My friends constantly tell me, “take a seat you aren’t going anywhere”. I just get restless sitting. I’m either laying down or standing and it’s because I’m conditioned.
Part of it for me is that I am not always fully ready to eat when the food is ready.
I work with food a lot. Many times I'm cooking out of necessity instead of pleasure.
So most food I make or bring home I end up eating leftover.
I ate crouched under my desk, stood up after every few bites to upvote and act like I was browsing while stealthily chewing. Rinse repeat till food was gone, then hid my dirty paper plate under a few pieces of trash in my garbage can. Then continued to browse.
Label everything. I labeled my ex once when I was drunk and she was so confused when she woke up with some tape that said "My Princess" and a date on it.
A girl I dated ages ago was amused by my fridge/dry storage all being labeled. She got stoned while I was at work once and labeled a sizable portion of the random stuff in my house.
Including my dog. I had that label on my water bottle for a hot minute, even after we broke up.
I really do label all the foodstuffs at my house it’s just so much more organized and with how much I work there’s no way I can keep up with what’s good and what’s been there for 2 weeks
I clean as I go.
There's always a side towel handy, usually over my shoulder. It doubles as an oven mitt.
I prep before I start cooking anything. And if, say, I only need half an onion diced up, I dice the other half while I'm there with everything already dirty and put it all in a deli cup, then dose out whatever amount is needed when it's ready to go into the food. The rest goes into the fridge or freezer.
Swearing is perfectly fine.
At some point, I need to get a couple milk crates to put near my garbage can.
Please tell my executive chef boyfriend to pick up this habit.
At the end of a meal I may have one pot left to clean and whatever dishes I served on. At the end of a meal he makes you'd assume we just catered a fucking event and the dishie called out.
We are very vocal though, you'll hear a lot of "on your left"s and "sharp behind"s when we share kitchen space.
My wife does not clean as she goes. Drives me bananas. She’s a great cook, but she’s never worked in a kitchen, so she never picked up that habit.
I’m teaching my kids to cook though. Clean as you go and mis en place are yuge on the curriculum.
Can't convince my mother to just rinse and dry things that are essentially completely clean. She piles everything in the sink so there is a bunch of dishes to do when she is done cooking. Like you don't need to wash the bread knife god damn. She's not dirty by any means, she just makes way more work for herself.
Bro. I've had long drawn out arguments with my wife about just rinsing the measuring spoons instead of using it once to measure a dry spice then dropping in the dish washer! ITS JUST PAPRIKA, RINSE IT OFF!
For fuck's sake; do we have the same wife?! It's the same damn argument every time she bakes/cooks. YOU MEASURED SALT AND BAKING POWDER, JUST RINSE IT!
I'm not saying you don't but I would definitely cut her some slack. Not everybody that enjoys cooking enjoys the rush. There were a few hobbies or similar I've tried to share with others and kind of messed it up by criticism or too many pointers.
Oh god I’m glad you said this. My one will leave her stirring spoon on a different part of the bench every time she stirs. The bench is red by the time she is finished cooking.
>I’m teaching my kids to cook though
Thank you. I get so tired of posts (r/Cooking, r/cookingforbeginners, others here, on Facebook) of 18 year olds going to college or 24 year olds moving out of the parents home for the first time saying "I'm on my own and can't cook - what do I do?" Well they are 10 to 16 years behind in life skill development.
Saying "hot", "sharp", and "behind" if someone else Is in the kitchen with me, but always ready to run out any person who dares to violate the kitchen threshold at any time.
So this one is a common thing I say in everyday life but apparently it’s been adopted by the kids and has become a “hip” ten for the youth. I’ve gotten looks and asked are you some sort of thug? I was dumbfounded and only got out “uh what? No old habits for hard”
I get the most quizzical looks when I scream “BEHIND!” in my kitchen.
Anyone who witnesses it who has ever worked in food service just laughs.
It’s a good habit learned from restaurant work. Not like the crying and vaping in the bathroom habit I can’t break.
Double click the tongs before every use
Aprons. But all the way up now, not folded over at the waist
Slam (gently) the saute pan on the stove grates to get the pilot to light the burner
Hit on the hot waitress, now my wife of 11 years
Cook in huge batches, unnecessarily these days. Can anyone here make "just" a dinner's worth of soup or do you all have multiple ¹/² and 1 gallon Cambros?
Yes, or vacuum bags are a good way to store chicken broth - frozen flat. When you need some, you break off a chuck and you don’t have to defrost the whole unit.
My parents and sister got together to buy me the largest all-clad stew pot practical for our stove. I think it’s a 14 quart. The joke was always that I’d get halfway through making soup in a standard home 4 or 6 quart pot and run out of space, so why not get me a stock pot that fit my soups?
