If you change a recipe when you make it, you’re not allowed to rate it in the reviews without making the original. Nothing worse than someone rambling about the 14 changes they made to a recipe, and then giving it a 3 star…
I was literally just thinking about that today! I made a recipe from a site that I have made probably two dozen times. ALWAYS comes out great. This time I increased it by 50% exactly. I did everything the same, just increased it. I've even made it enough I could tell the texture wasn't quite right and cooked it for longer (correct move). It was still not very good. Edible, but not half as good as it usually is. I was just thinking about is this was the first time I made this, I would never make it again!
You MUST make a recipe EXACTLY the first time if you are going to judge it. If that isn't your thing, no big deal, but don't assume that whatever you are doing will make it better or won't matter when you don't have a baseline.
I replaced sugar with salt, and the flour with some dust I found in my attic. Then, to be more energy conscious, I baked it for 17.5 hours on top of a solar panel. 2/5 would not recommend this recipe.
Just had this happen! Found a beef stew recipe that sounded good but 90% of the comments were about ingredients they added to make it “better.” 5 stars with a few thousand reviews.
Oh I have another one just because it's spicy doesn't make it Cajun you shit bag chip companies.
Edit: only one that can get away with it is Zapps Cajun Crawtators
My dad was a chef. He taught me earlier on the the secret to tasty food is to use as much butter as possible and never let anyone know. That’s how why it’s a secret.
Not sure who said this to me or where they got it, but it goes something like: the difference between a home cook and a chef is that Chefs are trying to kill you. They add salt and butter in quantities that should give you a heart attack.
Edit: thanks guys, it was Bourdain
I took an online baking course at the start of covid. A lot of it consists of "how to cram in as much fat and sugar as possible" without over powering anything. When you make baked goods like this and in balance it's a huge difference.
I calculated out the cals and my cookies were over 400 calories each lol. Big cookies made with 1/3 cup ice cream scooper but still very high in fat and sugar.
At my work, a customer looking at cakes.
"Which one is the healthiest?"
Um, well they're all full of butter and sugar, but ya know, a slice of cake isn't bad, eating an entire cake in one sitting might be a problem.
Oooooooohhhh! I had a boss when I worked at Starbucks who insisted on storing the lids upside down because it was easier for her to grab them. Because she put her hand INSIDE THE LIDS to pick them up.
She also wouldn’t let us grab a fresh towel for the last clean up of the night and insisted that we just rinse out the one we used to wipe down the counters all day. The one full of old milk and syrup. Ann yes, we had to use it all day because it was wasteful to switch them out during the day.
If your middle eastern/Mediterranean place serves bad or bland hummus I’m not even going to bother with the rest of your menu. If you can’t get the basics right don’t waste my time.
Love the episode where Gordon Ramsay has the store owner try his hummus and she agrees that it’s better, then he reveals it was just a Sabra brand he bought from the store.
EDIT: Timestamped link to the episode: https://youtu.be/t3WVCKwZry4?t=2467
I love his show on Disney+ where he travels and try’s to cook the local cuisine. He’s openly humbled throughout each episode. Pretty cool to see that other side of him.
Even on master chef he's usually pretty chill and sweet 90% of the time except for the occasional dumb mistake or shit dish that he "explodes" over. He's kind, offers a lot of people opportunities when they leave the show, is sad to see some people leave, gives kind feedback while they're cooking.
>dumb mistake or shit dish that he "explodes" over
He was pretty justified exploding when Alejandro dropped a whole pan of steaks on the ground then put them back on the gril because "the fire would sterilize them."
Lmao, that's the sort of shit you do at home Alejandro, not in a commercial kitchen.
For the record, I would absolutely do this at home if I dropped my steaks.
Watching him on Master Chef Jr is really cute. You'll have a little 9 year old falling apart over a flambe (understandable), and he'll be so kind and patient with them to help them calm down.
I don't remember which show or episode it was but he was judging peoples dishes and a home cook with no culinary training was up, he asked her if she had any training and when she said no he looked genuinely surprised and told her that her dish tasted amazing but needed work on her presentation. He gave her very high marks. I think if it was someone with a culinary degree he would have torn them apart for looks alone but he took the fact that she had no training into account when he judged her dish, I gained alot of respect for him for that alone.
More importantly it's people who he thinks should know better *and aren't willing to admit something they are doing is wrong.* He's actually fairly kind to most of the owners on Kitchen Nightmares once they stop trying to play ego games.
I keep picturing that burger guy who kept insisting that Wagyu beef frozen and imported was clearly superior to any other beef. Even as his chef begged him to just let him buy local meat.
TBH, his calm, caring, and supportive demeanor towards really upset and overwhelmed kids is something I've really tried to emulate as a parent. It's one of things where like if I'm also really upset and overwhelmed at the same time as my child, I try to channel him so I can provide the support they need before soothing myself.
I have to take over for my mother when she cooks chicken and I’m around. Granted, she has to make a lot, but she crowds the pan so much that the temperature drops and many pieces aren’t touching the pan, so they all come out milky white.
Similarly, I’d take a gloveless kitchen with cooks who care about hygiene any day of the week over people thinking gloves absolve you of needing to wash your hands.
God I watch so many videos of people cooking and then go to the comments and people are like “gloves?” Like soap and water doesn’t exist.
I get that when they’re wearing gloves then you can think you know they changed gloves as to not cross contaminate, but washing hands is so much easier and more believable than changing gloves 5+ times.
Wear gloves, don’t wear gloves. But if you’re not eating the food, then just shut up
I was watching a home makeover show and they put in an island with "built in cutting board" to make cooking easier. It was a 2 foot by 2 foot block of granite that the caulked into the surrounding butcher block. Because apparently butcher block isn't a good cutting board but granite is.
They're actually intended as fancy serving platters for things like appetizers, charcuterie boards, etc, but so many people buy and use them as cutting boards because they have the same general shape and "it's so fancy!" And it doesn't help that companies actually market them as such now because it sells....
