30 Of The Worst Beliefs About Cooking People Have Been Taught By Their Parents, As Shared On This Online Thread
One of the best ways to learn how to cook is to help out your parents and relatives as a kid while they’re busy in the kitchen. That way, you quickly pick up some great techniques, sharpen your veggie chopping skills, and get used to being around all the clanking and clattering pots and pans. It’s great! On the flip side, you also pick up some of your parents’ cooking misconceptions, too.
Their mistakes become part of your knowledge base. And it sometimes takes years and years for you to realize that your parents might not have had everything figured out when it comes to food. Redditors opened up about some of the weirdest and funniest things their parents taught them about cooking that ended up being completely the wrong way to go about making food.
From completely overcooking pork and salmon into dry inedible meals to undercooking mushrooms and not using any salt and beyond, here are the biggest misconceptions that they shared. Scroll down, upvote the posts that you think everyone should read, and if you have any food lessons to share with the rest of our dear Pandas, you can tell us all about them in the comments.
Bored Panda got in touch with Jessica Leigh Clark-Bojin, a talented pie artist, food expert, and the author of ‘Pies Are Awesome,’ for a chat about where misconceptions about food come from and about food fads (like the dastardly sugar lobby vilifying fat in the 1960s).
“Culinary knowledge is usually passed down generationally. If that’s how your mum/dad/gran did it, that’s how you do it. There’s a lot of, ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ mentality around the dinner tables of the world,” she told us. Read on for our interview with Jessica!
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Their method for hard boiled eggs: start them in cold water, boil for 15 minutes, then wait til the water cools to remove them. Gross grey yolks every time
ETA: whoever downvoted me obviously makes eggs this insane way so I just wanna tell that guy specifically that you can boil a perfect egg in 12 minutes, less time if you prefer a jammier yolk. you do not need to waste an hour to make hardboiled eggs buddy
You lot are mad. Cold water, eggs in, bring to boil, 3 mins runny, 6 mins hard, cold water after both. End of.
End of? Rubbish. For a dippy egg stick it straight in boiling water. 4 minutes. Done
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I know it's probably not the tastiest way, but back in the day you'd have to boil a few extras for your computer mouse, so might as well do them all in one go 😉
What?? What do you mean, boil a few extras for your computer mouse?
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Cold water, bring to boil, then remove from heat and lid. Drench in cold water after 15 minutes. Bright yellow for me.
Lmao I had no idea that hard boiled egg techniques were so controversial.
Who the heck boils 'em that long? 8-10 min never fails me. Bring to boil. Let sit in hot water ... off heat!
To those people saying you add baking soda for easier peel, just lightly tap the bottm (more rounded) portion of the egg onto a hard surface until it cracks slightly. There's a little air pocket there between the shell and the membrane of the egg that makes them easier to peel everytime I soft or hard boil eggs
Plus I think the ice cold bath helps to make them easier to peel.
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Flashback nightmares to my childhood - this is how my mother made them. Maybe why i don't like eggs so much!
Eggs in cold water, bring to boil for 4 minutes for soft yolk. Never boiled an egg for hard yolks, so couldn't tell you the time, but 12 minutes seems excessive.
My sil would cook them even longer. She's got weird taste🤭
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You're all wrong. Eggs in cold water, bring them to a rapid boil, and turn off the heat. Leave them covered to cook perfectly in 15 minutes.
That is beacuse the over cooking. You can see a greyish rim around the yolk.
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I feel for ya. I was also raised on grey yolked eggs, had no idea this was not normal until I moved out. I gave u an upvote to replace that dumb down vote you got 😆
I like my eggs hardboiled, everything firm - yolk and white. So whatever works for you.
Put water on to boil, put the eggs in, when water has boiled, timer for 5 minutes for hard boiled
I swear by our electric egg cooker. Hot it at Walmart for like $10 and it makes perfect eggs every time and they are SO EASY TO PEEL.
Waiting for the water to cool down makes the eggs impossible to peel. You need cold water as soon as you think your eggs are ready.
Wow reading the comments, i didn't know boiling eggs was such a controversial subject
8 minutes in instant pot with 1 inch of water and 1 layer of eggs. Immediately put in cool tap water. Perfect every time with very little effort.
Just throw the suckers in a dang instant pot and hit the button. Done!
I feel like the people who argue about this haven't taken location differences into account. Especially altitude. My sister learned how to make hard boiled eggs when we were living in places like Idaho, a couple thousand miles above sea level. She could safely put the eggs in cold water, leave them to boil for a while without being monitored, and they'd come out delicious. But then she moved to the coast. She tried making eggs like that, and came back to a pot that had completely boiled off, so the eggshells on the bottom were burning. She panicked (emphasis on panicked, lol) and threw the pot under cold water. Yeah, the eggs started to explode. We cleaned up as best we could, but the landlord told us after we moved out that they found pieces of egg in the strangest places during the deep clean. XD
Don't let the eggs sit in their hot water. Put them into cold water immediately, ice water if you have it. Keeps the yolks from getting discolored.
People, people. The easiest way to make an egg is have someone cook it for you.
For hard boiled eggs: I was taught to start them in cold water, bring to a boil, put a lid on the pan and remove from heat. In 15 minutes put in an ice bath, they're perfect and still nice and yellow.
do not wait to cool, pour off the hot water and run under cold water to cool and stop cooking
Leaving the eggs in that hot water once they are boiled is what causes the grey outer layer on the yolks. Starting with cold water just means you have to heat them longer. If you get them out of the hot water after cooking to your desired doneness. Whether it's 12 minutes or 15 either put them in ice water or run cold water over them to cool them down quickly with keep the yolks a pretty yellow with no grey at all and even lowers the sulfurous taste that happens when they go grey.
