Brown the garlic.
Dont brown the fucking garlic
I don’t know if this counts but my wife will often be like “I saw this recipe on Instagram that I want you to make” and I have to be like “how many blocks of cream cheese does it involve?” and then she’s like “Awww okay”
I swear 90% of these recipes out therr are the same exact thing with different presentation and they all just taste like bland, underseasoned, cream cheesy meat and vegetables.
After my third Hello Fresh meal (during the first few months of COVID mind you) I was like “why does every recipe begin/bennigans/end with “AND NOW ADD THE BAG OF CREAM CHEESE!!”).
Cancelled soon after the “spicy firecracker meatball sichuan hell!” Meal that culminated in “and now add one tsp of Sriracha to 1/2 cup cream cheese to dress your arugula! (Use less sriracha if it’s too spicy fam!)” Or some such bullshit.
In summation: fuck Hello Fresh (and also use cream cheese where it’s supposed to be used: on bagels, as a frosting base and sometimes in TexMex as a condiment, ya sickos.)
A month ago, my wife saw a nice looking cookie recipe on Instagram. When she tried it herself, the cookies came out looking amazing. We had to throw them out because they tasted awful.
For chocolate chip cookies, go with Alton Brown’s newest version on YouTube.
That recipe is light years ahead of any other recipe I’ve tried. Just make sure to rest the dough in the fridge for a minimum of 6 hours. It really does make a difference. Also get them in the oven when they are still cold, don’t let the dough warm up.
Sounds to me like your purchasing subpar cream cheese
I am entirely convinced nothing bad will happen if you don’t pre-click the clackers.
Not prepared to take that chance…
Every power tool I pick up has a quick vroom-vroom before I use it properly, just like the tongs. It’s tradition.
I do that with all the power tools too! One time I did that with my circular saw and it made a rattling noise, the blade was starting to come loose and needed tightened. A couple of times I’ve somehow just completely forgotten to tighten drill bits and found out during the pre-use vroom. So I think it legitimately helps get a quick safety gauge before diving into using something
Agreed. Also, I switch it from reverse to forward every time after use even if I have more screws to unscrew.
The click is not for the clacker, it is for the cook.
Sorry, no. Non-clickertation of the clackers is one of the leading causes of early clackers declickeration. Clickeration of the clackers warns of problems early, when maintenance can be applied to the clackers before ongoing misaligned clickeration can have catastrophic effects on your clackers. Remember the old saying: Nine clicks is a fine thing.
You’re convinced? So you haven’t actually confirmed it? Still can’t resist the test clack even with this hypothesis?
And potentially have my penis fly off? I don’t think so!
The test clicks are so you get an accurate feel for the spring tension. It’s not the end of the world if you don’t do it, but you’re more likely to drop something.
It’s a sign we all yearn to be a crab.
I’m almost afraid to ask, but what are clackers? All I could find is the 1960’s children’s toy with two balls on a string. But that can’t be it, can it?
Adding olive oil to boiling water before putting in pasta. Oil and water don’t mix, you’re just wasting oil that sits on the waters surface until you pour it down the drain.
Now if you drain the pasta and THEN add olive oil to it while it’s still steaming hot then it will get absorbed. The only thing you should add to boiling water for pasta is a heavy amount of salt. Those two actually combine and will be absorbed by the pasta.
The oil isn’t for flavor. It’s to prevent the starch from the noodles from forming a foam that boils over and makes a mess. Alternatives to the oil are using a bigger pot, and/or setting the heat lower for a less rambunctious boil.
Never had it do anything. What does work is paying attention and having enough patience to not cook at full blast.
Patience? That stuff’s basically impossible to find these days.
I do that when cooking beans too. A little oil stops them from boiling over so easily.
Olive oil use in general i’d say, other oils are better for cooking. A good olive oil is a finishing oil.
Abundantly agree! It’s a waste to fry olive oil, you’re just destroying the flavor. Canola is my goto for actually cooking, olive is best reserved as a dressing or occasionally a core ingredient in cold dishes like hummus.
I prefer avocado oil for cooking but it’s a lot more expensive.
I am ashamed that I fell for this stupid idea 10 years ago.
Become convinced that purchasing an expensive knife and spending half of your life fucking around to keep it sharp and protected is a good investment of your time.
Buy a $10 German steel chef knife on sale, get a rada QuickSharp and a (e: Victorinox 14 inch) chef hone and get on with life.