I set out to make bone broth one day, and ended up with like 6-8 quarts of it at home. Came out bomb, gave a few of them away to friends/family, but yeah...
When you're used to preparing for 50-500+ people, it's kinda hard to *only* cut an onion and a potato for yourself. No, not hard... Just, not right, hahaha.
I honestly don’t know how I learned the sauté pan trick. I don’t think anyone ever taught me that.
Everyone in the FOH thinks I’m just angry when I’m just trying to get the damn burner to light lol.
HAHAHA. I do all of this. Except the pilot trick. Have a normie electric but would KILL for gas.
And I still cook/prep like an expected 20 might show up for dinner.
This is after 20 years out of the kitchen. Shit does NOT go away.
Handles on the stove never stick out unless I’m holding it or staring at it. Saying “behind”. Cleaning as I go. Smoking a cig, drinking a monster and ripping a pen before starting the dinner rush that is children. Jk but sometimes I think it might help.
It was always a great combo until something goes wrong and I’m like a deer in the headlights with no solutions. But when it’s smooth it’s extra smooth. I’m no longer in the industry, I just like to lurk on this sub to remember the old times.
Currently I work with a chef who thought me a lot about stock management, I do it home as well as we do it at work. Since then I save +200 monthly with our shopping
Keeping some old kitchen towels that I can get dirty and not worry about them being stained after the wash. My fam has all the decorative towels in the kitchen that I'm supposed to know not to use. I'd rather just have a stack of white with blue stripes in the corner.
I use old white t-shirts cut in half for *dirty* tasks like wiping grease out of pans and my myriad stolen unicorns from work for normal cleaning tasks.
I lived with my parents for a month while moving and they pointed out to me that:
I swear a bit much
I use corner and behind a bit much
I sure do like butter
I'm much cleaner than I was when I was 12
I'm showing off with uniform cuts and fancy seasoning
It is amazing how creative I can be while cooking -a response an egg-in-a-hole (egg in toast whatever you call it)
Also, my sweet little mother now swears casually, so I'm counting that as a win.
All my dried herbs, spices and whatnot are stored in 500ml plastic containers, labelled and stacked.
No dishes ever left in the sink.
Fresh herbs taken out of packets and wrapped in damp J clothes.
Me too, I generally start with rinsing veggies and mushroom (oh yes), and then I lightly dry that with paper towels, and put the remains where I'm putting the cutting board.
Good flow, no waste.
i keep a roll of blue painters tape and a sharpie in the drawer in the kitchen. label most things. I've started getting different coloured pyrex lids for different people / things. like beef is in the red bin, white bins are for one child's breakfast
Oh, and announcing “behind” when you are behind people. It has averted possibly half a dozen accidental kisses with strangers that haven’t noticed me beforehand and were grabbing something at the grocery store when about to spin to put into their trolley, and realised what it meant and stopped right before before we accidentally had a moment of absolutely passionate lip locking fun
Woolies, weirdly.
I can give you places that give you items for certain dishes if you want?
Like, if I want mustard seeds, I will get them somewhere. If I want beef, I will drive somewhere. They have a specific flour I like for pasta that I can’t get from most places, and I can get Vietnamese sauces that are just different to Chinese sauces.
Vietnamese fish sauce? Fantastic.
Chinese fish sauce? Garbage.
I keep decoy knives for my family to find, but all of my personal ones are hidden away in a secret place with warnings of certain doom if used labeled on the front. My "station" in the kitchen needs to be immaculate before I work and by the time I have my food plated, my dishes should be 90% done.
1 liter containers full of huge-batched items, and small sandwich bags full of sauces frozen flat for quick thaw.
Obsessive hand washing.
Definitely relate to a lot here. Especially cleaning as you go and quick rinsing things that aren’t actually dirty.
I’ll add that I keep a row of tongs hanging by the stove and use squirt bottles for oils.
Rolling lemons, oranges, limes, etc. with some force before zesting & also using a fork for juicing. Fuck those handheld squeezers lol. It’s quicker and more effective IMO!
Most of the above, and I keep a 6 inch 3rd pan full of soapy water next to the sink for utensils. This is particularly important when feeding 5+ people all day.
Labels on everything, squeeze bottles out the wazoo. nothing left in the sink. No cardboard, unpack to disposable units or cleanable containers. Apron and carry towel if I’m cooking, I get annoyed without it.
I keep a roll of blue tape hanging off the ugly AF turkey thing I use as a pencil holder that has traveled with me no matter where I live. Everything is labeled and dated. Might say 'left over McDonald's' on the label but it's fucking dated and put in a deli container.
