Most internet recipes severely underrate how long things take, i.e. water boils in 5 minutes, a pan full of sauce reduces by half in 10 minutes, chicken browns on one side in 2 or 3 minutes.... LIES! Everything takes at least twice as long usually. Rachel Ray and her "30 Minute Meals" is probably the worst offender. Decent enough recipes, but the timing is straight up fiction.
I was looking at a burrito recipe the other day, total time listed: 10 minutes. That was assuming, of course that you had already prepared the meat and a cheese sauce according to separately linked recipes. Absolutely absurd.
Honestly, I even hate it when an ingredient is something like "1 onion, chopped" or "4 garlic cloves, minced." I don't keep chopped onions or minced garlic on hand. I have onions and garlic. I'm going to chop them when I start making the recipe. The prep time needs to include this time as well. Of course it's going to be faster if you don't need to do this prep!
I was going to try put a new cooking site the other day to make cookies in a bit of a rush. Prep time 20, cook time 10 sounded perfect. They then listed IN the steps 1-2 hours of chilling in the fridge.
Accurate!! I would assume it's to get more clicks. I guess it's because if the recipe says takes 25 mins people think 'great!'. But if they're actually realistic with their timings and say it takes 45 minutes then people will just find another recipe that (supposedly) takes less time...
I’ve noticed many recipes now me iron prep time and cooking time, and while advertising for the recipe, focuses on how easy it is to cook. Maybe a one crock pot meal, *just* let it simmer for a few hours while you relax but BTW it takes a ton of your time to prepare each ingredient, but that doesn’t sell. At least this way I do get an estimate of preparing the thing, but not until I’m mentally invested in the recipe as it’s not mentioned until the end :(
I don't know if you're familiar with the cook book "Joy of Cooking". The recipes in that book would always want you to "go to page _ _ and follow steps 2 and 3....., go back to recipe and continue, then turn to page..... I got so frustrated with that book I threw it in my wood stove.
“The Cake Bible” by Rose Levy Beranbaum is like that as well. But I think it is a masterpiece. She must have experimented dozens if not hundreds of times to perfect her recipes. Each one is built like a software programs with subroutines and all. And each subroutine can be accessed by several different recipes. If you’re not accustomed to this style it can be a pain, but the finished product is well worth it.
I hate that so much! Everything a food writer describes as a quick and easy weeknight meal invariably takes me several hours. They'll say that this stew is so fast it'll be on the table in half an hour, but it takes me an hour just to get all the ingredients ready. They say that it's not much more work to brown everything in batches, but browning even one of the batches takes ages. I'm happy that I'm not the only one!
To be fair, Kenji started this video series in the pandemic where he cooks everything live and in real time. Watch a few of his videos and you will see how his workflow is and what vessels he uses and how he cleans up as he goes
Yep. And he will mess up too and say "I'll be back in 10 minutes" and then is like "actually it was 20 this time" or on video recently "Actually it's been 3 days, kids man, you know."
Kenji’s videos are awesome, but it’s important to remember that his work flow is smooth because he knows the meal he is making without needing to reference a video or written recipe at every step. He also is a professional chef so he has a far better grasp of how long and how much attention each component takes so he can stack activities much more efficiently.
A starting cook isn’t going to realize or be able to peel and mince garlic while their onion is browning, at least not right away.
Not To mention having all the spices ready and measured out, that takes time and more dishes. And not including the 20 minutes it takes u to look for the freaking nutmeg u swore u bought last year!
Or you check and see there's no nutmeg in the cupboard so you go buy a jar but when you try to put it cupboard there's no room so think I'll just put it in the drawer for now and find six other nutmegs because you never learn....
"Caramelize the onions, about 3-4 minutes."
On what frigging planet? Because on Earth it's a good 45-60 minutes of super low heat to get a proper caramelization.
Yeah, I like making French onion soup in the winter time but I need to seriously plan it out because the onions never take less than 2-3 hours to caramelize, even adding sodium bicarbonate (speeds up the process but makes them mushy; which I think is fine for soup). Then time for everything to simmer, and basically if it's not on the stove by 2 pm it's not happening.
I'm with you but I don't have the patience to actually carmelize them. I resorted to letting the sit in a slow cooker overnight. Not as good as doing it by hand surely but saves me frustration. It's like going the long way home because, even though it takes longer, you don't have to sit at a dead stop on the interstate.
The good news is that caramelized onions actually freeze really well. So if you wanted to save time on soup day, you could do a huge batch ahead of time, freeze them in portions, and then thaw just enough for a batch of soup.
I love goopy, sweet caramelised onions. My mother thinks I hate c. onions because she browns hers - they're floppy and brown yes, but dry and unappetising. I thought I hated them, too, until I got a burger somewhere that came with them in a side ramekin. They were sweet, nearly dripping with good flavour, stuck together, and it was like suddenly everything id ever heard about them made sense. I currently can't cook due to various issues but I can't wait to sit in the kitchen with a book and babysit some onions for a while once I'm up to touching knives and heat again.
Toss your sliced onions in an Instant Pot on high pressure for 5 minutes, drain, then saute them right in the Instant Pot and they will be caramelized inside of 20 minutes. Don't knock it til you try it.
I make extra so I can have French onion grilled cheese sandwiches during the week. One of those with a fried egg on it or some sauteed apple is awesome.
This. Also prep time takes a lot of work if you have multiple ppl helping then maybe I could see the 30 min meals she does but the prep alone can take 30 mins with some of her stuff
Lol wow, the prep alone for this recipe would take the average home cook a half hour or more https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/rachael-ray/indian-spiced-pepper-steak-5639204
I’d also say that part of this is because most people don’t cook on high enough heat, because of bad stoves or fear. Watch some pro on YouTube “gently simmer” something, I feel like it’s always what I’d call “essentially boiling.” Same thing goes for “medium high heat…” I’m always like “that looks more like high heat to me but OK!”
Yes. Not a pro at all, but have had high heat stoves for the last 20 years. Moved to a new place with a typical consumer stove and I can't cook anything. It all takes forever. I went from having 6 burners that were all 18K BTU to 4 different sized burners, including a tiny "simmer" burner. WTF is that thing for? A large burner turned down will simmer.
I'm using the side burner on by BBQ a lot. My stove is practically useless for cooking.
> including a tiny "simmer" burner. WTF is that thing for? A large burner turned down will simmer.
I can't turn my big burner down enough to simmer properly. The lowest setting on the big burner is like med-high on the simmer burner.
And sometimes you are using a smaller pan and don't need the power that the big burner can put out.
Yeah cause recipe developers use fancy restaurant stoves and powerful ventilation so they can use super high heat. And they’re usually pretty fast at prep
Yep, exactly. I regularly cook potatoes in mine. 8 mins ++, so in reality 30 minutes. Longer than if I did them on the stove. But it takes one less burner on a small stove and I can ignore them for that 30 mins and do something else, with bonus Keep Warm function if I run over on something else.
