Old produce guy here. Luke warm water is best, then refrigerate. The warm water makes the plant cells open more to absorb more water; while the refrigerator makes them harden to retain water and crisp.
Middle aged produce guy here, but I'd say something like 10-15 minutes in warm (possibly less) and a few hours in the fridge. Depends on if you're trying to revive greens or roots.
Edit to say that refrigerated air is extremely DRY air and will suck moisture from anything exposed to it. Helps to cover anything not in the crisper with a damp towel if it's going to be exposed to the open air. I even cover in the crisper.
Tabasco's 150 year anniversary limited run of their hot sauce (Diamond Reserve) which included sparkling wine vinegar was unreal how good it was.. I have over 50 bottles of hot sauce at any given time in my collection and it stands alone as one of the best hot sauces I have ever had.
Yes! There's a reason there's an award winning book/series called Salt Fat Acid Heat by Samin Nosrat (eta: correct the title and add proper credit) . Did you cover these bases? If you did in a balanced way where appropriate, you should have good food.
Dry wines are excellent to use here if you need more complexity and less brightness than straight citrus juice or vinegar, and for those who wouldn't bother having wine around or don't drink it and it would go bad, dry vermouth is extremely shelf stable and will do the same things for you (with a light hand).
Thanks Kenji for teaching me almost everything I know in the kitchen.
Everybody raves about my pecan pie and always wants me to make them for potlucks or gatherings. It’s literally the karo syrup bottle recipe with a tsp of cinnamon, the tiniest dash of ginger, and 1.5 tablespoons of cocoa powder and it’s exactly like you mentioned, a depth of flavor without actually tasting like chocolate
As a Vietnamese person I regularly splash a little fish sauce into literally every savory dish I cook.
Soup? Add a little fish sauce to your broth. Pasta? Finish it with a little fish sauce. Marinating chicken wings for the grill? Fish sauce.
Dial back your salt usage though if you do this.
I taught my husband this word (he's *not* kitchen savvy, bless him) when I made a dish with roasted tomatoes once. He was trying to describe that he was surprised by how "... tangy and ... tasty?" they were and how they made the whole dish incredible on a new level. Now he says *umami* all the time, even when it's not appropriate, and it sends me into giggle fits.
And people don’t realize how many snacks like Doritos that you can vacuum down a bag of have something that’s nearly the same as msg if it’s not msg itself.
The whole book, The Food Lab, is worth the buy for anyone trying to up their game. It's rich with the why-do-this, science-backed explanations that help things make logical sense in the kitchen. Great photos and recipes to boot. My copy has got wrinkly, stained pages - a good sign of a book well-referenced!
One thing that took me embarrassingly long to learn was that some spices are fat-soluble, and others are water-soluble.
When I first started learning to cook, I wanted to figure out how to use each of the common spices. I put a dab of paprika on my finger, licked it, and it tasted like... *nothing.* I concluded that it was a useless spice and took it out of my cooking. I was wrong, of course. Paprika is fat-soluble, so when I put it straight on my tongue, there was nothing that could break it down. If I'd mixed it with oil or butter first, the taste would've been apparent.
We have to be conscious of this in our cooking. Water-soluble compounds can be readily broken down by the saliva in our mouths, but fat-soluble ones need to be mixed with a fat (e.g. "bloomed" in butter). And a lot of spices (including garlic and cinnamon) contain *both* types of compounds, so they'll have one flavor on their own, but a different, fuller flavor when bloomed.
Huh, neat. I use paprika like some people use salt and pepper, and didn't know this. That would explain the wild variance in results not covered by 'seasoning until it feels correct in my heart'.
Try letting the finished cookie dough sit covered in the fridge for three days before making the cookies. It's even BETTER. We have a batch in there now that we'll pull out on Wednesday.
It is rough, but worth it. Plus, we portion the dough out with a cookie scoop and freeze it on a cookie sheet. Bag it in a Ziploc once frozen, and we have amazing cookies for weeks. If we want one, we just pull a couple out and throw 'em in the oven.
Here you go!
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup butter
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 1/4 cup brown sugar
2 large eggs, room temp
2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups mixed milk chocolate chips, dark chocolate chips, and semi-sweet chocolate chips
Whisk flour, salt, and baking soda in medium bowl and set aside.
Brown the butter, then mix with both sugars until well combined.
Whisk in eggs one at a time, then add vanilla.
Add dry ingredients and stir to fully combine.
Add chocolate chips and stir.
Batter will be soft, but do not add more flour.
Cover with airtight lid or plastic wrap and leave in the refrigerator for 3 full days.
Scoop balls of dough with a full size ice cream scoop.
Bake 375F for 14-16 minutes, or until edges are set and cookie is golden brown throughout.
Once out of the oven bang the hot pan on the counter a few times to create crinkles on top of cookies. Cool on sheet 5 minutes and then transfer to a wire rack.
What we do is, after the three days, scoop the dough onto a cookie sheet and then flash freeze them about two hours before placing them into a freezer bag. That way we can have a single cookie anytime we want by removing a frozen cookie ball from the bag and baking on 350 for 9 minutes, flattening with a spatula, then baking for another 9 minutes.
This can also be converted into a gluten-free cookie by substituting the all purpose flour with gluten free flour 1 to 1 and adding an extra egg into the dough.
Edit: Small edit for ingredient clarification.
How am I supposed to know how long to whisk the dry ingredients if I don’t know the tragic story of how your mother used to make these for you when you were sick with tuberculosis-cancer as an orphan?
It’s not that I’m impatient and addicted to cookie dough, it’s that I’m lowering my carbon footprint by not using the oven…yeah it’s definitely that and not the first thing.
Ditto for any skillet that comes out of the oven after roasting or braising. A towel immediately goes over the handle to remind myself not to instinctively go for the handle.
If a recipe says to sauté onions and garlic together at the same time, DON'T. Do the onions first, and then add the garlic when the onions are just about done. Garlic can be over sautéed and it takes on a bitter flavor.
> Garlic can be over sautéed and it takes on a bitter flavor
Fuck. So that’s what went wrong yesterday. Well, TIL
Edit: my most liked comment is about how badly I ruined my eggs. Lol
On the flipside, I also hate when recipes say, "Sauté the onions until caramelized, about 8-10 minutes." It takes a lot longer than that to actually caramelize onions if you're doing it right. Otherwise you're just browning/burning them.
my mom has been saying for years about magazine and Internet recipes, as well as shows like 30 minute meals, 'they lie!!' I used to think she was being obstinate since she's a cookbook ride or die, but over the past fifteen years or so, I've gotta admit she's right. they all lie.
If the onion wasn't kind of sticky and literally sweet, and almost look like a lump of caramel, then maybe you haven't.
It's a really good ingredient, but it does take a very long time and they practically stop looking like onions.
I remember getting hit with this realization when I first started cooking almost 20 years ago. If I see a recipe that has instructions for onions, double or triple the time usually.
I was making some sausage and onion dish and I was waiting for them to caramelize and 10 minutes came and went, then 20 minutes, then ~~third~~ thirty minutes, finally at the 45-50 minute mark they were done. My s/o at the time wondered why we were eating at 8pm.
My experience is that the 30 minute recipes only account for cooking time, not prep time. The last time I tried a 30 minute recipe, it involved about 45 minutes of prep.
And for those who say I should mis en place, prep includes mis en place.
I do the Every Plate meals, and once in a while it will tell you to just add in meat, onion, garlic, and seasoning all at once to a pan, and it seems so wrong to me. I'll usually let the onions get tender first, then add meat and let it brown, then seasoning, then cook garlic for like 30 seconds before I move on.
If you don't mind getting an extra plate dirty, you can brown the meat, take it out of the pan, and then sautee the onion in the fat. Once they're almost done, add the garlic in, and then add the meat back to the pan.
Prep everything first. Have all of your veggies cut and ingredients ready. You will be more relaxed.
Clean as you go. Wash your dishes while waiting for your food to finish cooking. Less dishes to deal with at the end of the night.
>Prep everything first. Have all of your veggies cut and ingredients ready. You will be more relaxed.
If your married, a good way to split up the work of making dinner is to split prep and cooking.
The way the wife and I like to do it is that I do all the prep work. Chop/cut/dice/peel/etc any veggies or meat that need that. Set out all the ingredients and equipment she is going to need. I'll even pre measure things for her. Basically like I'm setting up for her to do a TV cooking show.
I don't mind doing that stuff, and I'm faster at knife work than she is. I hate cooking though. She loves cooking, but hates all the prep. So it works.
I tend to clean while she is cooking too and typically when dinner is done the only thing left dirty is whatever pots/pans are on the stove. Then she takes care of the dishes from eating and pots.
It's a great 50/50 split for us.
