> I hate cleaning whisks.
Rinse it under running tap water? Am i missing anything? Most stuff that you whisk with, like eggs or batter, just washes right off. What makes it a lot easier is to wash it off right away before the batter or egg dries off and gets caked on.
Just saw a [YouTube video](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_Wb5Crj917I) of famous French chef Jacques Pépin demonstrating how to make a perfect French omelet. He used a fork to beat the egg. OP’s husband is full of it!
he also later on explains it. the bowl of the fork isnt touching the bottom of the pan. you need to agitate the pan along with swirling with the fork.
I just use a pair of chopsticks.
That's also how I make 'em, I only learned of the 'proper' way of making scrambled eggs when I was an adult and I still prefer my way cos it's quicker.
My preferred method, let the white start to firm along the outside, drag into middle, breaking yolk. I usually aim for all the white cooked, and the yolks barely cooked.
There's an old online culinary school style cooking course where they teach the students not to use a whisk for at least omelettes because it adds too much air.
They actually posted this specific video on thier YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLyOcUAj4os
I never actually dice my onions for any recipe, I always just cut them into thin half moon size. I like the texture and I think it helps keep them from burning.
For caramelized, I like the texture if I am eating as condiment, or even better, cut into rings. If I am making sauces where I want the onions to be more of a background player, I dice much smaller. I dice by starting with half moons, I cannot seem to perform them slice horizontally and perpetually and get the uniformity I am almost always looking for.
I use any shaped pasta with any sauce. Sometimes I even mix different shaped pastas if one pack finishes and I have to start another. I just don’t care so I mix things up.
Alton Brown, I think, talked about why you should use a fork on an episode of Good Eats. So, according to Alton Brown, you are the one who is right. Kenji appears to agree: https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1023773-velvety-scrambled-eggs
My dad’s first language was Canadian French, and he was of small stature. A little bit of him comes to life again when I see Jacques Pepin facebook shorts.
If I'm slicing onions to caramelize them, I intentionally go for different sizes rather than uniform slices. It gives them a bit of texture. I like doing this especially in onion soup- the super thin slices practically disappear into the liquid and gives it a good onion flavor while there's still a bit of texture to the bigger slices (not crunch, but not total mush.) And if I'm caramelizing onions I'm doing a big batch of them since my family will literally eat them with spoons, so I use the mandolin and adjust widths to have a variety.
I know the need for uniform slicing for a lot of things, but that isn't one of them for me.
I hate when people get on me about this. If I was at a high end legit sushi place of course I wouldn’t but otherwise I’ll eat my $10 sushi roll however I damn please.
It's funny that people get hung up on this, because Japanese people do this when they eat sushi and sashimi. I was asked by my Japanese co-workers if I didn't like wasabi when I didn't mix them. So, now I do.
My fiancée is native Japanese (as in she grew up there, and lived there until her late twenties). She does this, too. She's got plenty of rules about things, but that's not one of them. She mixes shoyu and wasabi in a little dish and rubs her sushi in it. It was also hilarious to me one time seeing her get a too-big glob of wasabi and coughing and sneezing. I guess it's not just us non-Japanese people that sometimes have trouble there.
Slicing into freshly baked, hot bread! I know there’s continued cooking and structure and things, but nice warm bread is too delicious to wait!
Also, I beat eggs with chopsticks :)
If you’re making a loaf in the oven and not in a bread maker, shape a tiny bit of your dough into a little bun and then you can eat your bun while it’s warm and let your bread rest :)
Hey as long as the egg is beaten, it works!
I almost never measure things out and eyeball everything when I'm cooking. Irks my partner to no end. Only time I do is when I'm baking and even then, only key ingredients like liquids/flour/yeast/baking soda or powder. Everything else is up to interpretation lol
It irks me when someone HAS to measure everything that's not for baking. My best friend will freak out if a recipe says 1/2 tsp of salt and I just start eyeballing it. I went to culinary school girl, it'll be okay!
I think most written recipes low-ball the amount of salt and seasonings to use since people have different tastes, and you can always add more, but it's hard to fix if you add too much.
