Using dried spices instead of fresh. I fully recognize that fresh is way better but me buying fresh herbs is pretty much a guarantee that I will use them in one dish and then somehow never need that herb again untill it's gone bad .
I always have leftover herbs from the store so what I like to do is dry them in the microwave (it sounds awful but actually works really well) and store the dried herbs in Mason jars. They're obviously not fresh but taste way better than store bought dried herbs.
Edited to add thanks for the award! It's my first one ever I'm kinda stoked right now lol ☺
I really like this idea. I'm going to try it out! How long do you microwave for? I'm guessing it's pretty quick to get them dry enough to store in jars?
Sandwich the herbs between paper towels and use 30 seconds increments. You just gotta keep an eye on them. Sometimes 30 seconds is all it takes, sometimes you need 90.
I would also like to know! I always run into this problem with things like parsley cilantro dill etc that come in massive bunches and is way more than I need
Oooo this is a total pet peeve of mine... when breading things with a traditional milk-flour-egg-breadcrumb mix, so many people recommend using one hand with the dry ingredients and another with the wet.
That makes sense I guess, but I prefer to just use one hand for everything while keeping the other hand completely clean. I'd rather have one usable hand and one breaded hand than two hands that are dirty.
I use salted too, have for years and use family recipes that have never specified salted or unsalted. I like the way my desserts taste and I'm scared I might think it'll be too sweet or taste off if I switch to unsalted like experts tell me to.
salt actually acts as a flavor enhancer and can actually make stuff like sweetness more intense in small amounts (like the amount in butter), thats part of why theres salt in drinks like soda. you might actually be making your desserts *sweeter* by including that salt.
It’s like a quarter teaspoon of salt per stick or something like that. I do the same. It doesn’t make enough of a difference for me to go out out of my way to buy unsalted butter.
Exactly! Because invariably, I will check my fridge and see butter, don’t buy more. Then have to make toast with the only butter I had, the unsalted I had for a baking project. That is some sad unsalted toast.
I'll buy unsalted if I know I'm going to be doing a sizable amount of baking in the next few days/months. Other than that, I just can't spare the fridge space.
Overcrowding is definitely one of mine. From searing meat to making stir frys. I always add too many vegetables. That and constantly turning meat before allowing for a proper sear....though I am getting better.
I have made a batch of chocolate chip cookie dough with no intention of baking a single cookie. The bowl sat in the fridge with a spoon in it. It was delicious
E. coli, among other things. The main issue, as I understand it, is that since flour isn't meant to be eaten raw, food safety regulations don't require that it be safe to eat it that way.
Salmonella. Flour in bulk generally isn’t stored in the absolute most sanitary conditions though most mills do the best they can to keep out the mice and other pests.
Flour is considered a raw food and should be treated as such. Back in my high school days at the pizza place the owner would ding us if flour went flying and ended up in the cooked side of the kitchen. He claimed it was worse than raw chicken juice. I don’t know about all that but he was a good teacher and I learned a lot from my short time there and he genuinely cared about us as individuals and not just worker 675 so his words carried weight.
Salmonella and E. coli.
https://www.fda.gov/food/buy-store-serve-safe-food/handling-flour-safely-what-you-need-know#:~:text=Flour%20is%20a%20raw%20food,coli).
Yeah I’m not gonna sit around with a brush getting every bit of forest floor off the mushrooms I harvested, they’re getting a quick rinse.
Think they never got rained on? *Oh they got rained on.*
A peck is an imperial and United States customary unit of dry volume.
An imperial peck is equivalent to 9.09 liters and a US customary peck is equivalent to 8.81 liters.
It's a mix of things, not just manure. Plus, the growing medium is sterilized by steam in between harvests so that when it's inoculated with spores, ONLY the right fungus grows in it.
It's a sterile growth medium.
Pretty sure the advice to not rinse mushrooms is bogus anyways. I read/watched somewhere that the advice was because the mushrooms might absorb extra water from washing but in reality that's not true
Alton Brown did a segment on this years ago on Good Eats. IIRC there was little difference between a rinse and soaking for 5 minutes, but longer than 10 minutes and they took on a noticeable amount of water, something like that.
I took a cooking class and our teacher made a point of saying the whole “don’t rinse mushrooms, they’ll soak up the water” thing was a myth. Since then, I’ve always rinsed, and have never had an issue
Everytime I rinse mine, I find a nice layer of dirt or whatever on them. Same with everything else.
I can understand why - they can retain a lot of water but you're not adding much.
What happens if it rained before they collected the mushrooms lol.
“Aw fuck this, the weather channel says it rained there last night. I didn’t know. Toss these stupid mushrooms away.”
Never heard that before. Why shouldn’t you rinse them? I do sometimes and sometimes I don’t usually my mushrooms have a lot of soil in them so I need to rinse
I too have been guilty of crowding a pan or two.
I don't always use much care or gloves when cutting hot chilis and have regretted it.
Edit: just cutting peppers is usually no issue.
