---
title: '12 simple ideas that ACTUALLY improved how I cook.'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=YzWNJBr6th4'
video_id: 'YzWNJBr6th4'
date: 2026-07-08
duration_sec: 1236
---

# 12 simple ideas that ACTUALLY improved how I cook.

> Source: [12 simple ideas that ACTUALLY improved how I cook.](https://youtube.com/watch?v=YzWNJBr6th4)

## Summary

The video shares 12 small ideas about food and cooking that have made the creator's time in the kitchen easier, more flexible, and more exciting. These ideas are broken into three categories: ingredients, techniques, and kitchen upgrades, and they interconnect into a simple weeknight meal made in about 10 minutes.

### Key Points

- **Use shallots instead of onions** [00:58] — Shallots are sweeter, more aromatic, and work raw or cooked without overpowering. They are more convenient and reduce waste since you use the whole thing.
- **Dried dill is underrated** [03:10] — Dried dill is its own spice with anise-y, citrusy notes. It works well in cooked food and creamy sauces, like a quick ranch made with yogurt, mayo, and dill.
- **Know when to pay for convenience** [05:04] — Buying convenience products like chopped chipotles in adobo, sour cream in a squeeze bottle, and individually portioned feta reduces waste and friction, making it easier to use ingredients.
- **Buy cheap steak for other uses** [07:50] — Cheap steak can be chopped, seared, and used in stir-fries, rice bowls, or pitas instead of being the centerpiece. It's cost-effective and versatile.
- **Add spices after cooking** [09:30] — Adding spices like cumin or chipotle after the heat is off preserves volatile aroma compounds, making flavors brighter and more intentional.
- **Cut vegetables to control flavor** [11:10] — The shape of vegetable cuts affects texture and taste. Thin slivers blend in, while thicker cuts stand out. Think about the role each cut plays.
- **Build contrast, not complexity** [12:07] — Focus on clear contrasts in temperature, texture, and flavor (e.g., warm steak vs. cool veggies, creamy sauce vs. crunchy lettuce) rather than adding many ingredients.
- **Cook what you have, not what the recipe says** [13:30] — Adapt recipes based on available ingredients. Great dishes like carbonara or birria came from cooking with what was on hand.
- **Organize spices for enjoyment** [15:48] — Use matching glass jars and a custom drawer insert to make the spice drawer visually calm and easy to use, encouraging more cooking.
- **Use drawer liners** [17:15] — Non-slip liners keep utensils and cutlery in place, making drawers feel better and reducing friction.
- **Keep a bar caddy in the fridge** [17:57] — A dedicated container for leftover prep items like ginger, peppers, or citrus makes them visible and more likely to be used.
- **Switch to a food service foil roll** [18:39] — A large foil roll is cheaper per foot and easier to use. Keep it near the stove for quick access during cooking.

### Conclusion

These 12 small ideas—ingredients, techniques, and kitchen upgrades—interconnect to make cooking easier and more enjoyable. The key is to adapt, use what you have, and reduce friction in the kitchen.

