Who do you go to when you need some cooking tips? Most probably, your mom or your grandma. In recent years, we also learned to adopt some tricks from online cooking content or cooking TV shows. While those are all great, don’t you sometimes wonder why it is that the same dish cooked by the chef of your favorite restaurant tastes so much… more interesting than when you try to recreate it at home?
Talent and years of study and hard work any chef puts into their cooking is very important, of course, but also, every chef has a small secret, and that’s the ingredients they use to make their dishes ever so appealing. Some of them share these secrets so that you also can become better at cooking and impress your guests.
We have collected a list of ingredients for you to incorporate in your cooking, as recommended by chefs online. You don’t have to be a professional cook to pick up some useful tips, even if it’s just for food to make at home for yourself and your loved ones.
Let’s take a look at the chef’s table and see what ingredients they recommend to have in your fridge or pantry. Which ones do you already have at home? Which ones were a complete revelation to you? Share this article with your cooking-loving friends and don’t forget to tell us how your enhanced cooking goes.
#21
"Eggs. Make desserts like ice cream, custard, pudding, pot de creme, and pies. Savory Sauces like bearnaise, mayonnaise, and hollandaise. Add them cooked to salads or eat them scrambled, fried, poached, or basted."
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15points
#22
"BLACK GARLIC! Makes everything 100x better. Most of what I see here are staple pantry items. If you don't have black garlic, get it. Crush it into a paste and make a compound butter or anything. BLACK GARLIC. Sweet sticky heaven."
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14points
#23
"Pasta water on recipes that use pasta. Hit that sauce thick."
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14points
#24
"Heavy cream."
hoodytwin replied: "Heavy cream in my coffee, scrambled eggs, and mashed potatoes."
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14points
#25
"My answer for the best ingredient that you can sink your teeth into is spring onions and similar grassy onions. The reason is they have a profound effect on any dish they're included in, they look beautiful in white, green, and both, are super versatile, forgiving to cook with, caramelize beautifully, and work well in dishes from so many cultures and geographic regions."
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14points
#27
"Miso paste Gochujang Doubanjiang.
All good stuff."
Overall_Instance replied: "Miso paste is insanely good, I could eat that stuff on toast."
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13points
#28
"Stock/brock cubes. They often add a lot of flavor, seasoning, and depth." Trist8686 replied: "Best life hack I ever learned was adding chicken stock cubes to cut potatoes boiling in water. Seriously will up your potato game in ways you can’t imagine. I’ve also done it with rice as well where the rice was going into something else."
13points
#29
"Salt obviously, but as far as funner items, you'll notice it changes. We go through stages. I've had my jalapeno/chipotle stage. My mushroom stage. My chickpea stage. My pancetta stage. My favorite was my Porchetta stage. I had the stuff on the specials menu in one way or another for so long we had to put it on the permanent menu of suffer the wrath of big eaters."
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13points
#30
"Chef here. Lemon juice enhances the flavor of almost anything. Vinegar is too dominant for me."
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12points
#31
"Oranges. They are just amazing. Do you enjoy lemon in your sauce? Orange is better. Fill your fish with baked oranges, will blow your mouth away. Hibiscus tea? Someone? Put orange and ginger, the most refreshing tea ever made. Chicken with orange and wine reduction? Beautiful."
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12points
#32
"Not a chef, but a baker. Cardamom. It’s still not super common in American baked goods, and while I love cinnamon, that flavor isn’t special to my palette anymore. Cardamom gives such a warm, floral scent/flavor to whatever you make, and can be paired with so many things. Treat yourself: add some cardamom and orange zest to your next batch of banana bread."
craycrayfishfillet replied: "I love when my Indian colleagues bring in sweets because more often than not they have cardamom in them and I love the flavor."
Meowbagel said: "Oh, I’m Indian and just found out I’ve been eating cardamom my whole life without even realizing, lol."
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10points
#33
"Tajin. It’s a season that adds a little bit of lime and a little kick to your dish. I put it on almost everything."
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10points
#34
"Because I haven’t seen it yet, vanilla extract is too sweet as salt is too savory. So besides salt, vanilla extract is pretty bomb."
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10points
#35
"Not a single ingredient, but using the best and right oil for the right cuisine. Butter for french food, extra virgin olive oil for Italian, etc, always makes a huge difference.
If you’re trying to nail a country’s cuisine, learn the oil they mainly use. It’ll really help you achieve that flavor."
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10points
#36
"Carrots. Both sweet and savory. Almost endless uses from base ingredients to garnish. Pickle them. Candy them. Roast them. Eat them raw. Good in a soup, salad, or on a steak."
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10points
#37
"Buttermilk. An underrated ingredient you can use in marinades and dressings as well as in just about every bakery item, bread, cake, etc. It just adds that extra zip."
herman-the-vermin replied: "It's the only way I do pancakes or waffles now. Overnight sourdough buttermilk pancakes are a favorite Saturday breakfast."
proscriptus comments: "Once you make buttermilk mashed potatoes, you will never make them any other way. With roasted garlic, olive oil, and some salty stock for extra depth."
9points
#38
"Lemongrass. I generally love the ingredients in Thai food. Cilantro, lemongrass, spice, and bamboo shoots."
purplefriiday replied: "I love bamboo shoots. The texture is amazing."
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9points
#39
"Water. Not enough beef, add water. Need to make sauce, water. Chicken overcooked, water. Too much salt, water. Water fixes a bunch of s*it."
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9points
#40
"I'm a big fan of cayenne powder. I throw a pinch in everything to give it a zing!"
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8points