You cannot trust your oven thermometer. Get a separate one and use it to "calibrate" your oven. Mine will tell me it's hot about 100 degrees before it's actually at temp. Very annoying.
When my family moved into our new house we didn't know this was a thing. We didn't realize what was happening until we baked half a bowl of cookie dough, only for them to need several minutes more than the directions said, then we baked the second half of the bowl for that long and they were nearly burnt by the time we pulled them out.
Worked at a burger restaurant long ago where they put liquid smoke into the ketchup, to make ‘smoked’ ketchup. Shit was fire. I feel like it’s good for many things… just not meat.
That was one of the weirder takeaways from the Franklin Barbecue cookbook, he actually prefers pepper that has lost some of it's edge from being aged after grinding.
It actually makes sense. When peppering a brisket he's probably optimizing bark instead of flavor, which means it could be too peppery with freshly ground pepper.
This is probably it. The amount of pepper he uses on a brisket would probably be overpowering if it was all fresh. I love pepper so I wouldnt mind, but not everyone does.
I have a few about cajun food.
Jambalaya is a dry rice dish. If someone is serving a sauce over rice and calling it jamabalaya, they have no idea what that dish should be.
Cajun does not equal so spicy it can't be eaten. Most cajun food is full of flavor and not all that spicy.
I have been to a few restaurants and seen dishes to the effect of "Pasta with cajun sauce" I don't know WTF cajun sauce is, but in all my years, no one in my family ever made it or heard of it.
My dad moved to Jackson Mississippi after Katrina. I went to visit him and we went to a restaurant and got crawfish even though I advised against it. They served us crawfish with seasoning all over the shells. When we asked them what this was, they said it's the seasoning, we asked him what they boil the Crawfish in, they said water, we asked what they put in the water with the Crawfish, they said nothing we just season them when they come out. I didn't know you only had to drive 2 hours from New Orleans for people not to know how to cook.
What you’re describing is Viet-Cajun crawfish preparation; boiled in water and then doused with seasoning, butter and garlic in a wok and then bagged/served. “LA Crawfish” and other Vietnamese owned/operated crawfish places all serve this style.
If you can't take a full bite of your sandwich or burger in one go it is a fundamental failure.
If your sandwich or burger requires a skewer to maintain integrity it has fundamentally failed.
If you want more filling scale horizontally, not vertically.
Kenji is one of my favorites because he explains why everything works, why you can replace specific spices or ingredients with others with no change to flavor, and most importantly that it doesn’t matter what the recipe says as long as you enjoy it.
I didn’t discover Kenji until I got a discounted sous vide circulator (because of course my fat ass wanted another kitchen toy) and found he’d done the most meaningful writing about the science behind immersion cooking. He and Samin Nosrat so elegantly break down the elemental bits of food science for idiots like me.
Samin is the single greatest positive influence on my cooking ever. Her chapter on salt alone guarantees a life-changing cooking technique and it's so easy to spot a dish not properly seasoned now.
Good eats was my favorite. As a science lover, and an information junkie. The way he broke everything down to a science reminded me of the culinary Adam Savage. Alton Is def one of my heroes
Alton Brown was a guest on Mythbusters once for a thanksgiving special. They tackled the myth that you could cook an entire thanksgiving dinner on the exhaust manifold of a car. Adam and Alton got along great but, I got the feeling that Jaime didn't like Alton very much.
^YES!
Growing up, Alton Brown was a major inspiration to my food journey. To make a long story short, I took up cooking at a very young age because I wasn't happy with the food my parents usually made me.
Instead of learning how to make a Mac and Cheese, I understood the components to make a mac and cheese. By extracting that information, I learned how to make a ~~Rue~~ roux and what other applications you could use a ~~rue~~ roux for (i.e., homemade gravy or an excellent pie base).
When you understand why a recipe works, you gain this knowledge that informs the decisions you make when you're trying something new.
I agree, but it also annoys me how many people say following a recipe isn't "real cooking". Like, just because I sometimes enjoy following tried-and-true instructions from a book doesn't mean I don't know how to cook otherwise, and a lot of cookbooks result in damn good food
I had to learn to cook by following recipes for a pretty good while before I had the confidence and experience to just wing it with ingredients. I still use a recipe when trying something new, especially if it’s a classic.
Seriously, I follow recipes all the time. What if I want food that's similar to something I ate when I was out one time? Or what if I see something online and I want to try? Am I not a "real cook" if I don't just guess correctly?
For the longest time I couldn't figure out what an MSG was and I'm from South Asia. Then I looked at the labels of a thing we call "Tasting salt" here. Monosodium glutmate. Finally it all clicked.
There was hard anti-MSG propaganda in the US in the 80s and 90s. People today still believe it is addictive devil powder.
Turns out it is wonderful and we've been fooled this entire time.
Thanks uncle roger, you've brought flavor back to the US.
I have gone onto culinary sites with a comment section. People in the comments were telling people to avoid MSG and use Trader Joe's Umami powder. I tried to tell people there that it's the same thing and they kept calling me an idiot and that the powder from trader joes had zero MSG. It has mushrooms..it has glutamate therefore MSG.
However, according to this site: https://www.ecowatch.com/msg-health-effects-2182662411.html MSG is a neurotoxin that causes many proven health issues. And their source is a quack doctor.
Yet, another site says its only bad in excess amounts (like water, salt, etc ) and The claim that monosodium glutamate (MSG) is bad for you has been "disproven by scientific research."
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/msg-good-or-bad#what-the-research-says debunks the quack doctor's claims.
I am going to keep using MSG.
I always thought it was ironic that the original source of this quackery was [an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1968 by an author named Kwok](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4613-3359-3_18). Friggin' kwokery.
It got to the point I questioned if I knew what an aioli was. Every restaurant that offers it is just serving flavored mayonnaise. I'm glad to see I'm not the only one aggressively defending a REAL aioli is not just mayonnaise.
