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All too often people are intimidated to step into their own kitchens, fearful of where to start.  With a little knowledge however, that fear will subside into confidence and your skills will grow from there.  This article is designed to give you several basic starting points to help get you into the kitchen and start creating your own delicious healthy meals. 

Skillet image - Courtesy of Wikipedia

Below are 10 cooking tips for building your own muscle building meals:

1. Cooking meat is often a fearful event for new cooks, when in doubt bake a boneless skinless chicken breast for 30 minutes at 350 degrees. You can also use a simple meat thermometer to easily know when it is done*

2. When a grill is not available or it’s too cold outside, you can broil a steak in your kitchen.  I recommend using a cast iron skillet and placing it on the second rack in your oven.  Let it heat in the oven for 20 minutes on the highest broil setting.  Place the steak on the heated skillet for 4 minutes per side, for a medium steak (add up to two minutes per side for thicker steaks)

3. When cooking eggs remove them from the skillet just before their desired doneness, eggs will continue to cook for  up to one minute after you plate them!

4. Use non-stick cooking spray everywhere, even on non-stick pots and pans.  This will save you a lot of frustration and cleaning up in the kitchen (not to mention turned sunny side up eggs into scrambled eggs)

5. Try different meats, there is no need to be limited to chicken breasts and fish.  You can easily substitute 95% lean ground beef, lean turkey, or lean cuts of pork for your chicken breasts

6. When baking, especially baking with protein powder, you need to include a fat source to keep things moist.  I recommend VPX Thin Fat as it contains fat burning CLA fats and has a neutral flavor

7. If you’re looking for a lower calorie option for milk, butter, or cream in a baking recipe try using unsweetened apple sauce and/or Greek yogurt

8. If you choose the Greek yogurt route just make sure the flavors you are using will be strong enough to mask the taste or choose the 100 calorie flavored Greek yogurts.  There’s nothing worse than a Greek yogurt flavored baked good

9. Try out different white flour substitutes; I personally love almond flour, coconut flour, and oat flour.  Get creative and mix half almond flour with half oat flour for baked goods with lower carbohydrate content and the healthy fat from almonds

10. When baking with protein powder make sure you use a good brand and mix, cheaper products will dry out instantly.  VPX Syngex not only tastes great (it has a real vanilla flavor not the normal chemical tasting one that you find in most protein powders) but also cooks well!

My final piece of advice is to open your mind to trying new things, that’s the excitement and fun of cooking your own food!  If you see an interesting spice on sale at the store pick it up and give it a try, you never know, you may just find your new favorite flavor!

*Consuming raw or undercooked meats, poultry, seafood, shellfish, or eggs may increase your risk of food-borne illness.

This is a guest post by Mike Metzger (@Muscle_Chef on Instagram).