I cook quite a bit, so I disagree a little. you don’t need a stupid expensive knife, but buying one or two good quality knives is worth it. They probably last as long as you do so it’s not like you have to keep buying more, just buy quality once. I still have a couple cheap knives too. Also, expensive != quality. Choose wisely.
The cheap knives suck at holding an edge. I spend more time “fucking around” keeping the cheap knife sharp than I do the good ones.
Hand wash the knives. The dishwasher detergent will accelerate the loss of the edge and pitting, especially in cheaper steel. Use plastic or wood cutting surfaces, not hard ceramic like plates, or glass.
I buy cheap knives with the plastic handles from the local butcher as they always have spares. Got a maybe 2000 grit belt for the belt sander. Sharpen the whole lot in about 15 minutes twice a year and they hold well
agreed on the inexpensive knife, but I’ve never had good enough results with any quick sharp pull through tool. I use one knife for basically everything and hone it maybe once a week for fifteen seconds. it’s very easy to keep it sharp if you don’t abuse it (thank you dad for always looking for the sharpest thing in the room regardless of what the task is and for using knives on teflon and steel pans and ceramic plates…). I sharpen it maybe twice a year? I honestly don’t remember if I’ve even sharpened it in 2026
The wheel sharpeners are absolutely the sweet spot combination of speed/efficiency/performance… As long as you are willing to accept a little more knife degradation. And you must hone them immediately after otherwise you’re doomed to having the edges fold. Otherwise yes, I am mostly a hone user to keep cutting tools primed.
Anybody that tries to tell me there’s some magic to knives is wayyyyy out there; Too baffled by all the bullshit online to understand that keeping a knife usable is extremely simple, when you focus on the couple key techniques that actually matter.
I freehand cut this hasselback potato with a $5 knife after sharpening it. This is proof I am not just ass-shouting like most self-styled knife “pros”. The biggest technique to understanding knife care is not listening to idiots, but how to know who’s an idiot and who’s not? It isn’t easy for the average person.
Partially agree:
Having nice knives is nice, some of the cheap stamped ones are awful and a good knife will last forever.
Equally, having a set of sharpening stones is also really useful to rescue knives, however you should only be using them once every few years, standard knife sharpeners are fine.
They are tools, not your hobby.
you should only be using them once every few years, standard knife sharpeners are fine
Ask any chef, the exact opposite is true.
I don’t think most knife sharpeners can really get rid of nicks in the blade? Needs a proper sharpening stone for that?
I mostly agree with you!
My personal experience with very expensive knives, and I’m telling you I have had some very expensive knives because my brother used to be a chef…
Not worth it. Not to me. My kitchen is a dynamic place, I need to throw things around, let them clatter around in the sink… I have had a chip out of every one of my $400+ knives within 4 weeks of owning them.
I’m done with “good” knives. Cheap German steel for this boy for life. Lol
First hones are worthless if not activity bad for a knife edge. 10 dollar German knives are trash unless you win the lotto or something.
You don’t need to spend hundreds but a good knife will last a lifetime and stay sharp 10 times as long.
“hones are bad for a knife”
Brother, I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but you understand absolutely nothing about knives and you should never try to talk about them again.
LOL I mean people once thought the earth was flat with the same certainty… There were wrong too. I’ve seen high Def images of exactly what a hone does to a knife edge, so umm you can claim whatever…
The only correct response to you right now is “shut the hell up”.
And yet you were incapable of following your own advice, interesting…
Shut the hell up.
Your pretty bitter might to work on that. An your inability to “just let it go” I’ve trolling for like 3 posts now. I can see is cheeto eating Monster drinking unclean adult smashing his keyboard :) makes me happy.
Adding a bit of starchy water to your pasta after it’s cooked, to make the tomato sauce stick better. Sorry, just trolling, this one works like a charm.
Boil down some of the pasta water. It will keep in the fridge for a while and then you can go extra thicc extra quick. If I didn’t have leftovers I’d do a carbonara.
Washing chicken
Iodide free salt
Cooking with seed oils
(Unless you’re allergic) gluten-free anything
Poking holes in steak to “let the marinade in”
Iodine free salt does matter in some applications, like pickling.
Also for some things you want coarser salt, which doesn’t really have anything to do with iodine but most of that is going to be iodine free.
For general table salt and such though, yeah, doesn’t matter.
