Don’t be afraid of seasoning your food, even if it seems like too much. If you’re cooking with chicken or pork, season aggressively. Both meats are wonderful seasoning sponges. Find a regional spice map or guide and start combining flavors.

Roasted vegetables are delicious, but the key is roasting them for longer than you think is necessary, as it can result on either being hard and undercooked or mushy. So, you need to cook them for even longer (past the mushy stage) until the moisture is removed and they begin to brown.

Whenever you’re making sauces and gravies, a splash of apple cider vinegar or citrus gives a lot of complexity to an otherwise simple sauce. For tomato-based sauces, add a pinch of sugar instead of acid.

For crispy fish skin, always follow the three-step method.

1) Scrape the skin with the back of a knife to dry it out.

2) Put it in a hot pan with fat skin down, and press it until it stops trying to curl.

3) Put the whole pan in the oven, and roast until done. Perfectly crispy skin every time!

Save ingredients like olive brine, pickle juice, and ginger juice from the jar. They make a great acidic component for dressings, vinaigrettes, marinades, soups, and sauces.

Rather than use measuring spoons for baking, use a kitchen scale. Think of baking like a science, and you really want the measurements to be exact. Measuring cups and spoons are not as accurate as the scale, and it can affect the results of your baked goods.

If you’re trying to brown ground meat and you see water forming in the pan, that’s a sign that it’s overcrowded. Rather than cook it all at once, work in small batches, and it will brown perfectly.

Pay attention to the order in which you add ingredients while cooking. Add garlic at the end because it burns quickly; add dried herbs at the beginning and fresh herbs at the end.