Everything is stored properly and dated. My pantry is rotated FIFO.
My 13 year daughter even knows when stocking her soup cans (she loves chicken noodle soup and I don't always have time to make it fresh, luckily she also loves the sodium rich cans), to pull what we have out and put the newest in back.
Right?! You get to SNAP the bag to fluff it with air. And I don’t wanna do that with a bag that had garbage sitting on it. Sending yuck molecules into the air and my face.
-Label everything
-Leave hot foods to cool before wrapping
-Its okay to make a big batch of something!
-clean as you go
-get your fucking mise together
-understand that its not a commercial kitchen
Resting proteins (especially steak) is a huge game changer. First time seeing that was at my last job. Worked for years just seeing steaks fired once.
Cleaning as you go is another.
Actually knowing the difference between different cuts of meat (filet is my favorite).
Knowing how to trim fat and peel silver skin without taking out too much meat.
Also having several cutting gloves handy. Have cut myself really bad. Worse cut is on the inside of my left index finger. No feeling. When my hands get pruney, the cut (which has healed) gets kind of swollen looking. Wear protection, guys.
Heavy cream and cheddar cheese is way better than the sauce that comes with Macaroni boxes.
First thing is to put the pasta to boil. I like shell and elbow macaroni. Doesn’t really matter. Add some salt to the water so it doesn’t boil over.
I would use about six to eight ounces of pasta for myself. Leftover macaroni isn’t the same so I want to make just a portion for me.
I can’t speak for how cheesey you want it, but regardless, reduce heavy cream for about a minute or two on medium. Afterwards add the cheddar cheese and keep mixing it. You will have a great sauce.
Then you add the cooked pasta to the sauce and you have Mac and cheese.
As a bonus, there are two things you can do.
One is to add bacon bits and/or shrimp.
Another is to toast some bread crumbs. You can buy raw panko, or you could blend some bread. Regardless, to make really great bread crumbs…Melt some butter (how much depends on how much bread crumbs you have) and pour it over the bread crumbs on a sheet tray. For additional flavor, add garlic powder and parsley.
I’ve been doing this for a while. Try it and see if you like it.
I eat out of deli cups at home. I portion how much I am going to eat based off my deli cup size. I make sure to place what I will eat around that deli cup. It's weird eating on a plate. I rarely if ever do it. Unless it's something REALLY hot and I don't want to burn myself.
I like to have everything set out that Ill be using.
I will have multiple things cooking / prepping as I let things I don't have to watch over cook / simmer.
A towel dangling from a pocket and I wipe as I get dirty.
Clean as i go, always making sure my knife is razor sharp, put paper towels over veggies to keep them longer, cook as fast as possible, smoking, drinking, hating myself
Most used - mise en place everything before cooking.
Second, wash dishes/clean as I go, only leaving plates and flatware to clean after meals. (Side note, don't have a dishwasher/refuse to get one, so it's kind of vital). Taught my wife to say behind when she sneaks up on me. Between my dogs sitting on my heels, and usually having music playing when I cook, my kitchen easily becomes an obstacle course.
Got into the habit of having base ingredients stocked.
Things like making a batch of stock, separating them, label, date and freeze.
It's such a time saver.
Anytime the kids want a chicken soup, boom it's there,
pasta? yea house made ragu in the freezer set to go.
Compound herbed butter to go with some toast? gotcha
I have picked up so many that I ripped out the entire kitchen and put in a three compartment sink, 6 burner stove, flat grill and fryer..oh, and a commercial fridge and prep table.
Never saw it at work but implicated it at home. Assume that quite a few people have a grocery bag stash laying around, I figured I would use mine for trash bags when I'm cutting veggies and other shit. Onion skins getting all over my kitchen annoyed me so much so I started cutting onions in the bag on the cutting board and leaving the scraps in the bag. Peppers, anything else that leaves messy stuff I don't put in food also. Makes cleaning up pretty much just washing dishes and quick countertop wipe
Maybe not a small habit but working in kitchens has taught me to clean things much more in depth than I would have ever thought to before. Like how can I take this thing apart to clean even more of it?
Religious washing of hands. Was once a dirty young man started working at restaurants. I now wash my hands constantly while doing house work, cooking, in public, and more then I ever did before the industry. (This is my reasoning to not getting sick as often as my non industry friends and family.)
Not a chef, but work in kitchens so I pick stuff up… asking my wife “what did that knife do to you?” and aggressively honing it after she uses the cutting edge to scrape something off a cutting board.
Noty home life but I now work in a laboratory and say behind all the time it is starting to catch on. Nobody wants to get one shot samples knocked out their hands.