## Transcript

Over the past year, I've been paying attention to a handful of small ideas about food and cooking that have genuinely made my life better. Now, none of these are revolutionary on their own,
but together they've made my time in the kitchen feel easier, more flexible, and a bit more exciting. So, in this video, I want to share 12 of those ideas, and I've broken them down into three categories. First are four ingredients I've completely changed my mind about. Second are
four techniques I find myself using way more often, and lastly, our four small kitchen upgrades that have made me happier. Now, the goal here isn't for you just to memorize this list. I want
to show you how these ideas can kind of have a butterfly effect in the kitchen. And by the end of this video, you'll see how these 12 individual ideas on their own can become interconnected into this simple weeknight meal that I made in about 10 minutes. So to start, let's talk about the
ingredients that I've changed my mind about, and the first idea is try using shallots instead of onions. This one is simple. For most quick lunches and dinners in the past year, I will reach for
shallots instead of onions now. And when I first got into cooking, I would only buy and use shallots when a recipe specifically called for them. And I think this led me to believe that there's some kind of fancy ingredient, like you should only be using them for a risotto or maybe a nice pasta
dish. However, now I just treat them like a general all-purpose allium similar to how you use onions and garlic and there are two main reasons why I use them so much now. First is flavor.
Straight up, I just like the flavor of shallots more. They're a little sweeter, more aromatic, and they work both raw and cooked without overpowering the dish. And this actually started after the onion deep dive I did a couple of years ago. I feel like this was the first time I really
understood what the flavor of shallots actually are and why I like them so much. And ever since then, I've just slowly gravitated towards using them, and there's a second reason for that as well. They are more convenient, and I waste less of them. With onions, I'm constantly ending up
with a half or quarter of an onion that sits in the fridge and then slowly disappears. But to me, shallots are basically like nature's better tasting pre-packaged onion. It's usually the perfect amount. I can slice and dice the whole thing, toss away the paper, and I'm done. There's
no leftovers, no forgotten produce, no extra baking. When used raw, they are great sliced into things like pizzas, salads, or sandwiches, and when they're cooked, you can use them anywhere you'd normally sweat down or cook an onion. I've tested them in chopped cheese, I've done an
Oklahoma onion smash burger with shallots instead, and they're absolutely phenomenal. Obviously, they also work in all the classic use cases too, like pasta dishes, risottos, and sautéed vegetables, But that's really it. I tend to just pick up a couple when I'm at the store and use them freely.
So today, I'm going to be using my shallots raw as kind of a little garnish for our pita. But now, let's head back to the spice drawer and talk about idea number two. And that is, dried dill is criminally underrated.
Dried dill has become one of my most used spices this year, and I think it's probably the jar that I've refilled the second most. So here's why dried dill works and why I was wrong about it for a long time.
You see, I've always loved fresh dill, the same way I love fresh cilantro or fresh parsley. However, dried cilantro and dried parsley to me have no redeeming qualities, and I think I unfairly lumped dried dill into that same category.
And that was a mistake, because dried dill is not a one-to-one substitute for fresh dill, but that's kind of the point. When dill dries, you lose some of that bright green top note, but what sticks around are kind of anise-y, slightly citrus-y, aromatic compounds,
and those work really well in cooked food and creamy sauces. And this is how my perspective shifted. Instead of thinking of dried dill as kind of this bad, fresh dill, I kind of realized it's its own spice and has its own job that it does well.
And here are the two ways that I like to implement it. First are simple applications. Plain roasted potatoes with a heavy hand of dry dill are absolutely fantastic, and that's kind of where I started, just throwing it on simple food to see what it did.
And the second application, and this is by far the thing I do the most, is a quick, creamy, soft condiment. I make some version of this kind of healthy ranch three to four times a week for quick lunches, and the base is dead simple.
One part Greek yogurt or low-fat sour cream, one part mayo, a bunch of dry dill, and then from there I'll tweak it depending on what I'm using it for. Could be a little black pepper, garlic powder, and red pepper flakes. Sometimes I'll add lemon juice or a little pickling liquid or some salt if it needs it.
And that's it. I'm constantly making some variation of this dill forward sauce, and that's what's going to be going into this pita we're making today. Now, let's talk about idea number three, and that is know when to pay for convenience.