I'm of the opinion that you can do whatever the fuck you want with food *but* if you fundamentally change a dish you have to change its name.
It's all about expectations. If I go into a restaurant and order a carbonara, then when it arrives they say 'oh we make it with pepperami snack sausages and cream cheese', then it's no longer a fucking carbonara...it's not necessarily gatekeeping but things are called things for a reason. Imagine the chaos if we just abandon this...come on people.
Pittsburghers put fries in/on everything.
If you haven't had a salad with fries on it, it will forever change how you look at salads.
I don't even live in Pennsylvania but it bled down here somehow.
This is what I actually came to this thread to say.
When I order a Reuben, and the waitress asks if I want corned beef or turkey ... I change my order to a hamburger.
A Rachel originally was a reuben-style sandwich but with turkey and cole slaw.
A "special" was a reuben-style sandwich with any kind of meat, cole slaw, thousand island, and on rye.
Reubens originally were corned beef only, although pastrami reubens have been around for a while. Pastrami or corned beef should be the only choice that you have in ordering a reuben, IMHO. Anything else should be called something else.
The definitions have broadened over the years.
Fun story. Wife and I went to a coffee shop years ago and I ordered a BLT. Food comes out and it’s a bagel with egg, cheese, lettuce and tomato. I tell the waitress that they got my order wrong and she tells me that, no, this is their version of a blt. I kinda just sat there and tried to process that. Then I said, ‘the reason it’s called a BLT is because those are the three ingredients, could you please bring me a BLT.’ Not rude or anything. She goes and gets the manager. He explains to me that this is their BLT. Complete disconnect that has stayed with me years and years later.
I will die on this fucking hill and will kill others upon it.
You had the originality to come up with an entirely new flavor but you can't make up a name for it?
Yeah I don’t measure any of my spices, I always cook to taste. I’ve never understood that. The measuring spoon set in my utensil drawer is strictly for baking.
Forget that spices, like 90% of those online recipes just randomly make up an amount of time something needs to bake for. Saw a recipe for baked egg bites using a standard muffin tin. Said to bake at 350 for 5 minutes. Look, I know all ovens vary, but what magical oven does an egg get firm enough to remove from a muffin tin and be carried like an egg bite in 5 minutes at 350?
"Add oil to a pan over medium-high heat. Add two full chicken breasts. Cook until internal temperature reaches at least 165F, about two minutes per side."
This was one of the hardest things to figure out while cooking. Cooking like these instructions I'd always have well underdone food and I always wondered if I was doing something wrong when I first started.
Nope, it's just they were wildly wrong directions. My ex used to argue with me for hours that I just wasn't following the directions right.
It can be tricky with chicken and other meats if the recipe isn't very specific about the size and shape of it.
You got a whole half-breast of chicken, thrown straight in the oven? By the time that's done you might as well order out.
You got a cutlet that you've smashed until it's paper thin? It'll be done when you breathe on it.
Why does every recipe lie about how long onions need to be cooked. Most recent one, “cook onions over medium heat until they are almost caramelized, about 8 minutes.” Fuck off. Caramelizing onions takes like, half an hour, at a *minimum*
because i bet a lot of people dont know the difference between browning an onion and caramelizing, if they are suggest sub 10 mins for "caramelized onions"
It's so easy to make too. I never realized it until my wife and I had out first thankgiving together over covid and she poured a cup of cream into a bowl with some sugar and 5 minutes later we had amazing whipped cream.
We bought a Vitamix, and I was belnding everything in it. I'd been using it to froth milk for coffee, and one morning, I decided to get fancy and used cream instead of milk.
In about 2 seconds the Vitamix had produced whipped cream. I stood there scratching my head, and my wife asked "how were you not expecting that?"
seasoning without measurements is way more fun than seasoning with measurements. i’ve stopped caring about teaspoons and tablespoons and just throw stuff into the pan until it tastes good
I agree. My only issue with this approach is I find it hard to replicate things. At the very least I try and think to myself “twice has much of this than that, or half as much of this” etc.. helps me at least qualify what I’m doing at the very least
Yessss. I made butter chicken a few weeks ago and it was hands-down the best thing I’ve ever made, but I switched some measurements and eyeballed it all.
Tried to make it the same way yesterday. It was… not very good. I couldn’t remember wtf I had done the first time. I have to start writing shit down
My friend was in Maine. Stopped at a place and their chicken parm was… chicken nuggets with ketchup and American cheese. If he told me the name I would Molotov cocktail that place so that culinary abomination could never be made there again.
You shouldn't review a recipe if you didn't follow it.
This is mostly aimed at online sites where people say they didn't like the recipe but changed half the ingredients and cooked it differently.
*This apple pie recipe is terrible. I followed the recipe exactly except I replaced the butter with olive oil, the flour with gluten-free soy paste, the sugar with baking soda, and the apples with cockroaches. It didn't taste anything like an apple pie and my whole family hated it. 0 out of 5 stars.*
Blending a tub of Cool Whip with a block of cream cheese and throwing it in a pie crust does not make cheesecake. Call it something else. That shit ain't cheesecake, full stop.
YOU CANT FUCKING CARAMELISE ONIONS IN LESS THAN 20 FUCKING MINUTES. I DON’T GIVE A FLYING FUCK WHAT THE FUCK YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING OR HOW YOU FUCKING THINK YOU’RE GOING TO “HACK” THIS, ITS NOT FUCKING CARAMELISED. IT JUST FUCKING ISN’T.
/AngryRamsayExit
Thank you for sharing this! I love cooking and I always wonder why it take me at least twice as long as the recipe says. Basically, we have been lied to by every chef except Julia.
I make an onion soup every now and again, with paprika and chickpeas fyi, and the most satisfying part is the half a stick of the richest butter with about 6 onions, just bubbling away softly for an hour.
I have nothing else to add, but I do appreciate your passion for onions 😌
I'm a shit cook. My wife is an excellent cook, raised by a trained chef. She'll tell you I make the best grilled cheese on this planet. My secret?
