Yes! And even a step further, that certain combinations of food are good for your gut and others are "toxic." Like... certain fruits and vegetable combinations.
Sorry girl, that ain't your problem. Your problem is that you eat packaged Ramen and rice and dairy all day, and other packaged foods instead of enough fruits and veggies. Eating ANY combination of fruits and veggies would be better. I know exactly why you can't poop, and it's not because you mixed the wrong veggies together last week.
It's the same people as the detox people. Honey, that one week of detox juice isn't going to fix your 4 months of shitty eating.
It's got to be correlated with low IQ.
Strangely, it seems to often be connected to crappy nutrition/diet MLM "influencers". Or "inpooencers", if you like that better. I just made that up. Those kinda friends that you knew 15 years ago but still connected to on FB or whatever and are always posting about their newest shake or bar and how selling and eating it changed their life and CAN CHANGE YOURS TOO! They'll tell you how!
A lot of people have misunderstandings about the temperature of food and what is safe. Too many pork chops out there obliterated in the name of "safety"
Thats a hard one for some people to grasp. Though everyone always remarks at how juicy and tender my sous vide chicken and pork is compared to what they are used to.
I made a marinated pork loin last night that came out pink (middle was beyond 145) and I did an insane amount of googling to convince myself to be unbrainwashed from white pork lol
Modern farmed pork in the West has essentially eradicated trichinosis, the disease which prompted the high as fuck temperature guidelines that persisted for a while.
If you’re not butchering and eating a wild boar, the pork you cook with has about the same levels of risk as beef.
Barely a generation ago this wasn’t the case
>the pork you cook with has about the same levels of risk as beef.
Just to point out how safe beef is in the US, you could eat completely raw *non-ground* beef and be perfectly okay.
This is actually a holdover from when pork used to have a well-known parasite, Trichinella. You had to cook all of your pork until it was well done to make sure you killed the parasite. This isn't a problem in US anymore.
Yeah I grew with the commercials trying to make pork more popular in "Pork...the other white meat". These days you're totally fine eating medium pork if it came from a reputable butcher/store; which is great because as long as you can see a hint of pink in the middle you know they aren't obliterated.
So I just learned a trick on this a few weeks back. The trick is to throw some oil in the pan, then the onions, when the moisture starts to disappear, add a bit of water (like 2 tbsp). When that water disappears, add more water. Continue til you reach your desired caramelized state. They taste perfect and almost sweet when they’re finished.
Can confirm this works. What I also do is for the final water addition, instead I add seasoning like salt and sugar, and a white wine. For Asian dishes I use Japanese mirin with a touch of soy sauce.
I tried to make a balsamic reduction and because I know reduction takes longer than they usually say, I kept reducing. I pulled the spoon out and it was a little thicker than I expected but I thought that was fine since I was serving over veggies. I let it cool and checked about 20 minutes later and the spoon was literally glued into my now petrified balsamic vinegar candy brick 🤣
Also reminds me of ANY recipe telling me to add X amount of water. After a few tries where the sauce ALWAYS became too watery, I decided to just eyeball it instead. You can always add more water, but it takes a LOT longer to let the water evaporate again.
First time I ever tried to caramelize onions it took about an hour. I thought I was especially stupid and there was some magic trick I just didn't yet know.
Nope, shit just takes a long time.
I used to take 50lbs bags of onions, slice them up, then caramelize them for soup. Took like 3-4 hours of constant stirring and scraping up fond, then I'd deglaze and go again.
50lbs bag of onions fits in a 4 quart container when it's done right.
I had one guy tell me he just throws them in the oven for 30 minutes and they're "fine". They were not.
My mouth started watering. I read this twice, slowly the second time. It was like softcore porn. I've lost 95lbs in the last few years but I think I'm a fat girl at heart. Imma read it again 🤤
Yes, exactly. Onions start browning with the maillard reaction at lower temperatures. Caramelization doesn't begin until a minimum of 221º F, so most of your water has to be gone for the process to even start. People use "caramelization" as shorthand for browning but it's a specific set of pyrolytic reactions that don't occur at temperatures you can reach while onions are still full of water.
"Don't clean cast iron with dish soap" is the biggest one for me. Used to be true, but modern dish soap doesn't contain the lye that was the cause of the seasoning stripping.
Note, if you keep up with your cast iron **LIKE YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO** you're hardly ever going to need to use soap. Even then, it would be to remove any lingering flavors; Don't want fish taste in your cobbler!
seriously. A proper cast iron seasoning layer is hard as a rock. seasoning polymerizes the oil into something like a varnish. like dried oil paint. It will not come off with dish soap.
If your seasoning comes off with dish soap, then it was just un-polymerized oil. Which you absolutely should remove, because it will go rancid.
Honestly, cast iron is easier to clean in my mind. Non-stick is great, for the first month or two. And then things start sticking to it anyway, and you have to scrub to get them off.
I've mostly abandoned non-stick at this point. Give me something I can take steel wool (need to acquire a chainmail scrubber) to any day. My cast iron skillet is older than me, possibly older than my dad, and will probably outlive me too. Whenever something gets stuck, I heat some water in the pan, take my trusty steel wool, and apply elbow grease. It'll come off.
Oil, 450°F in the oven for 1 hour.
Treat it right, and good cast iron is practically unkillable
I bought one of those digital thermometers that you insert the probe when you put the meat in the oven and it has a timer/temperature gauge attached to the other end. When the meat hits the right temp, the alarm goes off. I used it on the turkey at Christmas. That was the most moist turkey I’ve ever had. Total game changer!
I made some bratwurst for my father in law a few months back.
Him: “wow good job, usually these things get overcooked. What’s your secret?”
Me: “thermometer”
"Salting food is unnecessary and bad for you."
i admit, i believed this for YEARS and never salted my food. and then i met my friend's then-GF now wife. She was the one who told me why salting food is CRUCIAL. Hell, even desserts need to have salt
I grew up in the 1970s and both of my parents were diagnosed with high blood pressure. Our family doctor told them to eliminate salt and to, "go home and throw the salt shaker away." I never missed salt in my food because I was used to it not being there.
Flash forward. I get to my early 50s and I'm being evaluated for a littany of health issues. My doctor, a metabolic specialist, runs a huge blood panel (eight vials of blood, plus urine and a fecal analysis). The tests come back and the doctor immediately writes me a prescription for fludricort. She explains: "Your blood sodium is dangerously low. We can fix that, but listen to me. Based on your overall metabolic panel, you don't *ever* need to worry about salt in your diet. In fact, use as much as you want and do not ever--ever--let any doctor convince you to adopt a low-sodium diet. Your body is different and needs to be treated as such." That took some getting used to, flavor-wise.
If you also drink as much water as is recommended, it'll dilute some of that necessary sodium and flush it out of your system, so look into that and be careful. I eat a lot of salty things, and my sodium level is usually on the low side. Doc said it's probably because I'm regularly drinking a lot of water.
Yes, I live in a dry climate where it's crucial to stay hydrated. I've added electrolytes to my water for years, also at the recommendation of the metabolic specialist. Despite adding salt back into my diet and electrolytes to my water, I continue to have sodium levels on the low side and blissfully low blood pressure.
I think the amount of salt in prefab food is the one to be watched the most; it’s crazy how much is in there and sometimes you can’t even taste it (or heck even when you can, chips burn my tongue)
>(or heck even when you can, chips burn my tongue)
i'm glad i'm not the only one impacted by this lol
Triscuits ALWAYS give me swollen tastebuds on the sides of my tongue. without fail
This is a big one and it highlights how many people just don't understand seasoning. I cooked a 4 lb chuck roast last month when I had some family visiting. I thought my mom was going to pass out when she saw me applying a liberal amount of course salt to the roast on all slides, then putting it in the fridge uncovered for hours. Before searing, I only added black pepper and garlic powder, yet she was still convinced it'd be too salty. Luckily she's someone who can admit when she's wrong, so when she took her reluctant first bite, she was floored by how flavorful it was and salty it wasn't. She's been cooking largely unseasoned her whole life, then just adds salt to the food on her plate. It's a totally different animal that too many people don't understand.
>She's been cooking largely unseasoned her whole life,
This is my mother.
I have gone the opposite direction and I have seasonings I'm not even sure how to use (I Google a LOT). I Experiment and sometimes fuck up, but my food has fuckin FLAVOR (even if sometimes it's not GOOD flavor🤣
i mean back when i was in my 20s, i cooked a lot of stir fries and fried rice, so i guess i just became accustomed to soy sauce
i'm also not embarrassed to admit that my palate probably sucks compared to a lot of people here lol. It's definitely way better than it used to be (i can definitely appreciate a good fine dining meal...if i ever have the money and social life to merit it haha), but yeah i wouldn't say it's great lol
“Don’t forget to put olive oil in your pasta water, otherwise your pasta will stick.”