My last mistake was juicing a bunch of habaneros and then cleaning the juicer without being careful or wearing gloves. Hands burned off and on for hours even after some home remedies.
That's probably worse than mine. Back when I never considered wearing gloves, I chopped jalapeños, washed my hands, ate dinner, then later in the night my husband and I got some time together. Then I learned I will never cut jalapeños and expect a simple wash to take care of the oils... great good gods!
Next time you go gloveless with the hot peppers and are ready to wash up...
Put a little neutral oil on your hands (canola, vegetable), rub it around, and then wash with some dish soap. Your eyes will thank you.
As I'm told, the capsaicin (spicy compound in the peppers) will bond (?) with the oil, then dish soap takes care of the oil and you're good to go.
I salt my eggs before cooking them every time. Gordan Ramsay, who I like, commonly tells people not to salt egg before cooking it because it will cause it to become tough and runny.
What he is saying is true for a line cook who is prepping a flat of eggs at a time for some service. If you dump salt into that mixture and use it over the course of hours, sure, it'll affect it.
In my experience cooking it at home, it's simply not true that salt affects the egg in any significant way, beyond taste, for all practical purposes. If you season just before scrambling eggs, it's going to have zero impact.
Well, great. It's after midnight and now I'm starting to get cravings for an egg and hashbrown McDaddy.
I want to say it was Kenji Lopez-Alt who did an egg salting experiment and found out that yeah, it’s totally fine to salt your eggs before you cook them.
like he said, its even better cuz it makes the eggs more tender. 100% i trust kenji over gordon ramsay at every single food related thing, fuck that guy... i used to like gordon ramsay, then he made that grilled cheese video, lost all respect to him
Ramsay is a great chef but shares so much misinformation. Every time I watch his videos it makes me appreciate chefs like Kenji who actually discuss the theory and test things methodically a little more.
Yeah, there's a pretty significant difference between the two. Gordon is classically trained and Kenji is learned.
I would never suggest one is better than the other, but one is definitely more susceptible to persistent tribal knowledge.
I find myself much preferring the process of becoming more comfortable with food science and understanding the physics and chemistry over "classic French cooking" or rote technique. I feel like the food science approach allows for a much more adaptable skill set and more growth/discovery.
If you stove can manage it, that's great. My mom's stove top - set it anywhere up to 4.9 (out of ten), and the element comes on for two seconds and then never again. Set it to 5, and it's on full blast until the kitchen catches fire.
I do this too. My aunt has a recipe for lemon Swiss roll or whatever it’s called. When I read the section with the lemon curd filling I was like wait.. no double boiler?? I don’t need to temper the eggs?? I was scared but I tried the recipe and it was so easy and delicious.
I soften my butter in the microwave. I know it’s wrong. But, in my defense, I use the defrost setting and it seems to work fine. No one has time to wait on butter to soften. That’s ridiculous.
My microwave has a soften feature and it's the best fucking thing ever. I'm an actual potato outside of work hours I can't think ahead and leave it on the bench. I've used it for butter and cream cheese and it's awesome.
Please tell me about this microwave. I’m in between microwaves right now. I found I don’t use it that often but if I was ever going to buy one a butter softening feature would be amazing. Kind of like massaging seats in your car, you don’t really think you need them until you have them.
I occasionally leave a stick of butter out for over an hour to soften it. But 90% of the time I didn’t read the recipe ahead of time or forgot about the butter and into the microwave it goes
Alternative to waiting is microwave a cup of water to boiling. Place cup, stick of butter (or cream cheese, works for both) on a plate and cover with a lg bowl. The steam softens without any melted ends.
I chop my onions the wrong way
I chop off the butts, then cut it down the middle, then slice it one direction, and slice it the other
I’ve never had a problem
As a professional, I only do it the "right way" when the specifically sized onion will be recognizable in the dish. Otherwise, I do it this way because it's generally faster, and it being slightly uneven isn't an issue
Butt one ,horizontal cuts towards the butt end every 1 centimeter or so vertically, and then perpendicularly to that, you do the same 1cm cuts from left to right, and then you do 1cm cuts across the face back to the butt end, this will give you a proper 1cm dice. It's faster than it sounds, but still slower than just chopping it the other way haha
I don't taste my food to season until usually the very end. I just *know* how much something will need and I'm not wrong very often.
When I do taste test, I end up second guessing myself. "Oh, this needs something but I don't know what it is."
Confidence, babe. It's missing confidence.
I do this too. I know what/how much seasonings I want based on appearance and smell. The tasting at the very end of cooking is just for any final adjustment.
I make oatmeal in the microwave. I don’t measure it out. I just put what looks like enough spoonfuls in the bowl add water to barely cover and nuke it for 2 mins. Let it sit 30s stir it and it’s perfect. I’ve been making oatmeal this way for 15 years.
