How to Be A Better Cook

I've been writing about being a better cook for a while now, but unless you read the very first email newsletter I sent out, you've been getting bit and pieces of the story. So today, I'm going to start  a top-down brain dump of what I believe it means to Be A Better Cook. Here goes........

The Four Principles of Being A Better Cook

• Reliable, High Quality Recipes
• Effective, Simple Tools and Equipment
• Fresh, High Quality Ingredients
• Mastery of Fundamental Cooking Techniques

Here's How and Why It Works.......

• Leverage the expertise of great cook and chefs who can translate their skills to home cooks. 
• Gadgets, poor quality cookware, dull knives make cooking slower, less predictable (reliable), slower, less safe and less fun. 
• Poor ingredients will never allow a dish to reach it's fullest potential - and possibly will be disastrous (really - inedible, food poisoning, not worth the effort....the reasons go on and on).
• Developing solid fundamental techniques make cooking faster, more enjoyable, allow recipes to be executed properly and lay the foundation for your own interpretation, improvisation and creativity.

Better cooking results in GREAT FLAVORS, multiple dimensions of taste and a memorable eating or entertaining experience. 

Good, fresh cooking is always rewarded, but great cooking is revered and savored. 

I'll limit this first little taste of my ideas to the highest level concepts. Instead of running on and on breaking these concepts down into detail, I'll share them in a series of additional articles. 

Questions / comments? Email me at tmcguff@gmail.com or leave comments on www.beabettercook.net.