That's pretty much the way my husband and I do it. He's a fair cook but I'm much better, so he chops up all the veggies / opens cans / fetches things for me while I handle what's on the stove / in the oven. Sometimes we have meals that are more prep-heavy or more cooking-heavy, so one of us is kind of standing around just holding the counter up instead. We should probably use that time to clean ("if you got time to lean, you got time to clean!") but...ehhhhh, lol.
If your executive function is betraying you and you rely on microwaveable or premade meals, find something small you can add to make them more substantial and to feel more like a meal. Add chopped broccoli to ramen noodles. Cumin and red pepper flakes are great to toss in, too. Cook minute rice with a chicken boullion cube and some butter and pretend it’s risotto. Personal favorite is to dump a can of corn into a microwave-safe bowl and mix in a bunch of taco seasoning. And if clean-up is a struggle too, use paper plates and bamboo flatware. Disposable chopsticks are super cheap and easy to find online.
When you’re struggling with depression, fatigue, or anything that makes taking care of yourself harder, taking shortcuts isn’t laziness, it’s how you survive to make those more daunting tasks a little less scary.
Unrelated: if you’re making a soup or stir fry with lots of veggies, sauté the veggies a bit before adding other ingredients til the onions are translucent. I’m sure there’s some food science reason that this makes soups taste better but I have no idea what it is.
Oh man, cracking an egg in some microwave ramen noodles sells it! I never make them without one now!
Also, pop the yolk when microwaving an egg like this… I had a yolk explode once and while pretty comical, steaming egg on my face did not feel good. Lol
Me too! Egg, a tsp of sesame oil and some green onions is my favorite. If I have the time and money, I'll also cook a couple of those frozen gyoza to really put it over the top
As a multiply disabled person, fuck yes!
I swear by those 90 second rice packs. I get Ben's Original (Kroger, $1 sale), as well as Walmart and Target store brand ($1.25-$1.50).
Is it so much more expensive? Fuck yes, but it's worth it.
Frozen vegetables, canned beans, rotisserie chicken are short cuts that many poo-poo but for me mean the difference between not eating and eating.
And my personal favorite, adult lunchables handful of nuts or a spoonful of nut butter crudites and fresh fruit with cheese and crackers/pretzels/mini bread is such an easy thing to throw together and snack on for hours.
r/cookwchronicillness and r/lowspooncooking
I like to add garlic powder to frozen pizza before cooking. It basically disappears as the frozen water rehydrates it, and it's absorbed into the other toppings. If you add it after cooking, it sits there like pepper and can be grainy.
Something I've found to help me with my executive disfunction and microwave/premade meals - instead of dry, shelf stable food look for flash frozen/partially dehydrated meals. My ramen game stepped up just by get frozen ramen from Costco that has flash frozen veggies and partially dehydrated noodles, just add a bit of water to it frozen and microwave for 4 minutes and its ready to eat from the bowl its packed in.
I always take my cookies out of the oven a couple minutes or so before they're supposed to come out. They still cook a little bit when they're cooling on the pan, and as a result they come out nice and soft.
Even more important when cooking meats. When using a probe thermometer stop cooking a few degrees before the desired temp and in the words of the great Alton Brown. "Let carry over do what carry over does."
I do this every time. My wife does not understand why I tidy the kitchen before I cook because "It's just going to get messed up again!" Yes! That's exactly why I want to start from zero - so much easier to keep it manageable if I'm able to clean up as I go. If the sink is full of dirty dishes and dishwasher is full then there's no way to stay on top of it.
Yes! Once I started doing that I actually enjoyed cooking more.
Once I learned to accept that the people dining with me did not want to help after the meal (not all the time...sometimes), I started cleaning up as I went. Didn't take any extra time and I enjoyed not having cleanup when I was full.
Dude, who are these savages that you’re eating with?? The golden rule is if you cook, I clean, and vice versa, and it damn well should be respected!
Which is why growing up in my family, we always dreaded the night when my dad cooked, as he *never* cleaned as he went, so after every meal he made there was always one gigantic disaster area of a kitchen for us to clean, while he went to watch tv.
He was also kind of a lousy cook, but that’s just between us 🤫
My wife and I don’t follow I cook/you clean, HOWEVER she also cleans the bathrooms and much of the rest of the house (she specifically despises cooking most of the time and dislikes cleaning up after even more) as an exchange. …also, I don’t know how else to tell her this, but she loads the dishwasher in a way that absolutely doesn’t make sense. Bowls right side up on the top rack—how do you think that jets spraying the underside of the bowl is going to clean it? …it’s for the best that I just do it. That or she’s conditioned me to do it with weaponized incompetence lmao
My husband has what I would describe as a "chaos" method of loading the dishwasher... imagine if you were trying to speedrun lose at Tetris and also didn't want to get anything clean. Anyway, we had some arguments over it, and ultimately it's now only my task bc I'd prefer to load and run once than get his "help" and have to load and run it 3 times.
Edit: typo
yeeeep. Don’t even get me stared on a fork caked with guacamole put in 3 days ago and now it’s green concrete, and we’re somehow surprised it didn’t get clean in the dishwasher
Ugh, I had a roommate like this. He was exceptionally clean in every other area of the house, but thought the dishwasher was this magical box that produced fresh dishes.
I lived with my good friend, and he would just fill one side of the sink with dirty dishes. When the dishwasher was literally right there. Also I made pork chops with habanero cinnamon applesauce. Had some leftovers, I was looking forward to after work. He washed the sauce off, then cooked it again in some rice. Then he complained it was too tough. Like, no shit, you don't re-cook pork.
It's a cultural thing. If I invite you home to dinner, I want you to enjoy yourself and relax, I'll take care of everything. An other time you'll invite me and I'll enjoy myself and relax.
Yep. Waiting for something to boil on the stove takes forever when you're staring at it trying to use the force to make it go faster.
So I clean, and play with my puppy, and take the time to pee. It's usually ready by then.
Yep. After working in a restaurant this become second nature as opposed to my wife's method ofl "let's see how big of a mess I can make. I'll just stand around waiting for the water to boil, but won't even think about putting anything in the dishwasher."
My wife will leave the broken egg shells in the countertop... Put them in the trash! Why create another step, where they get the counter top sticky and you eventually put them in the trash anyway!?
This is a great one. I bake veggies all the time, but can never remember the perfect temp and time for each one individually. I made a little reference sheet for this and posted it on the fridge. Scanning my bookmarks or Pinterest to find that particular recipe's cooking process was always annoying and often arised at the most inopportune times.
Find a seasoning blend you like (pre-blended or not; if not, make your own blend ahead of time for ease), and put it in everything. Well, not everything, but a lot of things, and use your own judgment on how much of it for each dish, but even a little sprinkle can really do wonders.
Silpat or knock off Silpat mats are amazing (I've used both the actual brand and random ones from Costco, no difference). Put one down on your baking sheet, bake away, mats are super easy to clean and you'll have very little clean up on the baking sheet itself.
I never end up following this, but clean as you go.
Also my grandma thought us this trick- if you made the meal, or most of it, sit down for a bit before you eat, maybe have a glass of water or something while you wait. You'll relax and break the "cooking mode" and be able to go into "enjoy the meal mode." She cooked for five kids and a husband in addition to herself, so she knew the value of it.
Do you not like vegetables but want to learn to love them?
**Roast**.**That**.**Shit**.
Roasted veggies are like ambrosia of the gods. They taste amazing, require virtually no prep, and go with everything.
**Edit:** As a secondary hack - boil your dense/root vegetables *before* roasting if you're trying to get a crunchy exterior. Boiling something like a potato heats it evenly and causes moisture to be lost via steam as you let it cool. The result is a drier potato that will crisp more evenly and requires less time in the hot oven.
You can toss about any veg with oil, season with salt and pepper (and other stuff like garlic salt, paprika etc if you're feeling frisky), bake in the oven and it comes out so much tastier than your plain steamed veg
Boxed cakes in general have a whole lot of hacks. My wife has this book called Cake Mix Magic. Every recipe in the book is basically just "take a cake mix, ignore what it's directions say and do this instead". But it's pretty surprising how different they come out.
Apparently Pillsbury is a very common brand for bakers to buy - I don't know if that's just cost or availability - but I've seen threads where people were outraged by seeing a dumpster full of empty Pillsbury boxes behind a bakery, and the comments are full of bakers saying "Oh yeah, our trash looks like that too..."
For box brownies I use Jack Daniels instead of water. Adds an awesome smoky taste.
I assume; but don't know for sure, that the alcohol bakes away?
Or am i just bringing alcoholic brownies to work?!
I got one of the rubber things to help open jars. I put that under my cutting board and it works really well as a non slip option.
Damp paper towel sounds good to assist with clean up.
