1. Fat means flavor

When cooking, always remember that meats hold most of their flavor in the fat. You can also go for high quality fats like butter (real butter, not margarine!) and olive oil, they’re not only tasty but also healthy.

2. Roast the vegetables

This is an easy and effective trick! Roasting the veggies in your recipes enhances both their texture and flavor. You’ll unlock maximum taste, and the veggies will also look more appealing.

3. Let the seasonings settle

Don’t rush to add extra salt or spices after tasting the dish while it’s still hot. Sometimes, once you’ve finished preparing a recipe, it’s best to wait a few minutes for the food to cool slightly and allow the flavors to settle, so you can truly taste them.

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1. Fully thaw the bacon before cooking.

When preparing a recipe with bacon, the first step is to take it out of the fridge. Letting the meat come to room temperature, without forcing it to jump from cold to hot too quickly, ensures even cooking and helps preserve its texture and flavor.

2. If you’re cooking with bacon, no extra fat is needed.

Make the most of the bacon in your recipe! Cook the bacon first, before anything else, and use the fat it releases to sauté your veggies or other proteins. We guarantee you’ll get a deliciously flavorful result!

3. Cook over low heat.

No matter how you plan to use it in your dishes, cooking bacon low and slow is the ultimate trick for achieving even cooking and the best texture.

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1. Cook the pasta in a large pot.

Pasta grows when cooked and releases starch, so there has to be enough room to stir so it doesn’t stick. Ideally, we should use 5 or 6 liters of water for each kilo of pasta.

2. Add salt and pasta to the water after boiling point.

The pasta is somewhat bland on its own so it needs salt, but it has to be added to the water after it boils so it doesn’t delay the boiling point. And pasta should be added after the boiling point to perfectly control the cooking time.

3. Do not add oil to the cooking water.

This is one of the most common bad pasta habits, but the only thing the oil does is isolate the pasta from the sauce later added. To prevent the pasta from sticking, we must control the cooking time and stir regularly.

4. Do not refresh the pasta with cold water once cooked.

Another common mistake. Unless we want to cool it to use in a salad, we should never run pasta through cold water. We would only be washing off the salt and removing the remaining starch that helps the sauce to stick better to the pasta.

5. First the sauce, then the pasta.

Sauce always takes longer to prepare, and it’s ideal to add the pasta to the sauce directly from the cooking water, so it is best to start with the sauce so everything in the mixing is fresh. By the way, the pasta finishes cooking with the heat of the sauce, so it’s better to never overcook it.

6. Choose the right cut.

At the end of the day, people can have pasta however they like, but some cuts go better with certain sauces. Short pasta is best for thick sauces or chunky sauces, so their cavities collect more sauce. Therefore, long pasta is better for lighter sauces.

7. Do not throw away all the cooking water.

Given the consistency the water gets after cooking the pasta, it becomes an excellent ingredient for making sauces and giving them texture. It’s always a good idea to reserve some of the cooking water.

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But here’s a trick Italian chefs swear by: if you save some of that water after draining the pasta, you can add a bit of it to the sauce you’re preparing (pesto, Bolognese, carbonara, etc.).

Adding a little pasta water to the sauce gives it a silkier texture.
The result? A smoother, more luscious pasta, thanks to the starch in the water, and a boost of flavor from the extra salt.

Just don’t overdo it: saving about one cup is usually enough, depending on the type of sauce you’re making.

Remember, the starch in the pasta water acts as a natural thickener, making it especially useful if your sauce turns out too thin.

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