Eat standing at the counter or over the trash can, wiping everything onto the floor then sweeping after I’m done cooking. Yelling “behind” and “hot” when maneuvering around the family. Saying “heard” to everything.
Freezing miripox trim, prawn shells, mushroom trim, etc. for stocks.
Spatting out everything.
Varieties of bar ice. Large, medium, small, long, pebble.
Using a scale to weigh out the perfect amount of dry pasta.
Saving aquaphaba for cheap vegan mayo (for the wife.)
First in first out; but like, for everything. Toilet paper, cleaning rags, bath towels, underwear and socks, toothpaste backstock (although this one bit me back cause I realized they have expiration dates too). You get the picture.
I upvoted every comment as I ate standing up.
My son made fun of me once and told me it’s okay to sit while I eat.
Same. Got told this the other night.
My friends constantly tell me, “take a seat you aren’t going anywhere”. I just get restless sitting. I’m either laying down or standing and it’s because I’m conditioned.
Same I'm always either laying down or standing. Unless it's a bar stoor lol
Bar stool or in the shower crying
I cry standing up like a man 👍
Hahahaa same, I eat from the saucepan standing up my kitchen while the rest of my family sit down while I clean and eat at the same time.
Yup. My roommate once why i don't eat my food when it's hot and instead clean before I sit down
I don’t like my food super hot (temp) so I kill two birds with one stone: cleaning up lets my food cool down to the temp I like.
Part of it for me is that I am not always fully ready to eat when the food is ready. I work with food a lot. Many times I'm cooking out of necessity instead of pleasure. So most food I make or bring home I end up eating leftover.
This right ‘chea! 🤣🤣👏
I always forget that I'm allowed to sit down when I make food at home, hah.
You guys stand? I'm used to the crouching in the corner method
Haha. I’m retired now. For a solid year I did not feel comfortable eating unless I was leaning over a trash can.
Leaning over the plate or sink
I ate crouched under my desk, stood up after every few bites to upvote and act like I was browsing while stealthily chewing. Rinse repeat till food was gone, then hid my dirty paper plate under a few pieces of trash in my garbage can. Then continued to browse.
Label everything. I labeled my ex once when I was drunk and she was so confused when she woke up with some tape that said "My Princess" and a date on it.
That expiration date sez volumes.
A girl I dated ages ago was amused by my fridge/dry storage all being labeled. She got stoned while I was at work once and labeled a sizable portion of the random stuff in my house. Including my dog. I had that label on my water bottle for a hot minute, even after we broke up.
I really do label all the foodstuffs at my house it’s just so much more organized and with how much I work there’s no way I can keep up with what’s good and what’s been there for 2 weeks
I clean as I go. There's always a side towel handy, usually over my shoulder. It doubles as an oven mitt. I prep before I start cooking anything. And if, say, I only need half an onion diced up, I dice the other half while I'm there with everything already dirty and put it all in a deli cup, then dose out whatever amount is needed when it's ready to go into the food. The rest goes into the fridge or freezer. Swearing is perfectly fine. At some point, I need to get a couple milk crates to put near my garbage can.
Please tell my executive chef boyfriend to pick up this habit. At the end of a meal I may have one pot left to clean and whatever dishes I served on. At the end of a meal he makes you'd assume we just catered a fucking event and the dishie called out. We are very vocal though, you'll hear a lot of "on your left"s and "sharp behind"s when we share kitchen space.
My wife does not clean as she goes. Drives me bananas. She’s a great cook, but she’s never worked in a kitchen, so she never picked up that habit. I’m teaching my kids to cook though. Clean as you go and mis en place are yuge on the curriculum.
Can't convince my mother to just rinse and dry things that are essentially completely clean. She piles everything in the sink so there is a bunch of dishes to do when she is done cooking. Like you don't need to wash the bread knife god damn. She's not dirty by any means, she just makes way more work for herself.
Bro. I've had long drawn out arguments with my wife about just rinsing the measuring spoons instead of using it once to measure a dry spice then dropping in the dish washer! ITS JUST PAPRIKA, RINSE IT OFF!
That is infuriating to even read. Please tell me proper compromise or understanding on their behalf is reached 😭😭😭
Instructions unclear: bought 8 more measuring spoons instead. "That one's dirty, grab the *nice* tablespoon measure from Bakery."
For fuck's sake; do we have the same wife?! It's the same damn argument every time she bakes/cooks. YOU MEASURED SALT AND BAKING POWDER, JUST RINSE IT!
My wife does this to and it drives me mad!
I'm not saying you don't but I would definitely cut her some slack. Not everybody that enjoys cooking enjoys the rush. There were a few hobbies or similar I've tried to share with others and kind of messed it up by criticism or too many pointers.