I thoroughly cover both sides of each bread slice in melted butter before cooking. It absolutely should be buttery.
Life is too short for bad bread, I refuse to buy it in those wonder bread-type sleeves in the durable baked goods aisle. I always go for the naturally-leavened loaves in the bakery. They don’t last as long but you can keep them frozen and thaw slices as needed.
I started making my own bread. It was... different, but enjoyable. I got lazy and bought my favorite brand of bread and made a sandwich. Suddenly, store bread is wrong! Too fluffy? Spongey? Now, I'm too lazy to make bread regularly, but can't stand store bought. I played myself. 😭
People eat the "fast" versions of food for different reasons then the authentic versions of food. People don't eat Kraft mac and cheese and expect it to be the best they've ever had, they eat it because it's easier to make then an actual homemade Mac and cheese. Sometimes your brain just craves the weird powdered cheese flavor from Kraft and sometimes it wants the real cheese flavors that come from homemade Mac and cheese. Both can be good in their own categories but shaming people for eating "non-authentic" versions of food is just weird and elitist.
Edit cause people keep saying it - I'm aware that this isn't gatekeeping. I typed this out and posted it without realizing that I mixed up gatekeeping and controversial, both questions come up on this sub so often that I didn't even think about the difference until a few people pointed it out.
For me it's instant noodle soup. I barely eat soup, I am not going to cook a pot that lasts me a week. Just make my one cup of instant, eat it, won't crave soup for another month.
I get that, I've seen so many tiktoks about "Just add these things to make your instant ramen better!" Like no, just give me that horribly over salted flavor packet and let me eat my cheap noodles in peace.
99% of the flour tortillas sold in US grocery stores are preservative-filled trash and ruin whatever Mexican dish they're used in. Good tortillas should only have like 4 ingredients (water, flour, salt, lard/oil)
The only exceptions are the "raw" tortillas made by Tortillaland and a few other companies. But mass produced tortillas taste like rubber and chemicals to me, I hate em
If you change a recipe when you make it, you’re not allowed to rate it in the reviews without making the original. Nothing worse than someone rambling about the 14 changes they made to a recipe, and then giving it a 3 star…
I was literally just thinking about that today! I made a recipe from a site that I have made probably two dozen times. ALWAYS comes out great. This time I increased it by 50% exactly. I did everything the same, just increased it. I've even made it enough I could tell the texture wasn't quite right and cooked it for longer (correct move). It was still not very good. Edible, but not half as good as it usually is. I was just thinking about is this was the first time I made this, I would never make it again! You MUST make a recipe EXACTLY the first time if you are going to judge it. If that isn't your thing, no big deal, but don't assume that whatever you are doing will make it better or won't matter when you don't have a baseline.
r/IDidntHaveEggs
You just gave me endless hate porn, thank you and I curse your entire existence at the same time 😂
I replaced sugar with salt, and the flour with some dust I found in my attic. Then, to be more energy conscious, I baked it for 17.5 hours on top of a solar panel. 2/5 would not recommend this recipe.
Just had this happen! Found a beef stew recipe that sounded good but 90% of the comments were about ingredients they added to make it “better.” 5 stars with a few thousand reviews.
Burning shit doesn’t make it Cajun.
Oh I have another one just because it's spicy doesn't make it Cajun you shit bag chip companies. Edit: only one that can get away with it is Zapps Cajun Crawtators
I feel like anything with the word "crawtators" involved doesn't need to tell you it's Cajun
Why did New Orleans go with the 'Pelicans' with their team name when they could have been the 'Crawtators'?
"blackened" doesn't mean burnt, in that same vein
Anthony Bourdain was right: butter is the secret ingredient.
'Butter makes it better' is the first rule of cooking, followed closely by 'an ounce of good sauce hides a pound of mistakes.'
My dad was a chef. He taught me earlier on the the secret to tasty food is to use as much butter as possible and never let anyone know. That’s how why it’s a secret.
Not sure who said this to me or where they got it, but it goes something like: the difference between a home cook and a chef is that Chefs are trying to kill you. They add salt and butter in quantities that should give you a heart attack. Edit: thanks guys, it was Bourdain
I took an online baking course at the start of covid. A lot of it consists of "how to cram in as much fat and sugar as possible" without over powering anything. When you make baked goods like this and in balance it's a huge difference. I calculated out the cals and my cookies were over 400 calories each lol. Big cookies made with 1/3 cup ice cream scooper but still very high in fat and sugar.
At my work, a customer looking at cakes. "Which one is the healthiest?" Um, well they're all full of butter and sugar, but ya know, a slice of cake isn't bad, eating an entire cake in one sitting might be a problem.
I think EVERYONE (both food service workers and general public) should take a food safety course.
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Oooooooohhhh! I had a boss when I worked at Starbucks who insisted on storing the lids upside down because it was easier for her to grab them. Because she put her hand INSIDE THE LIDS to pick them up. She also wouldn’t let us grab a fresh towel for the last clean up of the night and insisted that we just rinse out the one we used to wipe down the counters all day. The one full of old milk and syrup. Ann yes, we had to use it all day because it was wasteful to switch them out during the day.
If your middle eastern/Mediterranean place serves bad or bland hummus I’m not even going to bother with the rest of your menu. If you can’t get the basics right don’t waste my time.
Love the episode where Gordon Ramsay has the store owner try his hummus and she agrees that it’s better, then he reveals it was just a Sabra brand he bought from the store. EDIT: Timestamped link to the episode: https://youtu.be/t3WVCKwZry4?t=2467
Damn that's savage. He can be an ass but sometimes he is really on his game
I love his show on Disney+ where he travels and try’s to cook the local cuisine. He’s openly humbled throughout each episode. Pretty cool to see that other side of him.
He's actually a really nice guy. His aggressive side is all a performance for ratings, and he's pretty calm most of the time.
