From understanding cooking terms to basic things that everyone should know how to cook and everything in between. Over the last four months, we have covered a lot of ground in my basic cooking course “Kitchen Clueless”. Today marks the end of this particular part of our journey together. As is always good to do at the end of something, we are going to take a look back and review the incredible amount of information that we have covered.

With that, let’s get to it. This is…

Section 1 – Understanding Cooking Terms

In the first part of this series, we took a look at some basic cooking terms. Cooking has its own language (Spoiler, it’s mostly French) and in order to fully comprehend recipes, you need to know the language. It’s my hope that this section of the course gave you a better understanding of the language of cooking. Here are the terms we covered.

• Bake
• Blanch
• Braise
• Brine
• Boil
• Broil
• Brown
• Caramelize
• Clarify
• Chop
• Conventional Oven
• Convection Oven
• Cup
• Deglaze
• Demiglace
• Dice
• Dry Roast
• Emulsify
• Fillet
• Garnish
• Glaze
• Gram
• Grill
• Gratin
• Julienne
• Kilogram
• Low and Slow
• Litre
• Marinade/Marinate
• Mother Sauces
• Mince
• Mirepoix
• Pan-fry
• Pinch
• Poach
• Reduce
• Render/Rendering
• Roast
• Roux
• Sauté
• Score
• Sear
• Season
• Shred
• Simmer
• Skim
• Slice
• Steam
• Stew
• Stock
• Stir-Fry
• tbsp/tsp
• Temper/tempering
• Toss
• Truss

If you are unsure of what any of the words in this list mean, click the link below to read the full post.

Check out the full post here.

Section 2 – Kitchen Equipment

In order to become a good cook, you will need to have at least decent equipment at your disposal. In this part of the series that is exactly what we talk about. We take a look at what you need to know when buying knives, pots and pans, vegetable peelers, measuring cups, cutting boards and more. If you have any questions about kitchen equipment I suggest taking a look at this post at the link below.

Check out the full post here.

Section 3 – Knife Skills

For the third post in my basic cooking course series, we took a look at some basic knife skills and knife safety. We talked about how to sharpen your knife and why that is important, how to properly hold your knife, and different options for that, and of course how to actually cut things. Even if you think you are an expert knife-wielder I highly recommend taking another look at this post. There is a lot of very valuable information in there.

Check out the full post here.

Section 4 – Understanding Ingredients

Part four of the course was so chock full of information that I had to break it up into four parts. In the first part, we looked at all kinds of beans and rice. In part two we looked at potatoes and onions. Part three was all about garlic, carrots, celery, bell peppers, and chilli peppers. And, part four was all about beef, chicken, fish and pork.

Looking back on this now I can’t believe how much information is jammed into these four parts. If you’d like to take a look you can click the links below.

Check out the full three part post here, here, here, and here.

Sections 5 – Basic Cooking Techniques

In this the broke down and more clearly defined some basic cooking techniques including how to sauté, broil, roast, bake, pan-fry, sear, braise and more. If you want to be a better cook, nailing down every technique in this post will help to get you there.

Check out the full post here.

Sections 6 – Understanding Soups

From looking at basic cooking techniques we moved on to more concrete cooking concepts, like understanding soup. In this post, we looked at different kinds of soup, the basic principles behind the types, and of course how to make them. This post includes soup recipes for French Onion, White Bean and Chorizo, Roasted Butternut Squash, Apple and Parsnip, Bacon and Corn Chowder, and Scallop and Bacon Chowder.

Check out the full post here.

Section 7 – Understanding Salads

From understanding soups, we moved on to understanding salads. In this section, as with the previous one, we looked at the basic principles of salads. We also looked at common types of greens and what to pair with them. As part of this section, we also looked at salad dressings. This post has recipes for a Basic Vinaigrette which you can alter in countless ways to make any type of vinaigrette you’d like. It also has recipes for Honey Dijon Vinaigrette, Maple Balsamic, Lemon and Chive, Caesar Dressing and more.

Check out the full post here.

Sections 8 – Basic Things Everyone Should Be Able To Cook

In the final section of the series, which is broken up into three parts, we took everything from the previous lessons and applied it to the real world in Basic Things Everyone Should Know How To Cook. There is so much information and so many recipes in these three posts that I’m not even going to break it down. I suggest you go take a look for yourself. If you haven’t read them, you’re in for a treat. If you have, you will find something you missed.

Check out the full posts here, here, and here.

Conclusion

I’m not going to lie to you, putting all of this together has been a tremendous amount of work. Much more work than I had anticipated and I am very much looking forward to taking a break from it. However, I feel really good about the series as a whole and I hope that you have enjoyed it. More importantly, I hope learned a lot from it. Over the next few weeks, my Wednesday posts will be pretty standard posts as I get ready for my next series which will start in a month or so.

Thank you as always for reading and for your continued support. You can find the entire basic cooking course at the link in the menu at the top of the page. And if you have an idea for a series that you would like to see on the blog let me know, you may just get what you asked for.

Have a great day everyone!