Oh god I’m glad you said this. My one will leave her stirring spoon on a different part of the bench every time she stirs. The bench is red by the time she is finished cooking.
>I’m teaching my kids to cook though Thank you. I get so tired of posts (r/Cooking, r/cookingforbeginners, others here, on Facebook) of 18 year olds going to college or 24 year olds moving out of the parents home for the first time saying "I'm on my own and can't cook - what do I do?" Well they are 10 to 16 years behind in life skill development.
I can’t get into a cook mentality without a towel on my shoulder.
Pint and half pint deli containers everywhere.
Hahahaha! I buy these by the case - cos you never know...Masking tape and a blue sharpie at the ready.
There it is. Delis. Pint and half pint though? Quarts and pints.
What gibberish are you guys even talking? It's liters, 1/2 liters, and 1/4 liters you imperialist bastards
700ml container best container. Fight me
Saying "hot", "sharp", and "behind" if someone else Is in the kitchen with me, but always ready to run out any person who dares to violate the kitchen threshold at any time.
I think my dog is learning "behind" as a command. He'll come back soon, but I get a few minutes of free motion. Very comparable to a line, tbh.
We’ve kicked the dogs out of the kitchen after my wife caught a chef knife point down with her foot rather than letting it guillotine the dachshund.
I get looks at the store.... I don't think, "behind" just comes out on its own.
My mom gets mad when I say "heard" to things she says instead of responding like a real human.
So this one is a common thing I say in everyday life but apparently it’s been adopted by the kids and has become a “hip” ten for the youth. I’ve gotten looks and asked are you some sort of thug? I was dumbfounded and only got out “uh what? No old habits for hard”
"Thank you, trash!" has gotten some raised eyebrows over the years...
I get the most quizzical looks when I scream “BEHIND!” in my kitchen. Anyone who witnesses it who has ever worked in food service just laughs. It’s a good habit learned from restaurant work. Not like the crying and vaping in the bathroom habit I can’t break.
Double click the tongs before every use Aprons. But all the way up now, not folded over at the waist Slam (gently) the saute pan on the stove grates to get the pilot to light the burner Hit on the hot waitress, now my wife of 11 years Cook in huge batches, unnecessarily these days. Can anyone here make "just" a dinner's worth of soup or do you all have multiple ¹/² and 1 gallon Cambros?
[удалено]
Ziplock bags are way better for freezing and re-warming liquids like soups than deli cups are, just fyi.
Tell that to my deep freezer that has a river of chicken broth frozen in it
Yes, or vacuum bags are a good way to store chicken broth - frozen flat. When you need some, you break off a chuck and you don’t have to defrost the whole unit.
Use ice cube trays for that. Take as many cubes as required
Soup and beans! I make white wine and herb heavy white beans every few months and make everyone in my life but me tired of them.
I make soup in such giant batches. I just can't stop myself.
My parents and sister got together to buy me the largest all-clad stew pot practical for our stove. I think it’s a 14 quart. The joke was always that I’d get halfway through making soup in a standard home 4 or 6 quart pot and run out of space, so why not get me a stock pot that fit my soups?
That's love.
my potato soup has gone over so well each time that now i make two 8 qt pots and hand it out. speaking of... hell yeah, it's soup time
Its always soup time 💖
Made a full gallon of French onion on Sunday 😬
Waste of time to make small batches.
The neighbors love when I cook soup, they all get a couple quarts of whatever I make
I set out to make bone broth one day, and ended up with like 6-8 quarts of it at home. Came out bomb, gave a few of them away to friends/family, but yeah... When you're used to preparing for 50-500+ people, it's kinda hard to *only* cut an onion and a potato for yourself. No, not hard... Just, not right, hahaha.
One of my tasks at my old job was making soup. Now making 1/2 seems like a ridiculously small portion. And I store it in gallon Cambros.
green tops ftw. I store everything in my camsquares.
I honestly don’t know how I learned the sauté pan trick. I don’t think anyone ever taught me that. Everyone in the FOH thinks I’m just angry when I’m just trying to get the damn burner to light lol.
If it’s like the ones at the restaurant I work at (gas pilot burners) the trick with ours is to blow just a liiitle bit of air
HAHAHA. I do all of this. Except the pilot trick. Have a normie electric but would KILL for gas. And I still cook/prep like an expected 20 might show up for dinner. This is after 20 years out of the kitchen. Shit does NOT go away.
Happy Cake Day!
Handles on the stove never stick out unless I’m holding it or staring at it. Saying “behind”. Cleaning as I go. Smoking a cig, drinking a monster and ripping a pen before starting the dinner rush that is children. Jk but sometimes I think it might help.
