A well-stocked pantry is your base of operations. Whether your kitchen is the size of Nebraska or a tiny kitchenette with one burner, you can make fantastic flavorful meals with just a few essentials and key preparations.

  1 | Be Organized. Before you start cooking, lay out all of your ingredients on your counter in the order you’ll use them. If chopped shallots and garlic go into the pan first, put them first in line. If your recipe calls for olive oil and butter, put that on the counter. There’s nothing worse than running to the fridge for an ingredient and having your onions burn when they’re supposed to just caramelize. A bit of prep on the front end goes a long way in helping you save time, cook with ease, and enjoy the process.

  2 | Trust your Tongue and Your Nose. Cooking is a sensual process. Take a moment to be present with your food and really educate your palate. The tongue knows sweet, salty, sour, and bitter, and your nose can pick up aromas. Take a bite with your eyes closed and try to identify what you’re tasting. In addition to recipe guidelines, these sensory tools will help you achieve balance, which is the foundation of great flavor.

  3 | Know Thy Salt. Used in the right amount, salt brings out the best flavor of each ingredient. But all salts are not the same. Kosher salt has a clean flavor and crystals big enough to see and feel between your fingers. Use it as often as you can. Snowflake the salt evenly over your meat, fish, and veggies and taste the natural flavors of your dish jump forward. Sea salt, with its deep mineral quality, is great for finishing off food before it’s served.

  4 | Manage the Heat When Sautéing, Roasting, Baking, Broiling, and Braising. Understand when to cook over low heat versus high heat. Using continuous high heat can burn food on the outside before its insides cook through. (Exception: Steak. See #5 below.)

Sautéing involves quick-and-easy high heat on the stove top, resulting in great color on chops, steaks, fillets, and thinner cuts of protein, as well as vegetables.

Roasting is an ideal “surround-sound high heat” for slowly browning larger cuts of meat with high fat content, like a whole chicken, beef roast, rack of lamb, or pork loin. These meats need more time to cook in the center, but also beg for a deep golden brown exterior.

Baking is “surround-sound gentle heat,” best for lower-fat proteins like fish, or for pastries and scones, or for finishing off a chicken breast or pork tenderloin that was first sautéed on the outside for color but needs a lower heat and slower finish to retain its juices.

Broiling is the “sunbathing of cooking”—quick high heat on the top only. Broiling your dish (placed on the top rack of the oven) is the perfect way to toast bread crumbs after baking your mac and cheese, to make a golden cheese crust on the top of a lasagna, and to yield bread that is crispy on top but still soft in the center (see Pan y Tomate Tapas).

Braising is baking with liquid covering approximately one-third of your protein, to keep less fatty cuts of meat moist. Usually large cuts of protein with minimal fat need long, moist, slow cooking to soften their connective tissue (the elastic strands that make meat tough). Braising is great for shoulder cuts, leg of lamb, and Osso Bucco.

  5 | Pay Attention to Fat. Generally, the lower a dish’s fat content, the lower the heat you should use to cook it, because fat acts as a buffer to heat. A pork tenderloin dries out under high heat. A fatty cut of beef (or even a lean, succulent steak) cooked over high heat on both sides yields a thick, golden crust and a perfectly medium-rare center.

  6 | Give your Meat a Rest. After cooking, leaving your meat on top of the stove for fifteen minutes allows its juices to be reabsorbed. This way, the juices stay in the meat and in your mouth, instead of running out onto your plate.

  7 | Reduce for Flavor. A reduction is simply the result of boiling down wine or liquids—usually until you have half the amount you started with. When the water from these liquids evaporates, the solids—which hold the real flavor—are concentrated. Reducing naturally thickens sauces, intensifies flavors, and removes most of the alcohol.

  8 | Be Careful When Thickening Sauces with Flour or Cornstarch. But using too much starch can sometimes yield a bland taste and pasty texture. Before adding starches to your dish, mix them with a touch of water to create a slurry that you can easily whisk into your sauce. Start slowly and continually taste sauces thickened with these ingredients, and boil them until any starchy flavors disappear. If you add too much, you can always add stock, milk, or cream to thin out your sauce.

  9 | Color Equals Flavor. Taste a slice of raw red bell pepper. Now heat some oil, drop in a slice of bell pepper, and cook until golden. As the color deepens, the pepper’s strong, acrid essence converts to sugar, creating a natural sweetness. Likewise, the sharp taste of a raw onion becomes sweet and caramel—in flavor and color—when cooked.

  10 | Balancing Flavors AND Textures is Key. Size does matter. Small is usually better. A small slice of red onion will add a palate-cleansing kick to a salad. The same red onion cut in a thick chunk will overpower the salad. On the other hand, a large chunk of boiled potato will have a richer, creamier center than a small one.

  11 | Grind your Spices for Bolder Flavors. Think about the intense blast of flavor you get from the simple twist of a pepper mill. Now think about the flavor of pre-ground pepper. There is simply no comparing the flavor of freshly ground spices and their pre-ground counterparts. Whole spices contain precious oils that are released the minute you grind them, providing intense and aromatic flavors. Pre-ground spices have their place in cooking, but they’re far less potent and, in some cases, almost unrecognizable from their freshly ground origins, having oxidized long before their use. If you buy whole seeds and freshly grind them yourself with a mortar and pestle or in a small coffee grinder, they can be three times more flavorful than a store-bought ground spice and last up to four times as long, stored in an airtight container. Plus, it’s so simple. Grinding your own spices is as quick and easy as grinding coffee beans.

