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“Just Dried Red Bell Peppers”: 60 Facts About Food And Cooking That Are Surprisingly True
A lot of people don’t exactly know what they’re doing in the kitchen. They might be able to follow a recipe or make a few simple dishes that require minimal effort, but truly understanding ingredients and how to make a dish from scratch is an art that takes practice. So if you are interested in leveling up your culinary skills, you’ve come to the right place, pandas!
Foodies on Threads have recently been revealing the most surprising facts they know about food and cooking. From information about product labels in stores to facts about how certain spices end up on our tables, we hope that this list teaches you something new. Enjoy scrolling through these fun facts, and be sure to upvote the ones that you’ll keep in mind when it’s time to make dinner!
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#1
Meal times & meals (like oatmeal for breakfast, sandwich for lunch) are a social construct. There are no rules as to what time or what food you break your fast with.
sturmwesen 1 day ago (edited)
I eat pickled veggies, fresh paprika/cucumber, cheese, olives and/or hummus for breakfast on work days. more like a snack platter and totally atypical for central europe. It started as part of my diet and now I love it.
RELATED:
#2
Sugar free tic tacs are 95% sugar, but can be labeled sugar free because they have less than 1 gram of sugar per serving.
#3
You aren’t allergic to MSG. That’s all junk science. It is safe to eat in moderation for almost everyone.
David Scotman 1 day ago
I saw that! Double blind studies couldn't find any problems. Most likely there is something else causing irritation that is common in Chinese cooking. I worked out powdered onion for me.
#4
Restaurants use 100x more butter and sugar then you could ever imagine.
#5
The way asparagus grows looks and feels like someone is pranking me about the way asparagus grows.
GenuineJen 1 day ago
"Eat it" is not the first thought that comes to mind when I see this. I wonder who the first to try it was.
#6
Breakfast is not the most important meal of the day. In 1944, General Foods coined the phrase simply to sell more of its Grape Nuts cereal.
#7
Brussel sprouts really were worse when we were younger. They’ve been bred to taste less bitter.
Red delicious apples used to taste delicious but were bred to withstand travel. They are now beautifully red, waxy, and terrible.
Corn looks nothing like its wild ancestor. I have no idea what made us think it would be great to cultivate, but very glad we did.
LakotaWolf (she/her) 1 day ago
I absolutely love Brussel sprouts. I even like them raw. There's nothing quite like that crunch! I am sad about modern red apples, though.
#8
Vanilla comes from orchids.
#10
Listeria occurs in a higher rate in bagged salad than lunch meat, but people don’t talk about that with pregnant women 🤷🏼♀️
#11
Organic does NOT mean pesticide free.
It just means that it’s grown without SYNTHETIC pesticides and fertilizers.
#12
If you cook onions with a tiny bit of baking soda, they completely dissolve into the consistency of jelly within minutes and it is BRIGHT yellow. Like chicken-instant-ramen yellow. I love doing this and then making an omelette—it’s so oniony and good.
#13
You don't have to "wash" chicken
Trust me, your favorite restaurant doesnt.
That med rare steak or prime rib isn't leaking "blood"
Pork is perfectly ok
Boneless wings are nuggets.
#17
There's this thing called Perpetual Stew where you start a giant pot of stew and keep adding to it as you're serving it so it never runs dry. Apparently, there has been a pot going somewhere in Europe for near 500 years.
#18
Bay leaves add so much flavor to food
You don’t eat them, but damn do they add flavor.
Roman Arendt 1 day ago
I use them in almost every sauce or stew. And they're really important if you want to make a good broth from scratch.
#19
Paprika is just dried red bell peppers.
Nikki Sevven 1 day ago
If you have a dehydrator, you can make all kinds of vegetable powders. Tomato powder is awesome, as is roasted onion powder. (Note: The dehydrator's fan should NOT be at the bottom of the appliance where moisture can drip onto it, but on top.)
#22
Add some squares of dark chocolate to your tomato sauce and the flavor hits a completely different level!
Likewise add a tsp of instant coffee to your brownie batter…same thing!
Tim Douglass 1 day ago
Caution on this. Know your audience. My wife is extremely sensitive to caffeine and adding the chocolate to the tomato sauce will leave her miserable for several days.
#23
Cinnamon being made from tree bark will never not feel weird.
#24
fun fact: every time someone puts garlic and onions into a pan everyone without fail says "ooo that smells good" not sure if its a curse or something medical 🤷🏼♀️
Nikki Sevven 1 day ago
When I don't know what to cook, I start caramelizing onions. They invariably inspire me.
#25
Ginger makes lemon more lemony. Add sour cream to cake to make it moister. I use mayo on grilled cheese instead of butter.