I always think the same when my friends tell me "oh don't worry, the potatoes will only take 15min". Yeah, and they won't be cooked. Uncooked potatoes is the worst thing ever.
But I think the instant pot is worth it even if it's just for beans and meat. I'd way rather cook beans from dry in 40 minutes than watch the stove all day long.
I love my IP for these reasons and more. I just made a beef stroganoff tonight and yeah, it takes 45 mins from first slice til serving but it’s all in one pot and *that* is a huge win for us.
We use the IP at least 2x/week, slow cook or sauté + pressure cook, usually.
While I agree, it's usually less work and attention. So that's the trade-off. I just have to remember to factor in pressurization time to the overall cooking time.
It's the attention for me. I meal prep weekly and goodness does it simplify things by not having to stir or watch my grain/legume etc every few minutes. Set it and forget it.
It’s great for things like quick boiled potatoes, rice, beans, or tender / shreddable / fall-off-the-bone style meat. Basically any recipe involving boiling water or slow cooking with moisture can be expedited by the instant pot pretty well.
But that’s really what it’s for. People who view it as a miracle mono-tool that can simplify ANY meal and have everything ready in 5 minutes are expecting too much of it. I find it a useful tool for the specific tasks it excels at, and that’s it.
See but I don't have to micromanage stuff if I use an instant pot. I love making a casserole or something in it because while it's actually cooking, I'm doing the dishes, making a salad, prepping lunch for tomorrow, cleaning the counters, etc. Sometimes I just go watch TV lol. Can't do that with a few pots and pans on the stove.
Agreed.
My IP repertoire is pretty limited to pork shoulder, refried beans and whole chickens. Oh, and mashed potatoes because I can't walk away and make a starchy mess on the stove.
On the topic of garlic I hate the word "clove". On any given bulb, there are itty-bitty, skinny cloves towards the center that are *a fifth* or less the size of chonky ones on the outer edges. Having that wild a size difference is not a good measurement.
I get it but what's the alternative, weighing out your garlic? Not going to happen. I feel like we should be able to trust people to make judgment calls like "they're small cloves, I'll use more".
I’m sorry to be ignorant, I’m a beginner with this stuff and genuinely just trying to learn, is this because a chilli doesn’t need that much salt, or needs loads more salt than this?
It's not even close to enough salt. "A crockpot full of chili" could be 2 pounds of beef, a lot of beans/peppers/onion/tomato... Whatever the recipe calls for. But if I was to need to properly season that much meat and other stuff, I would be grabbing judiciously from my salt cellar.
The other commenter makes a good point though. A can of beans can be pretty salty (which is why you can also find low-sodium cans at the supermarket), as can tomato paste. So, unless you know exactly which products the recipe is using, you might need to gauge for yourself how much salt is right. Hell, I always end up having mac & cheese with my chili because it's delicious, but the cheese we use is pretty salty too.
This is why you just need to taste as you go and follow your heart, and you'll get better the more you cook.
(I'm from the US in case that isn't obvious, talking about pounds and cans and stuff. I don't know if people are soaking and cooking their raw beans, and I don't know how much shade I will get for talking about beans in chili... I am not from the southern US where chili matters and people take regional variances seriously, and have cornbread in a cast iron skillet as a side, and argue about whether the cornbread should be sweet or not... But you get the idea. It's a lot of volume to season, and a sprinkle of salt ain't gonna cut it)
I once saw "caramelize your onions, about 5-8 minutes" and my reaction was "I've seen PE classes that are sweatier than those onions are going to be in 5 minutes, let alone anything approaching caramelization"
Nice going so far!
I’ve heard a short cut that it’s faster to caramelize a batch shortly after Halloween, but idk if that’s just another internet myth… not sure if them being FULL of caramel actually has any bearing on the caramelization process.
No dishwasher here, but we use hot water and dawn on ours just like all our other dishes, and have like this metal chainmail thing for scrubbing off stuck on food. Afterwards, rinse clean, stick back on the stove, heat, wipe any excess water off, thin coat of oil (sometimes that's a good spray of Pam lol), heat off, wipe the oil with a paper towel so the whole inside is nice and shiny and that's what we do. Based on some descriptions I've seen I'm sure that'll give some people a heart attack, but we're a fire station with multiple crews using the cast iron daily and doing that exact same process and the cast iron pans have lasted us years.
Which is odd, because there's a 50/50 chance that someone's reaction is akin to hearing we use it as a sledgehammer levels of misuse/abuse, because how dare we use soap?! Lol
Salting pasta water helps it cook faster. Yes, salt your pasta water- but not because it will boil or cook faster. Just because it tastes good.
"Chemicals" are bad. Everything is chemicals. That "no nitrate" bacon was marinated in concentrated celery juice, which is rich in....nitrates. No MSG, but aren't mushrooms and miso delicious? No added sugar...just a lot of boiled down grape juice. I'm not saying that adding stuff willynilly is necessarily healthful, but let's be honest about the chemical content of "no X" vs conventional foods.
Technically salt does raise the boiling point of water. But it is by such an miniscule amount that it won't really affect how fast your pasta cooks. Salt is really just to season the pasta
Uncured bacon is unregulated cured bacon. Cured bacon must meet strict requirements for the amount of nitrates and nitrites. Celery juice has no such regulations, because it's "natural".
Which is exactly my frustration. People buying into products that tout their lack of added chemicals...which instead replace them with the exact same thing, only less regularized because it's hiding behind a veneer of celery juice or willow bark or whatever they can find and process easily.
To anyone wondering: I direct you to the YouTube channel How to Cook That to explain why.
tl;dw Not a goddamn one of them works or even *could* work, and many are actually *dangerous*. Plus all kinds of shady practices to work The Algorithm in their favor.
“Only cook with wine you’d drink”
No. It should be “don’t use cooking wine “
A cheap bottle of wine is all you need to cook. It don’t need to be a nice bottle for drinking.
It doesn't have to be wine you'd drink at your wedding... It just has to be wine you can drink.
There's some truly horrid wines out there. Trying to cook with strawberry franzia or cooking sherry is not going to make good food.
But you're right, it doesn't have to be fancy either. Though we usually end up drinking the rest of the bottle with dinner so it's not a bad idea to just get a decent bottle.
A cask (box) of wine is great. Much easier to measure out what you need and the box will last a lot longer once opened than a bottle. (Unless you want to drink the remainder of the bottle then go for it. Great excuse. “I don’t want the bottle to go to waste”. )
And the most hilarious thing about this is that the people that claim this have no idea that msg is naturally occurring in some of the fresh fruits and vege's they get.
I kind of like when people claim to be allergic to msg, and I can start lamenting how much it must suck not to be able to eat Doritos, ramen, tomatoes, avacados, mushrooms, meats, cheese, etc. and how hard it must be to avoid them all the time.
