Culinary Tip Of The Day: Taste Your Food!

Next to actually cooking the food you serve from your food truck, to taste your food as you cook is arguably the most important part of cooking.

For most vendors, tasting is automatic, but why? Recipes don’t always call for the proper amount of seasoning, cooking times are estimates, and results vary depending on the qualities of your ingredients, your stove and the altitude you operate your food truck at. Ultimately, your palate should be used as quality control.

Cooking without tasting would be like painting a picture without looking at it. Some chefs create dishes from a mere scattering of raw and unrelated ingredients to plated works of art that, when tasted, suffer from unbalanced flavors, lack of seasoning, or, worse, no taste at all. We all eat with our eyes long before the food ever hits our taste buds, and we’re all about presenting beautiful dishes, but aesthetics aside, the point is to eat the food. So make it taste good.

And how will you know it tastes good without tasting it?

Pro Tip: Not all taste buds are located on the tongue. Some are found on the roof of the mouth and in the throat.

Tasting your food and seasoning as you go should fast become a regular part of your routine while cooking, regardless of what your recipe says. We’re not giving you carte blanche to double dip with your tasting spoon or to dump loads of salt and pepper into everything, but tasting is a critical part of preparing food. If you season and taste as you go, the food you serve your customers from your food truck will taste better.

Do you taste your food before sending it out to your customers? If not, why not? Let us know in the comment section below or on social media. Facebook | Twitter