How to taste as you cook

Why it matters more than any technique

A recipe is a set of assumptions: about the salt content of your stock, the acidity of your tomatoes, the size of your onion, the power of your hob, and the strength of your chilli. Every one of those varies, and none of them is knowable from the page.

Tasting is how you find out what you actually have rather than what the recipe assumed. It converts a set of instructions into a set of decisions, and it is the only feedback loop in cooking.

It is also the habit that builds the others. You cannot learn what salt does, or when a sauce needs acid, or how much a reduction concentrates, except by tasting before and after.

How to taste properly

• Use a clean spoon every time. Not the stirring spoon, and not the same spoon twice.
• Let it cool slightly. Very hot food suppresses your perception of salt and sweetness, so a scalding sauce tastes blander than it is.
• Taste on its own, without bread, which carries its own salt.
• Taste the components as well as the whole. The sauce, the vegetable and the meat separately, then together.
• Test adjustments in a small dish, not in the pot. A pinch of salt in a spoonful tells you what a teaspoon would do to the pan, and it is reversible.
• Rinse your palate with water between tastes of very strong things.

What to ask yourself

Five questions, in this order, each time you taste.

• Is it salty enough? Not "is it salty" — is every other flavour coming through.
• Does it need acid? If it tastes flat and salt is not fixing it, this is nearly always the answer.
• Is it rich enough, or too rich? Fat makes a thin dish satisfying and a rich one heavy.
• Is there anything sharp, bitter or raw sticking out? Uncooked flour, raw garlic, burnt spice, unreduced wine.
• Is it interesting? A balanced dish can still be dull. That is what herbs, zest, texture and heat are for.

When to taste

Specific moments, because "taste as you go" is too vague to act on.

After the aromatics soften

Is the base sweet and cooked, or still raw and harsh?

After adding liquid and bringing it up

How salty is the stock actually? This determines everything downstream.

Halfway through simmering

Is it going in the right direction? This is the last easy point to change course.

Just before it is finished

The main adjustment point. Salt, acid, sweetness.

After resting or standing

Flavours settle and often need a final lift.

On the plate, at the temperature it will be eaten

Cold food needs more seasoning than hot food to taste the same.

Building the habit

• Keep a pot of clean teaspoons by the hob and use a fresh one each time. If tasting is awkward you will not do it.
• Taste at every stage, not just at the end. A base that tastes of nothing does not become a dish that tastes of something.
• Taste the components separately as well as together — the sauce, then the sauce on the pasta. They are different judgements.
• Test a fix on a spoonful before committing the whole pot. This costs nothing and saves dinners.
• Taste at serving temperature. Cold food tastes markedly less salty and less sweet, which is why a chilled dish needs more seasoning than seems right.
• When your palate goes blind partway through, drink some water, eat something plain, or ask somebody else. Adaptation is real and it happens fast.

Common questions