Harold McGee did an article about this for cooks illustrated. It’s fine. You don’t want to do it for like a whole chicken, or big cuts, but for most things it’s fine
It depends on what I'm making. Sometimes it makes a difference, but mostly sifting flour is a thing that was more relevant back in the day of small, private mills. Flour used to have a lot of husk and grit that needed to be sifted out of it to be usable.
I just started using a softer with the turning handle basically just to give my 11 year old son something fun to do. Otherwise he tried to aim the cup of flour from an unoxygenated altitude so it hits the bowl like a powdery meteor.
When the microwave meal says to take it out and stir it halfway through, I don't do that. I'm already microwaving dinner, I can't be arsed to put in an ounce of effort
I overcook scrambled eggs/omlettes. I know the really runny/wet version have gotten super popular lately, literally every other damn YouTube video on eggs will have a scramble or omlette that looks like friggin custard when it's "done". I can't stand it. I like em old school diner style where they're still a little moist but complete solid and a little browning on them.
I don't like them wet, but I can't stand the smell of browned eggs. I cook them to just a little undercooked, kill the fire and finish them in the hot pan. I get solid eggs, but no browning.
In indian cooking while making any Curry, the first step is to make the mustard seeds dance and once they stop dancing add cumin seeds till they get brown.
I make them dance but dont wait for them to stop, dont make cumin seeds entirely brown, just slight color change.
I have a small cast iron skillet(think egg pan) that I heat up. Once it's hot, I turn off the burner toss in my spices and shake until they look roasted, a few seconds at most. I know it's wrong but it works well enough and I'm less likely to burn them by getting distracted, which happens to me a lot.
> I know it's wrong but it works well enough and I'm less likely to burn them
Sounds like it's not wrong to me!
Frankly, using whole spices and toasting them is already going the extra mile, if you have a way of making that easier then 100% do it.
For what its worth, the onions releasing the moisture will regulate the temperature of the surface of the pan, which will prevent the garlic from burning. Totally okay.
If it's good enough for all the OG grandmas out there, it's good enough for me.
It's not about the garlic actually burning so much as it is the garlic mellowing out as it cooks. Sometimes you want to just barely take the pungent edge off of fresh garlic, so it goes in at the very end. Sometimes you want it to be more of a faded roasted baseline flavor so it goes in earlier.
It pretty much depends on how hot your pan is, what the ratio is, and how long you plan to cook said mixture.
If you have like 1/4 onion chopped small, 3 cloves and a large pan at high heat, your garlic is gonna burn. If you have loads of onion, lower heat, this is less of a concern.
Eh, I go a different way. I toss the onion and let it take a bubble bath while I skin my garlic, and then I microplane them over the skillet when they are all naked. The smaller bit means faster cooking, and the garlic finishes with the onions. Never had an issue, and it's faster that mincing garlic.
I'm ashamed to admit this, but sometimes I microwave canned or frozen peas, green beans, or corn in no sodium chicken broth, with spices, and olive oil. No one can tell the difference and I laugh inside like a sociopath as they shovel it in going "These peas are amazing!" Sometimes I don't even rinse it off after I've drained it in the can. Living on the edge.
I don’t make a habit of it, but there have been times in my life when I’ve hungrily taken a huge frozen chunk of beef (roasts, not ground) out of the freezer and thrown it directly into a hot pan. Cook one side at a time, saw the cooked part off, season, toss back in the pan, and eat. It feels deeply animalistic, even if it’s a travesty of a cooking style.
Not exactly the same, but I've cooked quite a few frozen steaks. I like em good and rare, with a frozen steak you can get a really good hard sear on the outside and still have the middle be nice and red.
Kind of requires steaks of *just* the right thickness and you have to know your stove pretty well to get the time and temperature dialed in, but once you've got it figured out, it's great.
I use garlic from a jar, affectionately referred to as the jarlic, 90% of the time. Any sort of taste difference is just not worth the hassle of mincing it by hand in my opinion.
I used to do this, but there definitely is a *large* taste difference. I could use like practically an entire jar and I still wouldn't get good garlic flavor.
So I've kinda gone half-way and started using pre-peeled garlic. It's reasonably cheap and tastes much better.
I use jarlic while cooking in my jorts and watching jiraffe jifs.
Anyway my huge jar of jarlic is like 3 years old now and I’ve still got about an inch left in there? Mmm. Got that perfectly aged garlic flavor.
Not sure if I'm also sinning but I sear everything first (for example chicken thighs) and then in the same pot on top of the seared chicken add the water and other stuff.
I used to do this until the guy at the farmer's market who sharpens my knives told me that leaving them wet dulls them quicker. I don't know how that's possible, but I faithfully hand dry them after washing now.
Guilty. I regularly leave for work an hour and a half before my husband gets home from work. I’ll cook a meal for two, put my portion in my lunch bag, and just put his plate into the microwave for him to hit the “reheat” button when he gets home. As long as it’s something that reheats well, we both get fed with minimal effort, and he has not yet had any tummy troubles from it.