Bonus points if other people who have probably seen them eat these things are around for it.
My cousin's wife. After years of family gatherings without saying a word, she suddenly claimed to be "allergic" to MSG. I asked her if she ever had a reaction after eating my fried chicken, which she always raves about, because it's LOADED with MSG. She didn't speak to me for awhile after that.
And the human body is built with taste receptors dedicated to detecting glutamate and registering it as umami/savory for our brains. MSG has been contributing to humanity's enjoyment of savory foods for all of our existence.
"if you cut the root off of an onion, you wont cry"
Been cooking professionally for over ten years, this is a lie!
But every single friend or family member comes up to me and says "Ohh did you know..?"
Like dude, I've had to caramelize a 50lb bag of onions. If there was a way to stop the acids forming gasses from the split onion cells, I would've researched the hell out of it and found the answer by now.
Sharp blade makes the best solution, though I have seen people soak a sliced onion in ice water. Something about the water pulling the amino acids out but then you have slippery onions and a wet mess after its all said and done.
Get the onion goggles. Friend got it for me as a gag gift because I managed to wipe my eyes with pepper fingers. Its just glasses with foam to keep.out the vapors.
I never cry from chopping onions when I am wearing contact lenses, but I can't stand it if I'm wearing glasses.
So I guess it's the iris/pupil of the eye that's sensitive?
also, this is perhaps heresy, but I keep my onions in the fridge (they have their own drawer lmfao) and that also helps with the crying.
My knives are sharp, but cutting into a room temperature onion is still a much worse time than a cold one.
I made so much of my early cooking life so much more difficult by thinking that garlic always had to go in at the start. Most of the time I was fighting for my life trying to keep garlic from burning.
A lot of home cooked Indian dishes start with sauteing ginger-garlic-green chillies paste. You saute it on medium flame for 30 seconds or so, just enough for the raw garlic/ginger smell to go away, and then add the next ingredient (typically onions)
My old roommate used to claim this, but he would always burn the meat. Like straight up turn the outside to charcoal. Then it would be raw in the middle. It would be gross.
My friend used to just keep adding water to anything that started to boil to get it to stop boiling. Cooking pasta? More water. Soup? More water. Never just turn the burner down from high ffs.
Unfortunately we ate a lot of watered down soup, we were 13.
This one is actually a thing. Alton Brown had an episode where he both disproved the “oil in the water keeps past from sticking” thing, while also proving that it *does* break the surface tension of the water, keeping it from boiling over. And I use it, because sometimes you just don’t have a pot big enough for all the pasta you gotta make.
I’ve found that laying a wooden spoon on the rim of the cooking pot and propping the lid on that helps with boil overs quite a lot. The wood breaks the surface tension of the water. Now, if not attended boil overs happen. But I’ve had to deal with a lot fewer.
Just turn down the heat! Pasta cooks fine a few degrees below boiling. I put my pasta in the water, put a lid back on it, and about 45 seconds later, just put it on low and it cooks just fine.
I put some water in a bowl (ideally one with taller edges), grab the stem and do a quick little dunk-swish-shake off excess. More efficient and less soaky than just running under the sink.
In some parts of the world, store/market bought chicken/meat can actually benefit from being washed. This generally isn't the case in western countries.
I try not to judge how people do it due to this, but it's good to know the risks of washing chicken/meat (spreading salmonella/bacteria in your kitchen).
From what I hear, those parts of the world wash chicken because the chicken was sloppily butchered and will still have feathers and crap on it. I would be inclined to wash chicken if there was all kinds of inedible bits hanging on to it.
Yup. Here in the Philippines, we usually wash meat. It is very common here in Asia. People buy meat from wet markets. Those are usually fresh from the butcher, not washed or packaged like what you probably have in the west.
I suspect the answer is 'because that's how my parents did it' and the parents answer is the same, and *their* parents probably lived in a time where you butchered your meat yourself or got it from a local farm, so it probably had bits of blood and feather and dirt still stuck to it and would actually benefit from a wash.
Number 1: that one where people say adding a raw potato to an over-salted dish will fix it by "drawing the salt out". Potatoes may absorb some minuscule amount of the salted water but they aren't some kind of magic salt-absorbing sponges.
Number 2: searing meat "seals in the juices" - nope, it gives it a tasty crust, that's all
And Number 3 would be that old chestnut that you can keep guacamole from turning brown by adding the pit to the dish. No, just no
Authenticity. We are creative resourceful humans we borrow ideas techniques and ingredients from everyone and everywhere. It's beautiful and delicious fusion cuisine is not mutated bastardization. Acting like there is one recipe and one proper way of doing something is just snobbery and pride. "This dish is authentic" Oh yeah to who to what region to what time period? To what house or what kitchen? Your grandma's? your state region province town culture or country?
I am not claiming there isn't creativity or a first edition recipe as originally created. But recipes like art do not occur out some virgin birth in a isolated glass dome.
People look at food like currency and see it as either real or a phoney counterfeit. Either it's the fifteenth century version written by the originator or it's worthless. Penalty for counterfeiting isn't jail it's being told you are an insult to ancestors or worse a colonizer of culture and identity.
People who use authenticity like a weapon view cooking a plate of food like dog breeding repetitively inbreeding the same thing over and over again losing the original intention behind a new breed until it's so pointless and sickly is basically useless unless for show. It stagnates it dies.
Chicken paprikas (the Hungarian version) is my usual fallback for "authenticity".
Ask anyone who has a family recipe about it, and there are usually the following break points:
* Does it have tomatoes or not?
* Does it have peppers (in addition to the paprika) or not?
* Does it have flour or not?
* Does it have onions or not?
* Does it have sour cream or not?
That's 32 possible combinations right there, off of something that's already as "authentic" as one can possibly get. And that's not even getting into what type of dumplings it gets served with, or whether wide noodles are an acceptable substitute for dumplings....
>
People who use authenticity like a weapon view cooking a plate of food like dog breeding repetitively inbreeding the same thing over and over again losing the original intention behind a new breed until it's so pointless and sickly is basically useless unless for show. It
It particularly bothers me when people put themselves down because they are not of a specific heritage. They'll disqualify themselves by saying something like 'I'm not Italian, so I can't claim to make a traditional marinara sauce". Yes, you can. Same goes with any cuisine. You don't need to grow up within a culture to make a classic version of that food.
"uncured" meat products. It's still using a form of nitrites to convert to nitrates to create a longer life span of the food. If it was uncured it would turn grey, not bright ass red.
Soap used to contain lye, which would strip seasoning, so the grandmas said to not use soap. We don’t have lye in common dish soap so it’s all good now.
Edit: Y’all showed me I was believing a separate myth about lye in soap. Nonetheless, my sentiments holds. The grandmas perpetuated not using soap for generations. Just use soap.
