What are the best practices you’ve learned to save time or make a meal better.
Ok I might get downvoted to oblivion but I use MSG. It enhances the flavors so much that I have stopped going to restaurants.
Edit- I did my research and found no credible source that says MSG is harmful.
Edit2- If you go to a restaurant or order KFC chances are they use MSG as well
Anti-MSG propaganda actually comes from Asian racism, and was born out of the idea that Chinese food with its MSG was causing headaches and other health effects that were entirely made up. MSG is perfectly fine for you, and it makes a ton of things even tastier. I use it all the time in home cooking.
There is nothing wrong with MSG. It being bad for you is made up by racists.
Uncle Roger agree with you!
Hahaha true
- Nothing goes on a plate without being tasted
- If it’s too sour, add sugar
- if it’s sweet and you haven’t added acid, add a splash of vinegar.
- if it’s too hot, add fat
- if you burn it, throw it out.
- IF you taste it early, it should taste weak. If it’s fantastic when when it starts to simmer, it’ll be too harsh once it’s reduced.
- Taste it and it tastes empty or boring? Smell it. Smell all your herbs/spices on hand, which ever one it smells the closest to, add a healthy pinch and salt if it doesn’t taste salty already.
- know your oils and use the right ones. Olive oil can handle some heat and is great for savory, grapeseed is almost flavorless. Canola has a distinct flavor that doesn’t go with everything.
- season your meat before you cook it.
Only thing I’d add is that, on 8, learn what rancid oil smells like. Most people keep things like olive oil in poor conditions (that’s without us even getting into quality of oil, or how people buy FAR MORE oil than they’ll reasonably be able to use), and the oil goes bad far faster than they think it will.
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Butter makes everything better
This is why restaurant food tastes so good. Fat is flavor. But beware, restaurants don’t give a shit about your cholesterol. They want you to have good food that you want to come back for. They’ll give you butter and grease all day long. You can cook tasty food at home that won’t clog your heart, but it takes a lot to meet the flavor standards of bacon or butter using poultry or vegetable oil. The trick is moderation. Not every meal needs to be a greasy bacon cheeseburger, but you don’t have to completely boycott that either.
When I have to use parchment paper, I crumple the paper ip into a little ball first, then press it out flat into the cooking vessel (sheet pan or loaf pan or whatnot) and it lays flatter/conforms to the pan better without rolling up all over the place rather than trying to just use a pristine sheet of parchment. It really works great.
THANK YOU! I was baking cookies last night and struggled through placing the dough while trying to keep the sheet from rolling up. I will do this in the future!
LPT - go buy a box of half-size sheets from a restaurant supply store. Webstaurant was my go to until they sent their shipping prices into the stratosphere. I buy 1000 sheets at a time and store it with the sheet pans (the box is only a couple inches tall) and it lasts forever. Costs about $50-60 a box iirc which is way cheaper than buying in rolls.
This is a great idea. Alternatively you can buy silicone mats online for cheap that always sit flat too and work just as well.
Don’t be afraid of spices. Use more than you think is necessary. Onion and garlic can make a meal 100x better.
Agree. Especially the onion 🧅
Not good advice with certain hot peppers.
To each their own
Use a meat thermometer! All your meat will come out perfect, without being under or over cooked.
Imo this is the single most important tip that made me cook better. Get one of the instant-read ones, they are worth the money.
Also, flatten your chicken so it cooks evenly.
Highly recommend a meat thermometer to everyone. Great recommendation.
Thermoworks.
Biggest hack? Realizing that humans have been cooking for millennia, and that it’s in the best interest of big business to convince you that it’s difficult/expensive/extremely complicated.
You don’t NEED the fancy equipment every company out there is trying to sell you.
Not everything needs to be gorgeous on the plate, or a whole production to make.
The poorest people in the world cook delicious food every day.
For instance, you don’t need NEED a +$150 Japanese chef knife to cook at home. What you need is something that can hold an edge through general maintenance, a whet stone, a kitchen towel to dry off your blade immediately after you hand wash it, and a little bit of patience.
IKEA sells some surprisingly great single construction (steel blade, steel handle) knives, and their single body chef knife is like $25. Just get an honing rod for use before you start slicing, and a whet stone for periodic sharpening (there’s TONS of YouTube videos of all the different ways of sharpening your knife), and remember to wash and hand-dry after you’re finished. My chef knife cost me barely anything, and I’ve used it for years and years, and it still slices through a tomato without a problem. Also, I only cook for myself, so I can absolutely 100% guarantee my whet stone will “outlive” me.
That being said, a mandoline can save a lot of time, and a kevlar glove paired with that will save a lot of fingers.
Not exactly a mandoline, but I used to work at a place with a cheese slicer named “Old Nubby.” It had blooded the entire team at least once.
Did they ever learn to use protection?