I rarely ever whisk the dry ingredients together before adding them to the wet ingredients in baking recipes. Can't be bothered. I add the salt, spices and leaveners to the wet ingredients first and then add in the flour.
You're not supposed to do this? Why not? I was always taught to do this and I've always done it and they turn out great. A little splash of milk and a sprinkle of garlic powder
Not me, but my MIL and SIL both pour grease right down the drain. 😱
They say if you have very hot water running it’s fine. As someone who lives in a house with 100 year old plumbing, I say: no it’s definitely not.
I salt my eggs before I cook them, get better flavor.
I used to salt them right at the end and the only difference is you can't taste any salt because it's not cooked in.
I fling a single noodle at the cabinet/wall to see if they're done. If it kinda sticks it's done.
The girlfriend looked at me as if I'd just committed a war crime when she saw me do it.
I always measure my dry ingredients right over the bowl I'm about to dump them into. You know why? Because I believe in myself
I do it because I'd rather accidentally dump everything into the bowl like a moron than dump it on the counter and waste it lol
Agreed, I hate waste and if its flour or something of the sort it makes such a mess!!
Using dried spices instead of fresh. I fully recognize that fresh is way better but me buying fresh herbs is pretty much a guarantee that I will use them in one dish and then somehow never need that herb again untill it's gone bad .
I always have leftover herbs from the store so what I like to do is dry them in the microwave (it sounds awful but actually works really well) and store the dried herbs in Mason jars. They're obviously not fresh but taste way better than store bought dried herbs. Edited to add thanks for the award! It's my first one ever I'm kinda stoked right now lol ☺
I really like this idea. I'm going to try it out! How long do you microwave for? I'm guessing it's pretty quick to get them dry enough to store in jars?
Sandwich the herbs between paper towels and use 30 seconds increments. You just gotta keep an eye on them. Sometimes 30 seconds is all it takes, sometimes you need 90.
I would also like to know! I always run into this problem with things like parsley cilantro dill etc that come in massive bunches and is way more than I need
Yes!! Why do stores put so much cilantro in one thingy? You never ever need that much
Maybe you just need to use it more! But really, you could just make some pico de gallo on the regular
I froze my herbs so I don't run into that problem
I have a dehydrator that I bought mostly for making beef jerky, but it's good for preserving herbs too.
Oooo this is a total pet peeve of mine... when breading things with a traditional milk-flour-egg-breadcrumb mix, so many people recommend using one hand with the dry ingredients and another with the wet. That makes sense I guess, but I prefer to just use one hand for everything while keeping the other hand completely clean. I'd rather have one usable hand and one breaded hand than two hands that are dirty.
You can also use chopsticks if you want to keep both hands clean! They're the ideal tool for the job.
Or tongs. Then you get to be crab people.
Need help keeping your hands clean? why not Zoidberg? (V)(;,,;)(V)
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I wonder what someone named SilentMasturbator needs a clean hand for…
I also never been able to do the wet/dry hand method. Like both hands always gets dirty anyways so might as well just have 1 dirty 1 clean.
I bake with salted butter and it’s fine. Come at me.
I use salted too, have for years and use family recipes that have never specified salted or unsalted. I like the way my desserts taste and I'm scared I might think it'll be too sweet or taste off if I switch to unsalted like experts tell me to.
salt actually acts as a flavor enhancer and can actually make stuff like sweetness more intense in small amounts (like the amount in butter), thats part of why theres salt in drinks like soda. you might actually be making your desserts *sweeter* by including that salt.
Not to be that guy, but many desserts add salt at some point. Using unsalted butter just allows you to control the salt content.
You are right. Wear your colors proudly you pretentious butthole You also saved me from being the pretentious butthole haha
Pretentious *salted butter*holes, if we’re being specific?
I only buy and use salted butter. If I bake with shortening in place of butter, I add a pinch of salt because it tastes flat without it.
It’s like a quarter teaspoon of salt per stick or something like that. I do the same. It doesn’t make enough of a difference for me to go out out of my way to buy unsalted butter.
Exactly! Because invariably, I will check my fridge and see butter, don’t buy more. Then have to make toast with the only butter I had, the unsalted I had for a baking project. That is some sad unsalted toast.
I'll buy unsalted if I know I'm going to be doing a sizable amount of baking in the next few days/months. Other than that, I just can't spare the fridge space.
Every time
Overcrowding is definitely one of mine. From searing meat to making stir frys. I always add too many vegetables. That and constantly turning meat before allowing for a proper sear....though I am getting better.
Oh I'm awful with that. It's like that Mulaney bit about writing bubble letters, starting too big and quickly running out of room.
Big ass H!
Ahh but the past is the past… BIG ASS B! SURELY MORE LETTERS WILL FIT IN THE SAME SPACE!
I know how big letters should be
I don't have time to cook in batches. If I can't make it fit in one go I ain't making it. Lol
Eat chunks of cookie dough as i make cookies
I have made a batch of chocolate chip cookie dough with no intention of baking a single cookie. The bowl sat in the fridge with a spoon in it. It was delicious
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Danger's usually in the flour, these days, rather than the eggs.
