Take Notes When You Cook
One of the best advice I read on cooking, especially when starting, is to take notes.
This helps tremendously, especially when one does not cook that frequently (say, maybe annually?)
Things to take notes on:
- recipe details (never know when you want to cook the same thing next year!)
- weights of items used
- preparation times
- cooking start/end time
- actual items
- any substitutions used
- and most importantly: results!
I usually cook during the holidays and reviewing my notes from the years before help me tremendously in:
- deciding what to cook
- shopping for items
- preparing recipe
This advice on cooking I remember reading from the introduction of Alton Brown’s book: Good Eats Volume 1. He and The FoodNetwork dramatically improved the way I cook.