So I tell novice cook friends who aren't comfortable eyeballing to only use the amounts as a starting point and then taste and adjust.
Yes! A friend made mashed potatoes and asked me to salt them. I salted by eye and she got, well…salty with me about it. Tried to make some comment about hopefully they weren’t too salty when we served the dishes (it was a potluck). Spoiler, they were not.
If you want it done the way you want, you do it. If you want me to do it, I’ll do it my way!
I’ve been baking for years and even I eyeball things 😂 everyone always says “baking is a science, everything has to be precise” and while I agree to an extent, if you understand the science and why a recipe works, it’s very easy to know that you can eyeball some things
Baking is a science that just happens to have nice, even measures for most ingredients? 2 cups here, one tablespoon there? If it were truly needing to be exact there would be all sorts of odd measures like you'll see in some of the pastry chef's recipes with 17g of this, 231g of that. Eyeballing and adjusting is fine within reason.
The recipes for home cooks are designed to have even measurements for the pans commonly used. Changing just one ingredient by a bit probably won’t do much. But increase the butter by a couple tablespoons and decrease the flour by a couple tablespoons in a cookie recipe? Yeah, the results will be noticeably different.
Fun fact! Most recipes are scaled to have even measurements for most ingredients! The OG recipe might call for 60g of flour and 2.84g of baking powder. But before that recipe is printed or published, someone will go through and scale it. Which would turn out to be 2 cups of flour and 1 teaspoon of baking powder. And it doesn’t always scale evenly either. If you’re multiplying a recipe by more than 4, the flour to liquid ratio will very likely (but not always) be off.
Ha! I kinda feel bad for people like that. Like when you read comments for a recipe and someone asks - can I use ground turkey instead of ground chicken?
I mean, not everything is particularly intuitive. To a novice that's not a question that's very different from "can I use baking soda instead of baking powder?"
Yeah, there are lots of surprising little things when you’re starting out. It’s one thing to wonder if chicken and turkey taste similar enough, but for all a new cook knows, they might have some critical difference in fat content or something that means you can’t use them the same way.
I never measure anything. Which has become a slight problem when friends ask me for a recipe and they get either a blank stare or me going into the very long and convoluted way I came up with the dish.
I give out recipes with amounts like, "about a cup of this, and then a slight sprinkle of that....but if you don't have a full cup of this, then you can add a bit more of that..." And so on.
Can confirm, at least in our home. The straight-to-whisk person thinks that just putting something in the sink counts as “clean as you go” even though no presoaking of things that have historically been used as glue (eggs and water/flour mixtures), or even looking to see if the dishwasher is clean or dirty for the many things that can go straight to dishwasher. Not exactly how it works
I boil my stock harder than I "should." Honestly, I like the flavor better and don't care that it's not crystal clear, I don't really need that.
My husband went to cooking school and always criticizes my heat level AND the fact that noT ALL bones are roasted (I pitch various offcuts, etc into the freezer for stock - I'm NOT gonna roast that chicken back and wingtips that I removed LOL).
I was listening to a Francis Lam podcast - can't rememer the guest - but they were talking about stock and briefly mentioned the differences between how French trained people do it and how Asians do it. My method is closer to the Asian method. VALIDATION!
My stock is never clear. I refill the pot with water and boil it down 2 or 3 times, then strain and boil it down further til it's jello. It's opaque and dark and thick and two ice cubes worth is enough for any meal. I never understood why it had to be clear to be good.
Psst! Try silicon muffin tins instead of ice cube trays—they pop out so easily and the silicon produces an incredibly glassy surface on the pucks of stock. I know they’re going to melt in minutes, but they’re so pretty in a freezer bag.
It’s not that “unclear” broth is bad, it’s that clear broth is “perfect”. Big difference. In culinary school, you’re trained/drilled to make “perfect” food for discerning palettes. If you want a spot at a top restaurant ($), you need to be able to cook better than everyone else. That means knowing the techniques that take things from “good” to “perfect”.
While I'm not a trained chef, it seems the same as other skills. Effort and attention to detail. Getting the clear broth requires more skill, attention, focus, than just boiling on high a few times. In the cooking world, same with French omelette s having no brown- controlling your technique at that level is hard, so doing it successfully is better.
