We all have that one friend who would have made a spectacular chef in another life. There’s no microwavable ready meals for this kind of everyday artisan. No matter what they have in the kitchen, they always manage to whip something up that you’d be happy to pay for in any restaurant. You might be wondering what it is that makes these people such a natural in the kitchen. Here are a few qualities that go into a great cook…
Meticulous Organisation
Whether it’s planning out the courses for a dinner party, sourcing the ingredients needed for a complex dish, pre-heating ovens for the right time or generally managing good food prep, anyone who can perform well in the kitchen needs to have fantastic organisational skills. If you like to keep everything in life nicely organised, you’ll find juggling all the tasks needed to be a great cook much easier to handle.
Creativity
When most people think of creative endeavours, cooking doesn’t usually jump to mind straight away. However, if you want to be a great cook, being able to think creatively is absolutely essential. This not only helps people come up with new and exciting meals, but makes it much easier to improvise where it’s needed in the kitchen. Being able to work with whatever materials you have is what allows great cooks to whip up delicious pasta sauces that you can’t find in any recipe book, combine herbs and spices that work beautifully with each other, and discover the secret of how to get a cork out without a corkscrew!
A Desire to Please
The best chefs in the world are all driven by a powerful desire to please the people who ultimately receive their food. If you’re looking to further your skills in the kitchen, then developing a strong desire to put a smile on your friends and family’s faces will take you a long way. This will motivate you to keep on taking little tastes, playing around with this or that aromatic, honing in on every little possible improvement, and working towards the perfect dish.
Great Stamina
When you’re feeding a full dining table of guests, you can find yourself spending long hours in the kitchen which can become extremely stressful and messy. Organisation, creativity and passion are all important, but if it’s not backed up by brilliant stamina, your cooking is going to suffer. There will be times where you’ll be totally overwhelmed and your meals will end in a disaster, and times where you pull through and turn a crisis into a raging success. The key here is being able to grit your teeth through all that hectic, rushing stress, and push through to deliver the best food you possibly can. The satisfaction of great-tasting, well-presented food will always make your hard slugging and strife worth it.
If you’re looking to become a better asset to your own kitchen, or you were just curious about how great cooks manage to perform their last-minute miracles, we hope this post has been food for thought.