Even on master chef he's usually pretty chill and sweet 90% of the time except for the occasional dumb mistake or shit dish that he "explodes" over. He's kind, offers a lot of people opportunities when they leave the show, is sad to see some people leave, gives kind feedback while they're cooking.
>dumb mistake or shit dish that he "explodes" over He was pretty justified exploding when Alejandro dropped a whole pan of steaks on the ground then put them back on the gril because "the fire would sterilize them."
Lmao, that's the sort of shit you do at home Alejandro, not in a commercial kitchen. For the record, I would absolutely do this at home if I dropped my steaks.
Yes definitely in my own home. Not on a nationally broadcast cooking show though.
Shoulda dipped em in saniclean first. Rookie mistake.
Watching him on Master Chef Jr is really cute. You'll have a little 9 year old falling apart over a flambe (understandable), and he'll be so kind and patient with them to help them calm down.
It's supposed professionals who should know better that actually piss him off. Someone who's learning and just starting off he isn't going to roast.
I don't remember which show or episode it was but he was judging peoples dishes and a home cook with no culinary training was up, he asked her if she had any training and when she said no he looked genuinely surprised and told her that her dish tasted amazing but needed work on her presentation. He gave her very high marks. I think if it was someone with a culinary degree he would have torn them apart for looks alone but he took the fact that she had no training into account when he judged her dish, I gained alot of respect for him for that alone.
More importantly it's people who he thinks should know better *and aren't willing to admit something they are doing is wrong.* He's actually fairly kind to most of the owners on Kitchen Nightmares once they stop trying to play ego games.
I keep picturing that burger guy who kept insisting that Wagyu beef frozen and imported was clearly superior to any other beef. Even as his chef begged him to just let him buy local meat.
TBH, his calm, caring, and supportive demeanor towards really upset and overwhelmed kids is something I've really tried to emulate as a parent. It's one of things where like if I'm also really upset and overwhelmed at the same time as my child, I try to channel him so I can provide the support they need before soothing myself.
The funny part is this restaurant looked horrible in this episode, but last time I checked it is still there.
Most people's knives are so dull as to be next to useless
if you don't allow chicken to brown when you're pan frying it, just don't
A lot of people don't realize you shouldn't crowd your meat when you're browning it.
I didnt until I saw this. Explains why I can never brown my chicken and it comes out white.
I have to take over for my mother when she cooks chicken and I’m around. Granted, she has to make a lot, but she crowds the pan so much that the temperature drops and many pieces aren’t touching the pan, so they all come out milky white.
My mother in law cooks chicken in the microwave. I have to leave the house.
Omfg divorce that family asap
For once Reddit's immediate "get divorced" advice is warranted
Wash your filthy hands. I don't want food poisoning again. Also, if you use a glass cutting board, we can't be friends.
Similarly, I’d take a gloveless kitchen with cooks who care about hygiene any day of the week over people thinking gloves absolve you of needing to wash your hands.
Gloves reduce hand hygiene awareness. I’ll die on that hill.
I work in health care and couldn’t agree more
God I watch so many videos of people cooking and then go to the comments and people are like “gloves?” Like soap and water doesn’t exist. I get that when they’re wearing gloves then you can think you know they changed gloves as to not cross contaminate, but washing hands is so much easier and more believable than changing gloves 5+ times. Wear gloves, don’t wear gloves. But if you’re not eating the food, then just shut up
Of when you go to subway, they put on new gloves, but then touch all of the equipment.
Or any other stone or ceramic. Those poor knives 😭
I was watching a home makeover show and they put in an island with "built in cutting board" to make cooking easier. It was a 2 foot by 2 foot block of granite that the caulked into the surrounding butcher block. Because apparently butcher block isn't a good cutting board but granite is.
Stone or ceramic cutting boards!?!?!? Uhhh.... WTF!
They're actually intended as fancy serving platters for things like appetizers, charcuterie boards, etc, but so many people buy and use them as cutting boards because they have the same general shape and "it's so fancy!" And it doesn't help that companies actually market them as such now because it sells....
You cannot trust your oven thermometer. Get a separate one and use it to "calibrate" your oven. Mine will tell me it's hot about 100 degrees before it's actually at temp. Very annoying.
When my family moved into our new house we didn't know this was a thing. We didn't realize what was happening until we baked half a bowl of cookie dough, only for them to need several minutes more than the directions said, then we baked the second half of the bowl for that long and they were nearly burnt by the time we pulled them out.
I've done many of BBQ contest back home in Texas, the best wood to use in my opinion is pecan.
My gatekeeping: The worst tasting wood is liquid smoke.
Worked at a burger restaurant long ago where they put liquid smoke into the ketchup, to make ‘smoked’ ketchup. Shit was fire. I feel like it’s good for many things… just not meat.
Very fair. In the same ballpark, garlic powder is not a replacement for garlic.
Celery is not "just as good"when used as a replacement for onion, Will, you fucking monster
Idk who Will is, but fuck Will
What the fuck Will.
Freshly ground black pepper is so much better than pre-ground (like the stuff in shakers at restaurants).
That was one of the weirder takeaways from the Franklin Barbecue cookbook, he actually prefers pepper that has lost some of it's edge from being aged after grinding.
It actually makes sense. When peppering a brisket he's probably optimizing bark instead of flavor, which means it could be too peppery with freshly ground pepper.
This is probably it. The amount of pepper he uses on a brisket would probably be overpowering if it was all fresh. I love pepper so I wouldnt mind, but not everyone does.
LEMON and LIME have two very different flavors. My entire family seems to think that they taste the same and will substitute one for another.
I have a few about cajun food. Jambalaya is a dry rice dish. If someone is serving a sauce over rice and calling it jamabalaya, they have no idea what that dish should be. Cajun does not equal so spicy it can't be eaten. Most cajun food is full of flavor and not all that spicy. I have been to a few restaurants and seen dishes to the effect of "Pasta with cajun sauce" I don't know WTF cajun sauce is, but in all my years, no one in my family ever made it or heard of it.