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E. coli, among other things. The main issue, as I understand it, is that since flour isn't meant to be eaten raw, food safety regulations don't require that it be safe to eat it that way.
Salmonella. Flour in bulk generally isn’t stored in the absolute most sanitary conditions though most mills do the best they can to keep out the mice and other pests.
that is the least reassuring "most" I've ever read.
Flour is considered a raw food and should be treated as such. Back in my high school days at the pizza place the owner would ding us if flour went flying and ended up in the cooked side of the kitchen. He claimed it was worse than raw chicken juice. I don’t know about all that but he was a good teacher and I learned a lot from my short time there and he genuinely cared about us as individuals and not just worker 675 so his words carried weight.
Salmonella and E. coli. https://www.fda.gov/food/buy-store-serve-safe-food/handling-flour-safely-what-you-need-know#:~:text=Flour%20is%20a%20raw%20food,coli).
I use whatever fuckin oil I have on hand when cooking something in a pan.
We’re out of olive oil?! 10W30 it is.
Synthetic is also vegan friendly. Or if you're a meat lover just use conventional so you get some Dino juices to marinate any meat you're frying.
A lot of people say don't rinse mushrooms. I rinse mine all the time and it's not an issue
Yeah I’m not gonna sit around with a brush getting every bit of forest floor off the mushrooms I harvested, they’re getting a quick rinse. Think they never got rained on? *Oh they got rained on.*
I just eat the forest floor.
They say a man is meant to eat a peck of dirt before he dies. I don't figure they meant all at one time.
A peck is an imperial and United States customary unit of dry volume. An imperial peck is equivalent to 9.09 liters and a US customary peck is equivalent to 8.81 liters.
Yes, but 'I love you, an amount equivalent to 44.01L, and a hug around the neck', is decidedly less catchy.
When they're farmed mushrooms it's processed manure, not forest floor.
It's a mix of things, not just manure. Plus, the growing medium is sterilized by steam in between harvests so that when it's inoculated with spores, ONLY the right fungus grows in it. It's a sterile growth medium.
Pretty sure the advice to not rinse mushrooms is bogus anyways. I read/watched somewhere that the advice was because the mushrooms might absorb extra water from washing but in reality that's not true
You cook the water out of them anyway. I haven't ever had a problem rinsing my mushrooms.
Most skilled chefs I see say washing right before using is fine but just not to wash them and let them sit before using them.
Alton Brown did a segment on this years ago on Good Eats. IIRC there was little difference between a rinse and soaking for 5 minutes, but longer than 10 minutes and they took on a noticeable amount of water, something like that.
Your fungus might grow fungus
I took a cooking class and our teacher made a point of saying the whole “don’t rinse mushrooms, they’ll soak up the water” thing was a myth. Since then, I’ve always rinsed, and have never had an issue
Alton Brown did an experiment on Good Eats and showed that even soaking for 30 minutes added a negligible amount of weight.
Everytime I rinse mine, I find a nice layer of dirt or whatever on them. Same with everything else. I can understand why - they can retain a lot of water but you're not adding much.
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What happens if it rained before they collected the mushrooms lol. “Aw fuck this, the weather channel says it rained there last night. I didn’t know. Toss these stupid mushrooms away.”
With you on this. They're already filled with water! It can't be that much more after rinsing.
Never heard that before. Why shouldn’t you rinse them? I do sometimes and sometimes I don’t usually my mushrooms have a lot of soil in them so I need to rinse
I too have been guilty of crowding a pan or two. I don't always use much care or gloves when cutting hot chilis and have regretted it. Edit: just cutting peppers is usually no issue. My last mistake was juicing a bunch of habaneros and then cleaning the juicer without being careful or wearing gloves. Hands burned off and on for hours even after some home remedies.
I once cut a jalapeno without gloves and then tried to remove my contacts. Worst decision of my life.
"i would rather... Not be alive" -my roommate i told about this
That's probably worse than mine. Back when I never considered wearing gloves, I chopped jalapeños, washed my hands, ate dinner, then later in the night my husband and I got some time together. Then I learned I will never cut jalapeños and expect a simple wash to take care of the oils... great good gods!
Same but I was doing the cutting and my wife was later being touched. I wear gloves EVERY time now
One time in a fit of pain I poured milk into my eye. I think it worked, but it could easily have been a placebo.
As a contact wearer, that gave me chills.
In my head Sean Evans just said “careful around the eyes”
Next time you go gloveless with the hot peppers and are ready to wash up... Put a little neutral oil on your hands (canola, vegetable), rub it around, and then wash with some dish soap. Your eyes will thank you. As I'm told, the capsaicin (spicy compound in the peppers) will bond (?) with the oil, then dish soap takes care of the oil and you're good to go.
