Andrew Zimmern's Tips To Elevate Your Cooking Game

Whether you're a confident home cook or are just starting out in your culinary journey, it's always helpful to learn from professional chefs about how to improve your skills in the kitchen. Chef, restaurateur, and television personality Andrew Zimmern has lots of handy cooking tips — so when Food Republic spoke to him at the New York Wine & Food Festival, we asked him to give us some insider info. 

Zimmern's advice is simple yet highly effective, whether it's about turning up the heat for a superior sear or how to boost the flavor when sauteing broccoli. The chef is a master of adding unexpected ingredients to elevate dishes — dried limes are Zimmern's secret for zesty fried chicken, for example — so we're excited to try these tips, especially the one about adding fish sauce, butter, and sugar to amp up the taste of green veggies.

It's also reassuring to find out that the pro chef also discovers cooking tips and techniques from other people, whether it's young cooks learning new recipes or older people who have years of experience. It just goes to show that whatever level you're at, there's always room for improvement and inspiration.

Andrew Zimmern's first tip is simply to use a "hotter pan," and though it seems like a small thing to adjust, it can have a huge effect on the end result. "You'll sear better, and once you sear better, your food changes," he told Food Republic. "Once you're carrying more thermal velocity in your pan it's going to change your life." Since the difference between the Maillard reaction and caramelization is temperature, it's easy to see what a big difference turning up the heat can make with both the appearance and the flavor of your food. 

There are exceptions — you should never use a hot pan to cook bacon, for example, as it's best cooked slowly so the fat has a chance to render. But for things like steak or stir-frying, you really do need the pan as hot as you can get it.

"Little simple tricks" are an easy way to quickly elevate dishes, according to Andrew Zimmern. One easy way to do this is by incorporating a few extra ingredients. When he's cooking vegetables, for example, Zimmern said he adds "a teaspoon of brown sugar, a teaspoon of fish sauce, and a tablespoon of butter to finish sauteed broccoli in the pan."

A dash of fish sauce takes Brussels sprouts from good to gourmet, and it has a similar effect on other veggies, too. The sugar balances the savoriness and aids caramelization, while the butter adds a nice glaze and luxurious mouthfeel. Don't worry about the taste of the add-ins being too overpowering, either. "You can't tell any of those three are in there except the butter, and people go 'oh my god what is making that so good?'" said Zimmern. The unexpected ingredients are "a holy trinity for deliciousness," he added.

One way Andrew Zimmern likes to improve his own techniques and discover new ways to cook is by "paying attention to people who know what they're doing," he said. "There are tons of young people that I learn from all the time, they're spending time in their kitchens, they're learning new recipes, they're doing cool sh*t."

It's just as important, however, to disregard advice from those who are perhaps not so well-informed. "There are so many folks out there who are trading and making a living [from] misinformation in food," said the chef. Suffice to say, take the time to seek out people whose tips you can trust.

In addition to looking to younger chefs, Andrew Zimmern also relies on those with experience, too. It's common knowledge that, the longer you do something, the better you tend to get at it — and that applies to preparing and cooking food, too. It's why Anthony Bourdain's advice for slicing onions involves persistent practice. Equally, you can also absorb the wisdom other people have accrued over the years by learning from their experience. "I would encourage people to listen to folks who have been cooking a long time," advised Zimmern.

"Everyone says, 'I want grandmother wisdom,'" said the chef, and there are ways to get it. He added that Pasta Grannies, an Instagram account dedicated to heartwarming videos of Italian grandmothers preparing pasta dishes, is one of his favorite accounts, and it's easy to see why. "Those are the people I pay attention to! We should all pay attention to them."