Bad cooking habits that you must get rid of sooner than later

Many of you who has been trying to learn the skill of cooking or the ones who have been cooking since all these years must be thinking you've been doing everything right in there. Since you're taught to do things a certain way, you tend to follow it that particular way only, not knowing it might be a wrong way. This could lead to bad cooking habits that you've been practicing and which you should stop immediately.

Here are a few things that you've been doing wrong when it comes to cooking:

- You use old or expired spices: Spices are one of those groceries that have longer shelf life but that doesn't mean they don't have an expiry date on them. Dried herbs, spices and seasoning mixes in jars can last up to one or two years. But it's always better to check the expiry dates and also use fresher spices and herbs to flavour your food the right way.

- You check your food too often: This is something that most of you follow just so that you know how much time you need to give to the food to cook and whether it's cooking with the right consistency or no. This way you're only letting out the precious hot air that's needed for the food to cook each time you open the lid to check on the cooking food. It's always going to take longer time this way for the food to cook well.

- You overheat or don't preheat the pan: Before you start cooking, there are times when you either don't pre-heat the pan or just leave it overheated. Too cold or too hot a pan can actually ruin your food. There are certain foods that need certain kind of temperature of the pan, some need cold pan while others need just the right amount of heat on the pan and some can spoil if the pan is overheated.

- You overload the pan: This is also something that you end up doing when you can't gauge the amount of things you want to put in the pan or the size of the pan even. If you don't give food some space to cook, it won't cook the way you'd want it to. Overfilling the pan with all the ingredients will only take more time and less-than-satisfactory taste of the food.