Boil water add eggs ( from fridge 7 min) (room temp 6 min) take out off the pan and put in cold water and enjoy perfect soft boild eggs
Sorry, I'm kitchen cookware illiterate, here. What's an "instant pot"? Please, no nasty replies for my stupidity. LOL
I'm not going to give my method for "hard boiled" eggs, to avoid the chaos! LIL
Edit/ Damn! I don't know what's happening to me tonight! Suppose to say "LOL".
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Quail eggs, anyone? They’re bite-sized! Boil up hard in 3.5 minutes, then into an ice bath for bright yellow yolks and easy peel shells.
Eww. Drain after 15 minutes and then let cool and they are ok. 10 minutes even better.
Yes! I prefer my yolks to be a nice yellow color or dark orange! And 10-12 minutes does great!
Put eggs in boiling water (with slatted spoon or ladle) boli for 2 minutes, cover pot and remove from heat, leave them in for 10 minutes, put into an ice water bath, perfectly cooked eggs and the shells don't stick
Eggs in cold water. Bring to boil. Remove from heat. Let sit 7-10 minutes depending on preference. Remove from hot water, dunk in ice water bath. Dry. Store in fridge if not consuming immediately. That's my method. Everyone's different.
Room temp eggs into boiling water if you want to be able to peel them without destroying the white
We make it in way: Put water, add egg, boil till bubbles are made, than wait 10 minutes, add to cold water, peel and you can eat
My mum always boiled them for 40 minutes, so I do too. A really hard yolk makes it easier to remove them and throw the nasty things away.
I use Jacques Pepins method https://jp.foundation/video/hard-cooked-eggs
Learned this at 65 years old. Gently place eggs in boiling water using a large slotted spoon. Boil for 12-15 minutes. Immediately submerge into ice water. Shell slides off every time. No grey yolks. Been doing it wrong all my life and have tried every method in the round world.
This topic could go on and on and on. Every one has a different way and swears by theirs.
I don't boil eggs anymore. I steam them and they come out perfect every time. Vinegar while cooking seals cracks. Cold-water bath prevents dimples, week-old eggs peel perfectly, and no sulfur on the yolks.
Okay, so my question is how to make them easily peelable? Never get it right.
now you can just crack eggs into a pressure pot safe dish pop into an instapot and set for how you want them done and no pealing needed ;).
Soft boiled eggs are the best!! I put the eggs in boiling water for five minutes and then the yolk is slightly runny.
Toss the hard boiled eggs, and make scrambled eggs like a decent person.
My mother would forget they were on until the water boiled away and the shells started to burn. 🤮
For the crazy ones. Boil water in kettle. Pour into cup with egg. Wait 5 min boil more water and replace first cup full. Wait 5 more min and serve in shell.
Eggs in cold water in microwave-safe saucepan, add 1 tablespoon salt per egg, cook on high approximately 2.5 minutes per egg, let set same amount as cook time, remove and place in ice water. I usually do 8 minutes cook time, 8 minutes rest, for four eggs. Times may vary. Don’t forget the salt, otherwise you get an eggsplosion.
You're all nuts. Eggs in cold water, bring to boil, turn off, leave eggs in for 7 minutes for hard, 4 for soft.
Sous vide them works perfectly especially if you are making a large quantity
Cold water, max option on the stove, turn off after boiling, forget I'm making food and boom yummy grey yolks (i really do like them greyish yellow)
Agreed. 13 minutes in boiling water, then drench them in ice water. Perfectly bright yellow yolks every time.
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Put eggs in muffin tins with just a bit of water, cook at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Rinse in cold, Peel, and enjoy! 👍🏽🥚
At that point you might as well just make Shirred eggs.
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Reminds me of mom. She was a horrible cook and sometimes I miss the wierd c**p she'd come up with.
Pie artist and baking grandmaster Jessica told Bored Panda that if people haven’t tried the ‘correct’ versions of the dishes or ingredients, then they’ve got nothing to compare the versions they’ve always been served with.
“And even then, due to warm fuzzy nostalgic feelings the foods of our youth often invoke, some people may prefer the ‘incorrect’ version. Overcooked pasta just like mother used to make!” she noted that people’s nostalgia goggles might make an appearance.
“Of course, there is a line between ‘sub-optimal’ and ‘inedible’ when it comes to food. But if no one is puking up a lung or dying of obvious malnutrition, most busy parents don’t see much of an impetus to change,” she explained why most food mistakes don’t end up being fixed.
My dad always told me that mushrooms should be added to the dish at the very last minute and barely cooked. I always thought I didn’t really like mushrooms. When I finally ate mushrooms which had been sautéed golden brown I was blown away. Turns out they are way better fully cooked!
When I lived with my parents, I didn't get the hype around steak. This was all around the context we lived in - My mum was feeding eight of us and brought cheap tenderized cuts that she could afford, would cook it to the consistency of cardboard, and tell us how lucky we were having steak for dinner. I was totally indifferent to it as a meal, but you eat what's in front of you and you don't complain.
It wasn't till I moved out on my own and had a really good steak at a restaurant that I realized I had misunderstood beef for 18 years. Now I love to cook and eat steak.