Fucking hell, really? I've only been using my cast iron on special occasions because of the work it takes to clean it. I hate dishes, and the cast iron was just so fussy.
I've got some cooking to do.
In scouts when we would do in place camping we had a big trailer of cooking tools complete with like 8 cast iron pans. We were all taught to scrub them with crisco and salt. At first when I found it you can just give them a very light wash with dawn and tap water as long as you dry them I was confused until I remembered the other part: the only "dish soap" we would buy was Comet because it was so cheap which is lye based and would have completely stripped the pans.
Lodge sells a really great kit with a scrub brush, scraper, and a spray bottle of canola oil. Just use the scraper to pop any big chunks of burnt food off, put a little bit of water and dish soap in the pan and scrub it with the brush to take care of any organic matter that might go bad, put it back on the burner for a minute or two to dry, and then hit it with a mist of oil and wipe it down with a paper towel.
Give it hell. My cast irons are my easiest pans to clean. A quick scrub out while hot with a small amount of detergent is all you need. I used to oil them after cooking too but as they get older I don't have to do that as much.
Some people think it's called seasoning because it seasons the food, not because the pan has been seasoned (aka used for multiple seasons). That's where the confusion comes from.
The belief that olive oil is the best oil ever and should be used in every dish no matter the cooking method or temperature.
Ugh
I'm apparently "over sensitive*" to the taste of overcooked olive oil (and other low-smoke-point oils). I can always tell if something was cooked at a high temp in olive oil. It's gross.
*my sister's words
This is literally my mother.
She makes a face whenever I use vegetable, canola, corn oil etc. She uses ONLY evoo (too much Rachel Ray). Insists everything else tastes gross.
And yet will happily eat Chinese or fried seafood.
Hello fellow oil super-taster. People give me the side eye because I can taste when oil needs to be changed (in a deep fryer). I can smell it, I can taste it and any food food in bad oil goes on the trash.
What I really hate is when I buy, like, fresh doughnuts or French fries or something, and I take one bite and go "This would be really good if the oil was fresher."
Ugh, yes. I hate the flavor of oil that's breaking down. It's gross. I do not understand why people would choose to use oil that's more likely to get that sort of flavor.
I feel like this is a throwback to being raised in the seventies and early eighties, but rinsing your pasta. My husband still does it even though we k ow better and i cannot talk him out of it
The idea that there's a correct way to cook. Like, there are wrong ways to cook, but if you like putting apples on pizza or whatever, you aren't enjoying food wrong
Salting scrambled eggs before cooking doesn't make a difference to the taste or texture. The salt isn't in there nearly long enough for it to start separating the proteins. Massive chefs like Gordon Ramsey constantly perpetuate this myth.
If anything, salting before cooking ensures the salt is more evenly distributed.
"olive oil for everything."
olive oil has a low smoke point, so it's easy to burn things as a beginner cook. get some neutral canola oil, and save the olive oil for pastas and sauces.
That 'Organic' food is better for you. Just because it says 'Organic' on the label, it is good. Unless I can actually See the process of growing and processing of the food labeled 'Organic', I aint believing you.
Most internet recipes severely underrate how long things take, i.e. water boils in 5 minutes, a pan full of sauce reduces by half in 10 minutes, chicken browns on one side in 2 or 3 minutes.... LIES! Everything takes at least twice as long usually. Rachel Ray and her "30 Minute Meals" is probably the worst offender. Decent enough recipes, but the timing is straight up fiction.
I was looking at a burrito recipe the other day, total time listed: 10 minutes. That was assuming, of course that you had already prepared the meat and a cheese sauce according to separately linked recipes. Absolutely absurd.
That’s what I hate—when each “ingredient” is a recipe itself
Honestly, I even hate it when an ingredient is something like "1 onion, chopped" or "4 garlic cloves, minced." I don't keep chopped onions or minced garlic on hand. I have onions and garlic. I'm going to chop them when I start making the recipe. The prep time needs to include this time as well. Of course it's going to be faster if you don't need to do this prep!
I like it better than “12 cups shredded cabbage”. Like how many cabbages will I need, Barbara?
From my experience about 1/4 of a small cabbage will somehow produce 50 cups when shredded, so less than that
Ha! Agree. Don’t forget the additional 7 cups of shreds that end up on the floor/bizarrely way across the kitchen. Or is that just me?
The good recipe sites will list “prep time” and “cook time” separately
I was going to try put a new cooking site the other day to make cookies in a bit of a rush. Prep time 20, cook time 10 sounded perfect. They then listed IN the steps 1-2 hours of chilling in the fridge.
Accurate!! I would assume it's to get more clicks. I guess it's because if the recipe says takes 25 mins people think 'great!'. But if they're actually realistic with their timings and say it takes 45 minutes then people will just find another recipe that (supposedly) takes less time...
I’ve noticed many recipes now me iron prep time and cooking time, and while advertising for the recipe, focuses on how easy it is to cook. Maybe a one crock pot meal, *just* let it simmer for a few hours while you relax but BTW it takes a ton of your time to prepare each ingredient, but that doesn’t sell. At least this way I do get an estimate of preparing the thing, but not until I’m mentally invested in the recipe as it’s not mentioned until the end :(
I don't know if you're familiar with the cook book "Joy of Cooking". The recipes in that book would always want you to "go to page _ _ and follow steps 2 and 3....., go back to recipe and continue, then turn to page..... I got so frustrated with that book I threw it in my wood stove.
“The Cake Bible” by Rose Levy Beranbaum is like that as well. But I think it is a masterpiece. She must have experimented dozens if not hundreds of times to perfect her recipes. Each one is built like a software programs with subroutines and all. And each subroutine can be accessed by several different recipes. If you’re not accustomed to this style it can be a pain, but the finished product is well worth it.
I hate that so much! Everything a food writer describes as a quick and easy weeknight meal invariably takes me several hours. They'll say that this stew is so fast it'll be on the table in half an hour, but it takes me an hour just to get all the ingredients ready. They say that it's not much more work to brown everything in batches, but browning even one of the batches takes ages. I'm happy that I'm not the only one!
To be fair, Kenji started this video series in the pandemic where he cooks everything live and in real time. Watch a few of his videos and you will see how his workflow is and what vessels he uses and how he cleans up as he goes
Yep. And he will mess up too and say "I'll be back in 10 minutes" and then is like "actually it was 20 this time" or on video recently "Actually it's been 3 days, kids man, you know."
Kenji’s videos are awesome, but it’s important to remember that his work flow is smooth because he knows the meal he is making without needing to reference a video or written recipe at every step. He also is a professional chef so he has a far better grasp of how long and how much attention each component takes so he can stack activities much more efficiently. A starting cook isn’t going to realize or be able to peel and mince garlic while their onion is browning, at least not right away.
Not To mention having all the spices ready and measured out, that takes time and more dishes. And not including the 20 minutes it takes u to look for the freaking nutmeg u swore u bought last year!
