12 common cooking mistakes that may ruin your best recipe

When it comes to cooking recipes, sometimes you can follow the directions as closely as possible and still have the recipe not turn out how you expected. Cooking takes practice, the right ingredients, sometimes a bit of luck and patience to get the recipe just right. It's often in the little things you do that might make a recipe not turn out exactly as you want. So with that in mind, you will want to take a look at these common cooking mistakes that might ruin your best recipe. The following are just some of the common cooking mistakes that people make, take a look and try to remember them for the next time you are making your favorite dish.

1. One of the most common mistakes is overloading the frying pan. It's good to know that next time you are hoping to cook your meat with a crispy crust. To do this, you will want to give the meat enough room so that it can brown, otherwise if its overcrowded the meat will boil.

2. Another important food hack to remember when cooking meat is to put away the non-stick pan. If you like the crispy crust on the meat you may have trouble as this piece of cookware usually heats less than ordinary frying pans, so they are better for omelets and pancakes. But when it comes to cooking meat in your kitchen, try using a grill pan or a cast iron frying pan. Cast iron pots and pans are known for their excellent heat retention properties. You just want to remember to season your cast iron to protect it from rusting and to create a non-stick surface.

3. A kitchen hack for the best tasting pasta is to remember to properly salt the water. The basic rule when cooking pasta is to salt the cooking water as too little salt will lead to tasteless pasta, and no amount of sauce will save the recipe. If you're not sure about the amount, a good rule of thumb is one tablespoon of salt per 300 grams of pasta.

4. Frying with olive oil. When olive oil is used at high temperatures, the olive oil loses all of its nutritional value and will start to burn, and that can ruin the taste of your food. So it's better to use olive oil for salads and refined sunflower oil when it comes to frying.

5. Not preheating the pan properly before cooking. The top chefs say that if your pan is not hot enough wait for another couple of minutes and then cook after that. You will first need a preheated frying pan to cook vegetables and to get that crispy crust on the meat.

6. Another kitchen hack to remember is not to throw frozen meat on the pan. Before cooking any meat, make sure first to let it stand at room temperature for a couple of hours. The room temperature of the rested meat will be heated more evenly throughout, while frozen meat, may look like it is done, but it will still be raw inside. The same rule applies to baking any meat in the oven.

7. Storing all ingredients in the fridge. It's not a good idea to store all foods in the fridge. You don't want to store ingredients like tomatoes, onions, potatoes, garlic, zucchini, eggplants, and fruits like kiwi and mangos in the fridge.

This is just one of the food hacks for your kitchen you will find on the Brightside site. You will find all sorts of useful ideas from inspiration, creativity, wonder and more. **