Whether we like it or not, cooking is something most of us have to do almost every day of our lives. Unless we really love this process, it can sometimes get quite tedious, and thus, all the little hacks that make it faster or more rewarding are always welcomed.
However, not all of this advice is actually helpful and has any proof of working, despite what many people might believe just because they heard it countless times. While it’s usually not really harmful, getting rid of it is still a positive thing, and this Reddit post asking about these terrible cooking tips is absolutely on the right track. Scroll down to read what people wrote!
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Anyone complaining that "air fryers are just glorified convection ovens" is just missing the point that a small convention oven is, in fact, f*****g glorious.
As an inveterate pedant who loves her 'air fryer' I f*****g salute you.
"Saute onions for 5-7 minutes until caramelized." No way they are caramelized that fast.
At LEAST 20 minutes, preferably 30 to 40 minutes. They won't even be soft after 5 minutes.
Not washing mushrooms because they will "absorb" water...mushrooms are something like 90% water...wash the mushrooms, they are dirty!!
When you really stop to think about it, it’s not only in cooking that there are many tips and tricks that many of us know, but, at some point, we learn they don’t actually work. This makes us wonder why it is such a common occurrence and why we keep falling for it.
Well, it turns out what we’re dealing with is known as the illusory truth effect or the illusion of truth. It describes how when we keep hearing the same false information over and over again, we tend to start believing it as if it were true.
That you should open a restaurant because you "love to cook." Sure fire way to both crash and burn financially, and end up hating to cook.
“Add 2 cloves of garlic.”
…
lol, just no.
*Adds 6 Cloves and later regrets not adding more.*
"Add 1/2 an onion" If i am cooking something its either a full onion or nothing. I am not about to store a half an onion.
"Add half an onion" isn't remotely helpful. Onion size varies wildly from tiny cipollini onions to gigantic Spanish onions. They vary wildly in flavor too. Yellow onions are strongly sulfuric, while Vidalia onions are mild and sweet.
Becoming affected by this bias does not indicate that an individual is uneducated, as we might initially be aware of the correct information and still end up believing something false because of constant exposure to it. At times, even concrete evidence proving that the advice is empty might not stop a person from following it in the case that it still might do at least something of what it promised.
And in this day and age, information can spread faster than ever before, thanks to the internet and social media. And since we make thousands of decisions every day, no one really goes to check every single fact they hear, thus enabling the cycle to continue.
Every recipe takes longer than it says it will. Especially the first time.
"Quick great meal!" Time: 2 hours. Ingredients: Everything you cannot get, located on a remote island in the middle of the Pacific.
Only use good wine for cooking. I challenge you to tell the difference between a $20 bottle of wine and 3 Buck Chuck when you add 1/2 cup to your pasta sauce.
Most people can't tell the difference in a glass never mind in the sauce
The absolute best vodka I’ve ever had was made in a Ukrainian woman’s kitchen in Kyiv. It was so light, tasted almost like water but with this gorgeous soft smooth cooling effect on your throat. You could barely tell it was alcoholic, but the buzz was lovely. She made it out of potatoes she grew in the back yard. I don’t drink anymore but I wouldn’t trust the price tags to judge quality lol.
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I think what that really means is use wine that you would actually drink, not “cooking wine”. That stuff is NASTY & full of sodium 😱
That's just unnecessary snobbery. Even in fine dining kitchens we use the "3 buck chuck" for sauces and deglazing. If you're tasting that much wine in a sauce you've used too much and didn't cook it down properly.
Having two bottles open, I accidentally poured the wrong one into the saucepan. I can confirm that a £30 bottle of claret makes a difference in the glass but not in the saucepan.
I use wine in cooking very rarely. I won't use "cooking wine", so instead I get those four-packs of individual size bottles of actual drinking wine. Whatever doesn't go into the dish gets enjoyed, and no wine going bad in the fridge.
I've heard it as "use wine you are willing to drink". If you can't drink it, then concentrating it will make it worse.
