How To: 4 Ways to Improvise in the Kitchen Flawlessly

The best part of cooking in the kitchen is experimentation and improvisation. Let’s get you prepared for improvising dishes in the kitchen flawlessly.

While you may be shrewd in the kitchen, the best home chefs consistently put effort into experimenting and improvising with ingredients.

How To Improvise in the Kitchen Flawlessly

If being an at-home master chef is your calling, try working on improvising in the kitchen flawlessly by using different cooking methods or ingredients. Be open to improvising your dishes to create something new for dinner tonight. 

Only Experiment With Ingredients When You Feel Ready

Experimenting with food has risks—if you’re not careful, adding something like a ghost pepper could throw your entire meal off.

You shouldn’t add extra ingredients or substitutes without first researching their compatibility with the recipe—choosing pastrami over ground beef for hamburger patties leads to unnecessarily salty hamburgers, for example. 

Before diving into lists of recommended substitutes or additions to meals, take a step back and get to know the ingredients you currently have on hand.

When you take the time to work with what’s already in the kitchen, you learn a lot about your preferences, such as liking savory sauces over sweet ones.

Avoid Going Big Until You’ve Mastered Small Tasks

While it’s important to go big sometimes, it should happen only on rare occasions, preferably on your own, until you get the hang of cooking.

If you have guests coming over, consider asking what dishes they’d like and if they would be open to trying an improvised dish. If they say no, cook something basic.

To understand how experimental cooking works, start doing small tasks, like picking a vegetable, fruit, or herb to use in a dish. A fun herb to mess around with is dill—place it in eggs or sour cream to create a dip.

If you need other ways to cook with your ingredient, use social media and Google—don’t be afraid to reach out to your friends and family for advice.

Keep the Fridge and Pantry Full of Cooking Staples

While learning to improvise in the kitchen, the best thing is to make do with what you have in the fridge and pantry right now.

If you wanted to invent a new sandwich—maybe switching mayonnaise out with ranch—then you can do that!

One of the things to remember in cooking is that not every dry ingredient you have in the house has a long shelf life.

So, while at the store, keep an eye out for dry foods with a long shelf life, like rice, flour, and pasta—these items last a long time.

Hone Your Baking and Cooking Skills

If you can’t wield a knife like a TV chef, it’s OK. You don’t need to be like every cook you see on the Food Network, but you could learn one thing from them: hone your baking and cooking skills. Ensuring you tighten your skills in the kitchen is key to fully mastering how to improvise in the kitchen flawlessly.

Now, what are you waiting for? Get to cooking your fabulous dish so you can fully master the ropes of simple cooking and be ready to take on improvisation while in the kitchen. Let’s get cooking, chef!

Recipes to Try:

• Hummingbird Cake
• How to Make Baked Cod and Leek and Potato Soup Recipe
• How to Make Layered Southern Biscuits