Jessica explained to us that society tends to go through fads and phases when it comes to its relationship with food. Some ingredients can end up being lauded or demonized, only for the tables to turn years later.
“When I was a kid, butter was the enemy, and muffins were the epitome of healthy diet food for the weight-conscious. A 1,000-calorie bran muffin slathered in margarine with a black coffee. That was where it was at,” the cooking expert explained how something that was taken very seriously in the past might sound silly from a more modern perspective.
According to Jessica, people tend to have very strong feelings about their favorite foods. It’s only later that we might learn that the ‘healthy’ items we were eating might not have been all that great for us.
Vegetables must be boiled. Particularly broccoli.
Maybe if we had roasted a few, I would have eaten more.
same with brussel sprouts. people hate them because they are never cooked well
Putting oil in your pasta water keeps the pasta from sticking to itself.
This does nothing but waste oil. If you want to keep your pasta from sticking together stir it periodically and when it’s done drain it and put it right into your sauce.
Besides wasting oil, the only other thing it does is to keep sauce from sticking to the noodles and pooling in the bottom of the plate after they slid off the sad uncoated pasta
Love my mom, but she was an awful cook. As a teen I started to cook for my family once or twice a week. My father grilled on the weekend nights. The other 3 nights of the week were hers. She tried, she really did, but she was just not good. She would see a recipe she was interested in, but instead of trying it out as is, she would make adjustments to it the first time out. And her adjustments were not necessarily sensible. For example, she would see a recipe that calls for 2 cups of shredded cheese which she saw as too much cheese, so she would replace one cup of cheese with a cup of shredded carrot because it looked like shredded cheese. Stuff like that.
When I grew older and was at Girlfriend's house for dinner one night, she decided to make enchiladas, which I absolutely detested growing up. Of course, there are times in life when you just swallow what's offered to you and smile. They ended up being the best enchiladas I had ever tasted. Amazing. And of course I huge kuddos from her, A for eating them, B for asking for seconds, and C for the smile on my face.
Turns out, most enchiladas don't have 2 cans of diced olives mixed in. Yet another adjustment my mother made without thinking it through. You know diced olives bare a resemblance to ground meat when you cook it. And so, at the age of 22 I learned that I don't hate enchiladas. Lesson learned.
“There are certainly some historical food misconceptions that have done a lot of harm. The vilification of fat by the sugar lobby in the 1960s is a big one that springs to mind, as well as the whole ‘eating a giant bowl of glorified marshmallows is a-ok for breakfast’ phase,” she told us.
“Outside of broad societal attitudes towards certain foods and diets, there are a number of common everyday cooking mistakes that people make in the preparation of their food—our handling of rice and pasta are high on the list here—but outside of food safety violations, I tend to be pretty sanguine about these things,” the expert noted that not cooking something ideally isn’t always the same as making the food item dangerous for consumption.
“No one ever died from over-cooked pasta, or vegetables boiled within an inch of their life. Sure, they’re missing out on a heightened culinary experience, but do you really want to be ‘that guy?’ I know I’m not going to tell my grandma how to perfect her pasta boiling technique (and if you knew my grandma, you wouldn’t either!),” Jessica said that, at times, it’s best to be diplomatic and dig into the meal without comment.
That meat has to be cooked to a point of total shoe-leather dryness in order to be "safe" to eat. Neither of my parents would touch a piece of chicken that wasn't dessicated through and through nor a piece of beef with a touch of pink.
My entire childhood we had margarine. I thought restraunts had some special technique to make their butter taste good. Turns out it was just regular salted butter.
After the Chernobyl disaster in the 80s we had to eat margarine for a couple of years because the milk from our dairy herds was contaminated by the fall out. That first bit of butter when it was safe to eat again was like heaven melting on toast. (Incidentally, we lived a very, very long way from Chernobyl. Fallout can travel scary distances on the weather.)
My parents boil any meat that they’re going to “cook” on the grill because it won’t cook all the way through on a grill. And this is why I thought I hated BBQed chicken. Few years ago I threw a BBQ for them, my Dad insisted I was going to kill them by just grilling the chicken and pork. Then they said, best grilled chicken and pork they ever had. I also grilled the corn on the cob which they thought was some kind of miracle.
You should wow them with grilled pineapple &/or asparagus next - yum!
A lot of these misconceptions probably come from a place of love. For instance, some parents might not cook with salt because they know that an excess of it might be harmful to health. Others might overcook food because they’re overly worried about killing off any germs.
Sure, that might kill the flavor, but these aren’t misconceptions that harm you much apart from leaving your taste buds unsatisfied. It’s the mistakes related to hygiene in the kitchen that you should be worried about.
Some kitchen mistakes are worse than others. Food expert, pie artist, and author Jessica recently told Bored Panda all about food hygiene.
No more than three eggs per week, or you'd die of heat failure from the cholesterol.
If you want an omelette one day, you’re out of luck for the rest of the week, then
It took me an entire summer of owning my own barbecue to learn that barbecued does not mean charred past recognition.
That reminds me that at a friend's barbecue years ago, I said to my husband, honey, can you make sure I get a well done sausage? He said, no problem, they're ALL burnt !!
In this vein - spinach! Boxed fish sticks, rice, and canned spinach was in the regular rotation when I was a kid. I didn't realize spinach was tasty until I had a tasty fresh spinach salad at my in-laws' place.
Reading the Harry Potter books, I always just straight imagined gillyweed as canned spinach. Slimy and revolting.
