How to Fix These 14 Common Cooking Mistakes

Posted by Rachel Schwartz on 8/20/2020 to Now Ya Cookin'

man holding hands to face in distress while looking into open oven where smoke is billowing out

While cooking can be both challenging and fun, it can also be easy to accidentally make a mistake. Too much of one ingredient or not enough of another and your dish can go from tasty to yuck in short order. But if this happens, it doesn't necessarily mean your dish is ruined. The next time you find yourself making one of these cooking mistakes, try one of these solutions to fix it.

You added too much salt. If your dish is too salty, the trick is to dilute the salt by adding other ingredients. Despite cooking lore, adding a potato to soak up the extra salt doesn't work. If the dish is soup, add more liquid. If the dish is more substantial like a stew, add more vegetables or meat.

Your dish is too sour. If you've found that you added too much tomato, vinegar, wine, etc. and your dish is now too sour, attempt to counteract this by adding sweetness. This could be honey, cream, or even caramelized onions. As with too much salt, diluting the dish is another solution as is adding a tiny bit of baking soda to neutralize the flavor. If you do add baking soda however, be careful not to add too much as that taste can then become off putting.

Your vegetables are overcooked. Luckily, if you accidentally overcook your vegetables, there is an easy fix. Simply dip them in ice water to halt the cooking process and let them sit for a minute or two. The cold temperature should help them firm back up a little.

You're trying to cook too much at once. If you are in a hurry or just want to cook everything at the same time, it can be easy to overcrowd the pan. But doing so will cause the food to steam rather than cook and become softer as opposed to browning up properly. To fix this, make sure the food has enough room to breathe when sauteing, frying, or roasting. This may mean multiple batches are needed in order to properly cook all of your food.

Your French fries or other fried foods are soggy. If you're making fried foods like French fries at home, it's important to make sure that the oil is hot enough before you fry your food. Otherwise, you could end up with soggy food. If this happens, adjust the temperature on the fryer and check the amount of food that is in the fryer. Overcrowding is another common reason fried foods don't come out crispy because there isn't enough room in the fryer for the food to cook properly.

Your dish is too sweet. To counteract the sweetness, introduce some acidity back into the dish by adding a bit of salt, lemon juice, or vinegar.

Your dish is too spicy. The most common way to counteract too much spiciness is to add dairy products such as milk, cream, or butter. This works well as an ingredient within dairy products binds with the spice and neutralizes it. This is also why many people reach for a glass of milk after eating hot peppers or especially spicy meals.

Your sauteed food isn't browning. This is most likely because you did not give your pan enough time to heat up before adding in your ingredients. Any ingredients that you want to saute need to be added to a hot pan in order to brown on the outside. To fix this, remove the food from the pan and reheat the pan before adding the food back in to cook. If browning isn't occurring because there is too much food in the pan, split your ingredients and saute them in multiple batches.

Your pasta is overcooked. If you accidentally overcooked your pasta, remove it from the pan--saving the pasta water in case you do have to end up starting over--and run it under cold water. Drain the pasta and fry it in a hot pan with some olive oil. The pasta should firm back up. If this doesn't work however, you may need to start over.

Your pasta is under cooked. Unlike with overcooked pasta, if you remove your pasta before it was completely finished cooking, there are two easy way to fix it. If you still have the pasta water, simply re-boil the water and add the pasta back in for another few minutes. If however, you threw the water out before realizing the pasta was not finished, add the pasta to the sauce you were going to serve it with and set the heat to low. This will allow the pasta to continue to cook while the sauce heats up.

Your lettuce is wilted. Lettuce and other greens do wilt after a time, but this doesn't mean they can't be saved. Bring your wilted lettuce back to life by submerging them in a large bowl of ice water for 30 to 60 minutes. Then, remove the leaves and dry them with a salad spinner or pat dry with paper towels. To prevent the wilting from happening in the first place, loosely wrap your lettuce in a paper towel or fabric produce bag before storing it in the refrigerator. The paper towel or fabric bag will absorb some of the excess moisture.

Your cookies came out dry and crispy. Cookies are really easy to overcook or burn if you aren't paying attention. A good rule of thumb when baking cookies, cakes, etc. is to bake them for slightly less than the time suggested in the recipe. For example, if the cookie recipe calls for 12 minutes to bake, set the timer for 9 or 10 minutes. With cookies, ideally you want to remove them from the oven when they are still soft looking and barely golden on the underside as they will firm up as they cool. Waiting until they look done in the oven means they will come out hard and overdone.

The juice from your meat runs everywhere when you cut into it. Whenever cooking meat, allow it to 'rest' for a few minutes after cooking and before cutting into it. Because the juices move to the center of the meat during cooking, this allows the juices to redistribute throughout the meat. Cutting into the meat without this 'rest' period means you will most likely end up with juices running all over your plate or cutting board when you cut into it. Small cuts of meat such as chicken breasts only need a few minutes of 'rest' while larger cuts like an entire chicken may need 20 minutes or more to 'rest.' Tenting foil over the meat--particularly larger cuts of meat--will help to keep it warm while it 'rests.'

The bottom of the pan is burnt. If you are still cooking and there is still food in the pan or pot, transfer the food to a new pan so the burnt flavor doesn't cook into the rest of the food. Then, take the burnt pot or pan and add a thin layer of vinegar and baking soda. This mixture should fizz up a bit and once it does, scrub the burnt areas. Then wash the pan like normal. This typically occurs because the eat was set too high for what was being cooked. To prevent this, turn the heat down and stir your food regularly to keep it from sticking to the bottom of the pan.

How to Fix These 14 Common Cooking Mistakes

Add Comment

Categories

How to Fix These 14 Common Cooking Mistakes

Tagged Products

Add Comment

Categories