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All of us who like and enjoy cooking either consider ourselves gourmets in our own right or at least want to be gourmets after some years of experience. However, turning out nice noodles and pizza is not going to brand you a gourmet any time soon, neither is making instant soup. There are a number of things that anybody claiming to be a gourmet needs to do. For that matter, there are a number of cooking techniques that any good cook should be aware of. We list here a number of things that you will need to learn and know about before you find or perfect your gourmet cooking style.

Get Your Proportions Right: You will never see a great cook fiddling around with measuring spoons and cups. While you can definitely do this even if you are a gourmet cook, the main thing is to know about what will go in a recipe in what proportion. Knowledge of portion sizes for small and large gatherings and multi course menus is also important before you can be called a ‘great cook’.

Learn To Make Your Own Sauces And Stock: Gourmet cooks do not use instant stock cubes or bottled sauces. You can still be a pretty good cook if you use both these things, but getting to know how to make different types of stocks and sauces will let you play around with your recipes more. While making both vegetable and non-veg stock is easy, you can learn how to make some common sauces that you constantly use for your recipes.

Prepare Marinades: Get to know about some basic marinades and then tweak them to get a variety of different tastes and flavors. Remember to give your marinades at least 4 hours. The best food of course is one that has been marinated for at least 24 hours, but do not try this with fish.

Cooking With Wine: A large number of classy recipes call for wine, alcohol or liqueur. You can also give your own recipes a unique taste and flavor by knowing which alcoholic drink to use with which food and how. Once you get the basics of wine and food pairing, you will be able to personalize almost every dish that you make.

Know Your Flavors: Gourmets always turn out food with the perfect combination of different spices and herbs. To attain gourmet status, you will actually need to learn about the right herbs and spices to use for different recipes along with the correct proportions. Different recipes for the same dish will often list different proportions of the same herb or spice. You will have to decide and determine the proportions that suit your style of gourmet cooking.

Presentation: You will never see Michelin starred cooks presenting you with a dish that does not look like a piece of art itself. While you cannot become a gourmet artist in a day, you should start experimenting with different types of garnishing, food colors and decoration styles so as to always serve food that is good looking and appealing.