, and it’s how you know your food won’t stick, it is at this point that you add the oil.

Moving on to the actual cooking, let’s say you’ve thrown some chicken thighs in the pan and you’ve built up a lot of fond (the brown bits that form in the bottom of the pan) and the chicken is almost done, but you’re not planning on making a sauce. Deglaze the pan with little squirts of water targeted directly at the fond and rub the chicken thighs over the area where the water is deglazing and suddenly that fond is sticking to your chicken thighs, resulting in a better crust and a cleaner pan.

Speaking of cleaner pan, once you’re done cooking and plating and you have a hot dirty pan, squirt enough water in to cover the bottom of the pan and then go eat. When you come back to the kitchen to clean up, the water will have broken down the shit on the bottom of the pan and will steam the sides of the pan, so the pan will wipe clean as easy if all you did was fry an egg.

Finally, I stopped putting milk (of any variety) in my coffee, but I wanna be able to drink my coffee right away and it’s too hot when it’s made fresh, but I’ve got a bottle full of room temperature water (all the filtered water in my house comes out ice cold) sitting right there so I can cool it down that way (I brew my coffee pretty strong so watering it down isn’t a big deal).

Grilled cheese hack: assemble the sandwich open-faced on a baking sheet and place under the broiler for a few minutes until the cheese is melted and bubbling and slightly browned, then close it up and cook it like normal in a covered skillet on medium heat with butter. The cheese will be completely melted and (more importantly) it will stay melted while you’re actually eating the sandwich, and the browning on the cheese adds a big flavor component.

I used to make them the normal way just in a skillet, and even if the cheese was just barely melted it would cool off and re-solidify before I started eating it. And often I would burn the crust just trying to get the cheese melted.