$3 chuck wine has a very acidic and vingerary taste and you can tell when it is used. You don't need a good wine, but you need a wine that is drinkable other than as a getting smashed drink. I usually get $8-10 bottles for cooking, and I get Chilean wine, because they are great values to quality, just as good as Argentinian or California Wines but cheaper. So for $8 you get the equivalent of a $15 bottle from the other places.
But if you are making something like chokolate mousse and the recipe calls for brandy, it will taste different depending on which brandy you use.
The real rule is: Don't cook with "cooking sherry". As I understand it, that's sherry that has been rendered undrinkable by adding salt, to avoid liquor taxes or alcohol restrictions. I don't know if if selling "cooking sherry" is a current practice or not. I don't know if they do that with other types of wine than sherry.
Yeah but if you buy the cheap stuff and only use half a cup, you then have to store the rest of that c**p. Get the good bottle, use what you need in the recipe, and enjoy the rest with your delicious meal.
Just don't but that stuff labeled 'cooking wine'. If you'd be willing to drink it, it will do for the sauce. I purposefully buy a cheap table wine (about $15.00CD) that I use for cooking. It's fine to drink in a pinch but I'd get something nicer for company.
But who buys a bottle of mediocre wine just to add 1/2 cup to food? Don't you drink the rest?
I agree with this but I think the actual cooking with wine tip should be "cook with what you like to drink".
Use good wine when you're cooking because you're going to end up tasting a couple of glasses of it to see "if it's right".
I just use the wine I drink. Chardonnay is my favorite in white sauces and rose or a crisp red for red sauces.
Good wine for cooking is NOT a bottle that costs 20USD vs one that costs 3USD. It is about using a wine you can drink, so a good drinkable 5 buck bottle opposed to a 5 buck bottle of plonk. Because a bad wine will make for a bad pasta sauce, no matter how you spice it up.
I use mirin. Rice cooking wine, has a distinct flavor that is worlds ahead of grape wines (in my opinion, obviously).
I like Chef Jean Pierre's tip, what wine should I use to cook. " The one drink."
Adding the garlic to a hot pan first instead of last. Burnt garlic is NOT good eats.
There's already the same damn garlic post, just worded differently, in this article, so I really hope everyone gets the "tip" by now. Don't burn your garlic..
In addition to that, we don’t really like to be wrong, do we? Well, that’s where confirmation bias comes in, an occurrence when we look for information supporting our existing beliefs, ignoring or outright rejecting any data that might contradict it.
This can come in a few different forms, such as biased memory, recalling things in a way that would support our beliefs, biased information searches online (where we type in the thing we want to confirm in a way that the results we get align with our beliefs), and biased interpretation (where we interpret evidence in a way that supports our beliefs, quickly accepting what fits and very critically analyzing what doesn’t).
And, of course, in the end, we once again come to the internet and social media, where the information spreads quickly and is tailored to show us what we want to see, all thanks to the almighty algorithms.
MSG causes migraines.
This is an absolute myth dating back from a single letter published in the *New England Journal of Medicine* back in the sixties (likely as a prank) that became so prevalent that convincing someone who believes it otherwise is a waste of time.
MSG does one thing only: Makes. S**t. Good.
I see a lot of sauteing with EVOO. I learned that if I'm cooking with olive oil, use regular olive oil. Save the extra-virgin stuff for dressings, drizzles, and other things not cooked. I don't know, that just how I was taught.
It seems that completely avoiding this is not really possible. After all, these biases existed long before modern technologies, which only gives them a boost. Ultimately, it is a very human thing to believe something that most do and look for ways to confirm it rather than deny it. But keeping an open mind and spending a little extra effort checking your facts won’t hurt and, at the very least, might make your cooking attempts quite a bit more successful. So why not give it a shot?
How much of this cooking advice did you follow without knowing it wasn't helpful? Do you have any tips you'd like to add? Share your thoughts below!
"Fresh ingredients are always better."
Not necessarily. For example, frozen ingredients are better for deep frying or blending than fresh ingredients are.
Measuring flour and dry ingredients by volume is a terrible idea. Get a scale like a pro!
Cooking chicken in general. Most people overcook their chicken and it gets dry and tastes bad. Use a thermometer and take it off just as it gets to temp.