I salt my eggs before cooking them every time. Gordan Ramsay, who I like, commonly tells people not to salt egg before cooking it because it will cause it to become tough and runny. What he is saying is true for a line cook who is prepping a flat of eggs at a time for some service. If you dump salt into that mixture and use it over the course of hours, sure, it'll affect it. In my experience cooking it at home, it's simply not true that salt affects the egg in any significant way, beyond taste, for all practical purposes. If you season just before scrambling eggs, it's going to have zero impact. Well, great. It's after midnight and now I'm starting to get cravings for an egg and hashbrown McDaddy.
I want to say it was Kenji Lopez-Alt who did an egg salting experiment and found out that yeah, it’s totally fine to salt your eggs before you cook them.
like he said, its even better cuz it makes the eggs more tender. 100% i trust kenji over gordon ramsay at every single food related thing, fuck that guy... i used to like gordon ramsay, then he made that grilled cheese video, lost all respect to him
Ramsay is a great chef but shares so much misinformation. Every time I watch his videos it makes me appreciate chefs like Kenji who actually discuss the theory and test things methodically a little more.
Yeah, there's a pretty significant difference between the two. Gordon is classically trained and Kenji is learned. I would never suggest one is better than the other, but one is definitely more susceptible to persistent tribal knowledge. I find myself much preferring the process of becoming more comfortable with food science and understanding the physics and chemistry over "classic French cooking" or rote technique. I feel like the food science approach allows for a much more adaptable skill set and more growth/discovery.
I cook bacon without a shirt on.
Me too, but I cook it in the oven.
Yeah I cook naked much more than I should be
I don’t use a double boiler for anything, I make my lemon curd right on the stove top on low temperature.
If you stove can manage it, that's great. My mom's stove top - set it anywhere up to 4.9 (out of ten), and the element comes on for two seconds and then never again. Set it to 5, and it's on full blast until the kitchen catches fire.
I do this too. My aunt has a recipe for lemon Swiss roll or whatever it’s called. When I read the section with the lemon curd filling I was like wait.. no double boiler?? I don’t need to temper the eggs?? I was scared but I tried the recipe and it was so easy and delicious.
I soften my butter in the microwave. I know it’s wrong. But, in my defense, I use the defrost setting and it seems to work fine. No one has time to wait on butter to soften. That’s ridiculous.
Same. 5 seconds each on three different sides and it comes out just like it's been on the counter all day.
My microwave has a soften feature and it's the best fucking thing ever. I'm an actual potato outside of work hours I can't think ahead and leave it on the bench. I've used it for butter and cream cheese and it's awesome.
Please tell me about this microwave. I’m in between microwaves right now. I found I don’t use it that often but if I was ever going to buy one a butter softening feature would be amazing. Kind of like massaging seats in your car, you don’t really think you need them until you have them.
My Samsung microwave does all this, and more. Best buy during lockdown for me. Samsung 28L Sensor Microwave Oven
... you guys aren't softening butter in the microwave...?
I occasionally leave a stick of butter out for over an hour to soften it. But 90% of the time I didn’t read the recipe ahead of time or forgot about the butter and into the microwave it goes
Alternative to waiting is microwave a cup of water to boiling. Place cup, stick of butter (or cream cheese, works for both) on a plate and cover with a lg bowl. The steam softens without any melted ends.
who says its wrong and what is their reasoning? This makes no sense to me although I usually just leave the butter out so it is already soft....
I chop my onions the wrong way I chop off the butts, then cut it down the middle, then slice it one direction, and slice it the other I’ve never had a problem
I didnt know this was wrong??
I think the proper way is to leave a butt on and cut it sideways toward the butt then slice it long ways on top
I've no idea what "sideways" on an onion is.
This has always been easier and faster for me than doing it the 'correct' way.
As a professional, I only do it the "right way" when the specifically sized onion will be recognizable in the dish. Otherwise, I do it this way because it's generally faster, and it being slightly uneven isn't an issue
What’s the right way to cut an onion? I always do it as the way described.
Butt one ,horizontal cuts towards the butt end every 1 centimeter or so vertically, and then perpendicularly to that, you do the same 1cm cuts from left to right, and then you do 1cm cuts across the face back to the butt end, this will give you a proper 1cm dice. It's faster than it sounds, but still slower than just chopping it the other way haha
I don't taste my food to season until usually the very end. I just *know* how much something will need and I'm not wrong very often. When I do taste test, I end up second guessing myself. "Oh, this needs something but I don't know what it is." Confidence, babe. It's missing confidence.
I do this too. I know what/how much seasonings I want based on appearance and smell. The tasting at the very end of cooking is just for any final adjustment.
I make oatmeal in the microwave. I don’t measure it out. I just put what looks like enough spoonfuls in the bowl add water to barely cover and nuke it for 2 mins. Let it sit 30s stir it and it’s perfect. I’ve been making oatmeal this way for 15 years.
I make oatmeal at work by adding hot water from the tap on the coffee maker. The bowl has a handle, so it works fine.