LakotaWolf (she/her) 1 day ago
Ginger is also brilliant for nausea. I get nausea when I have migraines, and I keep lots of ginger chews on-hand! XD It's become something I enjoy quite a bit as a side effect, so I love candied ginger and other gingery treats as well XD
#27
Figs aren't vegan.
Extra info:
Certain figs are not considered vegan by strict standards because their pollination requires a female fig wasp to enter the fruit, get trapped, pass away inside, and have her body digested by the fig's enzymes.
Robert van Deventer 1 day ago
They are vegan. The confusion stems from the process of wasp pollination (the relationship between the Ficus tree and the fig wasp). When a female wasp enters a fig to lay her eggs, she often dies inside because the fig's internal structure is not designed for her to escape. Many people mistakenly believe this makes figs "non-vegan." There are two key reasons why figs remain standard for a vegan diet: Enzymatic Breakdown: The fig contains an enzyme called ficin, which breaks down the wasp's body completely, turning it into protein that the plant absorbs. The physical remains of the wasp are not present in the fruit you eat. Commercial Cultivation: Most figs consumed commercially (especially common varieties like the Black Mission or Kadota found in grocery stores) are self-pollinating and do not require the presence of a wasp to ripen.
#28
Tomato plants can release a chemical so potent that it turns caterpillars into cannibals and the caterpillar will eat itself.
#29
Nutmeg is poisonous, it can lead to a type of intoxication; in larger quantities it can even cause organ failure. We just consume it in very small amounts, spread out through recipes, but as little as a tablespoon can be bad news.
#30
So freezing and reheating bread actually does lower the glycemic index. It structurally changes enough to impact digestion. It's not a ton but it's still wild that happens. Also capers being a pickled flower bud has always seemed odd but less interesting.
Rick Murray 1 day ago
I freeze the bread I make in my bread maker, as the shelf life is way shorter than the time it would take me to eat it. So once it is cool I run it through a meat slicer set to 12mm, put it into a zip-strip freezer bag, and then into the freezer. Since I am usually toasting it and covering it in butter and cheddar, any changes due to freezing aren't noticeable. But it cuts down on food wastage *and* the time/effort/energy of making it more often than I need to.
#32
that banana, the gros michel isn't even extinct. it's just easier to ship the Cavendish banana, which is what we have today. many of the old crops were wiped out by fungus but there are still some trees left here on earth.
ABC NrEleven FCK CENSORISM 1 day ago
It's not "just easier to ship the Cavendish", the Gros Michel is subject to Oxysporum infection and therefore is very risky to be cultivated on an industrialised scale, making it prone to crop failure and loss of income. The Cavendish is threatened by fungal infection as well by the way, so maybe within our lifetimes, we'll witness the (industrial) wipe-out of it and another, more resistant variant taking its place.
#33
Adding a dash of powdered mustard to any creamy cheesy sauce will make the sauce taste cheesier, while a dash of nutmeg will make the sauce creamier.
Ace 1 day ago
Doesn't have to be powdered mustard. I always add a good dollop of Dijon mustard into my white sauce before adding cheese, it also acts as a thickening agent so you need less flour in your roux. Nutmeg? I'm sure it works well in things that you want the nutmeg taste, but more creamy? I don't think so.
#35
Adding baking soda to your coffee either to the grounds or into your cup helps neutralize the acid and tones the bitterness down so you need less cream and sugar. The big help though is that will cause less GERD
#36
The liquid from canned chickpeas can be whipped into a vegan meringue substitute.
#37
Biscuits and Gravy is just really wet flour served on really dry flour.
Robin Roper 1 day ago
The photo of a British biscuit is a cookie in the US. In the US Biscuits and Gravy does not involve a cookie. Add some pork sausage to the gravy and yummy!
#38
Rice is no longer good and should be tossed after 2 hours due to the bacteria that cannot be destroyed with reheating. Of course you can refrigerate within 2 hours and then it will be good for a few days.
#39
Parmesan Cheese isn’t vegetarian.
Oreos are vegan.
More info:
Traditional Parmesan (Parmigiano-Reggiano) is not vegetarian. To legally hold this name, it must be produced using animal rennet, an enzyme harvested from the fourth stomach of calves.
Most classic Oreo flavors do not contain any animal-derived ingredients, making them "accidentally vegan" on paper. However, the manufacturer does not classify them as strictly vegan due to the risk of cross-contact with milk on shared manufacturing equipment
Debby Keir 1 day ago
Why single out parmesan? Any cheese using animal rennet is non vegetarian.
#40
Potatoes are tomato plants that crosbred with another plant, causing it to focus on tubers instead of fruits. Also you can graft tomato stems onto potato root stock and get a plant that will produce hoth tubers and fruits, but both will be terrible from the split nutrients.