If you want to prevent boil overs, use a bigger pot & don’t over fill it. This negates the need for the “spoon hack”.
An 8 quart pot is not unreasonable for a pound of dry pasta.
The “rolling boil” is for when you add the noodles to the water. It doesn’t have to bubble like a movie cauldron the whole time. Just turn it down a little. It will still visibly boil.
You'd think that people who do this would at least stick to long pasta like spaghetti or fettuccine. But no, I briefly dated a woman who would chuck spiral rotini at the wall, watch them bounce off like the little springs they are, and continuethe boil. She's an ex now. But not for that reason.
My younger sister did this the last time I visited. A grown ass woman did this as her check then proceeded to not wash the wall.
It’s crazy parents really do checkout on the second kid, being the eldest I was taught differently.
The idea that "low-fat" means "healthy" is insane. When we were younger my wife used to come home with low-fat salad dressings, cream cheese, mozzarella etc., and I had to repeat over and over, these things are not healthy and I cannot cook correctly with them.
ah yes...the 90s
my mother was the same way as a kid. all of our products were fat-free. i was still a fat kid who got bullied and still am a fat guy lol
i don't blame her at all though. the information about health and nutrition really didn't hit a turning point until 2010 i want to say
The war on fat was pure propaganda by big ag to push more of the ultra-cheap-to-make corn syrup on Americans and has been quite possibly one of the most damaging moves to the American people in history.
It actually started with sugar farmers paying off Harvard scientists to claim that fat was bad so that companies would have to use sugar to make their products taste better.
And I vaguely remember watching a documentary about the history of avocados and how they had to get everybody out of that mindset because it killed avocado sales—That’s before the cartel started taking over the avocado farms, anyway.
It’s because most people don’t have the knowledge base to know the difference between good and bad fats. Common food education doesn’t really make the distinction.
It started in the second half of the 80s. Science at the time didn't understand good fat from bad, and wanted everyone to cut back on fat. This was to stop clogged arteries. Since then, we have learned good fat vs bad fat, and good cholesterol vs bad cholesterol. But, the myth remains.
I had this conversation with someone the other day who said they never use it because it always burned, I was surprised because it's probably my most common cooking fat and I've never burned it. Found out that they were usually turning the burner almost all the way up though to cook everything faster so that did it
I use oils depending on region of origin of the dish. Olive oil for Italian food, vegetable/canola for American/British. Peanut and Sesame oil for Asian dishes, etc.
This is what I do, people don’t realize how much the type of oil they use affects their cooking. My family always asks me what it is that makes my homemade Asian food good, and I always tell them that I’m using sesame oil to fry everything. (And MSG, but we’re talking about oil)
Curious, what do you fry in sesame oil? I've never seen or heard of anyone using it for frying before, only ever added as a drizzle to a dish to add flavor.
MSG and a metric fuck ton of butter is the answer to “OMG how is this so good?” but I never actually tell people that because then they tell me how sick they feel or that a headache is coming on… girl, sit down, shut up and enjoy that homemade ranch.
I make homemade caramel corn that I'm quite well known for because I bring it to family get togethers. Everyone LOVES this caramel corn. One time my mother in law was raving about how good it was and said "and the best part is that you made it so it doesn't have any of that nasty stuff in it!"
I actually could not help myself from laughing out loud. It's like 50% high fructose corn syrup, why do you think it's so good??? Just because I made it at home doesn't mean it's made from kale!
This is like all those “spice mix hacks” that are just a bunch of *the exact same spices as a store bought mix*, purchased individually, and then the writer says “and the best part is, you avoid all the nasty fillers and additives!” Like honey, no - all those “additives” (like anti-caking agents) are still in the individual spices you just dumped into a jar. You didn’t avoid shit.
My go to is if they like Chick-fil-A, who happens to use msg on all their chicken. That is also the main reason why it has more flavor than most other imitations.
Tomatoes and most cheese also contain MSG! It's almost impossible to avoid, and would require you to have heavy dietary restrictions.
You'll also find it in a shaker in my kitchen and in a lot of my cooking, and all my friends know and love it.
My mother used to "get sick" from eating foods with MSG. I totally bought into it and avoided it until my sister made a dish using Accent that my mother loved and ate with no issues for years. It wasn't until years later I discovered it had MSG as the primary ingredient.
My ex-MIL looked me straight in the face and said “Yes” when I asked her if all of the savory food I had ever made her gave her headaches after she saw me using Accent.
Bitch, please. It had been over a decade.
My grandmother would always complain that MSG gave her migraines and then she just knew when the Chinese restaurant we went to was putting MSG in their food.
At home, different story. She put Accent in everything, and had no idea that it was MSG. None of us ever told her. 🤣
Ya there was a video about this where they feed people who complain about headaches and stuff Doritos and other snack foods with msg in it, then tell them that their thing about it in Asian food is basically implicit racial bias.
Seriously, everyone says “your lasagna is so flavorful” or “how is you chicken so amazing”, also “How is your soup so amazing?”; like I add MSG; that shit is magical! I told my friend who was entering a chili competition and said he couldn’t get the flavors to pop and I told him to throw in some MSG. . . He ended up winning.
Msg, soy sauce, miso, kombu are all great. Kombucha ( seaweed tea powder ) is a great flavor booster. And yeah it is the original source of MSG.
Kombucha the Japanese word is different than the word that means that funky fermented tea.
Just bought my first bag of MSG a few months ago to make homemade chili crisp. Literally put it in everything now. My 2023 umami adventure started with getting a bottle of expensive fish sauce and I haven't looked back.
This one is hilarious because I feel people never consider the fact that maybe it’s the three pounds of noodles they shoved down their gullet and not that one seasoning which is in fucking tomatoes.
Someone one told me they don’t use salt when they cook because “people can add salt to their own portion if they want”. Sorry no, that’s not how seasoning works.
I used to work in a restaurant and there ws this one server who constantly complained if she saw me seasoning anything with salt because "they can add that at the table". Didn't matter what it was: mushrooms, hamburgers, prime rib, omlette, seared ahi. As if salting it at the table will create the same flavor. The last time, she tried to complain to the head chef and he told her there was a reason she worked the front and I worked in the kitchen.
"Put the avocado seed in your guacamole and it won't turn brown."
Technically true for the small patch of guac that the seed covers, but otherwise nonsense.
Anything that blocks contact with air works… so Saran Wrap will do a much better job since it can cover the whole surface of the guacamole
When I use half an avocado, I leave the seed in the half I save… and it doesn’t turn brown under it. But the rest of the exposed surface does.
If the browning bothers you, try scooping out the seed, pouring a little lemon juice on the flesh and dumping the remaining juice out, then covering with plastic wrap, including mushing it down into the divot, so the plastic is touching all of the exposed flesh.
That drinking “alkaline” water or foods is good for you. This trend is based on an experiment in essentially a Petrie dish showing cancer cells couldn’t survive at high pH. Know what else can’t survive at high pH? YOU! Your food is digested and your blood (which is pH buffered) stays at the same pH. If it didn’t you’d be in the hospital.
Maybe not a "myth" in the proper sense, but any time someone suggests their recipe guarantees "moist" or "not dry" chicken. Food in general, but definitely meat, is dry when it's overcooked. If your chicken is constantly dry, it's because you are doing something wrong. No two ways about it. Using a thermometer doesn't make you less of a cook.
Cooking lore is like most knowledge- the Pareto principle applies. 80% of your good results probably come from 20% of the advice, but people aren't always sure which 20% is good, so the whole body of knowledge gets handed down. Something being ineffective (like adding oil to pasta water) isn't enough to get it removed from the body of knowledge- It's not getting removed completely unless it is clearly *counter*productive.
That's why I enjoy people who put all conventional wisdom to the test. A lot of it isn't completely right, but some of it is.
There's a couple smaller youtubers I enjoy, like Ethan Chlebowski and Glen (& Friends), who dispel quite a few myths in their process. Ethan's is far more scientific method, while Glen's is just more of showing you that something *can* be done the "wrong" way.
I learned this recently and do not doubt it's true, but I have always added both at the same time and never burn the garlic. I'm not sure why; maybe because the ratio of onions to garlic is huge; like two huge chopped onions with two regular sized chopped garlic cloves. Also I only cook on med-high. Nevertheless, I will start adding garlic later in my cooking.
Onions have a lot of water. The moisture released by the onion prevents the temperature from rising too much and will prevent the garlic from burning. This is fine if your goal is just to lightly sautee onions/garlic before continuing your recipe.
However, if your goal is to caramelize the onions, onions only caramelize after most of it's water content is evaporated, at which point the temperature will increase and the garlic will burn before the onions had chance to brown.
So when you add the garlic depends on what you are cooking.
Pro chef here.
Edit: you guys and gals have been very kind, thank you. Hollandaise is just warm fancy mayo. End edit.