And for gluten-free stuff, in some cases, the macros might just be better for your dietary needs/goals. My wife has occasionally gotten gluten free stuff because of that, not because of any issue with gluten.
What’s wrong with seed oil?
nothing. many countries’ nutritional guidelines recommend consuming sunflower oil, because it’s high-oleic.
Where I live we use sunflower oil because sunflowers are growing here while, let’s say, olives – don’t. I suppose Italians would use olive oil as a default variant.
AFAIK based on my own myopic experience, they also use seed oils for frying and alike, except from few very specific oil-based sauces and dishes (e.g. cooking garlic).
Then there can easily be some random Italian Chef that will swear seed oil is the devil and it’s turning us gay.
Sunflower oil is just fine for frying, as long as it’s refined — otherwise you’ll get a shitton of smoke, and burnt particles in the dish. But unrefined oil tastes better in salads.
Idk even what the problem with garlic could be, except of course for the fact that chopped garlic fries very quickly.
Iirc it was just the taste. I was also told to never use virgin oil for cooking as it has a low smoke point. So I only use oil that’s been around.
Hmmm, guess I’ve just never tried garlic fried in anything else, except maybe butter.
Ignore nutritional “guidelines” - look at the nonsensical food pyramid, which even a diabetes doc from 1930 would call bullshit.
What’s largely important with oils is the Omega 3,9,6 balance.
There are other considerations after that (GLA/ALA), but it’s a good place to start.
My therapist gave me shit once for saying that the pyramid was bullshit.
Were they also a dietician?
That depends on who you ask. Some people say they contain excessive omega-6 acids, linolenic acid, vitamin E, and other stuff that negatively affects insulin absorption and contributes to inflammation in the body.
Others claim they’re a super food, they make fried food good for you, and you shouldn’t use anything else. These people are usually regurgitating dumb/useless things they heard on a trendy cooking channel.
The truth, of course, is likely somewhere in the middle.
So my entire nation, who cook everything with sunflower oil and otherwise eat lots of sunflower oil, are all diabetic and perpetually inflamed?
I mean omega-3, 6, linolenic acid and vitamin E vary wildly between different seeds’ oils so I’m sure as an informed consumer one can just leave that flame war alone and figure out by themself that the aforementioned criticism is true for sunflower oils for example but rapeseed oil has a fantastic fatty acid composition and is great for cooking while linseed oil is even better but not really suited for cooking and should instead be limited to cold dishes. To blanket “seed oils” as bad for cooking is just braindead.
To my knowledge, it’s specifically sunflower oil that’s really high in Omega 6, which is why you shouldn’t consume it when you have rheumatism.
Nothing it’s ‘influencers’ and poor outdated studies that stated they were. Rapeseed, sunflower and corn oils are great for heart health.
Many seed oils are toxic to consume. Okay oils being avacado, coconut, and olive. Coconut looks to have many health benefits too
No. Don’t listen to influencers for food science. Seed oils are not “toxic” like you say. In fact, if you hear someone describing food as “toxic” you can almost guarantee they are a quack.
The only food stuff off the top of my head that’s toxic is pink curing salt :) It’s designed to be used in such small portions that it doesn’t matter, but it’s dangerous enough to keep out of children’s reach.
Calling people names to try and discredit them is not an effective way of communicating why toxic foods seemingly don’t exist or whatever it is you’re trying to say. In this day and age of so much information at our fingertips you have to want to stay ignorant of food toxins. I wish I could say that being that way would only hurt oneself but that mentality allows poor food quality to persist across the industry
If it walks like a duck… You can stay ignorant of food science if you choose but food “toxins” is a term almost exclusively used by quacks and grifters. Listen to people that have been trained, went to school, and have a degree in food/dietary science instead. It’s probably a lot more boring, and doesn’t confirm your biases as much, but has the advantage of being factual and true. You also won’t fall for bullshit and buy into possibly dangerous woo, that can hurt you, to magically “get rid of toxins” too.
This weird food rabbit hole you’ve gone down to convince yourself of “food toxins” is almost assuredly an echo chamber of bullshit. I’m asking you very nicely, with kid gloves on, to actually go out to a library and read a book about actual food science instead of engaging with influencers and social media about it. I think you’ll find out pretty quickly that they’re all full shit and should be ignored.