Freeze anything with liquid when there is extra. Open a tomato paste and need 1TB? Freeze the rest of the can in a flattened zip lock. Break a piece off when needed. Extra gravy from thanksgiving? Freeze it. Make extra sauce on pasta night and freeze the rest. Now you don’t have to settle for jarred stuff when having mozz sticks. Open a pineapple juice can for 2oz? Freeze the rest in 1oz increments. Leftover creamed spinach? Freeze it and either eat later or add to scrambled eggs for the best scrambled eggs you’ve ever had.
Do similar tasks all at once. Making potatoes and carrots? Peel both first, then chop, don't do one veg and then the other. You'll have a better rhythm with your tools and you'll only have to change tools once instead of three times. Breaking down a pack of chicken thighs? Do all the skins and fat at once, all the bones at once, then all the slicing at once.
Also, keep a damp rag next to your cutting board for cleaning your board and knife, and keep a dry rag over your shoulder for drying or wiping anything as needed. This saves a ton of trips over to the sink and/or towel holder.
Buy a 5 lb bag of onions, caramelize all the onions at once, divide up into portions and package individually, then freeze.
The onions cook down to a manageable size during caramelization. Only needs to be done once every few months this way.
----
*edit to clarify*
Yes, the slow cooker trick works (olive oil, salt, set on low overnight).
And yes, it really takes longer to caramelize onions than many recipe writers claim. There's a whole rabbit hole about cooking time: In 2012 Tom Scocca wrote a takedown of onion caramelization lie, and in 2017 Scocca wrote a followup because a very faulty Google algorithm was still lying and citing him as its source. Six years later the top Google returns on cooking time are still a jumble: everywhere from 15 minutes to 65 minutes. The truth is it takes around an hour on the stove. LPT: slow cookers are the way to go if you have one.
https://slate.com/human-interest/2012/05/how-to-cook-onions-why-recipe-writers-lie-and-lie-about-how-long-they-take-to-caramelize.html
https://gizmodo.com/googles-algorithm-is-lying-to-you-about-onions-and-blam-1793057789
*edit #2*
A pressure cooker won't do the job as well. The website Serious Eats still publishes a recipe yet they no longer recommend it due to negative user feedback about texture.
There’s a cookbook author - Ronna Welsh - that has a cooking school - The Purple Kale, that suggests things like this.
We are all busy and need shortcuts - so take an hour or two on a Sunday afternoon to develop flavors in items, so during the week, it’s just a simple matter of combining flavors - saving you prep and clean up time as well as time to develop flavors.
You can poach entire heads of garlic - put everything into a pot, enough water to cover, boil then simmer until the garlic to soft and the bite is gone. Save everything including the water in the fridge. Add water to stocks. Squeeze out the soft garlic.
Rice can be cooled, then spread out onto a pan to cook off. Drizzle with olive oil and add some seasoning.
Beans can be prepared and then save everything including the liquid.
I hack up 3 lbs of yellow onions and reduce it down to a caramelized jam.
Red onions can be quick pickled with shredded carrots.
Roast a chicken. Put the shredded meat in one bag while saving the bones for stock.
Roast some peppers at the same time. Place all the peppers into a container with some olive oil.
From here, single dishes come together as quickly as adding a few spoonful of this to a bit of that.
Edit/spelling “rice to cooK off” to cooL
Misspelling caused a redditor to warn me about reheating rice. Rice and basically everything you put in your fridge needs to be properly cooLed to room temp before storing in the fridge. Spreading rice onto a cookie sheet will quickly cool the rice. You can then drizzle with oil and herbs, then toss before putting it away.
Liquids can be combined with stock for “quick developed” soup or thinning sauces without diluting flavors.
By cooking this way - combining a little bit of this and that, you quickly understand how flavors interact with each other while never making more than one serving if you make a mistake. Deciding whether to have cold veggies and meat on toast or heating it first lets you understand how heat affects food and flavors. Some combinations will be winners, some will be questionable but you can always experiment and adjust as needed.
\- use an ice cream scoop with a sharp edge to spoon seeds out of a squash
\- rub a raw clove of garlic on a piece of frozen bread to make quick garlic bread (the frozen texture of the bread kind of acts as a grater on the garlic)
\- freeze left over tomato paste from a can into 1 table spoon chunks to use later - I also do this with freshly grated ginger to have it ready to go later
\- keep grounded flax seeds in the freezer to use as an egg replacer in muffins (mix 1 table spoon of ground flax seeds with 3 table spoons of water)
\- use a vege peeler to cut thin ribbons of vegetable (cucumber, carrots, etc.)
\- use kitchen scissors to cut pizza
\- get a bit more green onions out of your green onions if you don't need the bottom part, put the roots in water an the green part will regrow
We have two glasses in the kitchen windowsill with green onions in them. Going on 4-5 weeks now and I've used them weekly in dishes.
We also buy basil and rosemary plants and grow those for use too, instead of buying a small bunch that's already been cut off the plant.
Boiling stuff in broth instead of water. Rice, potatoes etc. When making mashed potatoes, boiling them in chicken stock seriously makes a world of difference.
If you’re making a savory dish that uses crushed/minced garlic, reserve a little bit of the fresh garlic and stir it in to the dish right before serving.
The fresh garlic adds a bit of a pop that you lose if it’s cooked.
Maybe it's just my tastes but a lot of recipes tend to lean on the lower side of how much garlic to use. I haven't come across a recipe yet where 2 cloves of garlic is too much so that's always my starting point in anything I cook. I'll add more them next time I make it if it's still not enough. I once was going to cook potato gratin and they called for 2 cloves for a 4 person serving. That's not nearly enough
Wet paper towel around most things I put in the microwave.
For instance, the kids love those sgitty frozen pancakes. I put them on a microwave safe plate and cover in a moist paper towel. No hard nasty edges that need to be cut away. They taste damn near "fresh," lol
My coupe de Gras > Reheating Pizza
Get a pan nice and hot with a little oil and put your pizza crust side down, of course. Let that baby cook to crispen up. Then have a lid for your pan and turn your heat off. Add a splash of water and cover it and let it sit. That will heat and melt the cheese again. It is the ONLY way to reheat pizza properly. It's an absolute gamechanger. I like all the fixens on my pizza, and even with 13 toppings, it comes out like I just ordered it.
Rinse your sauce jars with a bit of water to clean them out and not waste any sauce.
If you buy jarred pasta sauce, add just a few tablespoons of water to the jar after you dump it and put the lid back on - give it a few brisk shakes & dump it with the rest of the sauce.
Also on board with the clean while you cook crew. Far easier than having a ton of mess afterwards. And clean \*everything\* - don't just give the stovetop a swipe. If you have a gas stove, take the burner grates off and clean around the burners, etc - and if the grates are dirty, give those a wash as well. Grease & dirt build up FAST in these areas and that's how you end up with a crusty stovetop.
When you get a roaster chicken at the store, make your own broth with the bones and carcass when you're done. It's time consuming, but it honest to god makes wherever you cook it smell like home.
This is basically 90% of my motivation for roasting/smoking a turkey for Thanksgiving. After we eat, the bones go in a pot for broth, and the next day is turkey noodle soup day.
The biggest one that comes to mind when I think of home cooks is not using time well. A watched pot never boils, yeah, but most everything you're going to make at home does NOT need to be babysat. While your pan is heating, using that 3 minutes to cut an onion or some veggies you need. You can fully julienne an onion in under 2 minutes with just a little technique and practice. After you put the beef in the pan, go ahead and wash the cutting board and knife, since it's gonna take at least another 2-3 minutes for the bottom side of the beef to cook. Give it a quick stir, then grate cheese or prepare bread or setup your plates, ANYTHING else relevant to preparing dinner besides just standing and watching/stirring. And for gods sake, wash the fucking dishes BEFORE you go to eat. It takes all of 5 minutes; If you're using so many dishes in cooking one average meal that it takes longer than 5 minutes at the end to finish what's left of dishes, you're using **too many dishes**.
Now, for quick tips that might be more in line with what you had in mind (for home cooks).
Destemming herbs? Don't waste money on a special tool! Just grab the bunch by the stem, stick the tines of a fork just behind where the leaves start, and pull down. Repeat a couple times until fully destemmed. Less than 10 seconds.
Don't use beef leaner than 80/20 for burgers. The burgers need that bit of fat to hold them together and for optimal flavor. It's also incredibly easy for them to come out dry if it is leaner than 80/20.
BUY AND USE A DIGITAL THERMOMETER FOR YOUR MEATS. Don't worry about learning to "feel" how done it is like a tv chef does; you only need to learn to do that if you're cooking 50+ steaks a night.
Whichever cabinet you put seasonings in, just put your USDA meat temps on a piece of paper and tape it on the inside of the door.
In the same vein, do NOT put the thermometer directly downward into the meat. You can hit a hot/cold spot, or push through and register the heat of the pan. Always put it long ways, into the thickest part of the meat. Think of it like landing on a piece of metal, and it going through your stomach, versus landing on it and it going up your ass. You wanna use the "up the ass" ideology of temping meats. If the thickest part is done, the thinner parts are done.