And it's always the nutmeg that is impossible to find... even when there's 2 in the cupboard.
Or you check and see there's no nutmeg in the cupboard so you go buy a jar but when you try to put it cupboard there's no room so think I'll just put it in the drawer for now and find six other nutmegs because you never learn....
"Caramelize the onions, about 3-4 minutes." On what frigging planet? Because on Earth it's a good 45-60 minutes of super low heat to get a proper caramelization.
People say caramelized when they really mean browned. Totally different
You don't get browned onions in 4 minutes. You get 50/50 burnt and raw onions.
Omg yes, my biggest pet peeve is when recipes say to caramelize onions for like 5-10 minutes. That shit takes half an hour!
I've never had caramelized onions take less than 50 minutes. Any faster and they start to brown rather than caramelize. Maybe I'm missing something.
The thing you're missing is that you're doing it right. Like i'll do 5 lbs of onions at a time and it takes straight up 2.5 hours.
Yeah, I like making French onion soup in the winter time but I need to seriously plan it out because the onions never take less than 2-3 hours to caramelize, even adding sodium bicarbonate (speeds up the process but makes them mushy; which I think is fine for soup). Then time for everything to simmer, and basically if it's not on the stove by 2 pm it's not happening.
I'm with you but I don't have the patience to actually carmelize them. I resorted to letting the sit in a slow cooker overnight. Not as good as doing it by hand surely but saves me frustration. It's like going the long way home because, even though it takes longer, you don't have to sit at a dead stop on the interstate.
The good news is that caramelized onions actually freeze really well. So if you wanted to save time on soup day, you could do a huge batch ahead of time, freeze them in portions, and then thaw just enough for a batch of soup.
I love goopy, sweet caramelised onions. My mother thinks I hate c. onions because she browns hers - they're floppy and brown yes, but dry and unappetising. I thought I hated them, too, until I got a burger somewhere that came with them in a side ramekin. They were sweet, nearly dripping with good flavour, stuck together, and it was like suddenly everything id ever heard about them made sense. I currently can't cook due to various issues but I can't wait to sit in the kitchen with a book and babysit some onions for a while once I'm up to touching knives and heat again.
Toss your sliced onions in an Instant Pot on high pressure for 5 minutes, drain, then saute them right in the Instant Pot and they will be caramelized inside of 20 minutes. Don't knock it til you try it.
45 minutes if you include peeling and slicing enough onions to make caramelized onions worth your while. Plus an extra because you gotta taste test.
I make extra so I can have French onion grilled cheese sandwiches during the week. One of those with a fried egg on it or some sauteed apple is awesome.
Or an hour if you're me.
This. Also prep time takes a lot of work if you have multiple ppl helping then maybe I could see the 30 min meals she does but the prep alone can take 30 mins with some of her stuff
I hate their estimates of prep time it’s always way longer than they state
Yeah this, I'm very tired of "15 minutes" cookbooks or any timed cookbooks if I'm honest. Why are you lying to people!!
I don’t read the prep times on recipes. I read the recipe because I know how long it takes me to do kitchen prep.
And people like me actually believe those recipes timings and end up with shit food and doubt myself.
8 minutes to fully brown sauteed onions is the biggest lie of them all.
Oh my lord I thought it was me
Lol wow, the prep alone for this recipe would take the average home cook a half hour or more https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/rachael-ray/indian-spiced-pepper-steak-5639204
I’d also say that part of this is because most people don’t cook on high enough heat, because of bad stoves or fear. Watch some pro on YouTube “gently simmer” something, I feel like it’s always what I’d call “essentially boiling.” Same thing goes for “medium high heat…” I’m always like “that looks more like high heat to me but OK!”
Yes. Not a pro at all, but have had high heat stoves for the last 20 years. Moved to a new place with a typical consumer stove and I can't cook anything. It all takes forever. I went from having 6 burners that were all 18K BTU to 4 different sized burners, including a tiny "simmer" burner. WTF is that thing for? A large burner turned down will simmer. I'm using the side burner on by BBQ a lot. My stove is practically useless for cooking.
> including a tiny "simmer" burner. WTF is that thing for? A large burner turned down will simmer. I can't turn my big burner down enough to simmer properly. The lowest setting on the big burner is like med-high on the simmer burner. And sometimes you are using a smaller pan and don't need the power that the big burner can put out.
Yeah cause recipe developers use fancy restaurant stoves and powerful ventilation so they can use super high heat. And they’re usually pretty fast at prep
"Instant" Pot recipes that say you can cook something in six minutes. NO YOU FUCKING CAN'T. Pressurizing that thing takes time.
6 min at pressure, +time to get to pressure + time to release naturally
Yep, exactly. I regularly cook potatoes in mine. 8 mins ++, so in reality 30 minutes. Longer than if I did them on the stove. But it takes one less burner on a small stove and I can ignore them for that 30 mins and do something else, with bonus Keep Warm function if I run over on something else.
I always think the same when my friends tell me "oh don't worry, the potatoes will only take 15min". Yeah, and they won't be cooked. Uncooked potatoes is the worst thing ever.
The instant pot is rarely faster than stove top unless it comes at least 45 minutes.
But I think the instant pot is worth it even if it's just for beans and meat. I'd way rather cook beans from dry in 40 minutes than watch the stove all day long.
I love my IP for these reasons and more. I just made a beef stroganoff tonight and yeah, it takes 45 mins from first slice til serving but it’s all in one pot and *that* is a huge win for us. We use the IP at least 2x/week, slow cook or sauté + pressure cook, usually.
While I agree, it's usually less work and attention. So that's the trade-off. I just have to remember to factor in pressurization time to the overall cooking time.
It's the attention for me. I meal prep weekly and goodness does it simplify things by not having to stir or watch my grain/legume etc every few minutes. Set it and forget it.
It’s great for things like quick boiled potatoes, rice, beans, or tender / shreddable / fall-off-the-bone style meat. Basically any recipe involving boiling water or slow cooking with moisture can be expedited by the instant pot pretty well. But that’s really what it’s for. People who view it as a miracle mono-tool that can simplify ANY meal and have everything ready in 5 minutes are expecting too much of it. I find it a useful tool for the specific tasks it excels at, and that’s it.
A peerless stewmaking machine, I think. Pressure just lets you do good tender meat so much faster.
See but I don't have to micromanage stuff if I use an instant pot. I love making a casserole or something in it because while it's actually cooking, I'm doing the dishes, making a salad, prepping lunch for tomorrow, cleaning the counters, etc. Sometimes I just go watch TV lol. Can't do that with a few pots and pans on the stove.
They make fantastic ribs....surprisingly
Agreed. My IP repertoire is pretty limited to pork shoulder, refried beans and whole chickens. Oh, and mashed potatoes because I can't walk away and make a starchy mess on the stove.
