You don’t have to be a good cook to make great meals. The thought of coming up with your own recipe might boggle your mind, and you might be confused about what some of the fancy kitchen gadgets you see on cooking shows are even for, but even you can create delicious, gourmet meals that your family will love and that will impress your guests. 

Here are the easy things you can do to prepare your own gourmet meals at home:

Start with the Best Ingredients

You’ll elevate your cakes with gourmet vanilla syrup. You’ll create mouth-watering roasts with high-quality, grass-fed beef. You’ll actually love vegetables again with organic asparagus grown in season and artisanal cheese. Just choosing the highest-quality ingredients that you can get will make your food taste amazing.

Don’t limit yourself to what’s at your local grocery store. Shop at the farmer’s market, find small specialty shops in your area or order online. If you aren’t sure what makes ingredients good, do a little research online or get to know your grocers and ask them a lot of questions. Knowledge is power, and the more knowledge you have about the ingredients you use, the more powerful you will be in selecting the best ones and in creating delicious dishes.

Get a Few Basic Tools

Besides the ingredients you use, the tools you use will have a big impact on the quality of your meals. You need the best basics to get started: A high-quality knife set, cookware set, and baking materials. A few notable choices include a stand mixer, a culinary torch, and a thermometer. If you really want to get fancy and throw down some big cheddar, you can upgrade your oven, as well. 

Know that you can work miracles with utensils you find at the dollar store, but having high-quality tools at your disposal will make your work easier. You aren’t Gordon Ramsay, so you can’t expect to get top results with little more than your skill and innovation. You need the help, so get it in the form of great kitchen tools.

Find Great Recipes

Most recipes that you will find on popular websites are designed for mass audiences. They are typically for meals that are easy to cook and that will be ready quickly. These are not the kind of recipes you want to use if you want to make gourmet meals that will elevate your everyday menu. Instead, you should search for gourmet recipes provided by reputable chefs.

Know that you will most likely need to pay for access to these recipes. You may be able to get a subscription for online access, or you may have to buy a hard copy of a cookbook. Just do your research first to make sure you are getting recipes that are truly gourmet and that have been created and vetted by experienced and celebrated chefs.

Follow Directions to the Letter

You aren’t Julia Child yet, so don’t try to be. You should not be trying to experiment while you are in the kitchen — at least not until you master the basics. If you want to cook a gourmet meal successfully and you don’t have the formal training to do it, you need to let the recipes created by the professionals guide you. That means that you need to follow the directions to the letter. If the recipe says to sift the flour first, do it and don’t just dump the flour in straight from the bag. If the recipe says to marinate the meat for two hours, leave it for exactly two hours. Don’t try to rush the process, and don’t let it sit for too long.

You may not have disastrous results if you cut a few corners or make a few changes to the recipe, but any success you have will be luck. You’ll be able to improvise once you’ve gained some experience and have a lot of successes under your belt.

Follow these simple tips, and you’ll soon be creating meals that your guests will think you had prepared by a gourmet chef. You don’t need culinary training — you just need to have the right tools and the right recipes, and you need to follow directions.