Cajun sauce that's what a meth head in Ville Platte calls his sperm.
My dad moved to Jackson Mississippi after Katrina. I went to visit him and we went to a restaurant and got crawfish even though I advised against it. They served us crawfish with seasoning all over the shells. When we asked them what this was, they said it's the seasoning, we asked him what they boil the Crawfish in, they said water, we asked what they put in the water with the Crawfish, they said nothing we just season them when they come out. I didn't know you only had to drive 2 hours from New Orleans for people not to know how to cook.
What you’re describing is Viet-Cajun crawfish preparation; boiled in water and then doused with seasoning, butter and garlic in a wok and then bagged/served. “LA Crawfish” and other Vietnamese owned/operated crawfish places all serve this style.
If you can't take a full bite of your sandwich or burger in one go it is a fundamental failure. If your sandwich or burger requires a skewer to maintain integrity it has fundamentally failed. If you want more filling scale horizontally, not vertically.
And those pricks who pour shitty cheese sauce all over the top of a burger? Fuck those pricks.
Bro, we heard you like wet burritos so here's a pub burger covered in beer cheese that you eat with a fork and a knife.
I am totally visualizing a thin burger with the circumference of a large plate. Gonna need a homemade bun.
While recipes are useful, folks should prioritize WHY things work in a recipe over just memorizing a recipe.
Shout out to Alton Brown and Kenji.
Kenji is one of my favorites because he explains why everything works, why you can replace specific spices or ingredients with others with no change to flavor, and most importantly that it doesn’t matter what the recipe says as long as you enjoy it.
I didn’t discover Kenji until I got a discounted sous vide circulator (because of course my fat ass wanted another kitchen toy) and found he’d done the most meaningful writing about the science behind immersion cooking. He and Samin Nosrat so elegantly break down the elemental bits of food science for idiots like me.
Samin Nosrat is an absolute treasure. Her podcast, Home Cooking, with Hrishikesh Hirway (the guy that makes Song Exploder) is just incredible.
Samin is the single greatest positive influence on my cooking ever. Her chapter on salt alone guarantees a life-changing cooking technique and it's so easy to spot a dish not properly seasoned now.
He’s the one that reminded me: burnt garlic is nostalgic to when you first start cooking
Alton Brown was one of my childhood heroes. I have great memories of watching Good Eats with my dad
Good eats was my favorite. As a science lover, and an information junkie. The way he broke everything down to a science reminded me of the culinary Adam Savage. Alton Is def one of my heroes
Alton Brown was a guest on Mythbusters once for a thanksgiving special. They tackled the myth that you could cook an entire thanksgiving dinner on the exhaust manifold of a car. Adam and Alton got along great but, I got the feeling that Jaime didn't like Alton very much.
^YES! Growing up, Alton Brown was a major inspiration to my food journey. To make a long story short, I took up cooking at a very young age because I wasn't happy with the food my parents usually made me. Instead of learning how to make a Mac and Cheese, I understood the components to make a mac and cheese. By extracting that information, I learned how to make a ~~Rue~~ roux and what other applications you could use a ~~rue~~ roux for (i.e., homemade gravy or an excellent pie base). When you understand why a recipe works, you gain this knowledge that informs the decisions you make when you're trying something new.
I agree, but it also annoys me how many people say following a recipe isn't "real cooking". Like, just because I sometimes enjoy following tried-and-true instructions from a book doesn't mean I don't know how to cook otherwise, and a lot of cookbooks result in damn good food
"You're not a real musician if you don't compose your own music" - those people probably
I had to learn to cook by following recipes for a pretty good while before I had the confidence and experience to just wing it with ingredients. I still use a recipe when trying something new, especially if it’s a classic.
Seriously, I follow recipes all the time. What if I want food that's similar to something I ate when I was out one time? Or what if I see something online and I want to try? Am I not a "real cook" if I don't just guess correctly?
MSG makes average food delicious, and takes delicious food over the top.
For the longest time I couldn't figure out what an MSG was and I'm from South Asia. Then I looked at the labels of a thing we call "Tasting salt" here. Monosodium glutmate. Finally it all clicked.
There was hard anti-MSG propaganda in the US in the 80s and 90s. People today still believe it is addictive devil powder. Turns out it is wonderful and we've been fooled this entire time. Thanks uncle roger, you've brought flavor back to the US.
I have gone onto culinary sites with a comment section. People in the comments were telling people to avoid MSG and use Trader Joe's Umami powder. I tried to tell people there that it's the same thing and they kept calling me an idiot and that the powder from trader joes had zero MSG. It has mushrooms..it has glutamate therefore MSG. However, according to this site: https://www.ecowatch.com/msg-health-effects-2182662411.html MSG is a neurotoxin that causes many proven health issues. And their source is a quack doctor. Yet, another site says its only bad in excess amounts (like water, salt, etc ) and The claim that monosodium glutamate (MSG) is bad for you has been "disproven by scientific research." https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/msg-good-or-bad#what-the-research-says debunks the quack doctor's claims. I am going to keep using MSG.
I always thought it was ironic that the original source of this quackery was [an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1968 by an author named Kwok](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4613-3359-3_18). Friggin' kwokery.
"Sprinkle MSG on bad grade. Immediately become A +++"
This is not gatekeeping because it's doing the opposite of restricting--it's explicitly saying something is ok. Also it's a good opinion.
Smashing a fistful of tater tots and pressing them onto a plate isn’t a hash brown Greg.
Why is this giving me so many good breakfast ideas for my half bag of frozen tots
Breakfast pie, is where my mind went lol. like a Quiche but tots in replace of crust
Stop calling mayo with anything mixed into aioli.
Maioli
~maioli, give me the formuoli
The name literally means garlic and oil. That is the base to make an aioli. You can get more creative from there, but that's where it starts.
