Kardea Brown Has The Ultimate Advice Rookie Cooks Should Not Ignore

Kardea Brown, the host of Food Network's "Delicious Miss Brown," knows a thing or two about cooking — including what you should keep in mind if you're just starting out your journey as a home cook. Brown shared the wise advice with Daily Meal when we spoke to her at the New York City Wine & Food Festival.

Brown's biggest advice for rookie cooks? Failure is totally okay. Brown says, "[Failure] does a few things for you, it teaches you a valuable lesson as well [as] shows that you're human. So don't get caught up in perfection, because perfection is not even a real thing." The next step, Brown advises, is to learn from those failures and improve yourself as a home cook. Brown has even spoken about learning the common mistake that will strip the flavor from chicken soup: Not browning the ingredients before adding liquids. And there are plenty of other common mishaps that home cooks can learn from.

Even though failure can be a good thing, it doesn't hurt to learn about some common mistakes that beginner cooks tend to make. To start, Daily Meal has a list of general bad cooking habits that you should be on the lookout for — these include overcrowding the pan and not preheating correctly. 

One pro tip is to read the entire recipe before you start cooking, which is something beginners may skip. This allows you to get an idea of each step that is to come, as well as what equipment and ingredients you should have ready to go. And speaking of ingredients, a beginner cook may think that leaving something out might not make a difference to the entire recipe. This may be detrimental in some cases, such as leaving out baking powder (or another leavening agent) when making baked goods. 

It's also a good idea to look into cooking tips that beginners need to know, including learning how to season and measure correctly. By learning these tips before starting, you're less likely to make a crucial mistake. Instead, you may just make a less important mistake that won't completely ruin the dish — which you'll, in turn, learn from and make a better dish the next time.