  12 | Toasting Spices intensifies their flavors, especially seeds like cumin, coriander, and mustard, which love to be toasted. The popular Indian spice fenugreek loses its bitterness and becomes mellow and rich. Ground turmeric comes to life. Black pepper becomes almost like a chile pepper spice when toasted. Sesame seeds become golden and sweet.

To toast, simply put your whole spices in a pan over medium heat and toast for about 2 minutes, or until you start to smell their fragrance, while stirring constantly to avoid burning. They will become slightly brown. Let the spices cool for about 3 minutes before grinding them. Toasting spices in a pan is also referred to as dry roasting. You can toast ground turmeric, garam masala, and smoked paprika in a little bit of canola oil or olive oil to wake up their glory.

  13 | Herbs are Best When Used Fresh. Like spices, herbs are huge agents of flavor, full of precious oils, and are worlds apart from their dried, pre-ground counterparts. There’s no comparing the deep green vibrancy of fresh basil, for example, with the relatively bland dried basil. The former has a deep green, sweet anise-scented vibrancy to it. The latter tastes like paper. Of course dried herbs have their place in cooking, especially in cuisines that historically called for them—like herbes de Provence, whose components are harvested when in season and then dried and used throughout the year. But choose fresh basil, cilantro, tarragon, parsley, mint, and, in some cases, rosemary, thyme, and sage, whenever possible.

All fresh herbs should be submerged in cold water, then pulled out and spun dry in a salad spinner or blotted well in a paper towel to get the dirt off prior to cooking or plating. This also keeps chopped herbs bright and full when garnishing a dish. One exception, however, is basil. Basil leaves can be used without rinsing since rinsing modifies their delicate nature and removes precious oils.

CHILES

  14 | Spice Does Not Mean Spiciness, but in the case of chiles, it does. For flavor, spiciness, and heat, we’ve got chiles. Chiles are the gatekeepers to your taste buds. The heat-packing power in chiles comes from a compound called capsaicin, and it varies along with the color and flavor of the chiles. Some chiles are mild and fruity. Others are crisp, grassy, and vegetal. Some are so hot they can almost melt your tongue. Others are happily mild. The best way to keep chiles fresh for the long haul is to put them in your freezer and simply grate them directly onto your food. It’s as easy as that.

  15 | Seeds are the Source of Heat. The tiny seeds inside of chiles are responsible for the chiles’ incredible heat and get bathed in capsaicin when you cut the chiles. By scraping out the seeds and the vein layer inside chiles, you reduce their heat. The more seeds you add to your food, the hotter it gets.

  16 | Dried Chiles Enjoy Richer, Deeper Flavors. Chiles are fantastically transformed when dried. Smoke and dry a fresh jalapeño, for example, and you get a chipotle. Do the same with a fresh poblano and you get an ancho.

Dried chiles can stay fresh at room temperature because most of their moisture is gone. I store mine in a jar in a cool, dark place and they last for months. You can also store them in the refrigerator if you have room.

  17 | Rehydrate Dried Chiles and Watch Their Flesh and Flavors Spring Back to Life. To rehydrate, pull the stem off a dried chile. Shake out half the seeds or all of them—remember: seeds equal heat. Drop the chile into a saucepan filled with cold water and set it over high heat. Bring the water to a boil, turn off the heat, cover the pot, and let the chile sit for 1 to 2 hours until soft (not leathery).

Remove the chiles from the water and puree in a blender. This puree makes a perfect homemade chile paste.

And don’t throw out the chile water—it’s packed with flavor. Taste it. If it’s not too bitter, use it as a stock to thin out your salsas or sauces for an even richer heat.

  18 | Chili Powder and Chile Flakes are Worlds Apart. Chili powder is generally made from anchos and other spices (paprika, dried oregano, cumin) and has a dark, smoky flavor. It’s best cooked into a sauce or rubbed over meat before you barbecue. Chile flakes (also known as crushed red pepper flakes), on the other hand, are pure dried, crushed chiles (often chiles de árbol) that include heat-bearing seeds. They have a clean but powerful heat that almost adds an acidity and cleansing balance to dishes, without the smoky intensity of the powder. They also have the virtue of staying separate when you cook. Add a pinch of chile flakes to pasta with some shaved Parmesan cheese, for example, and you not only have flavor, but you have decorative red heat visually peppering your dish. Chile flakes are widely available in the spice section of most supermarkets.

  19 | Use Different Oils for Different Dishes. Inexpensive regular olive oils are great for sautéing and grilling. Consider a more expensive, delicious, full-flavored extra virgin olive oil when making simple salad dressings (like lemon juice or red wine vinegar) or garnishing a bruschetta, or as a finishing drizzle on hummus or fresh vegetables. Generally, the more expensive the olive oil, the stronger the taste (spicy, green-olive peppery), so make sure you don’t let the olive oil overpower your dressing.

Canola oil is great any time you need a cooking medium but don’t need to add flavor, as is the case with Mexican cooking. It’s also great for rubbing on the grill. (It has a higher flash point, so it can take higher heat than other oils.)

  20 | The Most Important Tool in your Kitchen is your Heart. Food is all about love and communion with people. It’s the story of the world—of cultures, history, and geography—and the glue that keeps us together. Cooking with your heart and with passion is the true key to success and the best way to spread joy around.