There is no secret formula when it comes to cooking, but there are a few methods that you must learn. In the kitchen, mastering the technique of preparing flavorful, delectable meals can make all the difference. If your meals are lacking in flavor, try the following tips for spicing things up in the kitchen.

Add Spice Before Liquid

If you’re cooking with spices and genuinely want to bring out all of the flavors, you’ll need a way to do so. Before adding any liquids, you should add seasoning and spices. That’s because when the liquid is added first, the taste of the spice is diluted. This technique can be used to enhance the taste of almost any dish, including this mint chutney recipe at spicecravings.com, so keep it in mind while you’re cooking.

Use Salt Before The End 

Salt is a taste enhancer that has varying effects depending on how it is used. Adding salt to vegetables while sautéing them in oil, for example, stimulates them to release water. This moisture keeps the veggies from browning, which is good if you want pale sautéed cauliflower but bad if you want toasted grilled zucchini.

A day or two before cooking, salt the meat to permeate it and provide a more delicious taste. Season potatoes or pasta with large quantities of salt as they cook in pans of boiling water. A last sprinkling of salt gives a tangy zing.

Use Fat To Add Flavor 

Fat has a tasty flavor of its own, but it also serves as a flavor enhancer. The specific lipid makeup of the animal’s fat is responsible for much of the taste in meats, for example. Fat, however, comes in a wide variety of flavors. Because of the fat-soluble nature of many volatile taste and smell compounds, modest amounts of oil are used for frying garlic and onions, and butter is used to baste turkey. In other words, you need to be aware of what you’re cooking, how much fat to use, and what kind. Once you know this, you can enhance the flavor of any food. 

Brown Your Food

Consider the following situation: you’re given two steaks. Both have the same core temperature, but one has a crispy, brown outside with grill marks. The other is consistently grey as a result of steaming. Which one are you going to opt for? Most people will choose the browned steak – it looks as though it will taste better, and the fact is, it does. 

Browned food has a more intense taste. This isn’t a matter of perceptual bias; it’s science. Browning is caused by two different reactions. When food browns, amino acids and carbohydrates undergo intricate chemical interactions that result in the formation of new, more complex taste and aroma molecules. These processes are known as the Maillard and caramelization reactions. To put it another way, browning food gives you a better end result. 

Use Fresh Herbs And Spices

Temperature and air exposure rapidly degrade the efficacy of spices. A lot of surface area is exposed when spices are powdered, which causes them to age considerably faster. Start with entire seeds or pods and grind them as you go to get the most flavor out of your spices (and to keep them fresh for longer).