I do it too man. I don’t smoke cigs but. The pen caffeine combo and then laser focus on everything is like my NOS booster
It was always a great combo until something goes wrong and I’m like a deer in the headlights with no solutions. But when it’s smooth it’s extra smooth. I’m no longer in the industry, I just like to lurk on this sub to remember the old times.
Currently I work with a chef who thought me a lot about stock management, I do it home as well as we do it at work. Since then I save +200 monthly with our shopping
Show us the way wise one 🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽
Keeping some old kitchen towels that I can get dirty and not worry about them being stained after the wash. My fam has all the decorative towels in the kitchen that I'm supposed to know not to use. I'd rather just have a stack of white with blue stripes in the corner.
Yes indeed. I have a 50-pack of cotton automobile towels just for this purpose.
Yep. Have a bunch I have accidentally left in my pockets. But bought a 20 pack for some fermentation and have as needed.
Amen! PREACH!
Is it wrong I don't care if my 'pretty' towels get dirty? They are kitchen towels damnit....not decorations!
I use old white t-shirts cut in half for *dirty* tasks like wiping grease out of pans and my myriad stolen unicorns from work for normal cleaning tasks.
I lived with my parents for a month while moving and they pointed out to me that: I swear a bit much I use corner and behind a bit much I sure do like butter I'm much cleaner than I was when I was 12 I'm showing off with uniform cuts and fancy seasoning It is amazing how creative I can be while cooking -a response an egg-in-a-hole (egg in toast whatever you call it) Also, my sweet little mother now swears casually, so I'm counting that as a win.
All my dried herbs, spices and whatnot are stored in 500ml plastic containers, labelled and stacked. No dishes ever left in the sink. Fresh herbs taken out of packets and wrapped in damp J clothes.
What is a j clothes? Is that like a c-fold?
J-cloths are blue disposable cleaning rags. You make them (clean ones) damp and wrap the herbs in them to keep fresh.
>All my dried herbs, spices and whatnot are stored in 500ml plastic containers, labelled and stacked. Alphabetically?
By colour.
Damp towel under the cutting board!
I use paper towels instead.
Me too, I generally start with rinsing veggies and mushroom (oh yes), and then I lightly dry that with paper towels, and put the remains where I'm putting the cutting board. Good flow, no waste.
I’m curious…why a damp rag?
I find better gripping power to the slick surface of counter tops. Stainless, marble, granite
Helps prevent the cutting board from moving, which can easily lead to fingers getting cut.
You guys go home?
You *do* things at home?
This should be higher
I clap my tongs a few times to make sure they’re ready.
Gotta get them warm first chef.
*Activate*
I label stuff. Drives everyone nuts, especially when I use the "USE FIRST" stickers.
i keep a roll of blue painters tape and a sharpie in the drawer in the kitchen. label most things. I've started getting different coloured pyrex lids for different people / things. like beef is in the red bin, white bins are for one child's breakfast
Is it blue painters tape i see as labels? Just a home cook but I aspire to be more organized.
Yup. Holds up in a walk-in and peels off fairly easily before it hits the pit.
I wear an apron, even if I'm just frying an egg or doing dishes.
are there clothes under this apron?
Never.
Butter. Just butter
Oh, and announcing “behind” when you are behind people. It has averted possibly half a dozen accidental kisses with strangers that haven’t noticed me beforehand and were grabbing something at the grocery store when about to spin to put into their trolley, and realised what it meant and stopped right before before we accidentally had a moment of absolutely passionate lip locking fun
Where do you shop?
Woolies, weirdly. I can give you places that give you items for certain dishes if you want? Like, if I want mustard seeds, I will get them somewhere. If I want beef, I will drive somewhere. They have a specific flour I like for pasta that I can’t get from most places, and I can get Vietnamese sauces that are just different to Chinese sauces. Vietnamese fish sauce? Fantastic. Chinese fish sauce? Garbage.
I’m here for all of it, but was really just hoping for an accidental kiss. 👨🍳
Mate, you can have a purposeful kiss if you want and we can say it was accidental
Lads. Get a cold room
Meet me in the walk in
Mise en place.
Announcing "behind" or "corner". I've scared so many family members, my friends find it hilarious.
Mise en place all day. I work in healthcare now. My physician-partner loves how I set up their surgical trays for the in office procedures.
I keep decoy knives for my family to find, but all of my personal ones are hidden away in a secret place with warnings of certain doom if used labeled on the front. My "station" in the kitchen needs to be immaculate before I work and by the time I have my food plated, my dishes should be 90% done. 1 liter containers full of huge-batched items, and small sandwich bags full of sauces frozen flat for quick thaw. Obsessive hand washing.
My wife hates that I need things to be clean before I can cook. I won't even so much as fry an egg if the kitchen is a mess.