Legend has it the blood was never cleaned off either
By far my favorite is to have a squirt bottle of water next to my stove. It’s great to have throughout the cooking process, especially if you’ve moved on from Teflon bullshit and are using a pan you pre-heat. To start, you put the pan on the heat and squirt a little water in it. When the water evaporates, the pan is usually in the 350F-400F range. Then when the pan is dry and heated a little more, you can squirt a few more drops in to see if the Leidenfrost effect has taken, uhhh, effect. The way you tell is that the water just dances around on the pan instead of behaving like water normally does, and it’s how you know your food won’t stick, it is at this point that you add the oil.
Moving on to the actual cooking, let’s say you’ve thrown some chicken thighs in the pan and you’ve built up a lot of fond (the brown bits that form in the bottom of the pan) and the chicken is almost done, but you’re not planning on making a sauce. Deglaze the pan with little squirts of water targeted directly at the fond and rub the chicken thighs over the area where the water is deglazing and suddenly that fond is sticking to your chicken thighs, resulting in a better crust and a cleaner pan.
Speaking of cleaner pan, once you’re done cooking and plating and you have a hot dirty pan, squirt enough water in to cover the bottom of the pan and then go eat. When you come back to the kitchen to clean up, the water will have broken down the shit on the bottom of the pan and will steam the sides of the pan, so the pan will wipe clean as easy if all you did was fry an egg.
Finally, I stopped putting milk (of any variety) in my coffee, but I wanna be able to drink my coffee right away and it’s too hot when it’s made fresh, but I’ve got a bottle full of room temperature water (all the filtered water in my house comes out ice cold) sitting right there so I can cool it down that way (I brew my coffee pretty strong so watering it down isn’t a big deal).
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The problem with squirting the oil into the pan as it heats is that the metal of the pan heats up a lot slower than the oil so you will burn the oil before your pan is up to temp. Also, pre heating pans will not harm them in any way at all. It sounds like you’re applying my comment to Teflon coated pans, which I excluded at the beginning of my comment.
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I definitely didn’t say to leave the pan on the hob for 20-30 minutes, it takes about 5 minutes. But if putting an empty pot or pan on the heat for 20-30 minutes ruins anything at all on your pans, you need better pans. Every single pan in my kitchen, and I have some budget ones, would just be too hot to handle for a while. On the oil handling the heat, your way puts more heat into the oil than my way and you are way more likely to burn your oil.
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on the pan test, I just run a bit of water onto my hand and flick droplets off my fingers. My reason is that I absolutely LOATHE having anything plastic near the stove. I’ve had far more mishaps involving errant plastic containers than any other.
Besides, If my hand bacteria can make it into the water and survive a 300+ degree pan, it deserves to outlive all of us.
I’ll echo the other comment about deglazing with other flavorful juices to make a better pan sauce (even if it’s not going to be a sauce), since I just prefer it that way. BUT, a splash of water into a pan sauce that’s simmered for too long WILL restore its glossiness and re-thin it.
Very interesting, ty 4 sharing! Never heard of this but will definitely give it a try. I’ve got a spare unused squirtbottle already too
Bake bacon on cookie sheets at 375 for about 20 minutes. You can make a ton of bacon very quickly, with almost no mess, and all the bacon is perfectly flat. We have a double oven and we can make about 4 pounds of bacon in about 30 minutes this way. :)
And then save the bacon grease in a jar to add to gravys! I add a tablespoon or so to my sausage gravy for biscuits and gravy and it is freaking delicious. Can also use it to grease a cast iron pan before making a pizzookie for a little extra flavor.
Does this not splatter all throughout the oven?
No, it does not splatter throughout the oven.
Yes and no. A substantial amount of grease will be aerosolized and condense on the interior of your oven when it cools. It’s nasty looking and the next three cakes you bake will taste slightly of bacon. You can decide whether that’s a bug or a feature.
If I could figure out how to make my electric smoker get to 375F I would only do bacon outside in the smoker as I essentially have to clean the over every time I do bacon in it. And, yes, you can smoke bacon. It’s not bad, but it also is a bit more like jerky than the crispy bacon I like. Again - bug/feature territory.
I just throw bacon on the barbecue at the same time as my burgers. It takes almost the same amount of time to cook, and it’s super crispy - just how I like it.
I do pretty much the same but at a lower temp (~350F) so it doesn’t hit the smoke point. I also prefer my bacon a bit floppy instead of crispy.
You don’t need to slave over a stove for 3 hours to get caramelized onion. Here’s what you do. After slicing the onion, get the pan up to a medium heat with a splash of oil. Toss in the onions and add a bit of salt to make them sweat. Once they start to dry out, go golden at the edges, and even stick to the pan a bit, add a splash of water. You do have to stir continuously for this method as well, but it takes much less time. Do this process a few times where you add water, cook it until its dry, another splash of water, cook it until it dries out again, etc. Sometimes I’ll even alternate in a splash of white wine for fun. You should have beautiful caramelized onions in 30 min with this method.