If you walk into a grocery store today there are so many convenience products pre vegetables pre burger patties and salad mixes and a lot of them I just don think are really worth it That said, everyone draws that line in a different place.
And over time, I've started to keep track of a few products I realize I primarily buy for their convenience, and I wanted to share three of them that I typically keep in my fridge. So first up are chopped chipotles adobo in a jar.
These store easily in the fridge. You can use exactly what you need. And then you're not dealing with a half-used metal can next time that you don't know how to seal up. And I made a whole video on this if you want to check it out. The second ingredient is sour cream in a squeeze bottle.
It's faster to grab, easier to control, and just cleaner to use. I typically don't need to grab out an extra spoon. I can add a small dollop and move on. And the last one are these individually portioned Sheetz Milfetto, which is what I'm using today.
I realized every time that I would buy a bigger block of feta, I would use about half of it, and then the rest would sit in the fridge until it went bad. However, these individual snack portions actually get used.
I just find myself using them up the whole time. So while these ingredients are more expensive on a per-unit basis, if I'm not wasting them and using them all up, they're cheaper in practice. And for me, paying a little extra money isn't about saving money in the moment.
It's about reducing the friction so I actually use the ingredient. And as a bonus, one more convenience product I keep in my freezer are high-quality bread products from today's sponsor, Wild Grain.
So I've been thinking a lot recently about how can home cooks get more out of their freezer. And this might be a separate video at some point, but I think the big picture idea is this. You should be stocking your freezer with things you actually want to eat and enjoy.
Wild Green is the first bake-from-frozen subscription for things like sourdough breads, artisanal pastries, and fresh pastas, and they partner with small bakers and pasta makers from around the country. And there are two things I really like.
First, everything bakes straight from frozen in 25 minutes or less, and secondly, you can dial in the box with the ingredients that you'll actually want to use. So, for me, I'm typically after more convenient products like these pita we're using today.
The English muffin or bagels are great for a quick breakfast sandwich. I can do rigatoni to make a quick pasta dish. And obviously, you can never go wrong with keeping a loaf or two of sourdough on hand. And all of these make weeknight meals come together faster and better tasting too.
So if you want to check out Wild Grain for yourself, head to the link in the description and use my code for $30 off your order plus free croissants for life. And thank you again, Wild Grain, for sponsoring this video. but now let's talk about the final ingredient I changed my mind about.
Idea number four is buy cheap steak, but not for steak night. These prices have obviously gone up over the past several years. However, if you look online, it still feels like everyone is cooking with only these beautifully marbled premium cuts.
And if I'm going to sit down for a proper steak dinner, potatoes, vegetables, and the whole thing, I probably will go ahead and splurge on a nicer cut. That hasn't changed. But what has changed is how I think about cheaper steak.
So I'll buy something like this $5 steak so I can turn it into something else. And this works for two reasons. First, it's cost effective. It lets me make a beef forward meal without spending time or ragu money.
And secondly, I'm not asking the steak to be the centerpiece of the meal. So here's how I actually use it. I'll typically chop it up, steam it aggressively, and then cook it hot so I get a lot of browning.
And at that point, the steak becomes a really solid change-up from chicken or ground beef. I can use this in stir-fries, rice bowls, burritos, or stuff it into something like this pita, where beef is part of the dish, but it's not the entire point like a steak dinner would be.
And I would highly recommend just going to your grocery store and looking for a cheap cut of steak, buying it, and see what you make. So these are four of the ingredients that I've changed my mind about, but what's had an even bigger impact on me is how I actually use them.
So let's shift gears and talk about four techniques I find myself using way more often. And the first one is adding spices after cooking, not just before. And this is exactly what I did to prepare this chipotle steak.
This idea is really simple. Instead of adding all your spices before or during cooking, start thinking about adding them after the heat is off. And I've talked about this in my spice video before, but it's probably one of the most underrated techniques that I've really leaned on this year, and here's why.
Remember, the aroma compounds in spices are volatile, so they react with heat, light, air, water, and fat, and change quite a bit depending on when you add them during cooking. Now, one is not inherently better or worse, but you'd be surprised how it makes your food much more interesting.