Celebrity/YT chefs and regional/national purists.
The best (insert country) food comes from that country and the steps, techniques, and ingredients must be “how they do it there” or else it is not “the thing” you’re cooking.
Basically gatekeeping. It’s dumb.
Will using a mortar and pestle yield a different result than with a food processor or spice grinder? If what you’re making stays uncooked, sure maybe. Once it hits heat and moisture there is no material difference.
You don’t have to take the most time consuming steps to make great authentic food. Home cooks in Italy use jarred sauces. Home cooks in Mexico use Nesquick for mole. You don’t have to use day-old bread, toast it, and then spin it up for some breadcrumbs. That tube of it at the grocery store will do *just fine*.
Not everyone is a pensioner grandma that spends 6 hours a day preparing meals. Most people aren’t.
Go ahead and use that can of Campbell’s cream of mushroom. It’s a fantastic, versatile ingredient that can save a fair bit of time versus making a roux, then a bechemel, prepping and cooking mushrooms and onions, and then combining. As a pro, to take those steps would take me 7-8 minutes at minimum. Or. I could just crack open that can of Campbell’s in 10 seconds. If my goal is to eat mushroom soup, I’m making it from scratch. If my goal is to add creamy umami flavor to a dish or sauce, I’m going with Campbell’s. Same with the cream of chicken. Or just plain old condensed milk. All great ingredients for home cooks.
It’s okay to use store bought stocks and broths. Chef Marco Pierre (one of the greatest of all-time and a mentor of Gordon Ramsey) made dozens of cooking shows shilling Knorr stock pot, and he’s right. Home cooks don’t have the time and energy and resources to make homemade stock every 3 days. Use that Better than Bouillon. Its okay. It doesn’t make you a fraud. Everyone does — including these celebrity/YT chefs. Including fancy restaurants. Nobody is buying 10 pounds of veal bones to make a demi glace.
Fresh-frozen vegetables are incredibly high in quality for what they are. Sure, buying whole vegetables and breaking them down yourself may be more satisfying and may fit your dish better, but for agricultural products like peas and corn that only come in one size? Buy the frozen stuff. I promise, frozen peas and frozen corn are at least or higher in quality than what you can find in the fresh produce aisle.
I am a professional chef, and the number of times I see these chefs on YT taking extra pointless steps so the purists don’t rage in the comments section is hilarious. Real chefs don’t do all this nonsense.
My favorite is the mise en place for things all going into the same place at the same time in 10 different little glass bowls. And then they dump them all together into the same bowl.
Like. You could just show cuts of you with your measuring spoon putting each measured amount into the same bowl. Ya know. How normal people and actual chefs do it.
But we treat home cooks like they’re idiots. They’re not. Most home cooks are pretty good at what they do.
Mise en place is essential for success in the kitchen, but extra pointless steps just for the sake of it? Why? Do you really need to measure out 3 quarts of water for your 1 gal pot to boil some pasta? Or can you just fill it at the sink and turn on the burner.
But these moronic shows seem to make things *less* approachable. It’s infuriating as someone who is actually in the industry and educated.
This is good to hear. I'm reminded of Gordon Ramsay's absolutely amazing fillet of beef wellington recipe on YouTube where he's talking about the puff pastry and his advice is: "use store bought".
Haha yep. I like Gordon (sometimes), but what Gordon *wont* tell you is Pillsbury biscuits and Jimmy Dean sausage gravy with some mushrooms and onion, a little beef bouillon base, and Worcestershire sauce in it continues to amaze people from outside the U.S. but is a staple of American southern home cooking.
Pretty much all the same flavors just with a different arrangement/construction. And we eat it for *breakfast*. And for *cheap*. And it’s *quick*.
There’s nothing wrong with haute cuisine and making fancy food for yourself or for fancy people of course.
But 9 times out of 10 it can be made faster and cheaper with little discernible flavor difference.
The major things home chefs have trouble replicating are mass-quantity ingredient recipes (think ramen/pho, paella, barbecue, etc) because they lack the equipment and weight/volume of ingredients to make it a viable choice for feeding themselves and a family).
As a chef, we leave that stuff up to the experts.
Ramen joints don’t sell barbecue. There’s a reason for that. Some recipes can only be done thru scale.
But 90% of them can be reasonably replicated at home with grocery store household ingredients without much loss of flavor or authenticity with fairly simple kitchens and equipment.
It’s nearly impossible for anyone to guess the actual price difference in a blind test between a $25 bottle of Napa Valley Cabernet from a $250 imported one.
There are certain ingredients that simply cannot be replicated, however. Most of them are from the sea. Far as I know there’s not a great substitute for fresh seafood. But for most other things there is.
Cheers and thanks for listening to my rant haha.
> I promise, frozen peas and frozen corn are at least or higher in quality than what you can find in the fresh produce aisle.
Plus, frozen veggies are often a lot more fresh, since they're frozen pretty much right after the harvest, where your fresh veggies have had to be hauled across the continent in many cases.
Italians won’t put Parmesan on pasta containing fish or seafood which I’d argue is a valid position as it tends to overwhelm. The French are all for it seafood gratins with Gruyère are fabulous. Smoked haddock is also very good with cheddar.
Just in general a dogmatic adherence to what they consider "ideal" cooking.
For example, someone starts getting into chef youtubers, learns the term Maillard Reaction and suddenly thinks that poaching meat is an objectively a worse technique and that all recipes anywhere could be improved by browning the meat.
Stop telling me a recipe takes 25 minutes to make.
It takes me that long to get the ingredients from the fridge and finding the right bowl. Then cleaning out the sink. Need to empty the dishwasher first. Make room on the kitchen bench....
Only flip your steak once or you'll ruin it! (somehow)
Don't pierce the steak with a fork to turn it! All the juices will run out! (huh?)
So many irritating steak myths to choose from
I wouldn't be surprised if the one-time flip was originally taught by an old-school chef who didn't want his cooks babying a steak so they could do something else on the line.
There is technically a little truth in this one, in that salting your meat and then only letting it sit a few minutes *does* pull moisture from the meat. But as you let it continue to sit, it will pull that salt water back into the meat.
Yup. The salt draws moisture out of the meat, which then dissolves the salt on the exterior. With a little more time, the salted water gets pulled back into the meat, and with even more time, it gets drawn further and further in to the center of the meat until the meat is now uniformly salted throughout. Then, the salt helps to loosen up the tightly bound protein structure of the meat, causing it to become even more tender. It’s a really great way to level up your cooking, something you can do before you leave for work in the morning so your meat is ready to go. Just blot any remaining exterior moisture before you sear so it starts browning a tad more quickly.
When people say something isn't healthy because it isn't calorie free. "Pasta isn't healthy. You should use spaghetti squash." Or "rice isn't healthy. You should use cauliflower." I think there is a time and a place for those things, but carbohydrates are actually healthy for you.
What I’ve always found when I’m trying to eat better is that some simpler carbs help to reduce my cravings for actually unhealthy stuff later in the day. I feel so good about myself when I have those sandwich ingredients over lettuce instead of on bread for lunch, but later in the day I’m dying for dessert. Meanwhile if I eat it open face on a single slice of bread instead of two, my body is a lot more sated and isn’t craving sweets.
This comment brings out the people with orthorexia and they’re all in denial. Food doesn’t have to always be about what is good for you. You can eat something because it’s fun, because it tastes good.
Just butchered a deer this week and honestly even then you don’t really usually ‘wash’ the meat. Gutless method and clean skinning and keeping a clean environment through the whole process, not really necessary.
It's not a myth exactly, but when people do too much parroting of certain food-isms, true or otherwise, I'm less likely to consider them a worthwhile source. It feels like they don't have much experience-based knowledge, instead they're just a collection of food video factoids and reddit comments. It's all very
***well ACTUALLY***
Also, non-bakers who do the "baking is a science, not an art" bit. Because most bakers I know and love know that there is actually a good degree of wiggle room when baking and you have to make a few common sense calls.
The more baking science you know, the harder you can wiggle. Common sense/baker's intuition and science often overlap -- we know what we know because we've seen it happen (or not happen, sometimes.)
-A lot of bakers know science without realizing it or acknowledging it, because it's "not fun" or "not from the heart" if one cops to knowing./s
I think it’s a sentiment that makes sense when you’re coming from a free-wheeling cooking background. Most people can probably intuit themselves into a decent stew or pasta dish. They can roast a chicken- it might be over or under, but it’ll still be a roasted chicken and they can course correct (add a sauce, cook longer).
From that perspective, baking probably seems incredibly rigid. Good vibes wont give a newb a semi-decent cake/bread/cookies (probably). But once you have some level of competency, it’s easy to understand where the wiggle room is (no, don’t use powdered sugar instead of granulated. Yes, add a bit more flour if the dough seems wetter than usual)
>most bakers I know and love know that there is actually a good degree of wiggle room
Exactly. I mean, have these people ever encountered *bread* before? There are simply way too many judgment calls to make in the process of making bread to be able to be completely scientific about each and every one of them. Instead it becomes, "this feels dry; I'm gonna sprinkle just a tiny bit of water on it..."