You can also add a pinch of baking soda greatly speed up the process
Alternately, a mandolin, slow cooker, and an ice cube tray are amazing.
Mando up a 5lb bag of onions, toss in the slow cooker, & 6 hours later you have the most delectable flavors.
I usually take half the onions and make French onion soup, and the rest into the ice box. They thaw perfect in the fridge, or a sauté pan.
deglazing. it’s when you use an acid to pull all the glaze off the bottom of a pan. it flavors the dish and makes cleaning your pan easier.
rice vinegar and red or white wines are favorites
I also like to freeze leftover stock into an ice cube tray for deglazing, when I just need a little but and not have to open a whole new carton.
If you can take 1 or 2 cubes (or how many you need) out before cooking so they’re melted before, great, but I’ve also had success just throwing the frozen cubes directly into the pan in a pinch.
Grilled cheese hack: assemble the sandwich open-faced on a baking sheet and place under the broiler for a few minutes until the cheese is melted and bubbling and slightly browned, then close it up and cook it like normal in a covered skillet on medium heat with butter. The cheese will be completely melted and (more importantly) it will stay melted while you’re actually eating the sandwich, and the browning on the cheese adds a big flavor component.
I used to make them the normal way just in a skillet, and even if the cheese was just barely melted it would cool off and re-solidify before I started eating it. And often I would burn the crust just trying to get the cheese melted.
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I worship at the altar of Alton Brown, but I almost think he was kidding with that video. So much extra work just to melt the cheese.
It was a bit of a high effort shitpost. But that doesn’t mean we can’t learn anything from it. I’m definitely not pulling out a grill and full chimney of charcoal just to make literally grilled cheeses but fresh shredded cheese blends with spices as the filling? Hell yeah! Premelt the cheese so it gets bubbly and crispy? Do it under a broiler! Use something other than Wonderbread? Yes please!
I do love high effort shitposts. They have an oddly profound beauty to them
Alternate grilled cheese hack. Heat the skillet on medium till the skillet is hot. Really wait a couple minutes till it has come up to temperature. Melt a pat of butter on the skillet - don’t tear up you bread trying to spread butter on it. Cook the sandwich for one minute in the butter, move it to the side then melt another pat of butter in the empty space. Flip and cook the other side of the sandwich in the new butter. One min+ a little on this side.
Bonus look up inside out grilled cheese sandwiches and do them this way.
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Patience. Good food doesn’t have to take a long time, but you need to give each step the respect it deserves, sometimes it will take a little longer. Mise en place is an important step, and so is reading the entire recipe thru before beginning. Also read recipes, even if you never intend to cook them, because you’ll discover new techniques and combinations that might elevate an old favourite.
To get a good sear on a steak in a pan, the pan doesn’t have to be super hot, you just have to make sure the contact surfaces are as dry as possible.
If your stew tastes like it’s missing something, it’s bay leaf.
Don’t buy hyperspecialized tools for cooking if you can use more generalized tool for the task with the same amount of effort. You can do a lot with a good chef’s knife.
Cut through greasiness with a bit of acid.
Adding a little bit of sugar, but not so much you can taste the sweetness, to otherwise salty dishes will mellow out and enhance the flavor of the dish.
Can you give more details on searing the steak? I get a good sear in some spots, usually on the rim of the steak. The middle turns out greyish-brown sometimes.
Sure. First, cast iron pan is a must, since it has a high heat capacity because of its weight.
Your issue is the uneven distribution of heat, so use enough oil is important, at least as much to cover the bottom of the pan evenly.
Second thing is salt, if you salt it too early, it’s going to absorb the water from the meat and create wet spots, which would be steamed instead of seared. Dryness is the key here, you either want to salt the steak immediately before adding it to the shimmering oil, or you can salt it and leave it uncovered in the fridge for a couple of hours for the it to dry off.
Sorry for the off topic, but do I understand correctly that this account is being used by multiple people on Margot Robbie’s team to post and comment, and ultimately attract attention for the Barbie movie? If I have that right, that’s a really great marketing strategy that I haven’t seen before. It would be cool if you could find a way to let us know how it works out.
How can you be so sure of anything you read on the Internet?
What do you think the point I’m trying to make is here?
How can you be so sure of anything you read on the Internet?
I can’t be, which is why I was asking.
What do you think the point I’m trying to make is here?
I scanned through your profile, comments, and posts. The profile itself says it’s staffed by a team to market the movie. You made a whole bunch of posts without commenting on them initially, so I assume it was to get conversation going. Some of the comments reference the movie, but most are like the one above that seem to be good faith attempts to answer questions.
So I don’t know, but there’s at least an implication that the account is designed to get people talking, and maybe notice the account name, getting some attention for her work. The other leading option would be that you have no association with Margot Robbie at all and are just screwing with people.
But that’s all just me reading and guessing. You’re the one who can actually answer: what is the point you’re trying to make?