"The worst thing that can be done in the kitchen in terms of hygiene is treating the 'dangerous' ingredients in the same fashion as all the other ingredients in your food prep. Pathogens (the little things in food that can make us sick like bacteria, viruses, fungi, and microorganisms) thrive in certain foods more than others," Jessica explained to us in an exclusive interview.
"Raw chicken, raw egg, unpasteurized milk, seafood, and raw flour (people often forget that one!) in particular are fertile breeding ground for nasties and need to be treated differently than other foods,” the food expert warned.
According to Jessica, everyone should keep in mind the food safety acronym ‘FATTOM’ to remember which foods spoil quicker than others. The acronym stands for “Food supply (protein), low acidity, time, temperature, oxygen, and moisture."
If you don’t have a potato then it is not an actual meal. It wasn’t exactly true then but that was what they knew.
Not exactly my parents, but my grandmother had some... Unique views on food. For example:
Enjoying foreign food makes you almost traitor of your country
Never washed her vegetables because dirt toughens you up
Only she knows the correct recipes and experimenting in kitchen in unforgivable (direct insult to my mom)
If something had gone bad, she didn't throw it out, but boiled till it literally dissolved and then got upset that noone ate it
My mom just told me to completely omit salt when cooking.
There is a fairytale from Middle East, goes smth like this: A padishah had three daughters. When they grew to full age he asked them to tell him how much they loved him and the one who loved him most would get his kingdom. So the first daughter told him she loved her father like a caravan of gold. He gave her a caravan of gold but not his crown. The second one compared her love to a caravan of damonds. He gave her a caravan of diamonds but not his throne. The third one, his favourite daughter, came and said: I love you like salt. He was furious and sent her away without giving her anything, forbidding to ever return. The shah was broken since he felt betrayed by his favourite daughter. Then a wise wizard came to him and said: you have done injustice. Try and eat your food wothout salt for three weeks and you will see how much your daughter loves you. He did. By the end of the first week he had lost all appetite. By the end of the second week he was ready to lose his riches for one meal salted bite. By the end of the third week he was so exhausted by the tasteless food that he was ready to give up his kingdom for a pinch of salt. This is when he understood. He asked his daughter to return, gave her his kingdom and knew she would be a worthy queen. The end
The expert said that you can use ‘FATTOM’ as a quick rule of thumb to determine how dangerous the ingredients you’re working with actually are.
“For example, if you are working with something with a very high acid content like lemons, jam, or pickles, or something with a very low moisture content like crackers or rice cakes, you really don’t have to worry about them sitting out on the counter for hours or touching other food. They just don’t have enough of what the pathogens need to grow,” she said.
"On the other hand, something like raw shrimp which has a high moisture content and lots of protein for pathogens to eat really needs to be carefully monitored for how long it is left out in the open air in 'danger zone' temperatures and kept far away from other food and utensils,” she told Bored Panda that temperatures between 40 and 140 degrees F (4 to 60 degrees C) are the danger zone for pathogen growth.
My dad, whose mother is from Sicily, he was really offended when my future SIL sweetened her Bolognese sauce with carrots. I did a little research on a standard Italian sofrito, and it includes carrots. I've since modified my recipe, swapping sugar for carrots, and I think it improves the flavor.
Most of these differences are simply preferences, rather than strictly advantageous, incorrect or correct. Two cooks can use vastly different techniques for the same dish and make an end result that is equally delicious. That is why it is best to regard all recipes as advice and suggestion, not gospel.
This needs to be higher. Even with the science of baking, you can still turn it into art, like adding a bit of cinnamon and sugar on top of chocolate chip cookies straight out of the oven. Maybe those same cookies have a touch of nutmeg baked in?
For my entire childhood I thought mashed potatoes came in a box.
Everyone loves their Moms cooking but don't they all have this one dish that you learned later does not taste like it is supposed to? Mine for example will leave pasta in the water until it's time to serve it, even if it's practically starting to dissolve by that time. Then she will drown it in butter so it won't stick.
Mine was eggplant. Wouldn’t touch it. Then I went to a resturant, ordered it without knowing, and ate the whole thing. You should’ve seen my face when I was told it was eggplant!
Salmon. My mom was a decent cook but I thought I detested that nasty dry stuff until I had salmon at a restaurant once and was like holy sh*t, THIS is salmon??
I LOVE searing tuna and salmon on a cast iron skillet. For the longest time, I thought I hated seafood, turns out I just never had it prepared properly until a few years ago.. Now I'm pescatarian, go figure.
I was allowed to eat eggs, sunny side up, omelette, whatever, only once or twice a week.
Supposedly unhealthy.
My mom used to overcook pork chops all the time because she didn't believe it was safe to have any pinkness inside. I thought I didn't like pork chops very much because I thought it wasn't juicy enough until I finally had one that was cooked to medium doneness.
In the not too distant past, there was a real danger in eating undercooked pork - Trichinosis, the food-borne disease caused by a microscopic parasite Trichinella. Most pork was raised in conditions where the parasite thrived and was common in fresh pork. To kill it, the meat had to be cooked to 145°F/63°C. Now, pork sold in grocery stores is not raised in these conditions and because there is no parasite, the meat so doesn't have to be cooked to death.
Bacon. I assumed it was the solid food equivalent of coffee when I was a kid - smells amazing, tastes like bitter, burnt ashes. My parents err on the side of burnt, and sometimes they err hard. When I was 12 my buddy made us some for breakfast after a sleepover and pulled it off the heat almost still pink and my mind was blown.