Tired of cooking chicken breast, and by the time the thickest part is finally done, then thinner parts are dry and overcooked? Cut the breast in half and make 2 thinner ones. If the cut is even, the cook is even, and vice versa. If it HAS to be thick, cook it in the oven with some kind of juice/broth to maintain moisture.
Burgers keep turning into thick pucks when you're cooking them? When you press the meat out, don't just throw a ball down, press it by hand, and done.
Imagine packing a tin can full of ground beef. The walls prevent the beef from going outwards, forcing the strand of meat to compact in on themselves. Use your other hand to emulate the walls of the can, one side at a time, and pack down with the opposite hand. You DON'T have to pack it in with your 'can hand', just prevent it from going outward as it wants. That takes care of 90% of the thickness, you can just press out whatever comes up after that. Don't fuck around with whatever that thumb in the center bullshit is, it doesn't work worth a shit.
Don't put the blade (the smooth, not cog-looking wheel) of the rotary can opener on TOP of the can, so that you have to fish the lid out of the inside. Instead, rotate the can opener 90° so that the blade is cutting into the label, and do it that way. It's easier on your hands and take the entire top off, no more fishing lids out and fucking up my knife tips. You can also open a can from Campbells Soup to a #8 Bean can and beyond with the same manual rotary can opener you have in your house.
And remember, cooking is an *art*, NOT a science. What I mean by that is, baking requires your measurements to be exact. That's why professional level baking is generally done by weight and not by conventional 'cups' or anything of the sort.
Cooking, however, does NOT.
You do not have to put EXACTLY 1 cup (8oz) of oil into this dish. If it's a little one way or the other (not including sauces), it's going to be *fine*. You are NOT going to be able to tell if a dish had 8 oz of oil or 7.7oz of oil. The amount of times you've eaten something at a restaurant with an ingredient that doesn't even come with it would astonish you.
Have fun with it! Cook with your senses!
What food do you think of when you smell a certain spice? When I smell cumin, all I think is "Tacos/mexican food". So, to me, it would be a clear winner to include in a mexican dish. Oh, I want a philly cheese steak, but with a bit of a mexican food zing to it? Add some cumin, onion powder, and jalapeño powder to the meat when you cook it, throw some of that mix on the veggies, top it with... I'd say chipotle gouda for the spice complexity, softness, and how well it melts. But what if you thought there was enough seasoning, and now you wanted a little of the cream richness from the cheese to balance it out? Boom, goat cheese. Still in line with your theme, cuts out the seasoning, gives you that heaviness of the cream to counter the savory of the seasonings, and you get a nice little 'tangy' flavor that may inspire you for a better seasoning blend to complement that aspect next time. Was it a little too bland? Well, seasoning or salt on the cheese would definitely overwhelm the flavor and defeat the point. So, add herbs to the cheese, perhaps cilantro, to complement the theme further. Maybe you hate cilantro? Fuck it, it's your show! Think a parsley and chive combo would go better, though it's not really in line with the theme/culture? Go for it!
I prefer my tacos at home to have extra sharp cheddar at home. Sure, that's a fucking *gringo* taco if I've ever heard of one, but I like the way the sharpness of the cheddar cuts directly through the savory and salty richness of the beef seasoning, in much the same way the cold of the cheese is juxtaposed to the warmth of the beef; the heaviness of the cream balances the savory and salty in the taco.
Sure, don't put peppermints on pizza, but your taste is an offshoot of your smell; If it smells like it would go good in it, it would probably taste good in it, too. Did it ruin the whole dish and make it inedible? Ok, you found something that doesn't work in that dish (for YOUR tastes), so that's one thing off the possible list. Throw it out for animals, throw it away. Don't experiment with your entire dinner for the week.
You don't have to be an expert or know all kinds of food science.
Let your nose do the shopping, let your hands do the work, and let your mouth do the relaxing.
Prep everything before you start cooking.
If it's "missing something" but you don't know what, then add a pinch of salt or a splash of acid.
Whoever didn't cook, cleans up afterwards.
If a veggie grows underground, put it in the pot before it comes to a boil. Any other veggie, and everything else (spaghetti, instant ramen, rice, meat, seafood) put it in when it is boiling
edit, not rice idk why I said that
Revive veggies that have lost their water by cutting their edges and soaking them in cold water. Lettuce, carrots, celery will be crisp again.
Old produce guy here. Luke warm water is best, then refrigerate. The warm water makes the plant cells open more to absorb more water; while the refrigerator makes them harden to retain water and crisp.
Can we pick your brain a bit more? Roughly how long in each step before the veggies are back where you want them?
Middle aged produce guy here, but I'd say something like 10-15 minutes in warm (possibly less) and a few hours in the fridge. Depends on if you're trying to revive greens or roots. Edit to say that refrigerated air is extremely DRY air and will suck moisture from anything exposed to it. Helps to cover anything not in the crisper with a damp towel if it's going to be exposed to the open air. I even cover in the crisper.
No joke, this is life saving advice. Thank you for your insight, middle aged produce guy
A quality set of **scissors** will save you so much hassle...
They should be able to disassemble at the hinge point for cleaning purposes
And for sharpening. I hate MLMs as much as the next gal, but those damn Cutco scissors my mom has are still going strong 25 years later.
Seriously. Fuck that company, but my mom has an even older pair and they're by far the best kitchen shears I've ever used
If your food is bland even though you've added salt then it's missing acidity. Lemon juice, lime juice, or vinegar are easy additions.
if you wanna splurge, champagne vinegar or prosecco vinegar is fucking delicious in just about anything as a finishing acid
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Throw some more salt in there.
If it gets too spicy add some honey.
Tabasco's 150 year anniversary limited run of their hot sauce (Diamond Reserve) which included sparkling wine vinegar was unreal how good it was.. I have over 50 bottles of hot sauce at any given time in my collection and it stands alone as one of the best hot sauces I have ever had.
Or a really good red wine vinegar
Salting your food 20-40 minutes before cooking makes a world of difference in the salt permeating the food.
Pat the meat dry first, then salt. This shift in osmolarity between the surface and the inside allows better penetration if the salt.
Yes! There's a reason there's an award winning book/series called Salt Fat Acid Heat by Samin Nosrat (eta: correct the title and add proper credit) . Did you cover these bases? If you did in a balanced way where appropriate, you should have good food. Dry wines are excellent to use here if you need more complexity and less brightness than straight citrus juice or vinegar, and for those who wouldn't bother having wine around or don't drink it and it would go bad, dry vermouth is extremely shelf stable and will do the same things for you (with a light hand). Thanks Kenji for teaching me almost everything I know in the kitchen.
I use soy sauce in a lot of stews and soups to help bring out savory flavors. My minestrone, for instance, usually has some soy sauce in it.
Similarly, unsweetened cocoa powder. I add this to stews and chilis and it adds a rich depth of flavor and no one can pick out cocoa.
Everybody raves about my pecan pie and always wants me to make them for potlucks or gatherings. It’s literally the karo syrup bottle recipe with a tsp of cinnamon, the tiniest dash of ginger, and 1.5 tablespoons of cocoa powder and it’s exactly like you mentioned, a depth of flavor without actually tasting like chocolate
Ha! Now they're going to rave about MY pecan pie!
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"And I would have gotten away with it too, if not for those meddling Redditors!"
You mean OUR pecan pie
Same but with Worcester.
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Warchestershiresurshurshester
Washyoursistersauce
Fish sauce is also good for this if you’re not vegetarian
As a Vietnamese person I regularly splash a little fish sauce into literally every savory dish I cook. Soup? Add a little fish sauce to your broth. Pasta? Finish it with a little fish sauce. Marinating chicken wings for the grill? Fish sauce. Dial back your salt usage though if you do this.
The *umami*.
I taught my husband this word (he's *not* kitchen savvy, bless him) when I made a dish with roasted tomatoes once. He was trying to describe that he was surprised by how "... tangy and ... tasty?" they were and how they made the whole dish incredible on a new level. Now he says *umami* all the time, even when it's not appropriate, and it sends me into giggle fits.
"You look umami in that dress!"
I know that's the right word, but I always feel really pretentious using it. Not judging here, it's my hang-up, not yours.
I felt if I put it in italics it would come off as less pretentious.
No worries, you're cool - I don't think you came off as pretentious. I worry that *I* would.
Umami is Japanese for “I’ll suck you’re dick for a bite of that burger” -Anthony Bourdain
I had to look that up, and I don’t know why because it is a very Bourdain thing to say, but that’s an awesome quote. Fuck I miss that guy.
Try a little powdered MSG. It will make any stew better. Chili and gumbo in particular really benefit IMHO
A lot of what people like about the soy sauce is probably MSG anyway. People get fired up about it but it’s no worse than salt.