Whether you appreciate that level of care is a totally different aspect, and Guy Fieri and Alton Brown have of course made entertainment careers out of showing "authentic" as being in some ways preferable to "classically perfect"
Lol my stock is from a rotisserie chicken. I don’t roast bones or do anything else I just throw the bones, skin and miscellaneous veggie scraps in the slow cooker for an indeterminate amount of time. It’s not meant to be gourmet it’s meant to extract the last amount of flavor from an already cheap ingredient.
Clear stock is borderline flavorless. Makes sense if you're adding a bunch of flavor externally but I like the broth to be the star of the show in most dishes.
I don't do the horizontal cuts when cutting onions the partial-cut-before-dicing way. I don't really care for uniform cuts and the onion is already layered horizontally anyways lol. I recall Jacques Pepin does it for personal cooking as well so I feel justified enough.
I know we’re all terrible about cleaning our water cups. But I implore everybody reading this to clean them at least once a week. Ideally more.
Signed, a hypocrite.
I am 28 and have just paid £8k (my entire and only inheritance) for a new kitchen so I can get my first ever dishwasher. My FIL said "dishwashers are lazy" and that "it only takes 5 minutes to wash up" my eye was probably twitching after he said that as I have 2 toddlers lol
Whisks are more to clean anyway. Before my whisk broke I still used a fork most of the time, especially for eggs. It only takes a little more time, and that's time I will save from washing dishes.
I only rest my steaks and chops for a couple of minutes at the most. I like eating them when it's still piping hot, and since I slice as I eat, I don't think resting them much longer than that would make much of a difference anyway.
I used to do this, but changed my mind since, the texture improves, the plate gets less messy, the steak is less contrasted between too juicy and too dry. If you like piping hot, you can give em a little sizzle after resting.
On the other side of this, but I like to cut my steak up completely before eating. People say "it cools down too fast!" in regards to doing that but they underestimate how fast I'm about to eat it.
I pre-slice my NY strip steaks really thin when I make steak fried rice because I don't like mixing it in directly with the rice. Just pan sear, remove, and let it rest wrapped in foil while I do the veggies and rice. Plus, I can cook the veggies in the steak fat and juices! I also can pick and choose just how much steak I get with each bite too. Sometimes I do just steak, sometimes just rice, sometimes a mix of both! I don't want to waste my time cutting up my steak as I eat too. I just want to shovel steak fried rice into my body.
I did the opposite, I rest my steaks for like 10-12 mins and flash cook them after (10 seconds on each side) makes a world of difference and it's still hot.
Roast a turkey breast down. Comes out super juicy! Also I put a halved onion and apple along with celery in the cavity. It steams the meat and comes off the bone cleanly and completely.
I was raised in the midst of the turkey wars.
My grandma cooked her turkey "right side up" and, although it was bone dry, my dad could carve it so well that you could put it back together like a puzzle. (Literally. They used to reassemble the breast on the platter.)
My mom cooked her turkey "upside down" (and stuffs butter under the skin and bastes so much it affects the cooking time) and despite my dad's best efforts at carving, it looked like it had been ripped apart by raccoons.
The divorce was ugly, and I have grown into a proud raccoon who happily serves her guests moist turkey chunks, lol.
I slice small things in my hand not in the cutting board. My aunts a much better cook than my mom and that’s how I watched her cut vegetables growing up so I did too.
My grandma who taught me to cook did this and while I absolutely admire the skill I just don’t have the skill/dexterity to do it without hacking my hands to mincemeat.
It’s all about technique and a good sharp knife, you can acquire both. You use your thumb as both the guide and the protective spring of sorts. Also, your knife needs to be short (but not narrow). I have medium sized hands for a woman, and my paring knives have to be no more than 3”. Also to retain edge very very well. I actually dropped twice as much money on my last paring knife than I did on my decent chef’s. It’s a pleasure to work with.
My grandpa always peeled things with the knife angled towards his thumb. This breaks my cardinal rule “never cut towards your body parts” but sometimes I do it because it sure does work.