You can't drink milk while eating anything with lemon or it will *curdle in your stomach* and make you *severely* sick!
There's a really nasty prank you can play on a friend. Order a drink called a Cement Mixer. It's a shot with Bailey's Irish Cream with lemon or lime juice floated on top. It curdles instantly in your mouth and makes the shot almost impossible to swallow.
My mom is a great cook. People offer to buy her stuff all the time. And when my friends come over, they leave at least 5lbs heavier. HOWEVER, there is one thing that she does that hella bothers me- she leaves soups and stews on the stove top for a couple days. She boils it every day and claims it removes the bacteria. Luckily, no one has gotten food poisoning yet. It still freaks me out. And I’ll only eat it when it’s freshly made or from the fridge.
The 'no one has gotten food poisoning yet' part kinda proves she's right....
When baking, stir everything clock wise or it will be bad.
My parents always had their big meal in the evening. Only as an adult living in Germany did I learn that a big lunch and a light supper are much healthier (for me at least). Much better sleep for one thing.
Sorry people, but there is no specific tame of day for the big meal. Having a big meal soon before going to sleep can cause heartburn in some people, but having dinner at 7 and going to sleep at 11 is fine. Also, the whole "breakfast is the most important meal of the day" was invented by breakfast food companies.
Eggs are bad for you.... That was before we heard about cholesterol. Then butter, here use this congealed artery spackle instead
Later they got into the whole low fat thing
Spinach is desgusting. Its NOT. I eat it every day as an adult. But they ALWAYS bought Canned Spinach which is... not good. Really bad. Green, slightly grass tasting slime. Fresh Spinach? Crunchy! No Slime! Good. They came up poor and lived on an island so I don't think they quite understood that, one we had moved west, they now lived with 500 km of 1000 farms and didn't need to buy it in a can anymore...
Salt is bad. MSG is bad. Fat is bad. Ended up eating extremely bland food and thinking I hated vegetables because of it.
My mother boiled all the vegetables and grilled (boiled - we cook stuff UNDER the grill - Americans call that broiling AFAIK) all the meat. I couldn't chew the meat it was so tough, and boiled vegetables literally made me gag. So I mostly ate potatoes (we had to have rice and potatoes with every meal) and rice with disgusting 'gravy' on it. Then I became severely anaemic. My mother 'solved' this problem by forcing me to eat boiled chicken livers. Eventually I got iron tablets from the doctor because I was still unable to function due to the severe anaemia.
Pretty much everything. My parents don’t use spices, so everything is extremely bland. Once I went to college and started experimenting with different food, I realized how bland their cooking was. Well done steak with ketchup was a regular meal.
I once made them shakshuka, which hardly has anything fancy in it, and it was too overwhelming for them to eat.
Add oil and salt to your pasta water before it boils.
Peel mushroom caps before cooking.
Always put your leftovers in the fridge while still hot.
Stuff your turkey and sew it shut before roasting.
You can't freeze cheese.
Never add oil to pasta - sauce won't stick. Do add salt. Brush mushrooms with damp towel to remove dirt. Cool food before putting in fridge - enough that it won't Crack glass. Pros say don't stuff your turkey, but we always have. I grate cheese that's older, then freeze. It crumbles if you don't
I'm not sure if this necessarily counts, but my grandmother had this thing where you had to have bread with every meal. On top of that, she felt that certain foods would make you sick if not eaten with bread. She would get apoplectic if I ever ate a slice of cold cuts out of the fridge without bread. She claimed cold cuts and eggs would make me sick if I ate them without bread.
Another one is that soup is part of every meal.
It has been proven that having a cup of soup before a meal lowers your need for a large main meal portion, which is a great way to lose weight and get a serving of vegetables in. Sounds like the grandmother grew up frugally and knew soup and bread are great things to be filled up cheaply.
Hard boiled eggs. The yolks were also dark grey by the time they were done in the 20 minute bath.
Salads were iceberg lettuce, tasteless tomatoes, and a couple of unhappy croutons all covered in ranch dressing. Just awful.
I love salad. Every single one is different, because there's a world of potential out there and you can't put it all in one bowl.
Asparagus - had no idea you could get it fresh and crisp. We always had boiled, canned asparagus when I was a kid. Blech.
That "all fat is bad." Don't ask.
Eat low fat processed carbs with sugar... how'd that work out for America?
You can use any random ingredient substitute that you're trying to get rid of as long as it vaguely resembles what the recipe calls for.
Rice can't be reheated or it will make you severely sick
There is a bit wisdom behind this. Uncooked rice could contain spores of Bacillus cereus and if not cooled fast enough but left to be warm for a while the bacteria growth could cause food poisoning.
I had no idea that hard boiled eggs could be soft boiled or any other degree of doneness… I just assumed they always had grey ring around the yolk, later in life realized this is due to over boiling.
That liver and onions taste good.
Hey! I like liver and onions. Only have them every year or two, but tum.
Putting eggshells down the garbage disposal. Disproven by a very unhappy landlord of mine when he had to fix my drainage backup.
Better use for eggshells are to put them in a mason jar with a screwable lid, fill with water and water your plants with the water after it sits for a day. Plants love it and perk up.
My MIL puts a packet of Lipton’s dry onion soup mix in everything she makes. Every dish! Rice, mashed potatoes, taco meat. It’s the only thing consistent about her cooking.