So, whether it's adding sumac to an onion and tomato salad, a little Aleppo pepper to a pasta dish after it plated or adding some garam masala when you just heating up leftover butter chicken it makes everything taste brighter and more intentional And the version that I use most often for quick lunches or dinner is this one Instead of marinating or batch cooking a protein I cut some steak or chicken into small cubes
salt it, then cook it ripping hot in a little bit of oil. And at this point, I'm only focused on getting some really good browning and cooking it through, which takes about five minutes. Then, I turn the heat off, and that's when I add the spices.
So, in this case, I added a sprinkle of ground cumin seeds and a spoonful of chipotles and adobo, but I'll do this with the tar mix on chicken, or really any combination will work. It's a small shift, but it completely changes the flavor of the dish, and it's one that I really like.
Okay, so now that the protein is done, let's talk about idea six, and this is cutting vegetables to control the flavor. So before I cut any vegetable now, I'll ask myself one simple question.
What shape am I going to cut these and why? Because depending on how you cut a vegetable and which vegetable you're cutting, you can dramatically change how it tastes and feels in a dish. And the meal I'm making right now is a great example.
For the lettuce, I go ultra thin. Instead of bigger leaves, I want super fine slivers that add moisture and a general crunch without taking over. Then for the salads, I also want these thin as possible as well,
so they kind of meld in with the lettuce. I don't want a thick chunk that stands out. I want the little strips to blend into the filling. Now where I change things up is the pickled beets. I cut these into slightly thicker rings and spread them evenly on the bottom of the pita.
That way, when I bite into one, it's really obvious. It's meant to stand out. So now, instead of just cutting vegetables on autopilot, I try to think about how the cut will change the role in the dish. It's a small decision, but it has a huge impact, especially when it comes to the next idea.
And that is build contrast, not complexity. A lot of the time when we talk about food and cooking, the word complexity tends to come up. Someone may say something like, ooh, this sauce or the dish is very complex.
But I started to wonder that if someone can't tell you why it's complex or what ingredients are in it, you could argue, well, what was the point of adding those ingredients in the first place? And this is why when I'm assembling dishes at home, I try to build for contrast first,
not complexity. So in this pita, the contrast is very intentional. The steak is going to have a smoky aroma, it's going to be salty and a little bit spicy, and from a temperature perspective, it's also going to be warm while everything else is
cooled. On the other hand, the pickled beef are going to bring some contrast and taste because they're sweet. The lettuce adds textural contrast with its crunch and freshness. The salads layer in some aroma contrast, and the ranch sauce is going to be nice and creamy.
Each component has a clear job, and together, they balance each other out without feeling complicated. So, when I'm building a dish now, I try to make the contrast obvious, not hidden, and let each ingredient earn its place.
Now, once you understand how to build contrast into your meals, it becomes a lot easier to implement idea number eight, which is cook what you have, not what the recipe says.
When you look at all these iconic recipes that we love today, like carbonara, butter chicken, a French ratatouille, or Mexican birria, none of these exist because someone decided this is the exact perfect version forever.
And really, all of these great dishes that we have today primarily exist because people were cooking what they had. They were focused on feeding themselves, avoiding food waste, and making the best use of the ingredients that were available to them.
And this idea has really stuck with me. So if I see a recipe in a cookbook or something online, I don't immediately go, I need to go to the store and buy everything exactly as written. Instead, I'll ask myself, what about this dish is inspiring
and what do I already have that could get me close? Because once you start thinking that way, you'll stop cooking instructions and you start cooking ideas. And this steak pita is a good example of that.
If you break it down, it's really just four components. A seasoned protein, a mix of vegetables, a sauce, and some kind of carbohydrate. And each of these components are very flexible. The protein could be seasoned ten different ways.
The vegetables could be whatever you have in the fridge. The sauce could change completely. And the carbohydrate is really just a form factor. It could be rice, a wrap, a salad, whatever you want. And the reality is, I've never made this exact dish before.
I've never made a chipotle cumin steak pita with ranch and pickled beets, lettuce and chiles on a pita. It's just me using what I have. So up to this point, we've covered ingredients and techniques,
but there has been a lot going on behind the scenes as I've been making this, and that is the kitchen itself. Because even if you understand the ingredients and the techniques, your kitchen still needs to support those decisions.
