A little care about the right points leads to a great meal!

But the truth is preparing a great meal is not actually all that difficult. The important thing is to use the right ingredients at the right time. In other words, a bit of care and attention can solve all your problems. We asked some cooking experts about the finer points of preparing meals, with those who love to spend time in the kitchen in mind.

Some finer points on cooking great meals from the experts

 A good method of preserving the flavor of your oven-cooked foods is to cover them with aluminum foil. But of course, since aluminum foil is actually a carcinogen, don’t let it touch the food directly, first wrap the food in baking paper and then cover it with foil. This way you will lose neither taste nor your health.

 Take stale bread and break or cut into little pieces; sauté this quickly in oil or butter and then use the bread as croutons for your soup. Or you could bake your stale bread in the oven and then grind it into crumbs in your food processor for use later as a coating for fried fish, cheese and even some vegetables.

 Don’t forget, if you grind up garlic in your food processor and then add olive oil and salt, it can be kept safely for up to three months in a jar. Use it later in whatever food you wish. Also remember that if you place garlic in warm water for 10-15 minutes first, it makes it much easier to peel.

 Placing frozen meat into hot water to thaw it can be harmful to your health. The best idea is to take your frozen meat out of the freezer the night before you need to use it and let it thaw slowly in the refrigerator. If you need a same-day thaw for your meat, placing it in cold water is much healthier than plunking it into hot water.

We all know that letting meat you are intending to cook marinate in a sauce including vegetable oil, thyme and bay leaves will make it much more delicious and tender for when you want to cook it; but if you add onion marinade to this mixture as well, you will get a meat that literally has the taste of that famous “döner.” An onion marinade can be prepared by grating an onion, and then adding one or two tablespoons of yoghurt. The natural acid contained in the onion is also great in terms of softening the meat.

It’s very important to use fresh ingredients

Chef Oktay Aymelek: The most important thing is to make sure that the ingredients you use when cooking are fresh. This is the key to great results. And of course, watch the finer points of cooking when you are working. For example, when cooking with meat, make sure that the meat is chopped uniformly. In terms of order, first cook the meat, then add the onion, the tomato paste, and other ingredients. Of course, the amount of water in your dishes is also important. Very watery dishes are not tasty. So really, try to add as little water as possible, since when the food boils, the water levels lower and the flavor increases. When making pilafs, I mix together oil and butter. You can soak your rice beforehand, or even just rinse it well. But the important thing with rice is, whether you have soaked it or just rinsed it, to make sure the water has been drained completely. If there is water in the pot when you are sautéing it, the grains of rice will stick to one another. If this does happen, you need to sauté the rice until those pieces come unstuck from one another. Otherwise you will wind up with sticky rice. It is also important than when sautéing your rice for pilaf, that you do so with salt as well. The salt, the oil, the butter and the rice all need to be sautéed together. Another important point for achieving a great pilaf: whether you are using regular water or chicken or beef stock, make sure that the liquid you add to the rice is hot when you add it!

Careful with your spices!

Chef Eyüp Kemal Sevinç: First you need to choose your ingredients well. For example, from the perspective of fat content, ground beef used for dolma and ground beef used for köfte are very different from one another. And when making pilaf, choose the rice you are going to use carefully. The rice should not be broken and it should be shiny and white. Since the sodium in salt helps break down the starch in rice, add some salt when soaking your rice before cooking it. Also, when you are sautéing your rice, add salt. And if you are oven-cooking or grilling meat, always let it marinate for a day before cooking. As for sautéing meat in a pan, don’t worry about letting it sit, but add a bit of water to the pan to soften the meat. And on the subject of spices, always purchase your spices from somewhere you trust, since some places might add something that’s not actually spice to the mix, which you obviously don’t want to happen.