14 Cooking Time Mistakes You Need To Stop Making

When you're learning to cook, you figure one thing out pretty quickly: Timing is everything. You can spend all your money on the best ingredients and the fanciest equipment, and finesse your technique through countless hours of practice — but you make one mistake when it comes to your timings and your meal is ruined. Keeping an eye on the time when you cook is crucial to ensuring that your food comes out perfect, and is not overcooked or underdone. However, this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to cooking timing, and forgetting to account for times around the minutes or hours it takes for your food to cook can also destroy your hard work.

It's important to remember that everything's a matter of time in the kitchen, and miscalculating or rushing one aspect will ruin another. For instance, if you're not leaving enough time for your food to marinate, rest, or come up to temperature, you may end up with a worse result, or it could have a knock-on effect on how long your food takes to cook. Additionally, forgetting to consider how timings translate between appliances can leave you with a bad meal. The good thing, though, is that so many mistakes can be fixed.

Timers are one of your biggest allies in the kitchen, and yet so many people forget how essential they are. A good kitchen timer isn't just a tool that tells you how many minutes have passed: It also helps you streamline your activities and work to the clock, as well as keeping your attention on the task at hand. All of these things result in your food being much better — especially when you're making meals that you may not time as carefully, like sautéed or boiled dishes, which we tend to be a lot looser with.

The good news is that timers are pretty much everywhere, so there's no excuse not to use them. You can set one on your phone, on your smartwatch, or through your Alexa or Siri. The advantage of using modern technology is that you can set multiple timers simultaneously, allowing you to keep track of several aspects of your dish at once. However, we're a fan of a good old-fashioned kitchen timer, and a big one at that. Grab yourself a large retro timer and place it somewhere prominent in your kitchen. It'll look good, and it'll make your food taste good.

In many cases, the time that meat takes to cook is not the actual amount of time you'll need. A lot of meat dishes need space on either side of this, to either marinate or rest, and both of these steps can vastly improve your dish. Both of these steps also take a whole lot of time. Take marinating steak, for instance. You can get away with marinating a steak for about half an hour to improve its flavor, but in some situations and with specific recipes, you may need between 12-24 hours to achieve perfect results.

Resting meat can also take longer than you think, especially if you're working with a large joint. The general rule of thumb is that each 100 grams of meat requires around a minute of resting time, and if you're working with a piece that weighs in at several kilos then you could require the better part of an hour. Unfortunately, you just can't rush either of these steps, and while there are some ways to slightly speed up marinating time, cooking or serving your meat before it's done will make it worse.

Meat can cook incredibly quickly, but that's not always the case. There are many situations where cooking meat takes a long, long time, and in these circumstances, it pays to give it the hours it needs. When you cook meat slowly, you give the collagen in its protein structure the time it needs to break down, resulting in a tender, juicier result. Additionally, you cook your meat way more evenly, avoiding any patchy coloration or irregular textures.

Some meat recipes can take around 9 hours to properly cook in a slow cooker, and things may take even longer if you're barbecuing or smoking your meat. Trying to rush this process is a fool's game, and while your meat may technically be safe to eat, you can guarantee it won't be tasty. To avoid the temptation to speed things up, you should always assess how long you'll need for a meat recipe several days ahead of time. Even checking how long it'll take the morning of the day you're making it may not leave you with enough hours to properly cook it.

We love getting ahead with our meals, and we're a big component of cooking food ahead of time. It's a great way to save precious minutes at the end of a working day, when all you want to do is eat and put your feet up. However, one key mistake people make is assuming that almost any type of food can be prepared ahead of time. In reality, there are a lot of foods out there that should only be prepared fresh, and if you try to make them in advance, you'll just end up making them again when you actually want to eat.

Shrimp, for example, is a food that should only be cooked fresh. When you reheat shrimp, it turns incredibly rubbery and tough, and it's not that great cold either. Anything breaded will also suffer when it's reheated, and it'll usually lose its crispiness the moment it cools down. You should also watch out for starchy dishes like risotto and gnocchi, neither of which retain their pleasing pillowy-ness when reheated, and instead turn gloopy. 

