1. You didn’t preheat the oven.

You’ll have to tack on a few extra minutes of cooking time, but the taste won’t suffer much. Don’t try this when baking. Breads and cakes must go into a hot oven to rise properly.

2. You coarsely chopped instead of finely diced.

You can get away with this, as long as you cook everything long enough. Keep in mind that big chunks will change the way a dish looks. (If you’re making a soup that will be pureed later, it doesn’t matter how the food looks in the pot.)

3. You didn’t let the meat rest before carving it.

Most chefs don’t recommend slicing a roast right out of the oven, but doing so won’t destroy a meal. You will, however, end up with a lot of juice on the cutting board and a slightly gray dinner. “When meat rests, the temperature equalizes and the juices spread throughout the meat,” says Richard Simpson of the Institute of Culinary Education, in New York City. For cuts such as pork chops, which are sliced on the plate, resting isn’t such as important issue, since a few minutes usually elapse before you sit down at the table to eat.

4. You measured dry ingredients in a liquid measuring cup.

The volume of a cup of liquid is eight fluid ounces, and so is a cup of flour. The difference is that dry ingredients, like flour and sugar, mound. Dry measuring cups can be filled, then leveled off with a knife. But the line of a liquid measuring cup is below the rim, so you can’t even out the top, making it harder to get an exact measurement for dry items. Using a liquid cup for dry ingredients generally won’t ruin a dish. (The exception is baking, which requires precision.)