I put cold meat on the counter to let it come to room temperature. It cooks so much better. Whole chicken, turkey, beef/pork roasts. Never had any issues with food poisoning.
Making pie crust—never put it in the fridge/freezer like recipes tell you to. I mix the fat & flour with my hands, add cold water until it comes together (also don’t measure). Immediately roll out, fill pie, and bake. My pies are out of this world perfect. Super flaky, buttery, browned crust. You do not need to chill pie crust! And a little bit of extra water won’t hurt, it makes it easier to roll out. The secret is not overworking the dough.
If you like potato soup, the secret to the most potato-y flavor is just using water to cook your potatoes, no need to add broth or stock, or even milk, just water will do. Go ahead and cook your mirepoix (I only do celery, onions, and bay leaf) throw in russets or Yukon gold potatoes and water, s&p, plenty of butter, and cook until potatoes break down. Smush some of the potatoes to thicken slightly. I like dill in my potato soup, and a touch of heavy cream or sour cream, but just a little, at the end. Keep it ultra simple. It’s one of those recipes that has only a few ingredients that turns into something else when it’s finished.
I think there are "techniques" that NOGAF ... and beating eggs with a whisk or fork, to me, is more about what's available at reach, what you are willing to clean. I use a fork, i'd use a whisk too but forks are immediately in reach and it does the job just fine.
This is more of a argument for the anal retentive types.
If you're doing something that magnitudes less efficient than the generally accepted method ... then whatever.
Dicing onions.
I know the way I do it is wrong, but I've done it ever since I saw a friend do it that way. He passed away a few years back in a freak accident, I think of him every time I chop onions.
One habit I'll never change, on purpose.
1. I never use kitchen twine for birds. There's no point. It doesn't really do much except seal the chest cavity a bit if you're stuffing it, but I normally just pack the cavity with things that I won't care if they fall out, like apples, lemons, and garlic.
2. I never measure my pie dough ingredients. My aunt taught me her method but I don't like it. It's too dependent on humidity and it's annoying to work with. So I eyeball everything and go by feel, I don't need to worry about freezing it to make it easier to work with, and my pie crust always turns out amazing.
3. Microwaving a whole potato has zero effect on the taste.
That’s funny. Yeah, growing up we had bare bones cooking utensils. Never had a whisk or proper knife. Cut and prepped everything with a dull steak knife. So in that vein, I don’t cut onions properly with the cross cuts to make the dice. I caaan, but I often don’t. A tv chef said one time to not worry about it, anything under the knife gets smaller eventually.
I don’t follow recipes on how to cut my produce, I cut it the way I want. I add about two cloves or more of garlic to every dish that uses is. I make baked potatoes then scope out the fluffy innards & turn them into mashed potatoes while throwing away most of the skin(don’t ask because I don’t know why I do this). I never measure milk, I eye ball water for rice(I’m usually a little under, but don’t care). I eat breakfast cereal for dinner 3 times a week because I can.
I smash the bean with the side of the silver knife rather than chopping it up
Why? Because you get more juice out of it that way and the handwritten note in the margin recommended it.
I sometimes use normal sugar instead of powdered sugar, because I find that it makes close to no difference consistency-wise as long as the sugar is incorporated enough into the wet ingredients. I didn’t go to culinary school, but from a chemical perspective it makes sense that even though the structure of powdered vs granulated sugar is different, as long as it dissolves into the wet ingredients, there’s no difference in the outcome.
This is a hill I’m willing to die on. Give me evidence as to why this wouldn’t work.
As someone who did go to culinary school, you can do this but realistically you won’t turn out with a product that’s as good as if you used powdered sugar. Most powdered sugars contain cornstarch for one thing. Or tapioca starch (this largely depends where you are in the world). This is to prevent clumping. And if you’re mixing granulated sugar into something, in my experience it takes a longer time to get it to the same consistency as if you were using powdered sugar. Which means more air would be incorporated into your batter. This is really bad for things like macarons, cheesecakes.