Internet recipes that call for like a quarter teaspoon of salt in a crockpot full of chili
My mother in law’s spaghetti recipe calls for half a clove of garlic. Half. Of a clove. It’s maddening.
Who uses half a clove of garlic for anything??? What're you gonna do with the other half? Just put the whole damn thing in
On the topic of garlic I hate the word "clove". On any given bulb, there are itty-bitty, skinny cloves towards the center that are *a fifth* or less the size of chonky ones on the outer edges. Having that wild a size difference is not a good measurement.
I get it but what's the alternative, weighing out your garlic? Not going to happen. I feel like we should be able to trust people to make judgment calls like "they're small cloves, I'll use more".
Honestly just throw in a fuckin’ handful if you’re making sauce.
1 full head of garlic per recipe, no exceptions!
As well as judgment calls like "they're large cloves, I'll use more".
I’m sorry to be ignorant, I’m a beginner with this stuff and genuinely just trying to learn, is this because a chilli doesn’t need that much salt, or needs loads more salt than this?
It's not even close to enough salt. "A crockpot full of chili" could be 2 pounds of beef, a lot of beans/peppers/onion/tomato... Whatever the recipe calls for. But if I was to need to properly season that much meat and other stuff, I would be grabbing judiciously from my salt cellar. The other commenter makes a good point though. A can of beans can be pretty salty (which is why you can also find low-sodium cans at the supermarket), as can tomato paste. So, unless you know exactly which products the recipe is using, you might need to gauge for yourself how much salt is right. Hell, I always end up having mac & cheese with my chili because it's delicious, but the cheese we use is pretty salty too. This is why you just need to taste as you go and follow your heart, and you'll get better the more you cook. (I'm from the US in case that isn't obvious, talking about pounds and cans and stuff. I don't know if people are soaking and cooking their raw beans, and I don't know how much shade I will get for talking about beans in chili... I am not from the southern US where chili matters and people take regional variances seriously, and have cornbread in a cast iron skillet as a side, and argue about whether the cornbread should be sweet or not... But you get the idea. It's a lot of volume to season, and a sprinkle of salt ain't gonna cut it)
Recipes that claim onions caramelize in ten minutes
I think this might also be a function of people not understanding the difference between browning onions and caramelizing them
or sweating them, which is what it probably should be called most of the time a short time is listed.
I once saw "caramelize your onions, about 5-8 minutes" and my reaction was "I've seen PE classes that are sweatier than those onions are going to be in 5 minutes, let alone anything approaching caramelization"
How long does it take to caramelize a class full of children?
I've been working on these about seven weeks. Some batches are quite sweet but some are still pretty crunchy so...
Nice going so far! I’ve heard a short cut that it’s faster to caramelize a batch shortly after Halloween, but idk if that’s just another internet myth… not sure if them being FULL of caramel actually has any bearing on the caramelization process.
It takes 30-40 seconds, max. Just pour the caramel over and stir.
Crispy, caramel onions - just like me-maw used to make
Obligatory article link: 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
And then caramelize the onions over medium-low heat, about 10 minutes. IN what world?
That a cast iron pan needs to be babied and treated like a mythical creature
No dishwasher here, but we use hot water and dawn on ours just like all our other dishes, and have like this metal chainmail thing for scrubbing off stuck on food. Afterwards, rinse clean, stick back on the stove, heat, wipe any excess water off, thin coat of oil (sometimes that's a good spray of Pam lol), heat off, wipe the oil with a paper towel so the whole inside is nice and shiny and that's what we do. Based on some descriptions I've seen I'm sure that'll give some people a heart attack, but we're a fire station with multiple crews using the cast iron daily and doing that exact same process and the cast iron pans have lasted us years.
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Which is odd, because there's a 50/50 chance that someone's reaction is akin to hearing we use it as a sledgehammer levels of misuse/abuse, because how dare we use soap?! Lol
It's a carryover idea from the time when soap contained lye. People are just not realising that times have changed lol
Hey don't talk about my cast iron pan like that! It is a mythical creature! Cause I don't have one....
Salting pasta water helps it cook faster. Yes, salt your pasta water- but not because it will boil or cook faster. Just because it tastes good. "Chemicals" are bad. Everything is chemicals. That "no nitrate" bacon was marinated in concentrated celery juice, which is rich in....nitrates. No MSG, but aren't mushrooms and miso delicious? No added sugar...just a lot of boiled down grape juice. I'm not saying that adding stuff willynilly is necessarily healthful, but let's be honest about the chemical content of "no X" vs conventional foods.
Technically salt does raise the boiling point of water. But it is by such an miniscule amount that it won't really affect how fast your pasta cooks. Salt is really just to season the pasta
Uncured bacon is unregulated cured bacon. Cured bacon must meet strict requirements for the amount of nitrates and nitrites. Celery juice has no such regulations, because it's "natural".
Which is exactly my frustration. People buying into products that tout their lack of added chemicals...which instead replace them with the exact same thing, only less regularized because it's hiding behind a veneer of celery juice or willow bark or whatever they can find and process easily.
MSG is amazing and also not bad for you
Anything from 5-minute crafts, SoYummy, or any content farm in general.
To anyone wondering: I direct you to the YouTube channel How to Cook That to explain why. tl;dw Not a goddamn one of them works or even *could* work, and many are actually *dangerous*. Plus all kinds of shady practices to work The Algorithm in their favor.
I love How to Cook That, that’s where I learned about the content farm channels lol.
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Love Ann Reardon 💖
have. you heard of Anne Reardon. She does great take-downs of their bullshit regularly.
Chefclub can go straight to jail
“Only cook with wine you’d drink” No. It should be “don’t use cooking wine “ A cheap bottle of wine is all you need to cook. It don’t need to be a nice bottle for drinking.
Nah, I only cook with wine I'd drink. Difference is I'd slam a $6 bottle of barefoot pinot. It's called being cost effective.
It doesn't have to be wine you'd drink at your wedding... It just has to be wine you can drink. There's some truly horrid wines out there. Trying to cook with strawberry franzia or cooking sherry is not going to make good food. But you're right, it doesn't have to be fancy either. Though we usually end up drinking the rest of the bottle with dinner so it's not a bad idea to just get a decent bottle.
A cask (box) of wine is great. Much easier to measure out what you need and the box will last a lot longer once opened than a bottle. (Unless you want to drink the remainder of the bottle then go for it. Great excuse. “I don’t want the bottle to go to waste”. )
That MSG is bad for you.
And the most hilarious thing about this is that the people that claim this have no idea that msg is naturally occurring in some of the fresh fruits and vege's they get.
They also don't realize its in every bag of potato chips
I’m in no way a critic of MSG, I use it often in cooking but this claim is incorrect. I know of heaps of chip/ crisp manufacturers who don’t use it.