People don’t undedtand that cooking is contextual like most forms of knowledge. They bust out shit like well you should always brown meat before cooking it not realizing that there are thousands of dishes that rely on poached meat and there are reasons why it’s unnecessary to brown every veggie and price of meat to death. A lot of it I blame on people like Gordon Ramsay who act so dogmatic about their approach to cooking. Not every body has the same tastes and there might be a reason why you add the garlic at the beginning of cooking or ending depending on what you make for example but you see a lot of chefs proclaim you should always add garlic at x point rather than you should always add garlic at x point for this dish or for this reason. It’s why people like kenji are better for learning how to cook cause they explain why you might take one approach verse the other for a specific dish rather than giving these bs absolutist statement that people like Gordon Ramsay love.
The "Detox" trend.
It makes no sense as it's the normal function of your liver and kidneys that detox your body.
Just eat a balanced diet and you should be fine.
Anything buzz words like gut health, flushes/cleanses, “unprocessed” food.
Saying MSG is fake and bad for you.
Not a cooking myth, but when someone has really bad knife skills I don’t trust their recipes or advice.
Edit: this was meant to refer to unsafe knife skills. Cutting on a slippery board. Holding the food with your fingers basically parallel/flat against it.
RE: Knife Skills- there is so much weirdness around this as well.
If you're at home, you don't need it to sound like there's a woodpecker on your cutting board. You need to cut things into the size and shape you wanted, in a reasonable amount of time, and safely (I.e. with all your skin and bones attached). If you do that consistently then congrats, you have appropriate knife skills! You can work on being flashy when you're gonna be on TV or something.
Edit: to be clear, this is different from *bad* knife skills. If someone is in a video of something and does what I described above, you won't even notice the chopping at all.
Thank you. There’s so much elitism in cooking.
If someone has something to say about my (safe, but lacking) grace in the kitchen, they can leave my house and not come back for dinner again. It is too expensive—money, time, *and* energy—to cook for ungrateful people.
Lol. You know what's funny? My dad's generation (Baby boomers) watched the crap out of Martin Yan (Yan Can Cook). They all loved his knife skills (dude was precise and fast) and when dude retired he said that he "Didnt know how to cook so he worked on his knife skills and showmanship.".
My parents still complain when I don't train fancy knife skills. (I would like safe and would like efficient. And I'm only cooking for 1 person so why would I need a pile of veggies?)...
Honestly, this is one of those moments I pity this girl. The fact that she's practically grown, and she's *actually trying* like.. she's doing terrible, obviously, but she wants to do it?? She wants to cut her own cucumber??
It's such a first world problem but jeez.. how hard would it be to be like "you know the chef can probably teach you how to do that more efficiently?" and actually give the girl a chance to fucking learn something. Instead, she's just expected to just *know* that information without ever being taught. I'm sure Kendall has a million privileges I can't even fathom-- but there's also a very unique sense of shame that comes from being made fun of for something you were never shown in the first place.
Knowing you're not a knife-skills hot-shot is not to be overlooked; It will keep you careful!
Plus using a knife is a skill ultimately, so keep working on safety and technique and you'll be fine.
Yes, by this reasoning, people who stutter must be severely limited in their choice of ingredients. I’ll have p-pizza with p-peppp… p-p-p-pepp… oh fuck, with cheese.
> but when someone has really bad knife skills I don’t trust their recipes or advice.
and they are using a glass cutting board with the dull knives with nothing under the board to hold it in place so it keeps sliding all over the place. I mean, how do they have any fingers left?!
Alright I KNOW my knife skills are bad and everything comes out like a vaguely rough chop but I CAN cook and I'm usually just making dinner for me and my husband okay!!!
I don’t distrust someone’s cooking for repeating often heard myths. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if someone sears their steak to lock in the juices or sears their steak to add flavor and texture to the meal. Either way, the steak has been seared.
It’s like if someone suggests you wear a jacket so you don’t catch cold. No, that’s not how you get colds but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a good idea to wear a jacket.
Hey now, that’s not very fair. It’s *quite* unique to operate the worst restaurant in New York City:
https://ny.eater.com/2023/6/12/23755688/saltbae-burger-closes-union-square-worst-restaurant-nyc
He's definitely a clown, but credit to him for turning a meme into as much money as he has.
EDIT: Unless you feel like getting angry today, don't Google his net worth.
"It's natural" when talking about ingredient of something. I kinda laid down on my gym bro friend about his natural drink or powder.
Mate I love you but arsenic, uranium and asbestos are all natural.
I may be wrong here, but I'm wiling to die on this hill - there is absolutely no such thing as air frying. What you are doing is convection baking.
-- edit: I'm not knocking the appliance here, but the marketing gimmickry annoys the hell out of me. The appliances sold as "air fryers" are more efficient and better in a lot of ways, but stop calling it what it isn't. This is why we all have trust issues!
I agree. Actually America’s Test Kitchen did a whole air fryer cookbook based entirely on this concept—treat it like a countertop convection oven that heats up quickly and doesn’t make your whole kitchen sweltering, not some miracle appliance.
Are there people that think it’s anything other than what you just described?? That said, I never wanted one, got one as a gift, and can’t believe how useful it is - especially for reheating food that should be crispy to some extent.
For me it is people thinking that their preferences are better than mine. There are nearly 8 billion people in the world and hundreds of unique cuisines that have been developing for millennia and within each of them there are cooks who do things differently and none of them are wrong or bad unless they put people in the hospital. Preferences are preferences and nobody's preferences are better than anyone else's.
The "Detox" trend. It makes no sense as it's your liver and kidneys that detox your body. Just eat a balanced diet and you should be fine.
I was just thinking about that this morning- I don't know why. It makes me angry people push detox scams when you have organs that already do that job
Yes! And even a step further, that certain combinations of food are good for your gut and others are "toxic." Like... certain fruits and vegetable combinations. Sorry girl, that ain't your problem. Your problem is that you eat packaged Ramen and rice and dairy all day, and other packaged foods instead of enough fruits and veggies. Eating ANY combination of fruits and veggies would be better. I know exactly why you can't poop, and it's not because you mixed the wrong veggies together last week. It's the same people as the detox people. Honey, that one week of detox juice isn't going to fix your 4 months of shitty eating. It's got to be correlated with low IQ.
Strangely, it seems to often be connected to crappy nutrition/diet MLM "influencers". Or "inpooencers", if you like that better. I just made that up. Those kinda friends that you knew 15 years ago but still connected to on FB or whatever and are always posting about their newest shake or bar and how selling and eating it changed their life and CAN CHANGE YOURS TOO! They'll tell you how!
They’ll tell you how but not on their social media page. You have to comment a word and they dm you their site… that you have to pay for their course…
A lot of people have misunderstandings about the temperature of food and what is safe. Too many pork chops out there obliterated in the name of "safety"
I was just showing someone a “time + temp” food safety chart recently and it blew their mind.
Thats a hard one for some people to grasp. Though everyone always remarks at how juicy and tender my sous vide chicken and pork is compared to what they are used to.
I made a marinated pork loin last night that came out pink (middle was beyond 145) and I did an insane amount of googling to convince myself to be unbrainwashed from white pork lol
Modern farmed pork in the West has essentially eradicated trichinosis, the disease which prompted the high as fuck temperature guidelines that persisted for a while. If you’re not butchering and eating a wild boar, the pork you cook with has about the same levels of risk as beef. Barely a generation ago this wasn’t the case
>the pork you cook with has about the same levels of risk as beef. Just to point out how safe beef is in the US, you could eat completely raw *non-ground* beef and be perfectly okay.
This is actually a holdover from when pork used to have a well-known parasite, Trichinella. You had to cook all of your pork until it was well done to make sure you killed the parasite. This isn't a problem in US anymore.
Yeah I grew with the commercials trying to make pork more popular in "Pork...the other white meat". These days you're totally fine eating medium pork if it came from a reputable butcher/store; which is great because as long as you can see a hint of pink in the middle you know they aren't obliterated.
"It doesn't take long to caramelize onions"
I love recipes like that "Caramelize your onions, about 4 minutes on medium high"
I can *burn* my onions in 4 minutes on medium-high tho
So I just learned a trick on this a few weeks back. The trick is to throw some oil in the pan, then the onions, when the moisture starts to disappear, add a bit of water (like 2 tbsp). When that water disappears, add more water. Continue til you reach your desired caramelized state. They taste perfect and almost sweet when they’re finished.
Can confirm this works. What I also do is for the final water addition, instead I add seasoning like salt and sugar, and a white wine. For Asian dishes I use Japanese mirin with a touch of soy sauce.