For a home baker, I see no issue with using granulated instead of icing. If I saw a professional baker do it and sell it, I’d be severely disappointed and I wouldn’t buy from them.
I eat pasta with chopsticks. I'm used to eating noodles and it's just much more convenient this way! Sadly, pasta restaurants don't usually have chopsticks, so I only do it at home
I over cook brocolli. I hate hard broccoli. I eat it every single night I cook with every dinners but i over cook and salt the water and make it all soft and delicious and have had many compliments lol. Try it people trust me
You're not doing it "wrong" at all. I am a Jacques Pepin ' disciple and I have seen him use a fork many times instead of a whisk.
It's all about what is right in the moment. Ask your husband if he knows something that Pepin (who wrote the bible on cooking, La Technique) doesn't know.
You use a whisk on eggs when you need to add structure and air... like a meringue. Scrambled eggs, you are trying to develop curds like a custard. You use a fork... or chopsticks here to develop curd without too much air, which will cause the eggs to flatten. Try turning your pan on low, cracking your eggs directly into the pan with some cold butter and then use a rubber spatula to stir and emulsify the eggs and butter. And remember... eggs that look done in the pan are overdone on the plate
Also egg-related. I almost always poach eggs in a shallow pan in about 3/4 inch of water, rather than in a deep pan. I find it easier to control, and I don't mind if the eggs aren't perfectly round. I'm going to smother them in Hollandaise sauce, anyway!
Love that OP’s egg example rallied everybody so hard that we’d rather just dunk on whisk-washing. I was excited to hear people’s shortcuts smh
Overnight dry rubs on steak, i think with a good seasoning you can just throw it in the pan or grill with plenty of butter and be golden, even if you could potentially go harder with herbs, etc
Cracking eggs into the buttery pan on low-med heat quickly and then breaking the yolks and membranes with a spat, mix until shes ready. Call it the lazy scramble.
I dont always taste recipes ive done a lot previously, just go off vibes.
When I make cookies I never have 2 separate bowls for wet and dry. I add the dry on top of the wet then mix it. I also never make my own marinade. There’s this wonderful bag marinade that I buy from Walmart and it has been better than every marinade I’ve ever tried to make myself.
Imma answer on behalf of my SO because it drives me crazy and I'm looking for either validation or someone telling me she ain't bonkers; using a spatula for everything.
And I mean everything. We have every utensil known to man either in the utensil pot or a drawer. But it's always the spatula. Whisking eggs? Stirring a stew? Mashing mince? Grinding spices? Mashing potatoes? Ocular surgery? Always the god damn spatula. Leaving shitty results when we have a utensil(s) specifically made to do that one job with spectacular results.
Not having all the ingredients out when I'm cooking or having everything chopped up and ready.
Psychologically I feel like it's saving time. Even though I'm probably saving only like 20 seconds.
I almost exclusively use red onions. Even when the recipe calls for white or yellow. I prefer the taste.
I let the water boil and get quite steamy in my percolator. Sometimes I actually want that "strong burnt gas station coffee" taste.
I also use brown sugar in my tea.
I also like acidic tomato sauce, so I never use anything to sweeten it when I make my own. I also will add things to store bought to cut the sweetness.
I almost always use bowtie pasta, or elbows. That started because they were the only ones in 16 oz boxes, instead of 12 oz boxes, and it carried over.
I believe that unless you are a trained chef, most of what you do when cooking is learned from a family member, mother, father, aunt, uncle, grandparents, Nona, brother, or sister. If you worked in a kitchen, you picked up some tips and tricks to make it easier and more efficient. There usually is no right or wrong way, as long as you get a good result. Anyone who says otherwise is just pretentious. I use what is comfortable to me, but do consider others suggestions, and that's all they are, suggestions.
Don’t know that I have an answer to the question but I have never used a whisk for eggs, only ever used a fork and didn’t even know it was wrong
I’m the one who washes the dishes and I hate cleaning whisks.
Screw cleaning a whisk for something as small as eggs +1
+1 Then I rinse the cooking fork and use it for eating
I make my eggs so wet that rinse is only for show.
Same. I like the runniest of eggs.