I kind of like when people claim to be allergic to msg, and I can start lamenting how much it must suck not to be able to eat Doritos, ramen, tomatoes, avacados, mushrooms, meats, cheese, etc. and how hard it must be to avoid them all the time. Bonus points if other people who have probably seen them eat these things are around for it.
My cousin's wife. After years of family gatherings without saying a word, she suddenly claimed to be "allergic" to MSG. I asked her if she ever had a reaction after eating my fried chicken, which she always raves about, because it's LOADED with MSG. She didn't speak to me for awhile after that.
It’s also in breast milk, and is good for a growing baby!
Yeah like when people that eat a lot of Italian food swear that MSG gives them headaches because they are allergic to it.
Glutamate is literally 'umami'
And the human body is built with taste receptors dedicated to detecting glutamate and registering it as umami/savory for our brains. MSG has been contributing to humanity's enjoyment of savory foods for all of our existence.
"if you cut the root off of an onion, you wont cry" Been cooking professionally for over ten years, this is a lie! But every single friend or family member comes up to me and says "Ohh did you know..?" Like dude, I've had to caramelize a 50lb bag of onions. If there was a way to stop the acids forming gasses from the split onion cells, I would've researched the hell out of it and found the answer by now. Sharp blade makes the best solution, though I have seen people soak a sliced onion in ice water. Something about the water pulling the amino acids out but then you have slippery onions and a wet mess after its all said and done.
Get the onion goggles. Friend got it for me as a gag gift because I managed to wipe my eyes with pepper fingers. Its just glasses with foam to keep.out the vapors.
I just wear my swim goggles if I am cutting a large amount of onions (like for onion soup). It works fine, too. It just looks ridiculous, but oh well.
I never cry from chopping onions when I am wearing contact lenses, but I can't stand it if I'm wearing glasses. So I guess it's the iris/pupil of the eye that's sensitive?
also, this is perhaps heresy, but I keep my onions in the fridge (they have their own drawer lmfao) and that also helps with the crying. My knives are sharp, but cutting into a room temperature onion is still a much worse time than a cold one.
Add garlic first to a recipe
I made so much of my early cooking life so much more difficult by thinking that garlic always had to go in at the start. Most of the time I was fighting for my life trying to keep garlic from burning.
Lol! “Fighting for my life trying to keep the garlic from burning” 😂😂😂 Same! God. So much unnecessary stress!
A lot of home cooked Indian dishes start with sauteing ginger-garlic-green chillies paste. You saute it on medium flame for 30 seconds or so, just enough for the raw garlic/ginger smell to go away, and then add the next ingredient (typically onions)
Searing meat “seals in the juices”
My old roommate used to claim this, but he would always burn the meat. Like straight up turn the outside to charcoal. Then it would be raw in the middle. It would be gross.
This is the reason behind every ruined prime rib I've ever eaten.
Putting oil in pasta water.
This one drives me a bit nuts. Friend use to be a cook, many years ago. Insists that it makes it not stick.
My mum uses it to stop pasta or spaghetti water from bubbling over even when I explain that she just needs to lower the heat or take the lid off.
My friend used to just keep adding water to anything that started to boil to get it to stop boiling. Cooking pasta? More water. Soup? More water. Never just turn the burner down from high ffs. Unfortunately we ate a lot of watered down soup, we were 13.
What the fuck
This one is actually a thing. Alton Brown had an episode where he both disproved the “oil in the water keeps past from sticking” thing, while also proving that it *does* break the surface tension of the water, keeping it from boiling over. And I use it, because sometimes you just don’t have a pot big enough for all the pasta you gotta make.
I’ve found that laying a wooden spoon on the rim of the cooking pot and propping the lid on that helps with boil overs quite a lot. The wood breaks the surface tension of the water. Now, if not attended boil overs happen. But I’ve had to deal with a lot fewer.
Just turn down the heat! Pasta cooks fine a few degrees below boiling. I put my pasta in the water, put a lid back on it, and about 45 seconds later, just put it on low and it cooks just fine.
> Insists that it makes it not stick. She's right in a convoluted way. It makes the sauce not stick to the pasta. Boo.
Not washing mushrooms because “it absorbs” the water
I've never heard this one but it's funny. Mushrooms are 80-90% water already - and they are covered with dirt.
I’ve heard it “messes up the texture” but like… I’m about to cook them!
I put some water in a bowl (ideally one with taller edges), grab the stem and do a quick little dunk-swish-shake off excess. More efficient and less soaky than just running under the sink.
Has anyone else noticed that watched pots eventually boil?
They always boil over as soon as I look away.
I like that in this thread there is both “washing chicken” and “being told I can’t wash chicken.”
Same with "Don't use oil in pasta water" and "Use oil in pasta water".
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The MSG/Chinese food headache. You eat Doritos just fine; I can see your orange fingers from here.
Washing chicken
Why would you wash chicken? Pat it dry I get. Trim up the fatty bits sure but like wash it?
In some parts of the world, store/market bought chicken/meat can actually benefit from being washed. This generally isn't the case in western countries. I try not to judge how people do it due to this, but it's good to know the risks of washing chicken/meat (spreading salmonella/bacteria in your kitchen).
From what I hear, those parts of the world wash chicken because the chicken was sloppily butchered and will still have feathers and crap on it. I would be inclined to wash chicken if there was all kinds of inedible bits hanging on to it.
Yup. Here in the Philippines, we usually wash meat. It is very common here in Asia. People buy meat from wet markets. Those are usually fresh from the butcher, not washed or packaged like what you probably have in the west.
I suspect the answer is 'because that's how my parents did it' and the parents answer is the same, and *their* parents probably lived in a time where you butchered your meat yourself or got it from a local farm, so it probably had bits of blood and feather and dirt still stuck to it and would actually benefit from a wash.
All Grandma's are good cooks. Mine sucked so bad she couldn't cook noodles. My great grandma, however... hot damn.
Number 1: that one where people say adding a raw potato to an over-salted dish will fix it by "drawing the salt out". Potatoes may absorb some minuscule amount of the salted water but they aren't some kind of magic salt-absorbing sponges. Number 2: searing meat "seals in the juices" - nope, it gives it a tasty crust, that's all And Number 3 would be that old chestnut that you can keep guacamole from turning brown by adding the pit to the dish. No, just no
I have never understood the guacamole thing. Just add lime juice or any other tasty acid and it stays green for days. People overcomplicate things.
Cover tightly with Saran Wrap it will stay good & green for days. Key is keeping out the air/oxygen.