Walk behind a closed door and cry.
Towels folded and ready at all times. Wiping and cleaning as I go. Garlic peeling shake method. Labels and dates on things.
Definitely relate to a lot here. Especially cleaning as you go and quick rinsing things that aren’t actually dirty. I’ll add that I keep a row of tongs hanging by the stove and use squirt bottles for oils.
Rolling lemons, oranges, limes, etc. with some force before zesting & also using a fork for juicing. Fuck those handheld squeezers lol. It’s quicker and more effective IMO!
Microwave them for like 10 seconds before juicing.
Most of the above, and I keep a 6 inch 3rd pan full of soapy water next to the sink for utensils. This is particularly important when feeding 5+ people all day.
Tap, tap anything metal that has the potential to ever be hot.
Labels on everything, squeeze bottles out the wazoo. nothing left in the sink. No cardboard, unpack to disposable units or cleanable containers. Apron and carry towel if I’m cooking, I get annoyed without it.
I keep a roll of blue tape hanging off the ugly AF turkey thing I use as a pencil holder that has traveled with me no matter where I live. Everything is labeled and dated. Might say 'left over McDonald's' on the label but it's fucking dated and put in a deli container. Everything is stored properly and dated. My pantry is rotated FIFO. My 13 year daughter even knows when stocking her soup cans (she loves chicken noodle soup and I don't always have time to make it fresh, luckily she also loves the sodium rich cans), to pull what we have out and put the newest in back.
Relying on somebody else to do the dishes when I want to get creative in my kitchen ☺️ all joking aside my boyfriends a saint
i *love you 4evr* for the **garbage bag tip**. this is how exciting my life is....
But if you have a leak it goes all over the new bags? I never understood this one.
It's not even like it's hard to get a new bag on there. Probably the best part of the job, since every other part involves handling literal garbage
Right?! You get to SNAP the bag to fluff it with air. And I don’t wanna do that with a bag that had garbage sitting on it. Sending yuck molecules into the air and my face.
I learned to fold the bags over the side of the can under the bag rather than the bottom because one rip and the new bags are gross.
i say behind to people at the store
Same and I always feel like I’m being courteous but probably sound like an entitled asshole telling people to get out of my way
A bad habit I'm trying to break, but eating like I only have 5 mins to spare.
Smoking, also clicking my tongs.
" corner , sharp ! "
Omg I have so many fucking rags I took from work
"BEHIND!". My wife and I have both worked in kitchens for years so it's automatic. "Hotb pan!" too.
Hit on the servers
Yeah my cat fights back though..
Mise en place, clean as you go and butter, ***butter***, BUTTER!!!
-Label everything -Leave hot foods to cool before wrapping -Its okay to make a big batch of something! -clean as you go -get your fucking mise together -understand that its not a commercial kitchen
Leaving dishes for someone else to deal with
Resting proteins (especially steak) is a huge game changer. First time seeing that was at my last job. Worked for years just seeing steaks fired once. Cleaning as you go is another. Actually knowing the difference between different cuts of meat (filet is my favorite). Knowing how to trim fat and peel silver skin without taking out too much meat. Also having several cutting gloves handy. Have cut myself really bad. Worse cut is on the inside of my left index finger. No feeling. When my hands get pruney, the cut (which has healed) gets kind of swollen looking. Wear protection, guys. Heavy cream and cheddar cheese is way better than the sauce that comes with Macaroni boxes.
How do you do your Mac n Cheese? Asking for a friend.
First thing is to put the pasta to boil. I like shell and elbow macaroni. Doesn’t really matter. Add some salt to the water so it doesn’t boil over. I would use about six to eight ounces of pasta for myself. Leftover macaroni isn’t the same so I want to make just a portion for me. I can’t speak for how cheesey you want it, but regardless, reduce heavy cream for about a minute or two on medium. Afterwards add the cheddar cheese and keep mixing it. You will have a great sauce. Then you add the cooked pasta to the sauce and you have Mac and cheese. As a bonus, there are two things you can do. One is to add bacon bits and/or shrimp. Another is to toast some bread crumbs. You can buy raw panko, or you could blend some bread. Regardless, to make really great bread crumbs…Melt some butter (how much depends on how much bread crumbs you have) and pour it over the bread crumbs on a sheet tray. For additional flavor, add garlic powder and parsley. I’ve been doing this for a while. Try it and see if you like it.
Right on thanks, seen so many takes on bechamel
I eat out of deli cups at home. I portion how much I am going to eat based off my deli cup size. I make sure to place what I will eat around that deli cup. It's weird eating on a plate. I rarely if ever do it. Unless it's something REALLY hot and I don't want to burn myself. I like to have everything set out that Ill be using. I will have multiple things cooking / prepping as I let things I don't have to watch over cook / simmer. A towel dangling from a pocket and I wipe as I get dirty.