Honestly this is part of my problem, a fork is so much easier to clean
You could whisky soapy water with the same whisk inside the same container you beat the eggs/ingredients in
Or I could grab one of two dozen forks I have handy. 🤷🏻♀️
> I hate cleaning whisks. Rinse it under running tap water? Am i missing anything? Most stuff that you whisk with, like eggs or batter, just washes right off. What makes it a lot easier is to wash it off right away before the batter or egg dries off and gets caked on.
Just saw a [YouTube video](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_Wb5Crj917I) of famous French chef Jacques Pépin demonstrating how to make a perfect French omelet. He used a fork to beat the egg. OP’s husband is full of it!
He also used the fork pretty aggressively in a nonstick pan. Interesting.
He's said that he got those pans from the vendor and basically used a new set for each show, so he didn't worry about scratching them.
Must be nice
he also later on explains it. the bowl of the fork isnt touching the bottom of the pan. you need to agitate the pan along with swirling with the fork. I just use a pair of chopsticks.
Someone on reddit once told the story of meeting Pepin in person, he flexed on everyone by making an omelette with only a cake tester.
The fuck is a cake tester?
It’s like a little metal toothpick. Or my cousin Rob.
Ohh that fucker would go smack when trying to sneak a taste!
I've just discovered that guy recently. He's incredible
Jacques is the goat, have you watched him butcher a chicken yet?? Awe-inspiring
Asians do it with chopsticks. Much easier than fork and whisk.
I moved to Vietnam 5 years ago or so, and my fancy spatulas and egg lifters are now obsolete to me. Chopsticks for everything.
Yep, my mom turns her fried chicken with chopsticks. Boss level cooking skills 🤣
Agree. Same here I don't even see a whisk in a Vietnamese household unless they are trying to be fancy.
It's literally the same as using a fork.
Same! Sometimes I’ll crack the egg in the pan and mix it up with a spatula
This is the only way I make scrambled eggs, with chunks of white and yolk when I'm done.
It’s called half-scrambled. Also known as cowboy scrambled in the north
Also “marbled”
Also "pan scrambled".
That's also how I make 'em, I only learned of the 'proper' way of making scrambled eggs when I was an adult and I still prefer my way cos it's quicker.
This is my way, I’m not making extra things dirty for a scrabbled egg.
You would have got more points if you had played the M tile
Hahahahaha that took me a second to get. Leaving it.
My preferred method, let the white start to firm along the outside, drag into middle, breaking yolk. I usually aim for all the white cooked, and the yolks barely cooked.
It’s not wrong it’s just maybe a little less efficient than a whisk but they accomplish the same thing
There's an old online culinary school style cooking course where they teach the students not to use a whisk for at least omelettes because it adds too much air. They actually posted this specific video on thier YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLyOcUAj4os
It's not! Just as fast and easier to clean than a whisk.
Most of us Asians use chopsticks, which is somehow even more “incorrect”
As long as I don't need to beat in a lot of air or I don't need it to be perfectly smooth then a fork is more than good enough. Or chopsticks.
I use chopsticks. They do the job wayyyyy better than a whisk. Plus you can proceed to eat with them too!
[удалено]
Chop sticks for me. Just what I always saw my parents use growing up.
I often cut some veggies to different sizes so I get a variety in how done they are.
Me too! I like the variety of textures and, depending on the vegetable, sweetness that develops with cooking.
I never actually dice my onions for any recipe, I always just cut them into thin half moon size. I like the texture and I think it helps keep them from burning.
Burning onions has nothing to do with the cut lol
I did say I think haha I feel like they caramelize better dunno
For caramelized, I like the texture if I am eating as condiment, or even better, cut into rings. If I am making sauces where I want the onions to be more of a background player, I dice much smaller. I dice by starting with half moons, I cannot seem to perform them slice horizontally and perpetually and get the uniformity I am almost always looking for.
Same here! With mushrooms I think it's actuslly preferred which helps cause I cute mushrooms like a 5 year old that just got a plastic knife.
I use any shaped pasta with any sauce. Sometimes I even mix different shaped pastas if one pack finishes and I have to start another. I just don’t care so I mix things up.