It’s always a trip to hear what they mean by “toxin.”
gluten-free anything
There’s a 2023 randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial published in The Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology where they gave adults who self-reported non-coeliac gluten sensitivity gluten-free bread but said it had gluten in it and around 40% of them got matching symptoms. However actual gluten intake, by itself, produced little additional effect once expectancy was accounted for.
those all sounds like “all natural crowd” would consume, and would pay a bunch just to use that. i never get the obsession with iodine free salt.
What’s wrong with washing chicken? You never know where it has been.
The issue is that the chicken bacteria (potentially salmonella or campylobacter) gets splashed around inside and outside the sink.
i think its more have to do with the dripping water thats drops everywhere, from the sink to your cutting board, to the pan.
We do this all the time in asia, no widespread food poisoning despite science claiming it will. It’s always the westerner claiming it will, or you guys just have some of the weakest sauce stomach.
As asian, we do not do this at all, nor i know any people in asia that does. its always western white people, and thier perception of asia.
As asian living in asia, we do this all the time.
Trust me bro, I do so of course 2+ billion others do with no problems.
And your point being?
Is that a realistic problem?
100 % that the meat is already tainted so you’ve got to get it up to temperature anyway.
It’s best to keep that mess contained and let the heat kill off all the baddies.
Is dirt and shit on the chicken a realistic problem?
I’ve never once seen anything on a store-bought chicken that required washing it.
A lot of chicken is packed in brine solution. Some of us don’t want all that salt. Easy enough to rinse it off though. Although I’ve never needed to powerwash a chicken to the point the entire kitchen is coated in a fine mist of chicken water. Seems excessive.
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I don’t know. I am aware of this argument and I still wash chicken and pork, and pat dry with a paper towel before cooking. I never wash beef unless it’s packed wet, because I don’t want to ruin the searing. I wash chicken because I find it gross otherwise. I never noticed that this habit of washing caused any problems.
Instead of washing it, just cook it.
Hair, sand, etc?
How are you storing your chicken?!
If you don’t see the insides of meat factories and market warehouses it doesn’t mean they are nice. Bet the refrigerator of your nearby supermarket was thoroughly cleaned in 2019.
I’ve been in the factories and supermarkets as a worker and an inspector. It’s very rare (I don’t say impossible, because there’s always a chance) to find hair, sand, and other foreign objects in meat processed in registered factories - the cleanliness is pretty high up there because the fines are also high up there.
But if you’re getting meat from an unregistered butcher/retailer, you’re on your own. You can also see/inspect the meat in the display case before you buy.
on the beaches of greece apparently.
You’re more likely to spread germs around your sink and kitchen by washing it. If they splash upwards onto the tap and then get splashed downwards into the bowl where you’re rinsing your salad greens, the salad could make you sick. Whereas the germs on the chicken will die from cooking.
Edit: if you must, I suppose you could set up an outdoor chicken washing place. But do you also wash your other meats?
that must be a new phenomenon, because the only time you put in water if its frozen, and you want thaw it.
Everybody knows that chicken water is gross. Maybe the people who insist on washing their chicken also bother to wash their kitchen?
This is one of those areas where restaurant and factory food safety standards are being misapplied to the home cook. The risk of food born illness cannot be eliminated, only mitigated; it’s a statistics problem. And the formula changes dramatically when your serving 200 people vs when your serving 4. Or when your washing 1 bird vs 50.
If you take the chicken out of the package and drop it on the floor, the odds probably change to “rinse it without splashing, put it in the cooking container and IMMEDIATELY scrub your hands and the entire sink area, then put the scrubber in the dishwasher and don’t use it again until it’s been sterilized.” But in general the less you handle it the better.
Funny thing, most people who wash chicken wouldn’t think of washing a steak.
Side note: one thing people often forget is they touch their spice jars with their chicken/meat/fish hands.
Probably didn’t learn it from YouTube and it’s not exactly cooking related either but tapping the lid of a carbonated drink can before opening it does absolutely nothing.
What actually reduces the fizz explosion you’re trying to prevent is tapping the side of the can multiple times while rotating it so that the bubbles stuck to the inside of the can rise to the surface.
The time spent tapping gently gives the carbonation time to settle back in.
Penn and Teller did a little magic explained video on “transferring” the explosion from one can to the other. You spend thirty seconds waving a wand around so the shaken can settles before opening it gently, then violently pop the other can while giving it a squeeze.
