Welcome to The Toasted Almond! Our goal is to bring you delicious food. Period. Many of these delicious treats are going to be recipes—some will be my own original recipes and some will be recipes that I found and changed, or that I just found and loved. I’ll always give credit where credit is due, so if you want to look up the original recipe to compare, feel free.
I figured, what better way to welcome you to the blog than to start off with a few basic tips. If you’re new to the kitchen (or not so new but don’t really know what’s what), this post is for you. I’m going to outline a few of the most important steps that will apply to every single recipe that you’ll ever make (probably). A lot of these are things that I’ve picked up along the way because, like you, I’ve had that moment where I was halfway done mixing ingredients to bake a cake and… I had no milk so I had to suddenly get dressed (because cooking in PJ’s is way more fun) and go to the store to buy milk. So, without further ado, here are the steps that I’ve found to be the most important:
1. Make sure you have all of the ingredients you need! As you probably realized from my story before, having all of the ingredients is kind of important and will prevent you from running all over the place and disrupting your cooking. Don't skip this step!
2. Preheat the oven (if necessary). Because, if you’re like me, you’ll forget to turn it on until right before you need to pop everything into the oven. For recipes I write here, that will usually be the first step I write.
- This deserves its own little sub-number: if you’re grilling, make sure you have propane!!!! And also, preheat the grill. I only say this because I love you. And I want to prevent you from driving all over your neighborhood at 9pm, only to realize that you need to wait until morning to refill your tank because all of the stations are closed. This may or may not be from personal experience…
3. Prep all of your ingredients before you start cooking. This seems silly, but it can save you time, prevent you from burning things, and just make your life easier. If something needs to be chopped, chop it and put it aside. If you need toasted almonds, toast them first. If you need 1 cup of milk, measure it and put it aside. You get the idea. It’s helpful to put everything into separate bowls next to your work area so you can grab them as needed. I have a bunch of ramekins that are useful for just this purpose (and also for soufflés!)—they’re inexpensive and handy. They’re also good snack bowls, and who doesn’t love snacks?
4. Set up your work area. This probably sounds more formal than it needs to. I just mean, put all of your ingredients next to the mixing bowl, pot, or whatever they’re about to go into before you get started. Make sure that the area isn’t too cluttered so that you don’t lose anything.
5. Congratulations! You’re ready to cook!