And this is why the space, the tools, the setup, all of that either makes cooking easier and more enjoyable or it quietly works against you So as I been putting this meal together I been relying on a small handful of kitchen upgrades
that I've made over the past year. So I want to walk through a few of them, and the first one is organizing my spices for enjoyment, not efficiency. One of the best organizational changes I made this year
was finally fixing my spice drawer. And when I moved into this place, things were busy. I kept putting it off, and honestly, it became a dumpster fire. Random jars, half-used bags, stuff shucked everywhere, and I think all of us at one point in our lives will
end up with a spice drawer like that. Now, the goal wasn't just to make it organized. More importantly, I wanted it to feel good to open. Something clean, visually calm, and a little bit exciting, because if I'm going to be opening this drawer every day, I want it to be enjoyable. That
alone will make me more likely to cook and experiment. So here's how I did it. First, I moved everything into matching refillable glass jars with black lids. Same size, same shape, all visible at once. And the jar size was important to me. They're big enough that I can fit a full
spoon inside, but I can also just sprinkle them for the top. And also, because they're wide and short, it's easier to see inside them. Then secondly, I wanted everything to stay in place. So a friend of mine designed a 3D printed insert for the drawer,
so none of these will slide around. And I actually have a link to this if you want to print one out for yourself. And as you can guess, I use this drawer every single day. Dry dill, cumin seeds, and it genuinely just made cooking more fun.
So we're going to stay in the drawers for just a second. And the next upgrade that genuinely made me happier this year are drawer liners. Now, I'm probably very late to this, but in case anyone else is too, it's exactly what it sounds like.
Lighting drawers so things don't slide around. And this is one of those upgrades that doesn't seem like a big deal, but you interact with it constantly. Things stay in place, everything is easier to see, and honestly, the drawers just feel better to open,
and that matters more than I expected. So I did this in two key places. First was in my cutlery drawer. Then I did the same thing in my main utensil drawer. Again, I used a black liner for some contrast and makes it easy to see,
and more importantly, nothing shifts around completely. It's a small little upgrade, but it definitely removes friction in the way you feel every day. And it's a similar idea for the next upgrade, which is keeping a bar caddy in the fridge.
So this is literally that thing you'll see at bars or restaurants where they load it up with like a bunch of lemons or limes. But for me, the real value here isn't just from citrus, but it's for giving any leftover vegetable prep a dedicated home.
So obviously, if you do have lemons and limes, you can go ahead and add them in, but also things like a knob of ginger, a half a pepper, a quarter of an onion, or any other prep items that would typically just get shoved somewhere in the fridge
now has an obvious home. And because it's easier to see and grab, I'm way more likely to actually use those ingredients instead of forgetting about them. It could be something simple like just adding a spritz of lemon to that dill sauce I made earlier.
And lastly, the final small kitchen upgrade that I would recommend is switching to a food service foil roll. And there are a couple reasons why I think this is a much better solution than kind of buying the smaller, standard-sized ones you get at the grocery store.
First, you are buying in bulk, so it's going to be significantly cheaper. And this 12 by 1,000-foot roll is about 50% of the cost of buying five 200-foot rolls. And secondly, this kind of surprised me, but it's easier to use as well.
Because the box is taller and weighs more, it stays in place, and this is really easy to pull sheets off, but where you put this does matter. Instead of burying it in a drawer that's hard to get to, I keep mine in this cabinet left of the stove so I can turn around,
pull a sheet, tear it, and get back to the cutting board and kind of stay in my cooking flow state. And really, that's my mentality with all of these upgrades. You could do every single one of them in a single afternoon, Then they just pay you dividends every single time you cook for the rest of the year.
So hopefully now you can see how on their own these ideas could be pretty random if I just presented you a list, but they can all become interconnected into a simple meal like this weeknight pita.
This is now where I'd love to hear from you down in the comments. What are some ingredients that you changed your mind about? What are some techniques that you started using way more? or are there any small kitchen upgrades that you've made in the past year?
So that is going to wrap it up for me in this one. I'll catch you all in the next one. Peace, y'all.
But anyway, that is going to wrap it up for me in this one. Hope you all enjoyed the video. Thank you again to WildRank for sponsoring this video. Seriously, these pitas are just like a perfect use case for having something in the freezer ready to go.