5 Tips for Healthy Cooking - written by Phil Tucker

We all would like to improve our way around the kitchen, to become a little more confident and assured as we navigate the pots and pans, the sauces and baking, the oven usage and measuring. Whether we like cooking comfort food, baking extravagant desserts, or trying new recipes from different cultures, your experience in the kitchen can be fun, healthy, and efficient. However, too many of us don't have the benefit of learning the tips and tricks that an experienced cook can often pass down to a fresh beginner, so in today's article we're going to look at five such tips to help you become more confident in the kitchen, and improve your odds of producing a delicious dish the next time you try your hand at a new recipe.

The first piece of advice may seem superfluous, but it's fundamental to any positive experience in the kitchen: relax and have fun. The more you relax and enjoy yourself, the more fun the process of cooking will be, and the more delicious the results. Play some good music, give yourself plenty of time, work with fresh ingredients, and the results are guaranteed to come out tasting better for it.

Second, make sure you have plenty of space in which to work. Trying to do your chopping on the small corner of a crowded table will only lead to disasters and accidents. Not only that, but try to prep all your ingredients before you get started so that you can dive right through, and not risk burning something as you rush to chop the next needed ingredient.

Third, don't worry about following recipes to the exact milligram. Instead, allow yourself to act freely, shooting for accuracy but also knowing that a little bit more or less of a spice won't ruin the world. Learn to measure things with your eye, develop your instinct for how much you need. It will make everything easier.

Creatine is a nitrogenous organic acid (say that three times fast) which naturally occurs in your body and is a key component of energy generation in your cells, especially your muscle cells. The way it does this is by helping your body put together ATP, which is the acronym for adenosine triphosphate. We've known about creatine for almost two hundred years, when it was discovered by Michel Chevreul who named it after the Greek word for meat.

Where does creatine occur in the human body? It's made by your kidneys and liver from where it is transported to your muscles. About half the creatine in your body is derived from food, while the other half is created by your body, making creatine an inessential nutrient. Consequently vegetarians tend to have vastly lower amounts of creatine in their bodies. Creatine is used by our muscle cells to accelerate our usage of ATP, though the amount we normally find in our cells limits the amount we can absorb. That is where creatine supplementation comes in, increasing the amount we can synthesize due to the heightened levels that are consequently found in our cells.

Fourth, get to know your oven. Each oven is different, has its own personality and temperament. One oven's 350 degrees might be a second oven's 400. So get a good thermometer and figure out what's what with your own.

Fifth, always read through a recipe first and check to make sure you know what you're going to have to do, and what you're going to need to make it happen. Too many people simply glance through and get started, only to realize they're missing a key ingredient or piece of equipment.