Wash your chicken before cooking.
I am floored that our cook at work washes all the meat before she cooks it. And she has her food handlers certificate.
Margarine was healthy.
Being raised by parents who sung the praises of margarine my whole life, I didn’t know better when I left home to live on my own. I bought margarine and used it as usual. Then one day I put a nice pat of margarine on top of some very hot (temperature not spiciness) vegetables. It. Did. Not. Melt! Even when I mixed it into the veggies, it still did melt. WTF? After that, margarine started tasting more like plastic to me, so I switched to butter. Back then that meant buying one of those butter trays with the cover, since real butter only came in sticks. I also had to learn to leave it out to soften, because cold stick butter can totally break a piece of toast. Regardless, I never bought margarine again (since the mid-1980s).
That you must "clean" any kind of meat before cooking it because it "kills any bacteria" on it. Turns out not only is this false, but it also does the complete opposite of said effect. Doing so spreads the bacteria all over your sink/kitchen and does nothing to "clean" the meat. Cooking your meat properly is how you get rid of any bacteria full stop. This was something that was taught to my mother by her mother when she was young (which was 50+ years ago) and she has been doing it ever since. After randomly getting sick when she cooked sometimes I went on and did some research of my own and found out that the main reason I would get sick was because she was "cleaning" the meat every time before cooking it.
I confronted her about it, and of course she refuted it. I mean... I get it, she has been doing that since she was basically a child, but that was then and this is now. We have science and data that back these things up. Shortly after I started cooking anytime meat was involved and never got sick again (surprise, surprise!). She still doesn't really believe it, but at this point it's a lost cause trying to convince her.
Also, I know that in Latino culture it is tradition to "clean" the meat using mixes of vinegar/lime juice and water. When the study came out about this a few years back the Latino community was up in arms about it because they felt attacked. I do know that in certain places around the world the meat folks have access too isn't the most... safe... or prepared correctly before being sold off to the masses; thus "cleaning" said meat became somewhat of a tradition in some places. I've seen some of the videos where the chicken that was being cleaned did have copious amounts of scum like skin on it, so of course in that case it makes sense, but it still has to be done properly to avoid contaminating the surrounding area.
I don’t rinse meat before cooking - But - If one insists on rinsing meat before cooking - a safer way (still not safe, but just a little safer) is to place a large bowl in the sink and fill with water/vinegar mix, and then dip the meat into it. No running water, no splashing.
My parents thought any cut of beef could become steak (like the ones they would eat at expensive steakhouses) and that it had to be cooked a certain way to achieve it. Cue to my parents buying chuck roasts and getting super frustrated when they were super tough. I would point out that there were actual rib eyes and porterhouses in the super market that would be similar to the steakhouse in quality, they refused to shell out money for them. Years later I’m still mad they would buy s**t meat and get mad at me when it didn’t end up like a dry aged porterhouse.
It still would have been cheaper to buy a proper steak from the grocery store than going to the steak house... Reminds me of my mother. After years of living in my own place she really wanted to prepare something special for my birthday dinner. So I pointed out that there was a sale on rib eye steaks which are my favorite cut. She was grossed out by the lump of fat in the middle of the steak. So she went through every single one until she found one without the fat. Turned out she got something which is meant to be for soup on Germany (cooking it for a loooooong time until it's soft enough to eat) for the price of a steak. She prepared it and it was way to tough to eat. After three bites I was extremely frustrated, my dog was super happy and I left still hungry. Never let her prepare birthday dinner since then because it's supposed to be a happy day.
My mother saying leftover vegetables cause cancer.
You can only warm up leftovers once. If you don't eat it all after it's been reheated, then that's the end of it for those leftovers.
They didn’t expressly teach me every meal needs meat but that was certainly the default. Only i went vegetarian as a kid, and since then there’s plenty of information that a meatless meal can be as nutrient dense and filling if not more so than a meat based meal.
Using soapy water to wash cast iron was a sin....
I just made meatballs after not eating them for 15+ years and they were delicious. As much as I love my mom for cooking for us kids and inspiring me, I guess meatballs just weren't her specialty. They'd come out dry and burnt on the outside, plain wet on the inside.
Why fry them at all? Cook them in broth, once they rise to the top they are ready to be taken out. It makes them light and airy .
Always salt the water when boiling eggs.
I had to do a bit of research on “how to boil an egg” when my child started asking for them (and I’ve never had one in my life) and apparently a little salt and vinegar in the water will prevent the egg cracking and minimise egg from seeping out of the shell if it does crack. From my own experimentation, this seems to hold true BUT I don’t like keeping the eggs for next day, then, because the vinegar degrades the outside of the shell.
You can’t leave leftover canned food like tomato sauce in the can and cover it and stick it in the fridge or you’ll get sick when you eat it. You have to put it in a Tupperware. Since moving out I don’t bother transferring it to a Tupperware and I haven’t had any problems
Was also told you need to drain and rinse beans before cooking with them or you’ll get a stomachache
That if your melting butter and it turns brown, it’s ruined
My wife browns the butter for almost all the cooked vegetables we eat and it is AWESOME! And so is my wife, for the record.
My dad would always scrub mushrooms lightly with a brush instead of washing them. It turns out because mushrooms are already mostly water, rinsing then doesn't affect their taste and texture, and is a much faster way of cleaning them
Stiring direction when mixing a batter. Had to be clockwise from memory. You could get away with anticlockwise but once you started you couldn't change.