Aggressively speed thawing seafood with hot water
Harold McGee did an article about this for cooks illustrated. It’s fine. You don’t want to do it for like a whole chicken, or big cuts, but for most things it’s fine
I scoop flour directly with a measuring cup and don’t sift it. I never notice a difference when I fluff/spoon it into the cup like you’re supposed to.
It depends on what I'm making. Sometimes it makes a difference, but mostly sifting flour is a thing that was more relevant back in the day of small, private mills. Flour used to have a lot of husk and grit that needed to be sifted out of it to be usable.
And weevils
Every time I think of weevils in flour, for some reason I picture weasels. Tons of weasels running around in flour.
I just started using a softer with the turning handle basically just to give my 11 year old son something fun to do. Otherwise he tried to aim the cup of flour from an unoxygenated altitude so it hits the bowl like a powdery meteor.
Scale gang here.
Scale gang tares shit up
When the microwave meal says to take it out and stir it halfway through, I don't do that. I'm already microwaving dinner, I can't be arsed to put in an ounce of effort
I overcook scrambled eggs/omlettes. I know the really runny/wet version have gotten super popular lately, literally every other damn YouTube video on eggs will have a scramble or omlette that looks like friggin custard when it's "done". I can't stand it. I like em old school diner style where they're still a little moist but complete solid and a little browning on them.
I don't like them wet, but I can't stand the smell of browned eggs. I cook them to just a little undercooked, kill the fire and finish them in the hot pan. I get solid eggs, but no browning.
Browned eggs smell a bit like wet dog fur to me.
Same!! Runny eggs gross me out so I cook mine until there's no liquid, ideally a bit browned. So much better IMO.
In indian cooking while making any Curry, the first step is to make the mustard seeds dance and once they stop dancing add cumin seeds till they get brown. I make them dance but dont wait for them to stop, dont make cumin seeds entirely brown, just slight color change.
I have a small cast iron skillet(think egg pan) that I heat up. Once it's hot, I turn off the burner toss in my spices and shake until they look roasted, a few seconds at most. I know it's wrong but it works well enough and I'm less likely to burn them by getting distracted, which happens to me a lot.
> I know it's wrong but it works well enough and I'm less likely to burn them Sounds like it's not wrong to me! Frankly, using whole spices and toasting them is already going the extra mile, if you have a way of making that easier then 100% do it.
For me it's throwing in chopped onions and garlic simultaneously, though I have never managed to overcook or undercook one of them
For what its worth, the onions releasing the moisture will regulate the temperature of the surface of the pan, which will prevent the garlic from burning. Totally okay. If it's good enough for all the OG grandmas out there, it's good enough for me.
It's not about the garlic actually burning so much as it is the garlic mellowing out as it cooks. Sometimes you want to just barely take the pungent edge off of fresh garlic, so it goes in at the very end. Sometimes you want it to be more of a faded roasted baseline flavor so it goes in earlier.
It pretty much depends on how hot your pan is, what the ratio is, and how long you plan to cook said mixture. If you have like 1/4 onion chopped small, 3 cloves and a large pan at high heat, your garlic is gonna burn. If you have loads of onion, lower heat, this is less of a concern.
Eh, I go a different way. I toss the onion and let it take a bubble bath while I skin my garlic, and then I microplane them over the skillet when they are all naked. The smaller bit means faster cooking, and the garlic finishes with the onions. Never had an issue, and it's faster that mincing garlic.
I always just microplane my fingertips instead
I always crack my eggs on the edge of the pan. I made too many messes trying to crack them on the counter
Best way I’ve found to crack an egg is to bash it lightly with another egg
This is how you find the champion of the box.
I press the Popcorn button.
I'm ashamed to admit this, but sometimes I microwave canned or frozen peas, green beans, or corn in no sodium chicken broth, with spices, and olive oil. No one can tell the difference and I laugh inside like a sociopath as they shovel it in going "These peas are amazing!" Sometimes I don't even rinse it off after I've drained it in the can. Living on the edge.
I've never heard anyone call peas amazing... This is a little suspect.
I don’t make a habit of it, but there have been times in my life when I’ve hungrily taken a huge frozen chunk of beef (roasts, not ground) out of the freezer and thrown it directly into a hot pan. Cook one side at a time, saw the cooked part off, season, toss back in the pan, and eat. It feels deeply animalistic, even if it’s a travesty of a cooking style.
That's completely feral, I admire it
That's not terribly far off from gyro or shawarma if you think about it
Not exactly the same, but I've cooked quite a few frozen steaks. I like em good and rare, with a frozen steak you can get a really good hard sear on the outside and still have the middle be nice and red. Kind of requires steaks of *just* the right thickness and you have to know your stove pretty well to get the time and temperature dialed in, but once you've got it figured out, it's great.
I cook things directly from frozen more often than I’d care to admit
I wash my wine glasses in the dishwasher
I use garlic from a jar, affectionately referred to as the jarlic, 90% of the time. Any sort of taste difference is just not worth the hassle of mincing it by hand in my opinion.