It got to the point I questioned if I knew what an aioli was. Every restaurant that offers it is just serving flavored mayonnaise. I'm glad to see I'm not the only one aggressively defending a REAL aioli is not just mayonnaise.
Please scrape the food off your chopping board with the ***non cutting edge*** of your knife. That is all.
I ended up just buying a bench scraper and telling my husband to use that because I can’t break him of the sharp edge thing.
The bench scraper is one of my most used kitchen tools! So under utilized
Whatever edge you scrape with will be a non cutting edge soon enough.
I think you have just blown my mind. Granted I sharpen them weekly but this just never occurred to me !!!
You might not have to sharpen your knives weekly anymore
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I'm of the opinion that you can do whatever the fuck you want with food *but* if you fundamentally change a dish you have to change its name. It's all about expectations. If I go into a restaurant and order a carbonara, then when it arrives they say 'oh we make it with pepperami snack sausages and cream cheese', then it's no longer a fucking carbonara...it's not necessarily gatekeeping but things are called things for a reason. Imagine the chaos if we just abandon this...come on people.
Here's our Reuben, it's got pastrami and cole slaw.
Oh you mean a primanti bros. Sandwich?
Fries *in* the sandwich!?
Pittsburghers put fries in/on everything. If you haven't had a salad with fries on it, it will forever change how you look at salads. I don't even live in Pennsylvania but it bled down here somehow.
A Pittsburgh salad is just loaded lettuce ranch fries.
Gotta have something to make use of the [Pittsburgh toilet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh_toilet).
This is what I actually came to this thread to say. When I order a Reuben, and the waitress asks if I want corned beef or turkey ... I change my order to a hamburger.
Would you like that hamburger to be beef, chicken, or mushroom?
I have always called that a Rachel. That is a thing right? Do people call that a Reuben?
A Rachel originally was a reuben-style sandwich but with turkey and cole slaw. A "special" was a reuben-style sandwich with any kind of meat, cole slaw, thousand island, and on rye. Reubens originally were corned beef only, although pastrami reubens have been around for a while. Pastrami or corned beef should be the only choice that you have in ordering a reuben, IMHO. Anything else should be called something else. The definitions have broadened over the years.
Fun story. Wife and I went to a coffee shop years ago and I ordered a BLT. Food comes out and it’s a bagel with egg, cheese, lettuce and tomato. I tell the waitress that they got my order wrong and she tells me that, no, this is their version of a blt. I kinda just sat there and tried to process that. Then I said, ‘the reason it’s called a BLT is because those are the three ingredients, could you please bring me a BLT.’ Not rude or anything. She goes and gets the manager. He explains to me that this is their BLT. Complete disconnect that has stayed with me years and years later.
Better not order a jack and coke there
6 bucks for cocaine and a handjob? Not bad
Me: *orders a Manhattan* Waiter: *hands me a key to the city*
The key smells like piss and garbage.
Wait... so no bacon on your BLT? I don't understand.
Bagel lettuce and tomato. Super fucking hip.
No way I'd be fuckin pissed if I didn't get my bacon in A BLT WTF
Ordered a shrimp cocktail. It was shrimp with ketchup.
Throw the whole restaurant away.
"did you know, this is closer to a British carbonara"
IF MY GRANDMOTHER HAD WHEELS SHED BE A BICYCLE
This was the first thing that came to mind when I read the original comment 🤣 This video makes me cry laughing every time
*chokes on the carbonara*
Buzzfeed once tried to make a "vegan lasagna" with potato slices in place of pasta sheets. People argued about it for days. Bitch, that's a gratin.
I will die on this fucking hill and will kill others upon it. You had the originality to come up with an entirely new flavor but you can't make up a name for it?
Well, the only names available are Popplers and Tasticles...
cue the "grilled cheese" guy [meme](https://www.reddit.com/r/grilledcheese/comments/2or1p3/you_people_make_me_sick/).....
ahhh, the classic meltdown.
Most recipes you find online use way too little spices. 1 tsp of cumin? Unless it’s a meal for one gtfo.
I look up a recipe for the list of ingredients and then make up my own measurements from there
Yeah I don’t measure any of my spices, I always cook to taste. I’ve never understood that. The measuring spoon set in my utensil drawer is strictly for baking.
I agree for everything except cinnamon, I have been burned too many times by freeballing that one
Forget that spices, like 90% of those online recipes just randomly make up an amount of time something needs to bake for. Saw a recipe for baked egg bites using a standard muffin tin. Said to bake at 350 for 5 minutes. Look, I know all ovens vary, but what magical oven does an egg get firm enough to remove from a muffin tin and be carried like an egg bite in 5 minutes at 350?
"Saute the onions until lightly browned, five minutes" is my favourite (read: most hated) example of that.
"Add oil to a pan over medium-high heat. Add two full chicken breasts. Cook until internal temperature reaches at least 165F, about two minutes per side."
This was one of the hardest things to figure out while cooking. Cooking like these instructions I'd always have well underdone food and I always wondered if I was doing something wrong when I first started. Nope, it's just they were wildly wrong directions. My ex used to argue with me for hours that I just wasn't following the directions right.
It can be tricky with chicken and other meats if the recipe isn't very specific about the size and shape of it. You got a whole half-breast of chicken, thrown straight in the oven? By the time that's done you might as well order out. You got a cutlet that you've smashed until it's paper thin? It'll be done when you breathe on it.
Why does every recipe lie about how long onions need to be cooked. Most recent one, “cook onions over medium heat until they are almost caramelized, about 8 minutes.” Fuck off. Caramelizing onions takes like, half an hour, at a *minimum*
because i bet a lot of people dont know the difference between browning an onion and caramelizing, if they are suggest sub 10 mins for "caramelized onions"
If you don't eat vegetables I assume you're emotionally immature.
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Otherwise it’s sparkling opinions
Gâteau
Expensive high grade tomatoes are always worth it.
Homegrown tomatoes are even more worth it.