Every stew recipe that starts with "flour the beef cubes" -- you'll get a better sear if you only salt and pepper the beef cubes and sear those in properly-spaced batches to build up fond in the pot. If you flour the beef the flour will stick to the pot and you're going to burn the fond long before you're done searing everything.
I add flour only after I've sauteed a whole bunch of chopped onions to loosen the fond, and then once the flour is slightly toasted, the red wine goes in to make an alarming-looking purple roux that turns nicely into a glorious brown stew after a few hours of simmer time.
Just personal preference, but adding sugar to marinara to decrease the acidity. I like the acidity. I don’t like candied spaghetti.
Cold water boils faster. That drives me insane.
You should use cold tap water. Hot tap water brings with it more minerals from inside your pipes and can change the taste of your dish.
my gran damn near *insists* on rinsing pasta like no, you don’t do that, stop that. then again, if there isn’t any sauce made she’ll eat said pasta with *Italian dressing* and call it a day.
Rinsing (or not) depends on what you are going to do with it. If you are serving it immediately with a warm sauce - no rinse. If it is going to sit (think potluck with separate sauce) toss in oil to keep from sticking (rinse or shake off). Macaroni salad? Rinse. As far as Italian dressing My 100% Italian grand mother would make AGLIO E OLIO which is basically olive oil and garlic and pasta, she would mix it with left over garlic bread chunks. I always thought she made that up, because it sounded like 'oily oily' to my younger ears... Nope it's a real thing ;)
It seems like I’ve read and have seen too many that leave garlic in the skillet too long. Like if your adding it, good. Cook it for a minute but not 5, especially if it’s minced and the skillet is really hot. You’ll burn it otherwise.
Never washing your cast iron. Just scrape everything off.
Gross and unsanitary.
Starting boiled eggs in cold water.
If you bring the water to a boil first, then put the eggs in, the timing is more precise, and they're easier to peel. The only hard thing is lowering them in carefully so they don't crack.
The fresher an egg, the harder it peels. Regardless of boiling method. Put eggs immediately in ice water after boiling also helps peeling and prevents overcooking
If pasta sticks when you throw it at a wall, it will most likely be over cooked by the time you mix it with the sauce and serve it. Mix it into the sauce when it is still slightly undercooked and finish it in the sauce. I switched to using tongs or a straining ladle and transferring it directly into the sauce so that some of the pasta water is transferred as well, thickens the sauce and makes it silky.
Now I have that scene from the movie "The Odd Couple" in my head when Oscar hurls the lasagne at the wall (I'm pretty sure he wasn't checking to see if it was cooked or not)
If you put the temperature up higher, you can skip a lot of the cooking time.
Not EVERYTHING tastes “better” in an air fryer. Not saying it’s “terrible” advice to cook pretty much anything and everything in one, because a lot of the time the food tastes good, but not everything.
Sear meat to “seal in juices.” Kenji Lopez-Alt has empirically debunked that.
The Maillard reaction what happens when meat is seared. It is an interaction between amino acids and reducing sugars. The result is the food browns, and becomes very tasty. If you are cutting into meat, and there are juices running from it, then you haven't allowed the meat to rest. Leave it alone for a wee while. This will keep the juices in.
Adding milk/liquid slowly to your roux to make bechamel or whatever sauce. Unsure how common it is but so many places I seen they recommended adding slowly.
Started following some fine dinning channels, a double Michelin star chef did his own recipe and talked about how it's a common misconceptions. My bechamel improved overnight with it.
So I wish OP had told us how they did it, not that I can find many dinning channels (sorry, I know)
Note: this post originally had 33 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
Frozen pizza question... how to keep the edges soft and get the middle fully heated up?
Let it thaw a bit first, and lower temps, longer cooking time.
Load More Replies... Again - is this going to be a weekly post? I think these were all on here last week also.
Frozen pizza question... how to keep the edges soft and get the middle fully heated up?
Let it thaw a bit first, and lower temps, longer cooking time.
Load More Replies... Again - is this going to be a weekly post? I think these were all on here last week also.
