Every few weeks somebody asks me the same question: how do I make my food at home taste like the food at a restaurant? And every few weeks I give the same answer, which is that most restaurants are not doing magic, they are doing small things correctly, over and over. So I was glad to see Chef Balwant Singh Sajwan of Marriott saying more or less the same thing in the Hindustan Times this week.

His advice, boiled down, is plain in the best way. Keep a sharp knife. Taste as you cook. Season in stages instead of dumping salt at the end. Use fresh ingredients where it counts, and don't crowd the pan. He also talks about building a small set of kitchen essentials instead of buying every gadget that promises to change your life. A heavy pan, a decent knife, a mortar and pestle if you have the space. That is most of it.

The tasting part is the one people skip, and it's the one that matters most. My grandmother never measured anything, not once in her life that I saw, but she tasted everything, constantly, with a spoon she kept in her apron pocket like a duelist keeps a blade. In Naples we say you cook with the mouth, not the hands. A professional kitchen just makes that habit official. The line cook who tastes the sauce at every stage is not being fussy, he is doing his job. At home you can do the same with zero extra equipment.

Seasoning in stages is the other quiet secret. When you salt at the beginning, the salt goes into the food. When you salt only at the end, the salt sits on top of the food. That is the difference between a dish that tastes seasoned and a dish that tastes salty, and it costs you nothing to learn. Any dal, any ragu, any soup will teach you this if you let it.

I also appreciated that Sajwan doesn't push exotic ingredients. This matches everything I believe about cooking. Good food doesn't require expensive ingredients or fancy technique, it requires care and patience, and I will keep repeating that until they take my pen away. A hotel chef with access to walk-in coolers and a brigade of cooks telling home cooks to just sharpen their knife and taste their food, that is a man being honest with you.

The one thing I would add to his list: rest your food. Meat, yes, but also rice, also dal, also almost anything with starch or fat in it. Five minutes off the heat lets everything settle and redistribute. Restaurants plate fast because they must, but even they let things rest before service. Home cooks rush to the table and then wonder why the dish tasted better from the stove than from the plate.

Read the full piece for his complete list. Then go cook something tonight with your mouth open and your salt in stages. Restaurant food at home was never about the equipment. It was always about attention.