Convection ovens are pretty amazing, folks. These ovens (also known as fan ovens) work by blowing hot air around your food, producing the same result as a standard oven would but helping the dish cook way more rapidly. Because of this rapid result, though, you'll need to adjust your timings accordingly. Unfortunately, a whole lotta people don't do this, and just throw their food in for the amount of time recommended for standard oven cooking — and then they burn their meal.

As a standard rule, convection ovens cook food around 25% faster than conventional ones. As such, you just need to take a quarter off your cooking time. This is just a starting point, though, and certain convection ovens may be quicker (or slower) to cook food, so it's always best to keep an eye on your meals while they're cooking. Don't forget, either, that if you're following convection oven instructions in a standard oven, you'll need to add about a quarter more of your time to cook your food properly. Don't get caught out and end up with an underdone dish.

Perhaps one of the most frustrating mistakes people make is failing to prepare for their meal, and that always starts with reading the recipe. "Wait a minute," we hear you cry, "I always read the recipe before starting." Sure — but are you looking at how long it'll take, or just the ingredients and the steps required? We're willing to bet that you've skipped over the preparation and cooking times on a fair few occasions, and that you've spent way more time cooking a meal than you've wanted to.

Well, if this is you, you should check how long things will take to cook in the future. This isn't just so you know when you'll be finished in the kitchen — it's so you know when you need to start cooking too. Once you've established this, you can plan the rest of your day accordingly, and ensure that everyone is eating at an appropriate time. You can also figure out if you'll need more time than the recipe specifies. If, for example, it's a new recipe that requires some brand-new chopping skills, then you know that you might need to give yourself extra time to get things just right.

If you like caramelized onions, you're not alone. Few things hit the spot like the sweet-savory, intense flavor of a well-cooked tangle of onions. Sadly, though, one of the biggest mistakes people make with caramelized onions is not giving them enough time. To break down properly, onions need way more time than you likely think, and you may need to cook them for around 45 minutes (and maybe even a full hour) to get the maximum amount of flavor.

Having said this, there are a few tricks that could help you speed up caramelized onions. Some people recommend adding water to the onions in your pan and then putting a lid on top, which essentially helps them steam and break down more quickly. Others advocate using baking soda to speed up the chemical reactions required to caramelize them effectively. To be honest, though, while some of these techniques might be effective, none of them will be as good as giving yourself the proper amount of time.

Have you ever bought an expensive piece of meat, only to cook it as per the package or recipe instructions — and then find that it's tough and chewy? If you have, you probably haven't given it the time needed to come to room temperature. When you try to cook your meat from cold, you can end up with irregularly cooked, rubbery pieces of meat that have uneven juice distribution. You may also find that your meat is more watery, which can occur due to steam generation while it's cooking.

You can avoid this by allowing it to warm up before cooking, but this is something you really can't speed up. You'll need to rest meat for around an hour at room temperature before you cook it, and while thinner cuts might be a bit quicker, it's essentially impossible to rush this process. Meat is dense, and it needs the time required for the coldness to properly disperse from its center. Therefore, next time you're making meat, make sure you plan ahead and take it out about an hour before you plan to start cooking.

Doubling a recipe seems like one of the easiest things in the world to do. You just take the ingredients required, buy double the amount, use a slightly larger pan, and hey presto: Dinner for two. However, if you're doubling a recipe, you're gonna want to ignore the cook times. The problem is that when you're using more of everything in a recipe, the heat will take longer to permeate and cook the food properly.

Because you're generally not adjusting the heat when doubling a recipe, because that can result in burnt food, you'll need to adjust your timings instead. The original timings are a good starting point, but try adding five minutes or so extra on top of them. This may not be a hard and fast rule for all foods: Some pan-fried foods may only require a minute or two extra, while other recipes (like slow cooker ones) may need more time than specified. The key is to keep a constant eye on your food while it's cooking, and to check it constantly when it's in its final stages. Alternatively, you can cook your food in batches, which will allow you to stick to your original timings.

Preheating the oven feels like a lot of work for something that is actually no work at all. All it takes is a flick of the wrist 10 or 15 minutes before your food is ready to go in to turn it on — but despite this, so many folks fail to do it. They pop on their oven the moment their food is ready to go in, and then their meal comes out undercooked and disappointing.

