These tips will make you a better cook

By Sohla El-Waylly, The New York Times

There are plenty of practical reasons for learning how to cook: saving money, controlling what you eat, knowing precisely what’s in your food. I’m in it for the impractical. I love making a 27-ingredient mole negro when a craving strikes, hosting half a dozen friends on the fly on a weeknight, transforming peanut butter into a four-course meal in under an hour just for kicks.

But I didn’t begin my culinary journey — working at fine-dining restaurants, hosting internet videos and eventually writing a cookbook — with extravagant meals or complex dishes. Every good cook first masters the basics, like correctly holding a knife, salting your food and getting to know your pans and burners. It might not seem exciting, but we all have to start somewhere. (I promise: Even a pro like Gordon Ramsay once chopped his onions slowly, unevenly and probably with a dull knife.) That’s why the team at New York Times Cooking...