Random Things You've Been Doing Wrong In Kitchen Your Entire Life: Common Cooking Mistakes (22 items)

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  (#20) Fettuccine alfredo

  Most recipes for fettuccine alfredo say you need two different cooking pots: one for pasta and one for sauce. Many chefs, however, follow recipes that call for only one pot to cook both the pasta and the sauce.

  As you bring your large pot of water to a boil, add the pasta and the sauce ingredients at the same time. This technique allows the pasta to absorb the sauce better.
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  (#12) Vanilla

  Real vanilla as opposed to extract sounds like the way to go to achieve the best taste for your sweets, but if your recipe involves cooking of some sort, you need not splurge on it.

  Not only does real vanilla cost more money, but it also loses its edge in flavor when cooked with other ingredients in a pastry or cookie. For something like eggnog, where cooking is not required, then you want to dole out a little extra cash.
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  (#1) Potato

  Making oven-roasted potatoes, a staple in the world of cooking, typically only involves dicing the potatoes, covering them in oil, and roasting them in one sitting. Yet this technique often fails to achieve the perfect consistency of fluffy inside and crispy outside.

  To rectify this, boil the potatoes first in salt water for about five minutes, then add them to the oven to roast. The boiling makes their insides a little looser, allowing heat from the oven to more easily penetrate them. The result: perfect potatoes with a crunchy exterior and smooth interior.
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  (#22) Sticking To A Basic PB&J

  There is nothing wrong with the classic peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but blindly turning to it as an easy meal limits your palette.

  Rather than relying solely on the two staple ingredients, you can always add more spreads (Nutella, Miracle Whip, etc), fruits (banana, strawberry), or both to a sandwich in order to switch up the taste a little. 
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  (#7) Foregoing Lemon Zest Because You Don't Have A Microplane

  Getting lemon zest without a microplane sounds like a daunting task, until you learn this clever hack. The trick involves using a vegetable peeler to get the skin off the lemon; when you skin the lemon, try to peel as much as possible without taking off any of the white portion of the skin.

  Once removed, the skin can be finely chopped up and used in your recipes. 
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  (#13) Wasting Eggs

  Any conscious and smart shopper hates letting their food spoil, and that includes eggs. If you worry your eggs may spoil before you get the chance to use them, try freezing them instead. You can either mix the eggs together and preserve them in an icecube tray or freezer-safe bag, or you can separate your egg yolks and whites.

  Should you separate and keep just the yolks, be sure to add salt to prevent them from getting too thick. If done correctly, your eggs could last up to a year.

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