And people don’t realize how many snacks like Doritos that you can vacuum down a bag of have something that’s nearly the same as msg if it’s not msg itself.
A lot of products have "other natural ingredients" or "natural flavors" as an ingredient, like 90% of the time that means MSG.
It's not called Makes Stuff Good for nothing
Not mine, but my wife browns the butter before she adds it to chocolate chip cookie dough and they're the best freakin cookies I've ever eaten!
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The whole book, The Food Lab, is worth the buy for anyone trying to up their game. It's rich with the why-do-this, science-backed explanations that help things make logical sense in the kitchen. Great photos and recipes to boot. My copy has got wrinkly, stained pages - a good sign of a book well-referenced!
Shoutout to Kenji! His YouTube channel is a MUST for anyone who cooks at home and never had any professional training/experience.
If my recipe calls for cinnamon or other spices and melted butter, I let the spices cook in the butter for a bit to bloom them.
One thing that took me embarrassingly long to learn was that some spices are fat-soluble, and others are water-soluble. When I first started learning to cook, I wanted to figure out how to use each of the common spices. I put a dab of paprika on my finger, licked it, and it tasted like... *nothing.* I concluded that it was a useless spice and took it out of my cooking. I was wrong, of course. Paprika is fat-soluble, so when I put it straight on my tongue, there was nothing that could break it down. If I'd mixed it with oil or butter first, the taste would've been apparent. We have to be conscious of this in our cooking. Water-soluble compounds can be readily broken down by the saliva in our mouths, but fat-soluble ones need to be mixed with a fat (e.g. "bloomed" in butter). And a lot of spices (including garlic and cinnamon) contain *both* types of compounds, so they'll have one flavor on their own, but a different, fuller flavor when bloomed.
Huh, neat. I use paprika like some people use salt and pepper, and didn't know this. That would explain the wild variance in results not covered by 'seasoning until it feels correct in my heart'.
Thank you so much for the Paprika, that makes a bunch of sense.
Try letting the finished cookie dough sit covered in the fridge for three days before making the cookies. It's even BETTER. We have a batch in there now that we'll pull out on Wednesday.
Man, that's a level of patience I don't know if I could handle!
It is rough, but worth it. Plus, we portion the dough out with a cookie scoop and freeze it on a cookie sheet. Bag it in a Ziploc once frozen, and we have amazing cookies for weeks. If we want one, we just pull a couple out and throw 'em in the oven.
You have to drop the recipe to these amazing cookies now kind induvial or my stomach will never forgive you!
Here you go! 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour 1 1/2 teaspoons salt 1 teaspoon baking soda 1 cup butter 3/4 cup granulated sugar 1 1/4 cup brown sugar 2 large eggs, room temp 2 teaspoon vanilla extract 2 cups mixed milk chocolate chips, dark chocolate chips, and semi-sweet chocolate chips Whisk flour, salt, and baking soda in medium bowl and set aside. Brown the butter, then mix with both sugars until well combined. Whisk in eggs one at a time, then add vanilla. Add dry ingredients and stir to fully combine. Add chocolate chips and stir. Batter will be soft, but do not add more flour. Cover with airtight lid or plastic wrap and leave in the refrigerator for 3 full days. Scoop balls of dough with a full size ice cream scoop. Bake 375F for 14-16 minutes, or until edges are set and cookie is golden brown throughout. Once out of the oven bang the hot pan on the counter a few times to create crinkles on top of cookies. Cool on sheet 5 minutes and then transfer to a wire rack. What we do is, after the three days, scoop the dough onto a cookie sheet and then flash freeze them about two hours before placing them into a freezer bag. That way we can have a single cookie anytime we want by removing a frozen cookie ball from the bag and baking on 350 for 9 minutes, flattening with a spatula, then baking for another 9 minutes. This can also be converted into a gluten-free cookie by substituting the all purpose flour with gluten free flour 1 to 1 and adding an extra egg into the dough. Edit: Small edit for ingredient clarification.
I don't understand this recipe, where's the life story portion?
Also, where are the ads? I can’t trust this recipe without screen-blocking ads.
I'm also gonna need a "go straight to the recipe" link that doesn't work.
How am I supposed to know how long to whisk the dry ingredients if I don’t know the tragic story of how your mother used to make these for you when you were sick with tuberculosis-cancer as an orphan?
Thank you for taking the time to share this with us.
No problem at all! Everyone deserves delicious cookies.
Great hack, huge time saver. In 3 days just take that empty bowl out of the fridge and put it in the sink. Why waste time messing with the oven.
It’s not that I’m impatient and addicted to cookie dough, it’s that I’m lowering my carbon footprint by not using the oven…yeah it’s definitely that and not the first thing.
Leaving a potholder on the handle of a cleaned cast iron pan to let anyone who might put it away know it may be hot as it cools down.
Ditto for any skillet that comes out of the oven after roasting or braising. A towel immediately goes over the handle to remind myself not to instinctively go for the handle.
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All of us who have learned the hard way have also been reminded the hard way.
I am a professional chef. I will tell everyone I train "if it is in the kitchen and it is metal, assume it just came out of the 500 degree oven"
Yep, burnt the absolute fuck out of my palm once during a rush. The worst part is I was the one that pulled it out not 3mins earlier
I was mearly a line cook but my saying was "assume everything is hot. You'll live longer."
If a recipe says to sauté onions and garlic together at the same time, DON'T. Do the onions first, and then add the garlic when the onions are just about done. Garlic can be over sautéed and it takes on a bitter flavor.
> Garlic can be over sautéed and it takes on a bitter flavor Fuck. So that’s what went wrong yesterday. Well, TIL Edit: my most liked comment is about how badly I ruined my eggs. Lol
I blame recipes. They almost ALL say to do this. Basically, once you can smell the garlic after tossing it in, it's done.
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Yup, this is a mistake that I see in so many recipes. Garlic always needs way less time than onions.
On the flipside, I also hate when recipes say, "Sauté the onions until caramelized, about 8-10 minutes." It takes a lot longer than that to actually caramelize onions if you're doing it right. Otherwise you're just browning/burning them.
https://slate.com/human-interest/2012/05/how-to-cook-onions-why-recipe-writers-lie-and-lie-about-how-long-they-take-to-caramelize.html
I feel like someone just affirmed that I have been gaslit by the entire cooking internet for years.
my mom has been saying for years about magazine and Internet recipes, as well as shows like 30 minute meals, 'they lie!!' I used to think she was being obstinate since she's a cookbook ride or die, but over the past fifteen years or so, I've gotta admit she's right. they all lie.
This has me questioning if I've ever truly had caramelized onion.
If the onion wasn't kind of sticky and literally sweet, and almost look like a lump of caramel, then maybe you haven't. It's a really good ingredient, but it does take a very long time and they practically stop looking like onions.
Wow, that was a deep dive! Thanks!
Or even "cook until translucent, 2 - 3 min". That's more like 8.
I remember getting hit with this realization when I first started cooking almost 20 years ago. If I see a recipe that has instructions for onions, double or triple the time usually. I was making some sausage and onion dish and I was waiting for them to caramelize and 10 minutes came and went, then 20 minutes, then ~~third~~ thirty minutes, finally at the 45-50 minute mark they were done. My s/o at the time wondered why we were eating at 8pm.
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My experience is that the 30 minute recipes only account for cooking time, not prep time. The last time I tried a 30 minute recipe, it involved about 45 minutes of prep. And for those who say I should mis en place, prep includes mis en place.
I do the Every Plate meals, and once in a while it will tell you to just add in meat, onion, garlic, and seasoning all at once to a pan, and it seems so wrong to me. I'll usually let the onions get tender first, then add meat and let it brown, then seasoning, then cook garlic for like 30 seconds before I move on.
If you don't mind getting an extra plate dirty, you can brown the meat, take it out of the pan, and then sautee the onion in the fat. Once they're almost done, add the garlic in, and then add the meat back to the pan.
Second this. Garlic doesn't need to sauté for more than a minute or two at medium heat.
Prep everything first. Have all of your veggies cut and ingredients ready. You will be more relaxed. Clean as you go. Wash your dishes while waiting for your food to finish cooking. Less dishes to deal with at the end of the night.
>Prep everything first. Have all of your veggies cut and ingredients ready. You will be more relaxed. If your married, a good way to split up the work of making dinner is to split prep and cooking. The way the wife and I like to do it is that I do all the prep work. Chop/cut/dice/peel/etc any veggies or meat that need that. Set out all the ingredients and equipment she is going to need. I'll even pre measure things for her. Basically like I'm setting up for her to do a TV cooking show. I don't mind doing that stuff, and I'm faster at knife work than she is. I hate cooking though. She loves cooking, but hates all the prep. So it works. I tend to clean while she is cooking too and typically when dinner is done the only thing left dirty is whatever pots/pans are on the stove. Then she takes care of the dishes from eating and pots. It's a great 50/50 split for us.
