Starting to cook for yourself or your family more? That’s wonderful, and you’re definitely on your way to saving on meals. However, you’ll want to steer clear of certain mistakes that many new cooks make so as not to ruin your food. Here are a couple of examples:

Messing With it Too Much

When you’re flipping, stirring and turning a ton in the kitchen, you may feel like a master chef. But really, when you constantly mess with the food you cook, you’re actually hurting it.

Second nature reaction is something you’ll pick up the more you cook…Stay and listen to the sounds it makes while it’s cooking. They change from minute to minute, and knowing those will improve your timing and your reaction to necessary adjustments, and make you an overall better chef

Here’s an example from chef Gordon Ramsay:

Not Knowing Your Pans

New cooks tend to think that a pan is a pan. Toss some food in it and it will cook. While that might be true, you’re not likely to yield the best results if you don’t consider which pans to use for which recipes. The Kitchn recommends investing in the basics and spending time learning what they should be used for.

Learn more over at Cracked’s 5 Simple Things That Every Bad Cook Does Wrong.

Thanks to The Kitchn for the heads up!