Everyone has had the dream of cooking a grand meal for all of their friends and family and every body applauding their work and flavors. Truthfully, I know very few people who can pull this off. You need to know more than just how to cook a roast, or how to bake a potato. You need to have some awesome cooking skills, organizational skills, and a good tongue.

So How Does a Person Become a Kick Ass Chef?

I will tell you right away, it is really hard to fake cooking a great meal for a group of people. As long as you have some decent cooking skills, these tips should help you reach the your goal.

1 - Learn How to Prepare a Menu

The best way to figure out what you should cook, is go to your local grocery store or market. Forget looking through your cook books until later on. The grocery store is where your imagination is set on fire. You can walk up to a meat counter and see what is fresh and appetizing. Sure, you have in mind that most of your guests do not eat much red meat, or that one of your guests (who happens to be a hot chick you have been flirting with for the past 2 weeks) doesn’t like Salmon, but loves Tuna.

While you are shopping for food, be looking at the contents of your cart to see what ingredients are going where, and take it from there. I often times start with a protein. I throw a bunch of chicken breasts in my cart, then roll over to the produce area. There I grab whatever looks fresh and appealing. Afterwards I will go to the dairy isle, grab some butter, some heavy cream, and some sour cream. Then I will wonder around the store for the next 2 hours slowly building the meal in my head by putting the ingredients I find together like a puzzle.

2 - Organize Yourself

This is very important. If you are cooking for 10 people, you need to have a game plan. Otherwise something will end up over cooked, under cooked, forgotten, or too hurried.

I suggest you sit down after your visit to the grocery store and write your thoughts down, as far as what ingredients you purchased and what you plan to do with them.

Create a timeline also. This should be something like: Steaks = 20 minutes, Baby Reds = 30 minutes, Spinach = 5 minutes. This will help you time everything so that everything is done at about the same time.

3 - Start Cooking

Here is a good piece of advise for novice Chefs. Cook everything possible on HIGH HEAT. I am serious. Some might say, “well won’t I burn everything then?”. You might if you really suck, but this is the truth. Cook your meat on High unless you are poaching or braising, but still then start off on High. Doing this will make everything taste better. All that sugar in your vegetables will caramelize, your meat will seal its flavor and not over cook, and your sauces will have a chance to thicken. Doing this will make things go fast, so make sure you are organized.

Have all of your stuff cut, prepared, and ready to cook before you cook anything. Peel and cut your potatoes, chop your herbs, mince your garlic, slice your chicken, season your meat. Doing this will make sure you can keep up with the High heat.

4 - Serve

Hopefully, if everything went smoothly, all of your food will be done at the same time. Now you are ready to plate and present. At a true dinner part or event, you cannot just throw the food on the plate and present. You have to make it look good too. Also, try to make everybody’s plate look the same.

Pick out the proper china and place everything on the plate methodically. Put the protein on every plate, then put the vegetable on every plate, and so on. Make sure the rims of the plates are visible and clean also, this adds to the wow factor.

If you have done everything right, and people are impressed, and you get the girl. You have become a Kick Ass Chef.