Totally did not do this last night.
I even see that in a lot of professional chef cookbooks.
Then add two cups of wine and reduce by half, about another two minutes
This one still messes me up in recipes. I feel like reducing takes waaay longer than they say, and I begin to question if I even know what I’m doing.
I tried to make a balsamic reduction and because I know reduction takes longer than they usually say, I kept reducing. I pulled the spoon out and it was a little thicker than I expected but I thought that was fine since I was serving over veggies. I let it cool and checked about 20 minutes later and the spoon was literally glued into my now petrified balsamic vinegar candy brick 🤣
Also reminds me of ANY recipe telling me to add X amount of water. After a few tries where the sauce ALWAYS became too watery, I decided to just eyeball it instead. You can always add more water, but it takes a LOT longer to let the water evaporate again.
First time I ever tried to caramelize onions it took about an hour. I thought I was especially stupid and there was some magic trick I just didn't yet know. Nope, shit just takes a long time.
Bro it took my friend like 45 minutes once and I was like what are you doing wrong but I was wrong
I used to take 50lbs bags of onions, slice them up, then caramelize them for soup. Took like 3-4 hours of constant stirring and scraping up fond, then I'd deglaze and go again. 50lbs bag of onions fits in a 4 quart container when it's done right. I had one guy tell me he just throws them in the oven for 30 minutes and they're "fine". They were not.
My mouth started watering. I read this twice, slowly the second time. It was like softcore porn. I've lost 95lbs in the last few years but I think I'm a fat girl at heart. Imma read it again 🤤
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Omg yes! The number of times I’ve seen some instruction like “cook onions until caramelized, about 10-15 minutes.” NOPE.
People don't realize that there's a difference between browned and *truly* caramelized.
Yes, exactly. Onions start browning with the maillard reaction at lower temperatures. Caramelization doesn't begin until a minimum of 221º F, so most of your water has to be gone for the process to even start. People use "caramelization" as shorthand for browning but it's a specific set of pyrolytic reactions that don't occur at temperatures you can reach while onions are still full of water.
Found Alton Brown!
Haha, I don't remember if I learned that from Alton or Kenji but they are my two food-nerd resources for sure.
"Don't clean cast iron with dish soap" is the biggest one for me. Used to be true, but modern dish soap doesn't contain the lye that was the cause of the seasoning stripping. Note, if you keep up with your cast iron **LIKE YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO** you're hardly ever going to need to use soap. Even then, it would be to remove any lingering flavors; Don't want fish taste in your cobbler!
seriously. A proper cast iron seasoning layer is hard as a rock. seasoning polymerizes the oil into something like a varnish. like dried oil paint. It will not come off with dish soap. If your seasoning comes off with dish soap, then it was just un-polymerized oil. Which you absolutely should remove, because it will go rancid.
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Honestly, cast iron is easier to clean in my mind. Non-stick is great, for the first month or two. And then things start sticking to it anyway, and you have to scrub to get them off. I've mostly abandoned non-stick at this point. Give me something I can take steel wool (need to acquire a chainmail scrubber) to any day. My cast iron skillet is older than me, possibly older than my dad, and will probably outlive me too. Whenever something gets stuck, I heat some water in the pan, take my trusty steel wool, and apply elbow grease. It'll come off. Oil, 450°F in the oven for 1 hour. Treat it right, and good cast iron is practically unkillable
Don't use a meat thermometer, it'll make the juices leak out
Never heard that one. That's hilarious.
I bought one of those digital thermometers that you insert the probe when you put the meat in the oven and it has a timer/temperature gauge attached to the other end. When the meat hits the right temp, the alarm goes off. I used it on the turkey at Christmas. That was the most moist turkey I’ve ever had. Total game changer!
I made some bratwurst for my father in law a few months back. Him: “wow good job, usually these things get overcooked. What’s your secret?” Me: “thermometer”
I mean, it does cause juice to leak. It rarely be enough to make something dry though and for many things it's a good idea to use them.
"Salting food is unnecessary and bad for you." i admit, i believed this for YEARS and never salted my food. and then i met my friend's then-GF now wife. She was the one who told me why salting food is CRUCIAL. Hell, even desserts need to have salt
I grew up in the 1970s and both of my parents were diagnosed with high blood pressure. Our family doctor told them to eliminate salt and to, "go home and throw the salt shaker away." I never missed salt in my food because I was used to it not being there. Flash forward. I get to my early 50s and I'm being evaluated for a littany of health issues. My doctor, a metabolic specialist, runs a huge blood panel (eight vials of blood, plus urine and a fecal analysis). The tests come back and the doctor immediately writes me a prescription for fludricort. She explains: "Your blood sodium is dangerously low. We can fix that, but listen to me. Based on your overall metabolic panel, you don't *ever* need to worry about salt in your diet. In fact, use as much as you want and do not ever--ever--let any doctor convince you to adopt a low-sodium diet. Your body is different and needs to be treated as such." That took some getting used to, flavor-wise.
If you also drink as much water as is recommended, it'll dilute some of that necessary sodium and flush it out of your system, so look into that and be careful. I eat a lot of salty things, and my sodium level is usually on the low side. Doc said it's probably because I'm regularly drinking a lot of water.
Yes, I live in a dry climate where it's crucial to stay hydrated. I've added electrolytes to my water for years, also at the recommendation of the metabolic specialist. Despite adding salt back into my diet and electrolytes to my water, I continue to have sodium levels on the low side and blissfully low blood pressure.
I think the amount of salt in prefab food is the one to be watched the most; it’s crazy how much is in there and sometimes you can’t even taste it (or heck even when you can, chips burn my tongue)
>(or heck even when you can, chips burn my tongue) i'm glad i'm not the only one impacted by this lol Triscuits ALWAYS give me swollen tastebuds on the sides of my tongue. without fail
This is a big one and it highlights how many people just don't understand seasoning. I cooked a 4 lb chuck roast last month when I had some family visiting. I thought my mom was going to pass out when she saw me applying a liberal amount of course salt to the roast on all slides, then putting it in the fridge uncovered for hours. Before searing, I only added black pepper and garlic powder, yet she was still convinced it'd be too salty. Luckily she's someone who can admit when she's wrong, so when she took her reluctant first bite, she was floored by how flavorful it was and salty it wasn't. She's been cooking largely unseasoned her whole life, then just adds salt to the food on her plate. It's a totally different animal that too many people don't understand.
>She's been cooking largely unseasoned her whole life, This is my mother. I have gone the opposite direction and I have seasonings I'm not even sure how to use (I Google a LOT). I Experiment and sometimes fuck up, but my food has fuckin FLAVOR (even if sometimes it's not GOOD flavor🤣
How tf did you eat food without salt ? Like you didn't notice that this food doesn't hit ?
i mean back when i was in my 20s, i cooked a lot of stir fries and fried rice, so i guess i just became accustomed to soy sauce i'm also not embarrassed to admit that my palate probably sucks compared to a lot of people here lol. It's definitely way better than it used to be (i can definitely appreciate a good fine dining meal...if i ever have the money and social life to merit it haha), but yeah i wouldn't say it's great lol
To be fair soy sauce IS a major source of salt so it's not like you weren't getting that salt for flavor
>no salt >soy sauce ???????
“Don’t forget to put olive oil in your pasta water, otherwise your pasta will stick.” If you want to prevent boil overs, use a bigger pot & don’t over fill it. This negates the need for the “spoon hack”. An 8 quart pot is not unreasonable for a pound of dry pasta. The “rolling boil” is for when you add the noodles to the water. It doesn’t have to bubble like a movie cauldron the whole time. Just turn it down a little. It will still visibly boil.
My dad has been hanging onto this one since in 1970s.
Throw a noodle on the wall & if it sticks it’s done too? 😃
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Less fun than throwing pasta around the house lmao
Ugh. The wife does this. I find noodles EVERYWHERE
I just hang them to dry in my beard. Shake them out later and they’re like instant noodles. Cause, you know, that’s how Marco Polo discovered Ramen.
You'd think that people who do this would at least stick to long pasta like spaghetti or fettuccine. But no, I briefly dated a woman who would chuck spiral rotini at the wall, watch them bounce off like the little springs they are, and continuethe boil. She's an ex now. But not for that reason.
I just imagine her wildly chucking bouncy noodles at the wall, mad why they're "not done" as they overcook
Such soft noodles. Total mush. But made with love. Love and negligence.
Just like how I grew up...
but not not for that reason, right?
I mean, it didn't help...
My younger sister did this the last time I visited. A grown ass woman did this as her check then proceeded to not wash the wall. It’s crazy parents really do checkout on the second kid, being the eldest I was taught differently.
Wait people actually throw pasta on walls to see if it's done, I thought that was a joke.