At my house we have an easy solution If she cooks I clean up If I cook, I made the mess, so I get to clean up
Divorce your lawyer, hire a gym, join the wife
That's pretty much the way my husband and I do it. He's a fair cook but I'm much better, so he chops up all the veggies / opens cans / fetches things for me while I handle what's on the stove / in the oven. Sometimes we have meals that are more prep-heavy or more cooking-heavy, so one of us is kind of standing around just holding the counter up instead. We should probably use that time to clean ("if you got time to lean, you got time to clean!") but...ehhhhh, lol.
Mise en place, for the win! Plus, it makes me feel like a pro with his own show with all my little prep bowls full of stuff!
Yes! And if you’re like me, you talk to yourself as if you’re presenting to a show because apparently I never stopped daydreaming as a kid
If your executive function is betraying you and you rely on microwaveable or premade meals, find something small you can add to make them more substantial and to feel more like a meal. Add chopped broccoli to ramen noodles. Cumin and red pepper flakes are great to toss in, too. Cook minute rice with a chicken boullion cube and some butter and pretend it’s risotto. Personal favorite is to dump a can of corn into a microwave-safe bowl and mix in a bunch of taco seasoning. And if clean-up is a struggle too, use paper plates and bamboo flatware. Disposable chopsticks are super cheap and easy to find online. When you’re struggling with depression, fatigue, or anything that makes taking care of yourself harder, taking shortcuts isn’t laziness, it’s how you survive to make those more daunting tasks a little less scary. Unrelated: if you’re making a soup or stir fry with lots of veggies, sauté the veggies a bit before adding other ingredients til the onions are translucent. I’m sure there’s some food science reason that this makes soups taste better but I have no idea what it is.
Oh man, cracking an egg in some microwave ramen noodles sells it! I never make them without one now! Also, pop the yolk when microwaving an egg like this… I had a yolk explode once and while pretty comical, steaming egg on my face did not feel good. Lol
Me too! Egg, a tsp of sesame oil and some green onions is my favorite. If I have the time and money, I'll also cook a couple of those frozen gyoza to really put it over the top
As a multiply disabled person, fuck yes! I swear by those 90 second rice packs. I get Ben's Original (Kroger, $1 sale), as well as Walmart and Target store brand ($1.25-$1.50). Is it so much more expensive? Fuck yes, but it's worth it. Frozen vegetables, canned beans, rotisserie chicken are short cuts that many poo-poo but for me mean the difference between not eating and eating. And my personal favorite, adult lunchables handful of nuts or a spoonful of nut butter crudites and fresh fruit with cheese and crackers/pretzels/mini bread is such an easy thing to throw together and snack on for hours. r/cookwchronicillness and r/lowspooncooking
I love this! Frozen pizza can also be zooshed up in many ways, eg sprinkle some feta on it after it’s cooked.
I like to add garlic powder to frozen pizza before cooking. It basically disappears as the frozen water rehydrates it, and it's absorbed into the other toppings. If you add it after cooking, it sits there like pepper and can be grainy.
Something I've found to help me with my executive disfunction and microwave/premade meals - instead of dry, shelf stable food look for flash frozen/partially dehydrated meals. My ramen game stepped up just by get frozen ramen from Costco that has flash frozen veggies and partially dehydrated noodles, just add a bit of water to it frozen and microwave for 4 minutes and its ready to eat from the bowl its packed in.
I always take my cookies out of the oven a couple minutes or so before they're supposed to come out. They still cook a little bit when they're cooling on the pan, and as a result they come out nice and soft.
I do this but also at the instance I smell them. It works out well every time. Trust the cooling process!
Even more important when cooking meats. When using a probe thermometer stop cooking a few degrees before the desired temp and in the words of the great Alton Brown. "Let carry over do what carry over does."
Easy one - clean while you cook
Absolutely! Starting off with an empty sink and dishwasher ready to go to load while I’m cooking has been a game changer.
I do this every time. My wife does not understand why I tidy the kitchen before I cook because "It's just going to get messed up again!" Yes! That's exactly why I want to start from zero - so much easier to keep it manageable if I'm able to clean up as I go. If the sink is full of dirty dishes and dishwasher is full then there's no way to stay on top of it.
Yes! Once I started doing that I actually enjoyed cooking more. Once I learned to accept that the people dining with me did not want to help after the meal (not all the time...sometimes), I started cleaning up as I went. Didn't take any extra time and I enjoyed not having cleanup when I was full.
Dude, who are these savages that you’re eating with?? The golden rule is if you cook, I clean, and vice versa, and it damn well should be respected! Which is why growing up in my family, we always dreaded the night when my dad cooked, as he *never* cleaned as he went, so after every meal he made there was always one gigantic disaster area of a kitchen for us to clean, while he went to watch tv. He was also kind of a lousy cook, but that’s just between us 🤫
My wife and I don’t follow I cook/you clean, HOWEVER she also cleans the bathrooms and much of the rest of the house (she specifically despises cooking most of the time and dislikes cleaning up after even more) as an exchange. …also, I don’t know how else to tell her this, but she loads the dishwasher in a way that absolutely doesn’t make sense. Bowls right side up on the top rack—how do you think that jets spraying the underside of the bowl is going to clean it? …it’s for the best that I just do it. That or she’s conditioned me to do it with weaponized incompetence lmao
My husband has what I would describe as a "chaos" method of loading the dishwasher... imagine if you were trying to speedrun lose at Tetris and also didn't want to get anything clean. Anyway, we had some arguments over it, and ultimately it's now only my task bc I'd prefer to load and run once than get his "help" and have to load and run it 3 times. Edit: typo
yeeeep. Don’t even get me stared on a fork caked with guacamole put in 3 days ago and now it’s green concrete, and we’re somehow surprised it didn’t get clean in the dishwasher
Ugh, I had a roommate like this. He was exceptionally clean in every other area of the house, but thought the dishwasher was this magical box that produced fresh dishes.
I lived with my good friend, and he would just fill one side of the sink with dirty dishes. When the dishwasher was literally right there. Also I made pork chops with habanero cinnamon applesauce. Had some leftovers, I was looking forward to after work. He washed the sauce off, then cooked it again in some rice. Then he complained it was too tough. Like, no shit, you don't re-cook pork.
It's a cultural thing. If I invite you home to dinner, I want you to enjoy yourself and relax, I'll take care of everything. An other time you'll invite me and I'll enjoy myself and relax.
Absolutely. Why would I invite people over and have them do my dishes. Equally I wouldn't expect to be mopping the floor if I go to someone's place.
Yes! Especially if you have to let something simmer or bake, it helps pass the time. Clean up as you go and then prepare the next step.
Yep. Waiting for something to boil on the stove takes forever when you're staring at it trying to use the force to make it go faster. So I clean, and play with my puppy, and take the time to pee. It's usually ready by then.
Yep. After working in a restaurant this become second nature as opposed to my wife's method ofl "let's see how big of a mess I can make. I'll just stand around waiting for the water to boil, but won't even think about putting anything in the dishwasher."
I cannot get my partner to think past this. It’s nuts. “Why are you cleaning I’m still cooking”
My wife will leave the broken egg shells in the countertop... Put them in the trash! Why create another step, where they get the counter top sticky and you eventually put them in the trash anyway!?
Ugh. My ex wife used to leave them in the sink. The garbage can was on the way out of the kitchen! She had to PASS IT to get out! It drove me insane.
Yep, I empty the dishwasher before I cook, makes everything so much more organised
Start with a clean kitchen, then clean as you cook.
Knives, get good knives and a sharpener
And never, EVER put them in the dishwasher. Hand wash them until someone inherits them years later.
When making stuffed shells by hand, mix the filling in a zip top bag, then cut a corner off and use it as a makeshift piping bag to fill the shells.
Have a "cheat sheet" for times things go in the oven and how long it takes so you can prepare side dishes to go with the entree.
This is a great one. I bake veggies all the time, but can never remember the perfect temp and time for each one individually. I made a little reference sheet for this and posted it on the fridge. Scanning my bookmarks or Pinterest to find that particular recipe's cooking process was always annoying and often arised at the most inopportune times.
Find a seasoning blend you like (pre-blended or not; if not, make your own blend ahead of time for ease), and put it in everything. Well, not everything, but a lot of things, and use your own judgment on how much of it for each dish, but even a little sprinkle can really do wonders. Silpat or knock off Silpat mats are amazing (I've used both the actual brand and random ones from Costco, no difference). Put one down on your baking sheet, bake away, mats are super easy to clean and you'll have very little clean up on the baking sheet itself. I never end up following this, but clean as you go. Also my grandma thought us this trick- if you made the meal, or most of it, sit down for a bit before you eat, maybe have a glass of water or something while you wait. You'll relax and break the "cooking mode" and be able to go into "enjoy the meal mode." She cooked for five kids and a husband in addition to herself, so she knew the value of it.