And my mum used to put bicarb in veggies when I was younger. Thankfully that died off after a bid.
Salting too early in grilling can make a steak tough. It was great being able to cite this as something Martha Stewart said on TV (she specifically called it a myth) to my mom's friend who both idolized Martha and believed that salting made steaks tough.
Cold tap water boils faster than warm/hot tap water. - yeah, i know. 😐
Every meal must have a complex carbohydrate
Disproven: Safe pork temperatures and some other excessive anxiety around food safety. Not that I am lax, but my mom is concerned to the point of wasteful.
The main thing that annoys me about my parents' cooking v. mine is their adherence to the meat, starch, veg model of a typical dinner. It creates so much extra dishes. Make 1-2 pot meals; you don't need three separate preps.
1-2 pot meals are fine as long as you get the three groups (proteins, carbs & veggies) in. The easuliest take on the diabetic diet is 1/2 plate veggies, 1/4 each of proteins and carbs. From what I've seen, 1-pot meals are too easily skewed towards one of the groups, or even skip an entire group.
Butter flavored crisco is healthier than all alternatives, because that s**t is made from vegetables and not animals
Dumping a can of vegetables directly into a pot and heating it up is good
Take your chicken out of the freezer before work/school and leave it on the counter to ‘thaw’ until you get home that evening.
WTF, Mom.
i had a single mom raising 3 kids with a father that didn't pay child support. so, she was creative in her cooking. some of the things she did would sound weird but they worked. best thing that happened was there was a little corner market owned by an asian couple. while they didn't allow credit for 99% of their customers they did for mom, probably because they saw her struggling to feed three kids. one day they showed up at our apt w/veggies and meat and things i had never seen as it was all asian. mr. lou explained in broken english that his wife was going to teach how to stir fry & make meat go far & lots of veg. this was early 60s so way before stir fry was common. such kind people.
Some of these sound more like superstition than "cooking errors." Most of the rest are just personal preference, neither right nor wrong.
Preparation. There are so many veggies I hated (asparagus, spinach, eggplant, cauliflower just to name a few) because of the way my parents wanted them cooked. Generally really uninspired, bland cooking, no spices, not even herbs were to be used. Now, that I live with my bf, who really loves cooking and experimenting with flavors, a whole new world of tastes opened up to me 🤩
Until I knew my mother-in-law, I was convinced I hate Christmas sweets. My mum was the same sort of some people above - six eggs in recipe, no only twoo, 250 g of butter, hell its too much, give 100 g - and the result was dry, crumbly, no savor. Everything was prepared "healthy" - no fat, no cream, no milk, meat was boiled slowly until fragmented to sarcomers for better chewing and digestion. When I was 12, my parents applied for school cantine cause they were oversaturated with my "anorexia" and exhausted from forcing me to eat. Then, I almost doubled my weight during one year.
oh, one thing i wanted to add here is kind of an homage to my mom's creativity. since my dad didn't pay child support he would occasionally drop off things like a case of tuna or a case of chicken noodle soup. at one point i was having tuna for lunch so often that i was getting teased at school. we had a field trip & i told my mom i didn't want a lunch because i would stink up the bus and get teased. the next morning there was my lunch & she told me it was chicken salad. it was damn good chicken salad! was it really? nope. mom had drained and rinsed the tuna, seasoned w/chicken bouillon & spices. that's what moms do!! i sure miss her.
I used to think I hated lasagna but it turns out my mom would always buy the cheapest frozen lasagna and cook it too long (and burning it). The first time I had home made lasagna I was mind blown. Also now my husband and I frequently have frozen lasagna but we choose the best brand and don't overcook it lol and it's my favourite meal
Hm, there are some rules that appear to be silly at first sight, but might be worth a try. If you're cooking tomato sauce, listen to Black Sabbath while doing so. The original line up. The sauce will be a lot better than compared to any other music that was being listened to during cooking. Just try it out ... works!
My mom is convinced that eating off a plate or drinking out of a mug with a chip in it is extremely dangerous and the lurking bacteria will probably kill you. I understand that you shouldn't eat off a cracked plate, but within the last year she confiscated one of my favorite mugs that had the teensiest chip in it, even though I told her I drank from the opposite side!
My maternal grandmother was a terrible cook and she knew it, but, bless her, she tried her best anyway and just wanted to feed her family. Can't say the same for my other grandmother. She sucked and I don't miss her. My maternal grandmother was wonderful. The only thing she could make was Portuguese sweet bread, using her mother's recipe (which is now mine and I intend to keep it in the family) every year on Easter Sunday and us grandkids would dye the eggs that she would then bake in the bread. I absolutely loved it.
Margarine gets a lot of hate. I personally prefer it to butter, as I feel at least that it is less heavy, and if you look at the ingredients list it's not that out there.
I'd like to weigh in on this and agree that I thought I hated a LOT of veggies because my grandmother would boil them to mush. In my 20s I discovered that I loved them cooked differently, lovely and crunchy with so much flavour! Now in my 40s with sore teeth, I have to wonder if she just cooked them down to mush because she had no teeth and sore gums - eep.
my dad was a chef and I grew up in a restaurant so I know a lot about cooking food. Baking is not something I am good at b/c it's just too precise. Cooking is easier b/c it's not an exact science. He was old school Italian American so did like his meat well done but cooked it however people ordered it, but made ours a bit too well done. I still don't like rare meats, but no longer want them overcooked either.