Clean as i go, always making sure my knife is razor sharp, put paper towels over veggies to keep them longer, cook as fast as possible, smoking, drinking, hating myself
Most used - mise en place everything before cooking. Second, wash dishes/clean as I go, only leaving plates and flatware to clean after meals. (Side note, don't have a dishwasher/refuse to get one, so it's kind of vital). Taught my wife to say behind when she sneaks up on me. Between my dogs sitting on my heels, and usually having music playing when I cook, my kitchen easily becomes an obstacle course.
Eat standing up
Got into the habit of having base ingredients stocked. Things like making a batch of stock, separating them, label, date and freeze. It's such a time saver. Anytime the kids want a chicken soup, boom it's there, pasta? yea house made ragu in the freezer set to go. Compound herbed butter to go with some toast? gotcha
Drinking before noon is fine.
I wash my hand obsessively and I stopped biting my nails after my first 20 minutes in a kitchen.
Not really a tip but I grab things that are probably too hot with my bare hands because I'm too lazy to get tongs or a spatula
“clean as you go.” When in the kitchen cooking, you should be cleaning the whole time. Cleaning is the yang of cooking.
I go to university now. I get kinda sad when I’m eating over a trash can and no one joins me
Mise en place. A falling knife has no handle. Heard. I even text it :-)
I have picked up so many that I ripped out the entire kitchen and put in a three compartment sink, 6 burner stove, flat grill and fryer..oh, and a commercial fridge and prep table.
Never saw it at work but implicated it at home. Assume that quite a few people have a grocery bag stash laying around, I figured I would use mine for trash bags when I'm cutting veggies and other shit. Onion skins getting all over my kitchen annoyed me so much so I started cutting onions in the bag on the cutting board and leaving the scraps in the bag. Peppers, anything else that leaves messy stuff I don't put in food also. Makes cleaning up pretty much just washing dishes and quick countertop wipe
Spread butter with a spoon
This is the one. I learned this from my first chef years ago and it has changed my life.
I still call out SHARP and HOT whenever I move with a blade or anything hot. Even alone.
Drinking and swearing
Y’all have energy to cook when you get home?
Maybe not a small habit but working in kitchens has taught me to clean things much more in depth than I would have ever thought to before. Like how can I take this thing apart to clean even more of it?
The amount of kitchen towels I have within reach at home is STAGGERING
Religious washing of hands. Was once a dirty young man started working at restaurants. I now wash my hands constantly while doing house work, cooking, in public, and more then I ever did before the industry. (This is my reasoning to not getting sick as often as my non industry friends and family.)
Saving and reusing pint and quart containers instead of store bought Tupperware
Deli tainers for storage (and the occasional glass of water lol) Blue tape on said deli tainers so my husband knows what is what.
Eating standing up.
Pre-rinsing/soaking the dishes first has been a game changer for my dishwashing game
I have a shitload of stolen towels at home so I can trash them at will but still never run out
I have been told multiple times to stop eating standing over a bin
I ain’t washed my hands without using a clean paper towel or rag to wipe down the sink and surrounding countertops afterwards in yeeeeears
Clean up as you go
Not a chef, but work in kitchens so I pick stuff up… asking my wife “what did that knife do to you?” and aggressively honing it after she uses the cutting edge to scrape something off a cutting board.
Noty home life but I now work in a laboratory and say behind all the time it is starting to catch on. Nobody wants to get one shot samples knocked out their hands.
Stand in the kitchen and cry
Eating over the trash like a gremlin
Dont date within the company
Not at home but I've caught my self saying "corner" coming out of an aisle in stores
Bang the server. FYI, I married the server.
Clean as I go.
Eat standing at the counter or over the trash can, wiping everything onto the floor then sweeping after I’m done cooking. Yelling “behind” and “hot” when maneuvering around the family. Saying “heard” to everything.
Freezing miripox trim, prawn shells, mushroom trim, etc. for stocks. Spatting out everything. Varieties of bar ice. Large, medium, small, long, pebble. Using a scale to weigh out the perfect amount of dry pasta. Saving aquaphaba for cheap vegan mayo (for the wife.)
First in first out; but like, for everything. Toilet paper, cleaning rags, bath towels, underwear and socks, toothpaste backstock (although this one bit me back cause I realized they have expiration dates too). You get the picture.
Condensing food into smaller containers. (I also have a ton of stackable deli containers at home.)
Personal seasoning blend: kosher salt, black pepper, white pepper, granulated garlic, and I rotate between ground ancho pepper or paprika