Four ways to improve your cooking skills

If you are looking for simple ways to improve your cooking skills then look no further, Le Cordon Bleu London is providing you with four top tips that will help you on your way to culinary success in the kitchen.

1. Equip yourself with the right tools

It will surprise you to discover how much your cooking skills can improve with the right equipment. Not even Mary Berry would be able to avoid an uneven bake with a dodgy oven. So stop trying to hack at those onions with a blunt knife and invest in some good-quality cooking utensils, as it will not only save you a lot of time (and tears), but it will make a world of difference to your cooking skills. Our Teaching Chefs cannot live without a plastic spatula, a good chopping board, sharpening steel, and a cast iron frying pan that's not non-stick! These essential items would probably be a good place for you to start.

2. Get to know your ingredients

It is good to understand how your ingredients will behave when subjected to different cooking processes, such as steaming, boiling, roasting and baking, so this way you will be able to adjust your recipe accordingly. For example, do your sweet potato fries go soggy in the oven? Well our Chefs suggest you adjust your recipe by deep frying them instead.

It is also good practice to use fresh, high-quality ingredients as they can add more flavour to your dishes, which will boost both your palate and your ego! Try to use seasonal and ripe produce instead of that which has been flown in from across the world, as it will taste so much more fresh and vibrant. If you are feeling a bit more adventurous you could even try your hand at foraging.

3. Learn basic cooking techniques

Learning the basics of cooking are fundamental to success in the kitchen, so when a recipe asks you to sauté or braise an ingredient, a lack of knowledge won’t jeopardise your chances of producing a culinary masterpiece! The best way to learn these basic skills is to take our Cuisine Techniques short-course, where you will learn essentials such as knife skills, poaching, and preparing stock, under the guidance of our expert Chefs who have a wealth of experience from Michelin-starred restaurants and 5* hotels. Even those more experienced cooks who take this course are surprised to discover that they have been doing something incorrectly all this time, or that there’s simply an easier and more efficient way of doing things!

4. Practice, practice, practice!

Not even our renowned Master Chefs acquired their cooking skills overnight. In order to perfect anything worth mastering it takes lots and lots of practice, so just keep going and you will begin to see some steady progress. Even if you make something that you’re not happy with, just use it as a lesson to learn from, so that you know what not to do the next time. And once you get more confident with your basic cooking techniques and you become more familiar with a range of ingredients, then don’t be afraid to experiment. Who knows you could be the next greatest Master Chef!

If you would like to improve your cooking skills then please visit Le Cordon Bleu London’s website for more details on our range of courses.