Ah yes the old eggs are unhealthy because of too much cholesterol myth. The original study actually found out that too much cholesterol can kill... a rabbit. (They didn't test it on humans though) Also chicken has to be cooked through or else you risk a salmonella poisoning.
I must have cooked it wrong because my fresh tuna steak tasted the same as canned so that's why I get canned. 🤷♀️
Load More Replies... I hated mashed potatoes as a kid. Now I realize that my mom would make them either too lumpy or too runny with no flavor like butter or sour cream.
Garlic, sour cream, chives and/or cheddar are always fun additions. :)
Load More Replies...
So how do you fertilize and pollinate your vegetables? Do you hand pollinate and use chemicals to fertilize?
Load More Replies...
i had a single mom raising 3 kids with a father that didn't pay child support. so, she was creative in her cooking. some of the things she did would sound weird but they worked. best thing that happened was there was a little corner market owned by an asian couple. while they didn't allow credit for 99% of their customers they did for mom, probably because they saw her struggling to feed three kids. one day they showed up at our apt w/veggies and meat and things i had never seen as it was all asian. mr. lou explained in broken english that his wife was going to teach how to stir fry & make meat go far & lots of veg. this was early 60s so way before stir fry was common. such kind people.
Some of these sound more like superstition than "cooking errors." Most of the rest are just personal preference, neither right nor wrong.
Preparation. There are so many veggies I hated (asparagus, spinach, eggplant, cauliflower just to name a few) because of the way my parents wanted them cooked. Generally really uninspired, bland cooking, no spices, not even herbs were to be used. Now, that I live with my bf, who really loves cooking and experimenting with flavors, a whole new world of tastes opened up to me 🤩
Until I knew my mother-in-law, I was convinced I hate Christmas sweets. My mum was the same sort of some people above - six eggs in recipe, no only twoo, 250 g of butter, hell its too much, give 100 g - and the result was dry, crumbly, no savor. Everything was prepared "healthy" - no fat, no cream, no milk, meat was boiled slowly until fragmented to sarcomers for better chewing and digestion. When I was 12, my parents applied for school cantine cause they were oversaturated with my "anorexia" and exhausted from forcing me to eat. Then, I almost doubled my weight during one year.
oh, one thing i wanted to add here is kind of an homage to my mom's creativity. since my dad didn't pay child support he would occasionally drop off things like a case of tuna or a case of chicken noodle soup. at one point i was having tuna for lunch so often that i was getting teased at school. we had a field trip & i told my mom i didn't want a lunch because i would stink up the bus and get teased. the next morning there was my lunch & she told me it was chicken salad. it was damn good chicken salad! was it really? nope. mom had drained and rinsed the tuna, seasoned w/chicken bouillon & spices. that's what moms do!! i sure miss her.
I used to think I hated lasagna but it turns out my mom would always buy the cheapest frozen lasagna and cook it too long (and burning it). The first time I had home made lasagna I was mind blown. Also now my husband and I frequently have frozen lasagna but we choose the best brand and don't overcook it lol and it's my favourite meal
Hm, there are some rules that appear to be silly at first sight, but might be worth a try. If you're cooking tomato sauce, listen to Black Sabbath while doing so. The original line up. The sauce will be a lot better than compared to any other music that was being listened to during cooking. Just try it out ... works!
My mom is convinced that eating off a plate or drinking out of a mug with a chip in it is extremely dangerous and the lurking bacteria will probably kill you. I understand that you shouldn't eat off a cracked plate, but within the last year she confiscated one of my favorite mugs that had the teensiest chip in it, even though I told her I drank from the opposite side!
My maternal grandmother was a terrible cook and she knew it, but, bless her, she tried her best anyway and just wanted to feed her family. Can't say the same for my other grandmother. She sucked and I don't miss her. My maternal grandmother was wonderful. The only thing she could make was Portuguese sweet bread, using her mother's recipe (which is now mine and I intend to keep it in the family) every year on Easter Sunday and us grandkids would dye the eggs that she would then bake in the bread. I absolutely loved it.
Margarine gets a lot of hate. I personally prefer it to butter, as I feel at least that it is less heavy, and if you look at the ingredients list it's not that out there.
I'd like to weigh in on this and agree that I thought I hated a LOT of veggies because my grandmother would boil them to mush. In my 20s I discovered that I loved them cooked differently, lovely and crunchy with so much flavour! Now in my 40s with sore teeth, I have to wonder if she just cooked them down to mush because she had no teeth and sore gums - eep.
my dad was a chef and I grew up in a restaurant so I know a lot about cooking food. Baking is not something I am good at b/c it's just too precise. Cooking is easier b/c it's not an exact science. He was old school Italian American so did like his meat well done but cooked it however people ordered it, but made ours a bit too well done. I still don't like rare meats, but no longer want them overcooked either.
Ah yes the old eggs are unhealthy because of too much cholesterol myth. The original study actually found out that too much cholesterol can kill... a rabbit. (They didn't test it on humans though) Also chicken has to be cooked through or else you risk a salmonella poisoning.
I must have cooked it wrong because my fresh tuna steak tasted the same as canned so that's why I get canned. 🤷♀️
Load More Replies... I hated mashed potatoes as a kid. Now I realize that my mom would make them either too lumpy or too runny with no flavor like butter or sour cream.
Garlic, sour cream, chives and/or cheddar are always fun additions. :)
Load More Replies... So how do you fertilize and pollinate your vegetables? Do you hand pollinate and use chemicals to fertilize?
Load More Replies... 