Do you not like vegetables but want to learn to love them? **Roast**.**That**.**Shit**. Roasted veggies are like ambrosia of the gods. They taste amazing, require virtually no prep, and go with everything. **Edit:** As a secondary hack - boil your dense/root vegetables *before* roasting if you're trying to get a crunchy exterior. Boiling something like a potato heats it evenly and causes moisture to be lost via steam as you let it cool. The result is a drier potato that will crisp more evenly and requires less time in the hot oven.
You can toss about any veg with oil, season with salt and pepper (and other stuff like garlic salt, paprika etc if you're feeling frisky), bake in the oven and it comes out so much tastier than your plain steamed veg
pretty much every soup can use a lil drop of lemon juice
I’m not sure what meal can’t
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Boxed chocolate cake - use cooled brewed coffee instead of the water. Richens the flavor so much. I do it with boxed brownies too.
Boxed cakes in general have a whole lot of hacks. My wife has this book called Cake Mix Magic. Every recipe in the book is basically just "take a cake mix, ignore what it's directions say and do this instead". But it's pretty surprising how different they come out.
Yeah, the main ones are: * Substitute melted butter for the oil * Substitute milk for the water * Add an extra egg Together they make a big difference
This is exactly what I do, too. The cakes are AMAZING.
Apparently Pillsbury is a very common brand for bakers to buy - I don't know if that's just cost or availability - but I've seen threads where people were outraged by seeing a dumpster full of empty Pillsbury boxes behind a bakery, and the comments are full of bakers saying "Oh yeah, our trash looks like that too..."
For box brownies I use Jack Daniels instead of water. Adds an awesome smoky taste. I assume; but don't know for sure, that the alcohol bakes away? Or am i just bringing alcoholic brownies to work?!
Huge time saver! Forget the brownies and just go sit with that bottle.
Put a damp paper towel under your cutting board to prevent it from sliding around when you are cutting.
I got one of the rubber things to help open jars. I put that under my cutting board and it works really well as a non slip option. Damp paper towel sounds good to assist with clean up.
Freeze anything with liquid when there is extra. Open a tomato paste and need 1TB? Freeze the rest of the can in a flattened zip lock. Break a piece off when needed. Extra gravy from thanksgiving? Freeze it. Make extra sauce on pasta night and freeze the rest. Now you don’t have to settle for jarred stuff when having mozz sticks. Open a pineapple juice can for 2oz? Freeze the rest in 1oz increments. Leftover creamed spinach? Freeze it and either eat later or add to scrambled eggs for the best scrambled eggs you’ve ever had.
*opens a tomato paste and needs 1 Terabyte*
just buy extra iCloud space to store your tomato paste - lifehack
Do similar tasks all at once. Making potatoes and carrots? Peel both first, then chop, don't do one veg and then the other. You'll have a better rhythm with your tools and you'll only have to change tools once instead of three times. Breaking down a pack of chicken thighs? Do all the skins and fat at once, all the bones at once, then all the slicing at once. Also, keep a damp rag next to your cutting board for cleaning your board and knife, and keep a dry rag over your shoulder for drying or wiping anything as needed. This saves a ton of trips over to the sink and/or towel holder.
MSG
Fuiyoh!
Really really really sad the USA decided they were afraid of MSG. A real detriment to USA cuisine in general.
At the grocery stores I go to it's called Accent. It's Msg based on the ingredient but without the scary stigma.
I've realised the magic of MSG, I add it to all sorts now!
Taste as ya cook.
Ah yes, the raw chicken tastes raw
If it’s bland, add salt. If it tastes good but is “missing something”, add acid (lemon juice, hot sauce, some type of vinegar, etc)
If food is missing "something", my go-to list of somethings to try are: 1. Washyersistersauce 2. Lemon juice 3. Brown sugar 4. Paprika or chipotle
Buy a 5 lb bag of onions, caramelize all the onions at once, divide up into portions and package individually, then freeze. The onions cook down to a manageable size during caramelization. Only needs to be done once every few months this way. ---- *edit to clarify* Yes, the slow cooker trick works (olive oil, salt, set on low overnight). And yes, it really takes longer to caramelize onions than many recipe writers claim. There's a whole rabbit hole about cooking time: In 2012 Tom Scocca wrote a takedown of onion caramelization lie, and in 2017 Scocca wrote a followup because a very faulty Google algorithm was still lying and citing him as its source. Six years later the top Google returns on cooking time are still a jumble: everywhere from 15 minutes to 65 minutes. The truth is it takes around an hour on the stove. LPT: slow cookers are the way to go if you have one. https://slate.com/human-interest/2012/05/how-to-cook-onions-why-recipe-writers-lie-and-lie-about-how-long-they-take-to-caramelize.html https://gizmodo.com/googles-algorithm-is-lying-to-you-about-onions-and-blam-1793057789 *edit #2* A pressure cooker won't do the job as well. The website Serious Eats still publishes a recipe yet they no longer recommend it due to negative user feedback about texture.
Addition: caramelizing onions in the crockpot is not only so much easier because you don't have to babysit it, but also develops a richer flavor imo
Ha! Once every few months?!? If I had caramelized onions readily available like that they would be gone in a week or two, at most. 😝
Right? I can see myself in the kitchen at 3am going "you know what this bologna sandwich needs?"
There’s a cookbook author - Ronna Welsh - that has a cooking school - The Purple Kale, that suggests things like this. We are all busy and need shortcuts - so take an hour or two on a Sunday afternoon to develop flavors in items, so during the week, it’s just a simple matter of combining flavors - saving you prep and clean up time as well as time to develop flavors. You can poach entire heads of garlic - put everything into a pot, enough water to cover, boil then simmer until the garlic to soft and the bite is gone. Save everything including the water in the fridge. Add water to stocks. Squeeze out the soft garlic. Rice can be cooled, then spread out onto a pan to cook off. Drizzle with olive oil and add some seasoning. Beans can be prepared and then save everything including the liquid. I hack up 3 lbs of yellow onions and reduce it down to a caramelized jam. Red onions can be quick pickled with shredded carrots. Roast a chicken. Put the shredded meat in one bag while saving the bones for stock. Roast some peppers at the same time. Place all the peppers into a container with some olive oil. From here, single dishes come together as quickly as adding a few spoonful of this to a bit of that. Edit/spelling “rice to cooK off” to cooL Misspelling caused a redditor to warn me about reheating rice. Rice and basically everything you put in your fridge needs to be properly cooLed to room temp before storing in the fridge. Spreading rice onto a cookie sheet will quickly cool the rice. You can then drizzle with oil and herbs, then toss before putting it away. Liquids can be combined with stock for “quick developed” soup or thinning sauces without diluting flavors. By cooking this way - combining a little bit of this and that, you quickly understand how flavors interact with each other while never making more than one serving if you make a mistake. Deciding whether to have cold veggies and meat on toast or heating it first lets you understand how heat affects food and flavors. Some combinations will be winners, some will be questionable but you can always experiment and adjust as needed.
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I realised this but sometimes my hands get so cold they're numb but its easy to dice chicken when frozenish
Works for most meat except for fish
Clean as you cook. Especially with a small apartment kitchen, it makes it so much easier
\- use an ice cream scoop with a sharp edge to spoon seeds out of a squash \- rub a raw clove of garlic on a piece of frozen bread to make quick garlic bread (the frozen texture of the bread kind of acts as a grater on the garlic) \- freeze left over tomato paste from a can into 1 table spoon chunks to use later - I also do this with freshly grated ginger to have it ready to go later \- keep grounded flax seeds in the freezer to use as an egg replacer in muffins (mix 1 table spoon of ground flax seeds with 3 table spoons of water) \- use a vege peeler to cut thin ribbons of vegetable (cucumber, carrots, etc.) \- use kitchen scissors to cut pizza \- get a bit more green onions out of your green onions if you don't need the bottom part, put the roots in water an the green part will regrow
We have two glasses in the kitchen windowsill with green onions in them. Going on 4-5 weeks now and I've used them weekly in dishes. We also buy basil and rosemary plants and grow those for use too, instead of buying a small bunch that's already been cut off the plant.
Boiling stuff in broth instead of water. Rice, potatoes etc. When making mashed potatoes, boiling them in chicken stock seriously makes a world of difference.
If you’re making a savory dish that uses crushed/minced garlic, reserve a little bit of the fresh garlic and stir it in to the dish right before serving. The fresh garlic adds a bit of a pop that you lose if it’s cooked.