Also carrots do not seed until their second year.
#41
Protein powders, vitamin supplements are NOT regulated. You can literally start selling anything and call it supplements... Regulations only come when their is a problem.
#42
Bananas are berries.
#43
Devilled eggs, at their simplest, are eggs, mixed with eggs and oil and stuffed in eggs.
#44
Sushi grade fish is not a regulated term and essentially means nothing. It’s just a marketing tactic.
Becky Samuel 1 day ago
Maybe in the USA, but in the EU and UK there are strict regulations on fish that is to be served raw, including a requirement for it to be flash frozen to ki ll parasites.
#45
Dr Kellogg originally made corn flakes to help people stop pleasuring themselves.
David 1 day ago
When will this discredited myth just stop. No, he did not create for that reason. He created bc he was part of a movement called "Muscular Christianity" (same movement that gave us the boy scouts), which promoting masculinity in Christians to missionize the world. They also believed in eating "more pure foods" like red meats, oats, etc. Corn Flakes were created as part of the diet for that movement. The movement was also against m**********n, as they beleived it weakened the male body through unnecessary release of "male essence". What some moron did decades ago was take 2 separate things from the movement he was part of, and then combined them into one, and the myth was born. There is zero evidence to back up the claim, and in fact contradicts his literal writings on why he created it. This myth first came around decades after he died
#46
If you have a severe cockroach allergy you cannot drink pre ground coffee.
#47
All potatoes were once purple.
David Paterson 1 day ago
I can't confirm this. Purple potatoes were originally native to the Philippines and were domesticated in New Guinea and South East Asia some 10,000 years ago. But the potato as we know it originated in Peru where it was domesticated about 10,000 years ago.
#48
Well apparently the red liquid seeping from seemingly undercooked flesh ISN’T blood.
#49
Walnuts have way more of those omega-3s than salmon.
Jeanbore Dilford 1 day ago
Not an intelligent statement. These two foods have totally different kinds of omega-3.
#50
Letting a steak sit for a few minutes after cooking makes it juicier.
Becky Samuel 1 day ago
Letting a steak sit will not magic extra moisture or 'juice' into the meat. It will allow the muscle fibres to relax, which gives a less chewy mouth feel, and it gives a more even heat distribution.
#51
Broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, and kale are all the same plant, just bred to emphasize different parts of it.
#52
In the US you can label something as organic and it only needs to be 95% organic.
#53
All sushi served in the US is frozen and thawed. It’s a regulation to reduce parasites. This might not apply to gas station sushi
Never Snarky 1 day ago
My grocery store has a man standing there making sushi and putting it in containers to sell right then. Nothing frozen about it. If you mean the fish must be frozen first, that’s a different thing.
#54
Milk does not do a body good. It was a marketing tactic because milk sales plummeted.
Robin Roper 1 day ago
The saying is a marketing tactic but for the vast majority of people, milk is good for them. It's very healthy and is an excellent source of calcium, high-quality protein, and vitamin D.
#55
If you put lemon juice into a pan before the garlic has a chance to cook down, it might turn blue.
#56
One that no one ever believes when I tell them - if you eat a few Skittles and a few m&ms together, it tastes just like a Tootsie Roll.
LakotaWolf (she/her) 1 day ago
I might be a rarity, but I've never liked Tootsie Rolls XD Which is funny, because I love taffy and I love chocolate.
#57
The harder a cheese is, the more readily it will emulsify into a sauce. That's why you need a roux to make cheddar cheese dip but alfredo sauce only requires parmigiano cheese, butter, and a little pasta water.
#58
Emulsifing a vinegar and an oil together does in fact make them one lmao
ABC NrEleven FCK CENSORISM 1 day ago
What's that even supposed to mean? Let the emulsion sit for a while and they separate again, so...!?!?
#59
Potato salad at a picnic that makes people sick isn't the fault of the mayonnaise. The potatoes weren't cooled enough before being mixed, per science.
Mia Jones 1 day ago
What. This is just profoundly incorrect. Mixing the potatoes into the dressing while they’re still warm is the way to get the best possible flavor mix. You just have to cool the completed mix properly. Mix it while the potatoes are hot/ warm, put it in a shallow pan and into the fridge or freezer. You have, in general, FOUR HOURS to cool something like this down to safe levels. Why the hell would a hot potatoe touching mayonnaise or vinegar automatically become unsafe?
#60
Cheese that i used to make as a kid on a plate in the microwave hit way harder than majority of 5 star restaurant food.
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Flat_Alien 14 hours ago
"a bunch of false, inaccurate statements that nobody verified". Here, fixed the title
Flat_Alien 14 hours ago
"a bunch of false, inaccurate statements that nobody verified". Here, fixed the title
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