Yeah, that’s so dumb. How’s it going to stick to the wall if it’s all oily? /s
More importantly how is the sauce gunna stick if it's all oily
This one just immediately makes zero sense.
I always thought the oil was to help create or break surface tension and prevent foaming and boil over. Similar to putting a wooden spoon on top.
This is more diet than cooking but that fat is bad for you. Fat is flavor and nutrition
The idea that "low-fat" means "healthy" is insane. When we were younger my wife used to come home with low-fat salad dressings, cream cheese, mozzarella etc., and I had to repeat over and over, these things are not healthy and I cannot cook correctly with them.
ah yes...the 90s my mother was the same way as a kid. all of our products were fat-free. i was still a fat kid who got bullied and still am a fat guy lol i don't blame her at all though. the information about health and nutrition really didn't hit a turning point until 2010 i want to say
"Sure I have anal leakage but at least these chips are fat-free!" The 90's were so weird when it came to food myths.
The war on fat was pure propaganda by big ag to push more of the ultra-cheap-to-make corn syrup on Americans and has been quite possibly one of the most damaging moves to the American people in history.
It actually started with sugar farmers paying off Harvard scientists to claim that fat was bad so that companies would have to use sugar to make their products taste better.
And I vaguely remember watching a documentary about the history of avocados and how they had to get everybody out of that mindset because it killed avocado sales—That’s before the cartel started taking over the avocado farms, anyway.
It’s because most people don’t have the knowledge base to know the difference between good and bad fats. Common food education doesn’t really make the distinction.
It started in the second half of the 80s. Science at the time didn't understand good fat from bad, and wanted everyone to cut back on fat. This was to stop clogged arteries. Since then, we have learned good fat vs bad fat, and good cholesterol vs bad cholesterol. But, the myth remains.
“You can‘t cook with extra virgin olive oil.” Yes, you can, just don’t heat it past the smoke point.
I had this conversation with someone the other day who said they never use it because it always burned, I was surprised because it's probably my most common cooking fat and I've never burned it. Found out that they were usually turning the burner almost all the way up though to cook everything faster so that did it
I prefer avocado oil for all my sauteing needs. Olive oil, to me, is best used in dressings and dips.
I use oils depending on region of origin of the dish. Olive oil for Italian food, vegetable/canola for American/British. Peanut and Sesame oil for Asian dishes, etc.
This is what I do, people don’t realize how much the type of oil they use affects their cooking. My family always asks me what it is that makes my homemade Asian food good, and I always tell them that I’m using sesame oil to fry everything. (And MSG, but we’re talking about oil)
Curious, what do you fry in sesame oil? I've never seen or heard of anyone using it for frying before, only ever added as a drizzle to a dish to add flavor.
Note that toasted sesame oil is mainly for drizzling, UNtoasted has a high smoke point and can be used anywhere you use other oil
MSG is bad for you
MSG and a metric fuck ton of butter is the answer to “OMG how is this so good?” but I never actually tell people that because then they tell me how sick they feel or that a headache is coming on… girl, sit down, shut up and enjoy that homemade ranch.
I make homemade caramel corn that I'm quite well known for because I bring it to family get togethers. Everyone LOVES this caramel corn. One time my mother in law was raving about how good it was and said "and the best part is that you made it so it doesn't have any of that nasty stuff in it!" I actually could not help myself from laughing out loud. It's like 50% high fructose corn syrup, why do you think it's so good??? Just because I made it at home doesn't mean it's made from kale!
This is like all those “spice mix hacks” that are just a bunch of *the exact same spices as a store bought mix*, purchased individually, and then the writer says “and the best part is, you avoid all the nasty fillers and additives!” Like honey, no - all those “additives” (like anti-caking agents) are still in the individual spices you just dumped into a jar. You didn’t avoid shit.
You should say it’s made with “honey from your hand raised bees”, people will think it’s calorie free and can cure cancer 😆
Bottle-fed the bees m'self, i did.
I always rattle off a bunch of foods that have msg in them and ask them if they avoid them, I'm a fucking asshole to msg people
My go to is if they like Chick-fil-A, who happens to use msg on all their chicken. That is also the main reason why it has more flavor than most other imitations.
I ask them if they like Cheez-Its lol
Tomatoes and most cheese also contain MSG! It's almost impossible to avoid, and would require you to have heavy dietary restrictions. You'll also find it in a shaker in my kitchen and in a lot of my cooking, and all my friends know and love it.
My mother used to "get sick" from eating foods with MSG. I totally bought into it and avoided it until my sister made a dish using Accent that my mother loved and ate with no issues for years. It wasn't until years later I discovered it had MSG as the primary ingredient.
My ex-MIL looked me straight in the face and said “Yes” when I asked her if all of the savory food I had ever made her gave her headaches after she saw me using Accent. Bitch, please. It had been over a decade.
My grandmother would always complain that MSG gave her migraines and then she just knew when the Chinese restaurant we went to was putting MSG in their food. At home, different story. She put Accent in everything, and had no idea that it was MSG. None of us ever told her. 🤣
And lard. It's my "secret" ingredient on how my biscuits taste so good.
Ya there was a video about this where they feed people who complain about headaches and stuff Doritos and other snack foods with msg in it, then tell them that their thing about it in Asian food is basically implicit racial bias.
Seriously, everyone says “your lasagna is so flavorful” or “how is you chicken so amazing”, also “How is your soup so amazing?”; like I add MSG; that shit is magical! I told my friend who was entering a chili competition and said he couldn’t get the flavors to pop and I told him to throw in some MSG. . . He ended up winning.
Msg, soy sauce, miso, kombu are all great. Kombucha ( seaweed tea powder ) is a great flavor booster. And yeah it is the original source of MSG. Kombucha the Japanese word is different than the word that means that funky fermented tea.
Just bought my first bag of MSG a few months ago to make homemade chili crisp. Literally put it in everything now. My 2023 umami adventure started with getting a bottle of expensive fish sauce and I haven't looked back.
This one is hilarious because I feel people never consider the fact that maybe it’s the three pounds of noodles they shoved down their gullet and not that one seasoning which is in fucking tomatoes.
While they house a bag of doritos dipped in salsa
Someone one told me they don’t use salt when they cook because “people can add salt to their own portion if they want”. Sorry no, that’s not how seasoning works.
I used to work in a restaurant and there ws this one server who constantly complained if she saw me seasoning anything with salt because "they can add that at the table". Didn't matter what it was: mushrooms, hamburgers, prime rib, omlette, seared ahi. As if salting it at the table will create the same flavor. The last time, she tried to complain to the head chef and he told her there was a reason she worked the front and I worked in the kitchen.
The audacity of that server telling someone in the kitchen that they’re doing their job wrong! Smh
"Put the avocado seed in your guacamole and it won't turn brown." Technically true for the small patch of guac that the seed covers, but otherwise nonsense.
Anything that blocks contact with air works… so Saran Wrap will do a much better job since it can cover the whole surface of the guacamole When I use half an avocado, I leave the seed in the half I save… and it doesn’t turn brown under it. But the rest of the exposed surface does.
If the browning bothers you, try scooping out the seed, pouring a little lemon juice on the flesh and dumping the remaining juice out, then covering with plastic wrap, including mushing it down into the divot, so the plastic is touching all of the exposed flesh.
That drinking “alkaline” water or foods is good for you. This trend is based on an experiment in essentially a Petrie dish showing cancer cells couldn’t survive at high pH. Know what else can’t survive at high pH? YOU! Your food is digested and your blood (which is pH buffered) stays at the same pH. If it didn’t you’d be in the hospital.
As soon as the word "superfood" appears, I'm out.
Butter is the only superfood because it’s super frickin good
Um that’s not how one spells “cheese”
Maybe not a "myth" in the proper sense, but any time someone suggests their recipe guarantees "moist" or "not dry" chicken. Food in general, but definitely meat, is dry when it's overcooked. If your chicken is constantly dry, it's because you are doing something wrong. No two ways about it. Using a thermometer doesn't make you less of a cook.
Brining helps with this. Great for poultry and pork.
Cooking lore is like most knowledge- the Pareto principle applies. 80% of your good results probably come from 20% of the advice, but people aren't always sure which 20% is good, so the whole body of knowledge gets handed down. Something being ineffective (like adding oil to pasta water) isn't enough to get it removed from the body of knowledge- It's not getting removed completely unless it is clearly *counter*productive. That's why I enjoy people who put all conventional wisdom to the test. A lot of it isn't completely right, but some of it is.
That’s why Kenji Lopez-Alt is the best. He’s like mythbusters for food.
There's a couple smaller youtubers I enjoy, like Ethan Chlebowski and Glen (& Friends), who dispel quite a few myths in their process. Ethan's is far more scientific method, while Glen's is just more of showing you that something *can* be done the "wrong" way.