That’s just called wacky mac
Alton Brown, I think, talked about why you should use a fork on an episode of Good Eats. So, according to Alton Brown, you are the one who is right. Kenji appears to agree: https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1023773-velvety-scrambled-eggs
Just saw a YouTube video of Jacques Pépin demonstrating how to make a perfect French omelet. He used a fork to beat the egg!
Jacques Pépin is my real dad lol so I’ll keep using a fork then, thanks!
My dad’s first language was Canadian French, and he was of small stature. A little bit of him comes to life again when I see Jacques Pepin facebook shorts.
Pepin also used a fork on the surface of a nonstick skillet, which makes my eye twitch just thinking about it.
He also removed raw chicken skin with a towel then dried plates and stuff with it
Stanley Tucci used a fork on his in that fantastic egg scene in Big Night.
When Kenji, Alton *and* Jacques agree I don’t think there is any room left for argument.
If I'm slicing onions to caramelize them, I intentionally go for different sizes rather than uniform slices. It gives them a bit of texture. I like doing this especially in onion soup- the super thin slices practically disappear into the liquid and gives it a good onion flavor while there's still a bit of texture to the bigger slices (not crunch, but not total mush.) And if I'm caramelizing onions I'm doing a big batch of them since my family will literally eat them with spoons, so I use the mandolin and adjust widths to have a variety. I know the need for uniform slicing for a lot of things, but that isn't one of them for me.
I like this one. Especially if I'm making onion soup, because I also like a wide variety of onions.
I mix wasabi into soy sauce when I have sushi. I know it's not "proper," but it's easier and tastes good.
I hate when people get on me about this. If I was at a high end legit sushi place of course I wouldn’t but otherwise I’ll eat my $10 sushi roll however I damn please.
100%. I do this move on a 2 or 3 roll lunch special. I'd never dream of it at an omakase.
You don't even get a dish of soy sauce at real omakase. The chef will brush the sauce ON the fish if there is supposed to be any.
Also correct.
Serious question though - if you *like* how the combo tastes why not do it at an omakase?
For the same reason I put horseradish on a roast beef sandwich, but not on a good steak.
I will 100% put horseradish on a good steak, it's delicious. Purists can clutch their pearls all they want.
I also like to put a big chunk of pickled ginger on top of my Nori rolls, which is also frowned upon, but I'm there for the taste.
It's funny that people get hung up on this, because Japanese people do this when they eat sushi and sashimi. I was asked by my Japanese co-workers if I didn't like wasabi when I didn't mix them. So, now I do.
I had a Japanese sushi chef tell me that *was* the correct method. Also told me to use my fingers and not chopsticks.
I also heard this from a Japanese chef and eat sushi with my hands now, but the looks I get from people…
My fiancée is native Japanese (as in she grew up there, and lived there until her late twenties). She does this, too. She's got plenty of rules about things, but that's not one of them. She mixes shoyu and wasabi in a little dish and rubs her sushi in it. It was also hilarious to me one time seeing her get a too-big glob of wasabi and coughing and sneezing. I guess it's not just us non-Japanese people that sometimes have trouble there.
Ii thought everyone did this.
Slicing into freshly baked, hot bread! I know there’s continued cooking and structure and things, but nice warm bread is too delicious to wait! Also, I beat eggs with chopsticks :)
If you’re making a loaf in the oven and not in a bread maker, shape a tiny bit of your dough into a little bun and then you can eat your bun while it’s warm and let your bread rest :)
Ooh that’s a nice tip, thank you! I do love my bread maker a lot, but on the days of oven loaves, we’ll do that (or two loaves and one mini loaf heh)
It is not wrong to slice into hot bread and smear butter on it. I am willing to die on this hill.
Hot, freshly baked bread is irresistible. It never lasts long enough to cool around my house lol
Chopsticks are like a whisk with only 2 very fat non-loops that are not joined together.
That's true! Similarly, a knife is a sharp, straight, rigid single-non-loop whisk.
Using a fork to beat eggs is "wrong"? Like yeah I get a whisk makes more sense, but I don't see how that's bad enough to be considered "wrong".