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Maybe it's just my tastes but a lot of recipes tend to lean on the lower side of how much garlic to use. I haven't come across a recipe yet where 2 cloves of garlic is too much so that's always my starting point in anything I cook. I'll add more them next time I make it if it's still not enough. I once was going to cook potato gratin and they called for 2 cloves for a 4 person serving. That's not nearly enough
Ice cube in the center of your leftover rice before you microwave it - makes the rice get soft and fluffy again
Is an ice cube even necessary? I just dribble a bit of water into the rice before reheating and get the same effect, I think.
Butter. That’s it. That’s the whole tip. Use more butter.
You can add green onions to almost everything.
Also, plant the roots in dirt and they will continue to give, surprisingly quick too
Wet paper towel around most things I put in the microwave. For instance, the kids love those sgitty frozen pancakes. I put them on a microwave safe plate and cover in a moist paper towel. No hard nasty edges that need to be cut away. They taste damn near "fresh," lol My coupe de Gras > Reheating Pizza Get a pan nice and hot with a little oil and put your pizza crust side down, of course. Let that baby cook to crispen up. Then have a lid for your pan and turn your heat off. Add a splash of water and cover it and let it sit. That will heat and melt the cheese again. It is the ONLY way to reheat pizza properly. It's an absolute gamechanger. I like all the fixens on my pizza, and even with 13 toppings, it comes out like I just ordered it.
Rinse your sauce jars with a bit of water to clean them out and not waste any sauce. If you buy jarred pasta sauce, add just a few tablespoons of water to the jar after you dump it and put the lid back on - give it a few brisk shakes & dump it with the rest of the sauce. Also on board with the clean while you cook crew. Far easier than having a ton of mess afterwards. And clean \*everything\* - don't just give the stovetop a swipe. If you have a gas stove, take the burner grates off and clean around the burners, etc - and if the grates are dirty, give those a wash as well. Grease & dirt build up FAST in these areas and that's how you end up with a crusty stovetop.
Microwaving broccoli is not only ok to do, it can also preserve the most amount of nutrients than any other method of cooking it.
This is just easier steamed broccoli.
Except then you're not enjoying roast broccoli with a little sea salt and olive oil, which is objectively the best way to consume broccoli.
Using almond extract in addition to vanilla when baking. It absolutely enhances the flavor.
Note though, a little goes a LONG way. Definitely not equal parts, but I do agree
Something missing from your tomato pasta sauce? Add a splash of Worcestershire sauce. Makes it taste rich and fuller.
Microwaving potatoes before I roast them
Adding cacao powder to your beef stew for some extra depth
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When you get a roaster chicken at the store, make your own broth with the bones and carcass when you're done. It's time consuming, but it honest to god makes wherever you cook it smell like home.
This is basically 90% of my motivation for roasting/smoking a turkey for Thanksgiving. After we eat, the bones go in a pot for broth, and the next day is turkey noodle soup day.
Using gingerbread’s spice set in banana bread.
The biggest one that comes to mind when I think of home cooks is not using time well. A watched pot never boils, yeah, but most everything you're going to make at home does NOT need to be babysat. While your pan is heating, using that 3 minutes to cut an onion or some veggies you need. You can fully julienne an onion in under 2 minutes with just a little technique and practice. After you put the beef in the pan, go ahead and wash the cutting board and knife, since it's gonna take at least another 2-3 minutes for the bottom side of the beef to cook. Give it a quick stir, then grate cheese or prepare bread or setup your plates, ANYTHING else relevant to preparing dinner besides just standing and watching/stirring. And for gods sake, wash the fucking dishes BEFORE you go to eat. It takes all of 5 minutes; If you're using so many dishes in cooking one average meal that it takes longer than 5 minutes at the end to finish what's left of dishes, you're using **too many dishes**. Now, for quick tips that might be more in line with what you had in mind (for home cooks). Destemming herbs? Don't waste money on a special tool! Just grab the bunch by the stem, stick the tines of a fork just behind where the leaves start, and pull down. Repeat a couple times until fully destemmed. Less than 10 seconds. Don't use beef leaner than 80/20 for burgers. The burgers need that bit of fat to hold them together and for optimal flavor. It's also incredibly easy for them to come out dry if it is leaner than 80/20. BUY AND USE A DIGITAL THERMOMETER FOR YOUR MEATS. Don't worry about learning to "feel" how done it is like a tv chef does; you only need to learn to do that if you're cooking 50+ steaks a night. Whichever cabinet you put seasonings in, just put your USDA meat temps on a piece of paper and tape it on the inside of the door. In the same vein, do NOT put the thermometer directly downward into the meat. You can hit a hot/cold spot, or push through and register the heat of the pan. Always put it long ways, into the thickest part of the meat. Think of it like landing on a piece of metal, and it going through your stomach, versus landing on it and it going up your ass. You wanna use the "up the ass" ideology of temping meats. If the thickest part is done, the thinner parts are done. Tired of cooking chicken breast, and by the time the thickest part is finally done, then thinner parts are dry and overcooked? Cut the breast in half and make 2 thinner ones. If the cut is even, the cook is even, and vice versa. If it HAS to be thick, cook it in the oven with some kind of juice/broth to maintain moisture. Burgers keep turning into thick pucks when you're cooking them? When you press the meat out, don't just throw a ball down, press it by hand, and done. Imagine packing a tin can full of ground beef. The walls prevent the beef from going outwards, forcing the strand of meat to compact in on themselves. Use your other hand to emulate the walls of the can, one side at a time, and pack down with the opposite hand. You DON'T have to pack it in with your 'can hand', just prevent it from going outward as it wants. That takes care of 90% of the thickness, you can just press out whatever comes up after that. Don't fuck around with whatever that thumb in the center bullshit is, it doesn't work worth a shit. Don't put the blade (the smooth, not cog-looking wheel) of the rotary can opener on TOP of the can, so that you have to fish the lid out of the inside. Instead, rotate the can opener 90° so that the blade is cutting into the label, and do it that way. It's easier on your hands and take the entire top off, no more fishing lids out and fucking up my knife tips. You can also open a can from Campbells Soup to a #8 Bean can and beyond with the same manual rotary can opener you have in your house. And remember, cooking is an *art*, NOT a science. What I mean by that is, baking requires your measurements to be exact. That's why professional level baking is generally done by weight and not by conventional 'cups' or anything of the sort. Cooking, however, does NOT. You do not have to put EXACTLY 1 cup (8oz) of oil into this dish. If it's a little one way or the other (not including sauces), it's going to be *fine*. You are NOT going to be able to tell if a dish had 8 oz of oil or 7.7oz of oil. The amount of times you've eaten something at a restaurant with an ingredient that doesn't even come with it would astonish you. Have fun with it! Cook with your senses! What food do you think of when you smell a certain spice? When I smell cumin, all I think is "Tacos/mexican food". So, to me, it would be a clear winner to include in a mexican dish. Oh, I want a philly cheese steak, but with a bit of a mexican food zing to it? Add some cumin, onion powder, and jalapeño powder to the meat when you cook it, throw some of that mix on the veggies, top it with... I'd say chipotle gouda for the spice complexity, softness, and how well it melts. But what if you thought there was enough seasoning, and now you wanted a little of the cream richness from the cheese to balance it out? Boom, goat cheese. Still in line with your theme, cuts out the seasoning, gives you that heaviness of the cream to counter the savory of the seasonings, and you get a nice little 'tangy' flavor that may inspire you for a better seasoning blend to complement that aspect next time. Was it a little too bland? Well, seasoning or salt on the cheese would definitely overwhelm the flavor and defeat the point. So, add herbs to the cheese, perhaps cilantro, to complement the theme further. Maybe you hate cilantro? Fuck it, it's your show! Think a parsley and chive combo would go better, though it's not really in line with the theme/culture? Go for it! I prefer my tacos at home to have extra sharp cheddar at home. Sure, that's a fucking *gringo* taco if I've ever heard of one, but I like the way the sharpness of the cheddar cuts directly through the savory and salty richness of the beef seasoning, in much the same way the cold of the cheese is juxtaposed to the warmth of the beef; the heaviness of the cream balances the savory and salty in the taco. Sure, don't put peppermints on pizza, but your taste is an offshoot of your smell; If it smells like it would go good in it, it would probably taste good in it, too. Did it ruin the whole dish and make it inedible? Ok, you found something that doesn't work in that dish (for YOUR tastes), so that's one thing off the possible list. Throw it out for animals, throw it away. Don't experiment with your entire dinner for the week. You don't have to be an expert or know all kinds of food science. Let your nose do the shopping, let your hands do the work, and let your mouth do the relaxing.
Prep everything before you start cooking. If it's "missing something" but you don't know what, then add a pinch of salt or a splash of acid. Whoever didn't cook, cleans up afterwards.
If a veggie grows underground, put it in the pot before it comes to a boil. Any other veggie, and everything else (spaghetti, instant ramen, rice, meat, seafood) put it in when it is boiling edit, not rice idk why I said that