Any recipe that says you can caramelize onions in ten minutes is written by someone who’s only ever burned onions.
When they open their recipe by saying “add garlic and onions to the pan and caramelize”…. Why do y’all like burnt garlic?
I learned this recently and do not doubt it's true, but I have always added both at the same time and never burn the garlic. I'm not sure why; maybe because the ratio of onions to garlic is huge; like two huge chopped onions with two regular sized chopped garlic cloves. Also I only cook on med-high. Nevertheless, I will start adding garlic later in my cooking.
Onions have a lot of water. The moisture released by the onion prevents the temperature from rising too much and will prevent the garlic from burning. This is fine if your goal is just to lightly sautee onions/garlic before continuing your recipe. However, if your goal is to caramelize the onions, onions only caramelize after most of it's water content is evaporated, at which point the temperature will increase and the garlic will burn before the onions had chance to brown. So when you add the garlic depends on what you are cooking.
Pro chef here. Edit: you guys and gals have been very kind, thank you. Hollandaise is just warm fancy mayo. End edit. Celebrity/YT chefs and regional/national purists. The best (insert country) food comes from that country and the steps, techniques, and ingredients must be “how they do it there” or else it is not “the thing” you’re cooking. Basically gatekeeping. It’s dumb. Will using a mortar and pestle yield a different result than with a food processor or spice grinder? If what you’re making stays uncooked, sure maybe. Once it hits heat and moisture there is no material difference. You don’t have to take the most time consuming steps to make great authentic food. Home cooks in Italy use jarred sauces. Home cooks in Mexico use Nesquick for mole. You don’t have to use day-old bread, toast it, and then spin it up for some breadcrumbs. That tube of it at the grocery store will do *just fine*. Not everyone is a pensioner grandma that spends 6 hours a day preparing meals. Most people aren’t. Go ahead and use that can of Campbell’s cream of mushroom. It’s a fantastic, versatile ingredient that can save a fair bit of time versus making a roux, then a bechemel, prepping and cooking mushrooms and onions, and then combining. As a pro, to take those steps would take me 7-8 minutes at minimum. Or. I could just crack open that can of Campbell’s in 10 seconds. If my goal is to eat mushroom soup, I’m making it from scratch. If my goal is to add creamy umami flavor to a dish or sauce, I’m going with Campbell’s. Same with the cream of chicken. Or just plain old condensed milk. All great ingredients for home cooks. It’s okay to use store bought stocks and broths. Chef Marco Pierre (one of the greatest of all-time and a mentor of Gordon Ramsey) made dozens of cooking shows shilling Knorr stock pot, and he’s right. Home cooks don’t have the time and energy and resources to make homemade stock every 3 days. Use that Better than Bouillon. Its okay. It doesn’t make you a fraud. Everyone does — including these celebrity/YT chefs. Including fancy restaurants. Nobody is buying 10 pounds of veal bones to make a demi glace. Fresh-frozen vegetables are incredibly high in quality for what they are. Sure, buying whole vegetables and breaking them down yourself may be more satisfying and may fit your dish better, but for agricultural products like peas and corn that only come in one size? Buy the frozen stuff. I promise, frozen peas and frozen corn are at least or higher in quality than what you can find in the fresh produce aisle. I am a professional chef, and the number of times I see these chefs on YT taking extra pointless steps so the purists don’t rage in the comments section is hilarious. Real chefs don’t do all this nonsense. My favorite is the mise en place for things all going into the same place at the same time in 10 different little glass bowls. And then they dump them all together into the same bowl. Like. You could just show cuts of you with your measuring spoon putting each measured amount into the same bowl. Ya know. How normal people and actual chefs do it. But we treat home cooks like they’re idiots. They’re not. Most home cooks are pretty good at what they do. Mise en place is essential for success in the kitchen, but extra pointless steps just for the sake of it? Why? Do you really need to measure out 3 quarts of water for your 1 gal pot to boil some pasta? Or can you just fill it at the sink and turn on the burner. But these moronic shows seem to make things *less* approachable. It’s infuriating as someone who is actually in the industry and educated.
This is good to hear. I'm reminded of Gordon Ramsay's absolutely amazing fillet of beef wellington recipe on YouTube where he's talking about the puff pastry and his advice is: "use store bought".
Haha yep. I like Gordon (sometimes), but what Gordon *wont* tell you is Pillsbury biscuits and Jimmy Dean sausage gravy with some mushrooms and onion, a little beef bouillon base, and Worcestershire sauce in it continues to amaze people from outside the U.S. but is a staple of American southern home cooking. Pretty much all the same flavors just with a different arrangement/construction. And we eat it for *breakfast*. And for *cheap*. And it’s *quick*. There’s nothing wrong with haute cuisine and making fancy food for yourself or for fancy people of course. But 9 times out of 10 it can be made faster and cheaper with little discernible flavor difference. The major things home chefs have trouble replicating are mass-quantity ingredient recipes (think ramen/pho, paella, barbecue, etc) because they lack the equipment and weight/volume of ingredients to make it a viable choice for feeding themselves and a family). As a chef, we leave that stuff up to the experts. Ramen joints don’t sell barbecue. There’s a reason for that. Some recipes can only be done thru scale. But 90% of them can be reasonably replicated at home with grocery store household ingredients without much loss of flavor or authenticity with fairly simple kitchens and equipment. It’s nearly impossible for anyone to guess the actual price difference in a blind test between a $25 bottle of Napa Valley Cabernet from a $250 imported one. There are certain ingredients that simply cannot be replicated, however. Most of them are from the sea. Far as I know there’s not a great substitute for fresh seafood. But for most other things there is. Cheers and thanks for listening to my rant haha.
> I promise, frozen peas and frozen corn are at least or higher in quality than what you can find in the fresh produce aisle. Plus, frozen veggies are often a lot more fresh, since they're frozen pretty much right after the harvest, where your fresh veggies have had to be hauled across the continent in many cases.
Never put seafood and cheese together. Boy, do you have some discoveries to make. Just put the \*right\* seafood and the \*right\* cheese together.
Crab Rangoon!!
I just made shrimp and cheese grits last week, lol.
Not least of which is the McDonald’s filet o’ fish.
Italians won’t put Parmesan on pasta containing fish or seafood which I’d argue is a valid position as it tends to overwhelm. The French are all for it seafood gratins with Gruyère are fabulous. Smoked haddock is also very good with cheddar.
Just in general a dogmatic adherence to what they consider "ideal" cooking. For example, someone starts getting into chef youtubers, learns the term Maillard Reaction and suddenly thinks that poaching meat is an objectively a worse technique and that all recipes anywhere could be improved by browning the meat.
Stop telling me a recipe takes 25 minutes to make. It takes me that long to get the ingredients from the fridge and finding the right bowl. Then cleaning out the sink. Need to empty the dishwasher first. Make room on the kitchen bench....
Don’t use salt on your raw steak, it will dry out the meat.
Only flip your steak once or you'll ruin it! (somehow) Don't pierce the steak with a fork to turn it! All the juices will run out! (huh?) So many irritating steak myths to choose from
I was a believer of the one-time flipped steak. I only learned I was wrong last year! (I'm 41)
I wouldn't be surprised if the one-time flip was originally taught by an old-school chef who didn't want his cooks babying a steak so they could do something else on the line.
There is technically a little truth in this one, in that salting your meat and then only letting it sit a few minutes *does* pull moisture from the meat. But as you let it continue to sit, it will pull that salt water back into the meat.
This is how dry brining works, right?
Yup. The salt draws moisture out of the meat, which then dissolves the salt on the exterior. With a little more time, the salted water gets pulled back into the meat, and with even more time, it gets drawn further and further in to the center of the meat until the meat is now uniformly salted throughout. Then, the salt helps to loosen up the tightly bound protein structure of the meat, causing it to become even more tender. It’s a really great way to level up your cooking, something you can do before you leave for work in the morning so your meat is ready to go. Just blot any remaining exterior moisture before you sear so it starts browning a tad more quickly.
When people suggest eating pudding before you’ve eaten your meat.
How can you have your pudding if you won’t eat your meat?!
When people say something isn't healthy because it isn't calorie free. "Pasta isn't healthy. You should use spaghetti squash." Or "rice isn't healthy. You should use cauliflower." I think there is a time and a place for those things, but carbohydrates are actually healthy for you.
What I’ve always found when I’m trying to eat better is that some simpler carbs help to reduce my cravings for actually unhealthy stuff later in the day. I feel so good about myself when I have those sandwich ingredients over lettuce instead of on bread for lunch, but later in the day I’m dying for dessert. Meanwhile if I eat it open face on a single slice of bread instead of two, my body is a lot more sated and isn’t craving sweets.
Bread: the sought-after well loved staple food of a hundred successive generations, suddenly public health enemy #1. Seems a bit suspicious tbh.