It was sort of proven more than 40 years ago that there’s no point to do any of these rituals. You’re just have to wait for the gas to reabsorb. The tapping rituals basically give time for that to happen and act as a placebo for the person so time can elapse.
But then it would be less carbonated, right? So what would be the point?
No. They’re called nucleation sites. These are microscopic imperfections on the inside of the can. When you shake the can a small gas bubble might form there and after that more CO₂ can diffuse into it until the bubble grows large enough to detach and rise. A small pocket is however left behind, so the same site keeps making a steady stream of bubbles. These are what cause the can to immediately overflow when you open it. Tapping the sides before opening causes these small trapped gas bubbles to detach and rise to the surface and then it can be safely opened. If it haven’t been shaken, then there’s no need for this, though there’s no harm either.
Oil in pasta water. Though it’s much much older than YouTube.
It changes the surface tension and keeps the pot from boiling over. Very useful if you’re also preparing a couple other dishes.
It most certainly does not keep the pot from boiling over. I’ve had it happen plenty. Same with the “place a wooden spoon across the top of the pot to prevent boilover” trick. That does not work either.
I agree that the wooden spoon thing is horse shit. Never once seen it work. The oil in the water does work for me. Now I know that many things may affect this. If you crank your stove up to eleven, maybe nothing will help. Maybe your altitude will affect it in some way. I live at about 350m above sea level. What I can say for sure is that in a large pot of water, at a rolling boil on my stove, about 3 tablespoons of oil in the water and a full pack of pasta, my pot will not boil over, but it absolutely will if I don’t add the oil.
It also interferes with the water getting into the pasta.
If you’re making a couple other dishes, just make the pasta near the end.
Edit: correction, meant to say “with the sauce getting onto the pasta”
I’m curious about this but I’m also not buying it in the slightest.
Oil floats, pasta sinks.
I just realized I made a sleepy typo: meant to say the sauce, not the water. Here’s a source on it:
Dumping food on a table for kids to eat. So cutting edge, Denise.
Down voted by Denise.
Mis-handling ingredients that will be ‘cooked anyways’, and therefore should be handled with unwashed hands, knives, etc.
I do that, but have in no way got that from videos. Just from standard fecklessness.
Do “pros” really do shit like that?
“standard fecklessness”
Lol. Y’all can put that on my tombstone.
I remember watching some TV chefs handle raw meat, give their hands a quick wipe with a towel on their waist, and then handle all sorts of other things. It works on a show because it’s all just for the camera but if it’s for human consumption, you’d just be turning every handle and knob you touch into a possible source of contamination.
Cucumbers.
Doing cucumbers seems pretty effective.
Effectiveness in dishes is up for debate
Why do you want to become dumb and useless?
Maybe they want to start a big YouTube channel.
Well, the more charitable interpretation would be to identify things that they might’ve picked up that are bullshit so they can stop doing those things. lol
But that’s not how the human works. In general, you go where you look at, and you become what you spend time with.
Well, I tend to agree with that statement as a generality, but not specifically.
If you study WWII history in Germany, do you somehow become nazi? If just learning about something or discussing it made you become the thing, we’d all have a much more careful approach to the internet.
So in this specific instance, I wildly disagree that’s how “the human works” and I find that statement to be nonsensical in this context.
If you study WWII history in Germany, do you somehow become nazi?
The topic is broad. For what reason, or purpose, do you study that time? There are many possibilities.
You could develop an interest in soldiers. Or in Nazis. Or in their counterparts, the resistance. Or international politics of a time when that looked so much easier than nowadays…
Of course you could develop an interest. That’s a radically different assertion than “you become what you spend time with”.
Okay, I’m done with you.
There is possibly one clown who copied BS elbow-salt non-ironically.
Salt is better sprinkled from higher up though, it’s more even.
It hits with a higher velocity allowing it to penetrate the target food. Fancy restaurants will use a step ladder and pop out a couple ceiling tiles to get that extra height. They say after 12 ft you can’t taste it but they just have uncultured palates
The real reason chefs use coarse kosher salt is because its sharp edges let it penetrate deep into the food using this method, like a rain of tiny shuriken.
But you don’t have to look like a complete prat when doing so. That’s a choice.
Also, just dumping salt from high up give you a slightly larger dusting in one spot. If you’re trying to spread it evenly, you only need to go like 3-4 inches up and move your hand around as you sprinkle. lol.
No, you don’t have to do that, but a sprinkle from a foot or so up is better when cooking.