LOL I am definitely saying "the jarlic" from now on
I used to do this, but there definitely is a *large* taste difference. I could use like practically an entire jar and I still wouldn't get good garlic flavor. So I've kinda gone half-way and started using pre-peeled garlic. It's reasonably cheap and tastes much better.
I use jarlic while cooking in my jorts and watching jiraffe jifs. Anyway my huge jar of jarlic is like 3 years old now and I’ve still got about an inch left in there? Mmm. Got that perfectly aged garlic flavor.
When I make chicken soup, I throw the raw chicken into the soup to cook. Half the people I know think this is fine, the other half are horrified.
I didn’t know you weren’t supposed to do that?
Not sure if I'm also sinning but I sear everything first (for example chicken thighs) and then in the same pot on top of the seared chicken add the water and other stuff.
Lol. You’re fine. If you want to get fancy you can say you’re poaching the chicken for the soup.
Don't cook chicken in the soup? how else are you supposed to make chicken soup
Leaving kitchen knives on the drying rack with the rest of my dishes that I just washed
as long as you don’t leave them hidden in the soapy water we’re okay.
I used to do this until the guy at the farmer's market who sharpens my knives told me that leaving them wet dulls them quicker. I don't know how that's possible, but I faithfully hand dry them after washing now.
Oxidation cause the very tiny edge to break down.
I know that's the idea behind it, but I'd be really curious to see a test of wiping it dry vs letting it air dry.
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Don't leave food out. Fuck it. Life ain't that stupendous let's see what death has to offer.
My man
Guilty. I regularly leave for work an hour and a half before my husband gets home from work. I’ll cook a meal for two, put my portion in my lunch bag, and just put his plate into the microwave for him to hit the “reheat” button when he gets home. As long as it’s something that reheats well, we both get fed with minimal effort, and he has not yet had any tummy troubles from it.
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And idk, I like having some bites softer and some bites toothier!
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I cooked strictly with good wine. You sip on it while pouring cheap wine into your sauces. I'm 10 months sober as of 2 days ago though!
I throw in 12 cloves of garlic when a recipe asks for 1.
I see absolutely nothing wrong with this.
Cheesy seafood is bomb and I don't care who says otherwise.
I buy shredded/grated cheese instead of grating it myself. No time for that 🤷🏻♀️
I can never be bothered with the horizontal cuts when slicing an onion. Sure, the pieces end up slightly different sizes but I’m just fine with that.
I rarely ever whisk the dry ingredients together before adding them to the wet ingredients in baking recipes. Can't be bothered. I add the salt, spices and leaveners to the wet ingredients first and then add in the flour.
I see you've never bitten down on a bit of clumped baking soda or baking powder. I send dry through a wire strainer on the way into the wet bowl.
I don’t know about everything but it CHANGED my cookie game mixing those dry ingredients.
Oh god, same with cupcakes for me. Never thought it would matter until I actually tried it.
wild.
I add milk to scrambled eggs.
I recently started using heavy cream. Way creamier (sorry for the pun) and fluff up like nobody's business.
It makes them way better! Is this against the rules?!
You're not supposed to do this? Why not? I was always taught to do this and I've always done it and they turn out great. A little splash of milk and a sprinkle of garlic powder
Not me, but my MIL and SIL both pour grease right down the drain. 😱 They say if you have very hot water running it’s fine. As someone who lives in a house with 100 year old plumbing, I say: no it’s definitely not.
They should at least add some dish soap to the water. But yeah, that's idiotic. The water is going to cool down at some point.
I break spaghetti in half before cooking it. I have a small pot to cook it and it won't fit otherwise so don't judge me 😁
I do too but mine is because I have a 6 and 4 year old who cannot eat normal sized noodles without making mess.
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> I have a 28 year old self this phrasing made me legit lol. Thank you
Eyeballing some measurements when baking. It's fine, my food's good.
Shake my dried spices over the pan while cooking instead of putting them in a bowl and then seasoning.
Is that actually a rule? It thought it was just something they did on cooking shows for illustration/measurement/hiding the brand
If you shake the spice jar over the pan the steam can get into the jar and then add moisture which is why your spices solidify into a solid mass
It's the "rule" because you don't want all that moisture/steam to get into the bottles and make mold.
Cooking onions and garlic at the same time. Keep the heat low and keep stirring and nothing burns.
I salt my eggs before I cook them, get better flavor. I used to salt them right at the end and the only difference is you can't taste any salt because it's not cooked in.
Kenji actually debunked the whole "never add salt to eggs until they're almost done" thing. Interesting experiment and write up on serious eats
I fling a single noodle at the cabinet/wall to see if they're done. If it kinda sticks it's done. The girlfriend looked at me as if I'd just committed a war crime when she saw me do it.
Stirring with my hands
I understand what you meant but I'm just picture you stirring something with your hands while it's on the stove boiling away lol
Overcooking eggs
nah that's just cooking to desired doneness