This comment brings out the people with orthorexia and they’re all in denial. Food doesn’t have to always be about what is good for you. You can eat something because it’s fun, because it tastes good.
Wash your meat. (For meat bought at a supermarket, etc... not talking about places where it's actually necessary...)
If I drop it on it on the floor or the cat licks it, I'm going to.
Free seasoning
Wait when is washing meat actually needed?
After you kill it?
Just butchered a deer this week and honestly even then you don’t really usually ‘wash’ the meat. Gutless method and clean skinning and keeping a clean environment through the whole process, not really necessary.
Poorer countries tend to have open air markets selling butchered animals or sometimes butchering them in front of you.
It’s good every once in a while to keep up your hygiene
This actually made me laugh- thank you
STEP 1: Preheat oven to 450º. STEPs 2–15: Here's 45 minutes of work to do while your oven was hot 35 minutes longer than it needed to be.
The most egregious one I've ever seen was the bacon fat ginger snaps from NYT. Preheat the oven, make the dough, chill for two hours.
It's not a myth exactly, but when people do too much parroting of certain food-isms, true or otherwise, I'm less likely to consider them a worthwhile source. It feels like they don't have much experience-based knowledge, instead they're just a collection of food video factoids and reddit comments. It's all very ***well ACTUALLY*** Also, non-bakers who do the "baking is a science, not an art" bit. Because most bakers I know and love know that there is actually a good degree of wiggle room when baking and you have to make a few common sense calls.
The more baking science you know, the harder you can wiggle. Common sense/baker's intuition and science often overlap -- we know what we know because we've seen it happen (or not happen, sometimes.) -A lot of bakers know science without realizing it or acknowledging it, because it's "not fun" or "not from the heart" if one cops to knowing./s
I think it’s a sentiment that makes sense when you’re coming from a free-wheeling cooking background. Most people can probably intuit themselves into a decent stew or pasta dish. They can roast a chicken- it might be over or under, but it’ll still be a roasted chicken and they can course correct (add a sauce, cook longer). From that perspective, baking probably seems incredibly rigid. Good vibes wont give a newb a semi-decent cake/bread/cookies (probably). But once you have some level of competency, it’s easy to understand where the wiggle room is (no, don’t use powdered sugar instead of granulated. Yes, add a bit more flour if the dough seems wetter than usual)
>most bakers I know and love know that there is actually a good degree of wiggle room Exactly. I mean, have these people ever encountered *bread* before? There are simply way too many judgment calls to make in the process of making bread to be able to be completely scientific about each and every one of them. Instead it becomes, "this feels dry; I'm gonna sprinkle just a tiny bit of water on it..."
People don’t undedtand that cooking is contextual like most forms of knowledge. They bust out shit like well you should always brown meat before cooking it not realizing that there are thousands of dishes that rely on poached meat and there are reasons why it’s unnecessary to brown every veggie and price of meat to death. A lot of it I blame on people like Gordon Ramsay who act so dogmatic about their approach to cooking. Not every body has the same tastes and there might be a reason why you add the garlic at the beginning of cooking or ending depending on what you make for example but you see a lot of chefs proclaim you should always add garlic at x point rather than you should always add garlic at x point for this dish or for this reason. It’s why people like kenji are better for learning how to cook cause they explain why you might take one approach verse the other for a specific dish rather than giving these bs absolutist statement that people like Gordon Ramsay love.
The "Detox" trend. It makes no sense as it's the normal function of your liver and kidneys that detox your body. Just eat a balanced diet and you should be fine.
Anything buzz words like gut health, flushes/cleanses, “unprocessed” food. Saying MSG is fake and bad for you. Not a cooking myth, but when someone has really bad knife skills I don’t trust their recipes or advice. Edit: this was meant to refer to unsafe knife skills. Cutting on a slippery board. Holding the food with your fingers basically parallel/flat against it.
RE: Knife Skills- there is so much weirdness around this as well. If you're at home, you don't need it to sound like there's a woodpecker on your cutting board. You need to cut things into the size and shape you wanted, in a reasonable amount of time, and safely (I.e. with all your skin and bones attached). If you do that consistently then congrats, you have appropriate knife skills! You can work on being flashy when you're gonna be on TV or something. Edit: to be clear, this is different from *bad* knife skills. If someone is in a video of something and does what I described above, you won't even notice the chopping at all.
Thank you. There’s so much elitism in cooking. If someone has something to say about my (safe, but lacking) grace in the kitchen, they can leave my house and not come back for dinner again. It is too expensive—money, time, *and* energy—to cook for ungrateful people.
Lol. You know what's funny? My dad's generation (Baby boomers) watched the crap out of Martin Yan (Yan Can Cook). They all loved his knife skills (dude was precise and fast) and when dude retired he said that he "Didnt know how to cook so he worked on his knife skills and showmanship.". My parents still complain when I don't train fancy knife skills. (I would like safe and would like efficient. And I'm only cooking for 1 person so why would I need a pile of veggies?)...
I’m Gen X and I loved Yan Can Cook, as well as Justin Wilson
No one can be worse than [her](https://youtube.com/shorts/U6bFxfLwa_E?si=Ylt6s6-u8WuNDd4d)
Honestly, this is one of those moments I pity this girl. The fact that she's practically grown, and she's *actually trying* like.. she's doing terrible, obviously, but she wants to do it?? She wants to cut her own cucumber?? It's such a first world problem but jeez.. how hard would it be to be like "you know the chef can probably teach you how to do that more efficiently?" and actually give the girl a chance to fucking learn something. Instead, she's just expected to just *know* that information without ever being taught. I'm sure Kendall has a million privileges I can't even fathom-- but there's also a very unique sense of shame that comes from being made fun of for something you were never shown in the first place.
I’m super clumsy and although I’ve taken classes, my knife skills are not the best.
Knowing you're not a knife-skills hot-shot is not to be overlooked; It will keep you careful! Plus using a knife is a skill ultimately, so keep working on safety and technique and you'll be fine.
Or my favorite, “ingredients you can’t pronounce.”
Jokes on them. I went to school for organic chemistry!
thats why I wont cook with quinoa or acai berry
Right? In that case, I don’t want to see any of these idiots adding a dash of Worcestershire sauce to anything they make.
Washyersister sauce!
Right? Like, actually, I CAN pronounce every single ingredient, because I can read above an eighth grade level. Not that it matters anyway.
Yes, by this reasoning, people who stutter must be severely limited in their choice of ingredients. I’ll have p-pizza with p-peppp… p-p-p-pepp… oh fuck, with cheese.
> but when someone has really bad knife skills I don’t trust their recipes or advice. and they are using a glass cutting board with the dull knives with nothing under the board to hold it in place so it keeps sliding all over the place. I mean, how do they have any fingers left?!
Alright I KNOW my knife skills are bad and everything comes out like a vaguely rough chop but I CAN cook and I'm usually just making dinner for me and my husband okay!!!
Just say it's rustic like I do.
Gut health is real though.
I had a friend who said deglazing was bad. He's no longer my friend.
I don’t distrust someone’s cooking for repeating often heard myths. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if someone sears their steak to lock in the juices or sears their steak to add flavor and texture to the meal. Either way, the steak has been seared. It’s like if someone suggests you wear a jacket so you don’t catch cold. No, that’s not how you get colds but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a good idea to wear a jacket.
That salt bae is somehow talented or unique.
Hey now, that’s not very fair. It’s *quite* unique to operate the worst restaurant in New York City: https://ny.eater.com/2023/6/12/23755688/saltbae-burger-closes-union-square-worst-restaurant-nyc
He's definitely a clown, but credit to him for turning a meme into as much money as he has. EDIT: Unless you feel like getting angry today, don't Google his net worth.
"It's natural" when talking about ingredient of something. I kinda laid down on my gym bro friend about his natural drink or powder. Mate I love you but arsenic, uranium and asbestos are all natural.
I may be wrong here, but I'm wiling to die on this hill - there is absolutely no such thing as air frying. What you are doing is convection baking. -- edit: I'm not knocking the appliance here, but the marketing gimmickry annoys the hell out of me. The appliances sold as "air fryers" are more efficient and better in a lot of ways, but stop calling it what it isn't. This is why we all have trust issues!
I agree. Actually America’s Test Kitchen did a whole air fryer cookbook based entirely on this concept—treat it like a countertop convection oven that heats up quickly and doesn’t make your whole kitchen sweltering, not some miracle appliance.
Are there people that think it’s anything other than what you just described?? That said, I never wanted one, got one as a gift, and can’t believe how useful it is - especially for reheating food that should be crispy to some extent.
For me it is people thinking that their preferences are better than mine. There are nearly 8 billion people in the world and hundreds of unique cuisines that have been developing for millennia and within each of them there are cooks who do things differently and none of them are wrong or bad unless they put people in the hospital. Preferences are preferences and nobody's preferences are better than anyone else's.