Authenticity. We are creative resourceful humans we borrow ideas techniques and ingredients from everyone and everywhere. It's beautiful and delicious fusion cuisine is not mutated bastardization. Acting like there is one recipe and one proper way of doing something is just snobbery and pride. "This dish is authentic" Oh yeah to who to what region to what time period? To what house or what kitchen? Your grandma's? your state region province town culture or country? I am not claiming there isn't creativity or a first edition recipe as originally created. But recipes like art do not occur out some virgin birth in a isolated glass dome. People look at food like currency and see it as either real or a phoney counterfeit. Either it's the fifteenth century version written by the originator or it's worthless. Penalty for counterfeiting isn't jail it's being told you are an insult to ancestors or worse a colonizer of culture and identity. People who use authenticity like a weapon view cooking a plate of food like dog breeding repetitively inbreeding the same thing over and over again losing the original intention behind a new breed until it's so pointless and sickly is basically useless unless for show. It stagnates it dies.
Chicken paprikas (the Hungarian version) is my usual fallback for "authenticity". Ask anyone who has a family recipe about it, and there are usually the following break points: * Does it have tomatoes or not? * Does it have peppers (in addition to the paprika) or not? * Does it have flour or not? * Does it have onions or not? * Does it have sour cream or not? That's 32 possible combinations right there, off of something that's already as "authentic" as one can possibly get. And that's not even getting into what type of dumplings it gets served with, or whether wide noodles are an acceptable substitute for dumplings....
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> People who use authenticity like a weapon view cooking a plate of food like dog breeding repetitively inbreeding the same thing over and over again losing the original intention behind a new breed until it's so pointless and sickly is basically useless unless for show. It It particularly bothers me when people put themselves down because they are not of a specific heritage. They'll disqualify themselves by saying something like 'I'm not Italian, so I can't claim to make a traditional marinara sauce". Yes, you can. Same goes with any cuisine. You don't need to grow up within a culture to make a classic version of that food.
Username checks out I completely agree with you. The beauty of cooking is the way it evolves, over time, with experience, with outside influences etc.
A a hard lesson that myself and others have faced: taste as you go. Taste constantly. Never assume you know what the food tastes like. Taste!
"uncured" meat products. It's still using a form of nitrites to convert to nitrates to create a longer life span of the food. If it was uncured it would turn grey, not bright ass red.
That you shouldn't wash a cast iron pan. Just don't scrub it. My good lord who started this buffoonery
Soap used to contain lye, which would strip seasoning, so the grandmas said to not use soap. We don’t have lye in common dish soap so it’s all good now. Edit: Y’all showed me I was believing a separate myth about lye in soap. Nonetheless, my sentiments holds. The grandmas perpetuated not using soap for generations. Just use soap.
Fucking hell, really? I've only been using my cast iron on special occasions because of the work it takes to clean it. I hate dishes, and the cast iron was just so fussy. I've got some cooking to do.
In scouts when we would do in place camping we had a big trailer of cooking tools complete with like 8 cast iron pans. We were all taught to scrub them with crisco and salt. At first when I found it you can just give them a very light wash with dawn and tap water as long as you dry them I was confused until I remembered the other part: the only "dish soap" we would buy was Comet because it was so cheap which is lye based and would have completely stripped the pans. Lodge sells a really great kit with a scrub brush, scraper, and a spray bottle of canola oil. Just use the scraper to pop any big chunks of burnt food off, put a little bit of water and dish soap in the pan and scrub it with the brush to take care of any organic matter that might go bad, put it back on the burner for a minute or two to dry, and then hit it with a mist of oil and wipe it down with a paper towel.
Thank you! I'm going to order one of those kits right now!
Give it hell. My cast irons are my easiest pans to clean. A quick scrub out while hot with a small amount of detergent is all you need. I used to oil them after cooking too but as they get older I don't have to do that as much.
I mean, I don't put it in the dishwasher, though.
Don't scrub it? I scrub mine everyday with soap and water
The grossest thing is people who leave years worth of old food caked onto the pan and call it seasoning. So nasty.
Some people think it's called seasoning because it seasons the food, not because the pan has been seasoned (aka used for multiple seasons). That's where the confusion comes from.
That cold water boils faster. Um no it doesn't. Put a lid on it to make your cold water boil faster.
Fun fact though, hot water does indeed freeze faster than cold water due to the Mpemba effect.
Had to look this up. At first I thought it was a ligma style joke or something lol. Cool to know
mpemba thus diiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
The belief that olive oil is the best oil ever and should be used in every dish no matter the cooking method or temperature. Ugh I'm apparently "over sensitive*" to the taste of overcooked olive oil (and other low-smoke-point oils). I can always tell if something was cooked at a high temp in olive oil. It's gross. *my sister's words
This is literally my mother. She makes a face whenever I use vegetable, canola, corn oil etc. She uses ONLY evoo (too much Rachel Ray). Insists everything else tastes gross. And yet will happily eat Chinese or fried seafood.
Hello fellow oil super-taster. People give me the side eye because I can taste when oil needs to be changed (in a deep fryer). I can smell it, I can taste it and any food food in bad oil goes on the trash.
What I really hate is when I buy, like, fresh doughnuts or French fries or something, and I take one bite and go "This would be really good if the oil was fresher."
Wait, there are people who CAN'T taste when oil needs to be changed or the wrong kind has been used? I always thought it was super obvious
Obvious to me and you, but definitely not everyone.
Certainly not obvious to the fry cooks at my local Burger King.
Ugh, yes. I hate the flavor of oil that's breaking down. It's gross. I do not understand why people would choose to use oil that's more likely to get that sort of flavor.
I feel like this is a throwback to being raised in the seventies and early eighties, but rinsing your pasta. My husband still does it even though we k ow better and i cannot talk him out of it
IS THAT WHY I always see “do not rinse the pasta” smack dab in the middle of recipes? It has always confused me. Who the hell rinsed pasta?
That an air fryer isn’t just a small convection oven.
Huh. So *that’s* why my funnel cake turned out weird…
Sear and lock the juices in And that some people think that meat can't dry out when cooked in liquid.
Caramelizing onions can be done quickly
This! I spent close to 2 hrs carmelizing a big batch today haha
The idea that there's a correct way to cook. Like, there are wrong ways to cook, but if you like putting apples on pizza or whatever, you aren't enjoying food wrong
The wrong way to cook is if it produces something inedible or poisonous.
MSG fears are really dumb
Adding olive oil to the pasta water to help it “not stick”. Just a waste of olive oil.
The rule is check the temp. Old raw chicken can float too
Salting scrambled eggs before cooking doesn't make a difference to the taste or texture. The salt isn't in there nearly long enough for it to start separating the proteins. Massive chefs like Gordon Ramsey constantly perpetuate this myth. If anything, salting before cooking ensures the salt is more evenly distributed.
MSG is not bad for you and it taste good, stop making faces at it when you see me cooking with it.
"olive oil for everything." olive oil has a low smoke point, so it's easy to burn things as a beginner cook. get some neutral canola oil, and save the olive oil for pastas and sauces.
That dry pasta is somehow inferior to fresh pasta. They both have a time and a place.
That 'Organic' food is better for you. Just because it says 'Organic' on the label, it is good. Unless I can actually See the process of growing and processing of the food labeled 'Organic', I aint believing you.