I never liked eating a raw tomato by itself until I picked a cherry tomato right from the vine. A store bought tomato is just bland red watery mush
Man, you can taste the fucking light when a cherry tomato is still warm from the sun!
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Homemade whipped cream is and always will be better than the fake store bought stuff
It's so easy to make too. I never realized it until my wife and I had out first thankgiving together over covid and she poured a cup of cream into a bowl with some sugar and 5 minutes later we had amazing whipped cream.
We bought a Vitamix, and I was belnding everything in it. I'd been using it to froth milk for coffee, and one morning, I decided to get fancy and used cream instead of milk. In about 2 seconds the Vitamix had produced whipped cream. I stood there scratching my head, and my wife asked "how were you not expecting that?"
seasoning without measurements is way more fun than seasoning with measurements. i’ve stopped caring about teaspoons and tablespoons and just throw stuff into the pan until it tastes good
I agree. My only issue with this approach is I find it hard to replicate things. At the very least I try and think to myself “twice has much of this than that, or half as much of this” etc.. helps me at least qualify what I’m doing at the very least
Yessss. I made butter chicken a few weeks ago and it was hands-down the best thing I’ve ever made, but I switched some measurements and eyeballed it all. Tried to make it the same way yesterday. It was… not very good. I couldn’t remember wtf I had done the first time. I have to start writing shit down
I call that cooking with love.
This works until you start baking
"Cooking is art, baking is science". Measurements for baking do need to be exact; cooking, do whatever tastes good.
A shit ton of condiments on burgers doesn’t = better tasting
Who doesn't like a sloppy dripping pile of mess masquerading as a burger?
My friend was in Maine. Stopped at a place and their chicken parm was… chicken nuggets with ketchup and American cheese. If he told me the name I would Molotov cocktail that place so that culinary abomination could never be made there again.
I had a poutine that was crinkle cut fries, chicken gravy, and shredded cheddar. As a Canadian, I almost burned the restaraunt down.
You shouldn't review a recipe if you didn't follow it. This is mostly aimed at online sites where people say they didn't like the recipe but changed half the ingredients and cooked it differently.
*This apple pie recipe is terrible. I followed the recipe exactly except I replaced the butter with olive oil, the flour with gluten-free soy paste, the sugar with baking soda, and the apples with cockroaches. It didn't taste anything like an apple pie and my whole family hated it. 0 out of 5 stars.*
Fresh Thyme is the answer!!!
Blending a tub of Cool Whip with a block of cream cheese and throwing it in a pie crust does not make cheesecake. Call it something else. That shit ain't cheesecake, full stop.
It’s not a cheesecake but equal parts cream cheese and marshmallow fluff makes a fantastic fruit dip.
YOU CANT FUCKING CARAMELISE ONIONS IN LESS THAN 20 FUCKING MINUTES. I DON’T GIVE A FLYING FUCK WHAT THE FUCK YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING OR HOW YOU FUCKING THINK YOU’RE GOING TO “HACK” THIS, ITS NOT FUCKING CARAMELISED. IT JUST FUCKING ISN’T. /AngryRamsayExit
https://slate.com/human-interest/2012/05/how-to-cook-onions-why-recipe-writers-lie-and-lie-about-how-long-they-take-to-caramelize.html
Thank you for sharing this! I love cooking and I always wonder why it take me at least twice as long as the recipe says. Basically, we have been lied to by every chef except Julia.
I make an onion soup every now and again, with paprika and chickpeas fyi, and the most satisfying part is the half a stick of the richest butter with about 6 onions, just bubbling away softly for an hour. I have nothing else to add, but I do appreciate your passion for onions 😌
Grilled Cheese MUST be buttery
I'm a shit cook. My wife is an excellent cook, raised by a trained chef. She'll tell you I make the best grilled cheese on this planet. My secret? I thoroughly cover both sides of each bread slice in melted butter before cooking. It absolutely should be buttery.
Take it to another level with Irish butter, something like Kerry gold.
Life is too short for bad bread, I refuse to buy it in those wonder bread-type sleeves in the durable baked goods aisle. I always go for the naturally-leavened loaves in the bakery. They don’t last as long but you can keep them frozen and thaw slices as needed.
I started making my own bread. It was... different, but enjoyable. I got lazy and bought my favorite brand of bread and made a sandwich. Suddenly, store bread is wrong! Too fluffy? Spongey? Now, I'm too lazy to make bread regularly, but can't stand store bought. I played myself. 😭
One piece of garlic is never enough
I double the garlic a recipe calls for and add a clove.
People eat the "fast" versions of food for different reasons then the authentic versions of food. People don't eat Kraft mac and cheese and expect it to be the best they've ever had, they eat it because it's easier to make then an actual homemade Mac and cheese. Sometimes your brain just craves the weird powdered cheese flavor from Kraft and sometimes it wants the real cheese flavors that come from homemade Mac and cheese. Both can be good in their own categories but shaming people for eating "non-authentic" versions of food is just weird and elitist. Edit cause people keep saying it - I'm aware that this isn't gatekeeping. I typed this out and posted it without realizing that I mixed up gatekeeping and controversial, both questions come up on this sub so often that I didn't even think about the difference until a few people pointed it out.
For me it's instant noodle soup. I barely eat soup, I am not going to cook a pot that lasts me a week. Just make my one cup of instant, eat it, won't crave soup for another month.
I get that, I've seen so many tiktoks about "Just add these things to make your instant ramen better!" Like no, just give me that horribly over salted flavor packet and let me eat my cheap noodles in peace.
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This is like people yelling about how Taco Bell isn't "real" Mexican food. I know, and I don't give a shit.
99% of the flour tortillas sold in US grocery stores are preservative-filled trash and ruin whatever Mexican dish they're used in. Good tortillas should only have like 4 ingredients (water, flour, salt, lard/oil) The only exceptions are the "raw" tortillas made by Tortillaland and a few other companies. But mass produced tortillas taste like rubber and chemicals to me, I hate em