Most people think bad cooking comes from bad recipes. It almost never does — it comes from inconsistent knife cuts.

If your onions are different sizes, some burn while others stay raw. If your garlic is minced unevenly, part of it turns bitter in the pan while the rest never releases its flavor. Same recipe, same pan, wildly different results — and it's not the recipe's fault.

Here's the fix: before you cook anything, slow down on the cutting board. Aim for uniform size, not speed. A rough 1/2-inch dice done evenly will outperform a "fast" chop done unevenly every time.

Quick test: next time you sauté onions, stop and look at your cutting board before they hit the pan. If the pieces aren't roughly the same size, that's your bottleneck — not your seasoning, not your heat, not the recipe.

Fix the cut, fix the dish. Everything downstream gets easier.