The key thing to remember when preheating your oven versus cooking in a cold one, is that a preheated oven starts the chemical reactions required to cook your food faster. As a result, your food generates a better interior result, and gains the glorious brownness and crispiness we all want from oven-cooked meals. If you're starting with a cold oven, though, you're basically warming your food as your oven heats. This can produce an altogether different end result, and an inferior texture. Although dishes that cook in a pot or a covered dish can do well when starting with a cold oven, most meals are way better when you put them in a hot one.

It's easy to treat temperatures and times fairly loosely when it comes to cooking — and while you can get away with a few minutes or a slightly different temperature here and there, it pays to be accurate. That accuracy is especially important when you're changing up the temperature in a recipe. If you forget to adjust your timings when using different temperatures, you'll likely burn or undercook your food.

The good news is that there's a way to adjust your timings with a good amount of accuracy, to correlate with your change in temperature. You first have to work out the percentage difference in your temperatures. For example, if you're changing your temperature from 450 degrees Fahrenheit to 500, then you just divide 450 by 500 to get 0.9, or 90%. You then know that you have to work out what 90% of your original time is. Multiply your original time by 0.9, or whatever number you end up with, and you'll get your new and improved timings. Crucially, these timings may not be absolutely perfect, especially when you take different ovens or air fryers into account, which can produce slightly different temperatures. Use them as a guide, not a rule.

If you want to get a serious sizzle, you've got to preheat your frying pans. The principle behind preheating a frying pan is the same as preheating an oven: When your food meets your hot pan, it cooks way more effectively and can achieve a deeper caramelization and crispiness. Unfortunately, though, a lot of people are spending way too much time preheating their pans. Doing so can reduce the lifespan of your cookware, and may end up destroying your meal.

Nonstick pans are especially prone to degrade when preheated for too long. When you preheat a nonstick pan, it can quickly become overheated, which leads to the nonstick surface breaking down. Although adding oil to the pan when you preheat it can help, this can also warm the oil up to the point where it begins to break down, releasing plumes of smoke through your kitchen.

Conversely, a lot of people simply don't preheat their pans for long enough. Cast iron pans, for example, generally need five to ten minutes of preheating before they're ready to go. Because the pans are so heavy-duty and the heat moves through them more slowly, trying to rush the preheating process will lead to poorly cooked food.

Chopping your ingredients ahead of time sounds like an obvious thing to do, right? Well, you'd be amazed by how many people forget to do it. The prep method for your ingredients is a vital thing to master in ensuring that your cooking experience goes smoothly. If you're hurriedly chopping ingredients when you've already started cooking, you're in a race against the clock to get everything prepared before what's already in your pan starts to burn. This can quickly lead to badly cooked food, ingredients that are chopped terribly, and a lot of stress.

Rather than put yourself through all this, aim for what chefs call the "mise en place." Mise en place (which means "everything in its place") refers to the set-up you should try to create before you cook any dish, with every ingredient chopped and separated. It can be a good idea to place ingredients in different bowls, and then put them in the order that you'll add them to your pan. You should also prepare any herbs, spices, and sauces that you're putting in your dish, and put out some additional bowls or plates if you're cooking things separately, so that you can quickly decant your food.

An hour's an hour, right? Whether you're putting your food in the oven, the air fryer, or the microwave, it's easy to make the mistake that the times on the back of your food will correspond to any of your appliances. The problem is, they won't — and failing to adjust your times for your new cooking method will leave you with some terrible food, with your dish either burnt or raw.

This is a fairly common cooking mistake for first-time air fryer users. Air fryers are mini convection ovens, but their smaller dimensions and higher power mean that you need less time and a lower temperature. It's generally advised that you reduce your standard oven cooking time by about 20% when cooking food in an air fryer, and knock around 25 degrees Fahrenheit off things too. When you're swapping your oven for a microwave, timings should be tweaked even more. You need about 75% less time when cooking in your microwave, meaning that some foods that cook in half an hour could take way less than ten minutes.