Carla Hall Reveals the Cooking Mistake Everyone Makes Because "They're Afraid"

Just this week, Chef Carla Hall dropped her much-anticipated new book, Carla Hall's Soul Food: Everyday and Celebration. But not all of her wisdom can be contained between the covers of a book — and she just shared a cooking tip with The Feast that might just change (and vastly improve) the way you work in the kitchen every day in your own home.

We asked Carla to nail down the one cooking mistake people always make — and she said it all comes down to "seasoning," she told The Feast. "They don’t season their food."

Plus, people also get so preoccupied with a (misguided) sense of what food should look like that they sabotage its taste. "They don’t sear their food long enough — there’s flavors in the brown," she told us.

"They don’t balance their food with acids, so it’s one note. And they don’t add enough fat — because they’re like, 'Oh, it should be low fat.' So, I think it would be about seasoning their food, knowing how to simply salt your food — and fat is a flavor carrier, so if you don’t have enough fat in your food, you’re not going to get that flavor. Salt and spices sit on fat."

Plus, "[people are] afraid of color," Carla told us. "They’re afraid that it’s burning — so it’s a lot of bland and pale food."

All told, Carla's advice might be best summed up this way: Fear less in the kitchen. Be bold, not tenuous. Just go there. Nobody ever died from this!