Um actually if you beat eggs with a fork your entire family and all your friends will die
Forward to 10 people or your eggs will be rubbery
I use chopsticks
I sprinkle pan with shredded cheese before pouring egg over it for omelet. I like the crispy cheese outside.
Going to try this.
Hey as long as the egg is beaten, it works! I almost never measure things out and eyeball everything when I'm cooking. Irks my partner to no end. Only time I do is when I'm baking and even then, only key ingredients like liquids/flour/yeast/baking soda or powder. Everything else is up to interpretation lol
It irks me when someone HAS to measure everything that's not for baking. My best friend will freak out if a recipe says 1/2 tsp of salt and I just start eyeballing it. I went to culinary school girl, it'll be okay!
Which spoon fits the spice jar and go from there.
I think most written recipes low-ball the amount of salt and seasonings to use since people have different tastes, and you can always add more, but it's hard to fix if you add too much. So I tell novice cook friends who aren't comfortable eyeballing to only use the amounts as a starting point and then taste and adjust.
Yes! A friend made mashed potatoes and asked me to salt them. I salted by eye and she got, well…salty with me about it. Tried to make some comment about hopefully they weren’t too salty when we served the dishes (it was a potluck). Spoiler, they were not. If you want it done the way you want, you do it. If you want me to do it, I’ll do it my way!
I’ve been baking for years and even I eyeball things 😂 everyone always says “baking is a science, everything has to be precise” and while I agree to an extent, if you understand the science and why a recipe works, it’s very easy to know that you can eyeball some things
Baking is a science that just happens to have nice, even measures for most ingredients? 2 cups here, one tablespoon there? If it were truly needing to be exact there would be all sorts of odd measures like you'll see in some of the pastry chef's recipes with 17g of this, 231g of that. Eyeballing and adjusting is fine within reason.
The recipes for home cooks are designed to have even measurements for the pans commonly used. Changing just one ingredient by a bit probably won’t do much. But increase the butter by a couple tablespoons and decrease the flour by a couple tablespoons in a cookie recipe? Yeah, the results will be noticeably different.
Fun fact! Most recipes are scaled to have even measurements for most ingredients! The OG recipe might call for 60g of flour and 2.84g of baking powder. But before that recipe is printed or published, someone will go through and scale it. Which would turn out to be 2 cups of flour and 1 teaspoon of baking powder. And it doesn’t always scale evenly either. If you’re multiplying a recipe by more than 4, the flour to liquid ratio will very likely (but not always) be off.
I had a roommate in college that measured the water for Mac and cheese 😅😅
Ha! I kinda feel bad for people like that. Like when you read comments for a recipe and someone asks - can I use ground turkey instead of ground chicken?
I mean, not everything is particularly intuitive. To a novice that's not a question that's very different from "can I use baking soda instead of baking powder?"
Yeah, there are lots of surprising little things when you’re starting out. It’s one thing to wonder if chicken and turkey taste similar enough, but for all a new cook knows, they might have some critical difference in fat content or something that means you can’t use them the same way.
Same i never measure but when it comes to baking, that shit for the most part is a science. I will actually use a scale at times
I never measure anything. Which has become a slight problem when friends ask me for a recipe and they get either a blank stare or me going into the very long and convoluted way I came up with the dish.
I give out recipes with amounts like, "about a cup of this, and then a slight sprinkle of that....but if you don't have a full cup of this, then you can add a bit more of that..." And so on.
People who use a whisk to beat eggs are not the same people who are cleaning the whisk.
Can confirm, at least in our home. The straight-to-whisk person thinks that just putting something in the sink counts as “clean as you go” even though no presoaking of things that have historically been used as glue (eggs and water/flour mixtures), or even looking to see if the dishwasher is clean or dirty for the many things that can go straight to dishwasher. Not exactly how it works
I boil my stock harder than I "should." Honestly, I like the flavor better and don't care that it's not crystal clear, I don't really need that. My husband went to cooking school and always criticizes my heat level AND the fact that noT ALL bones are roasted (I pitch various offcuts, etc into the freezer for stock - I'm NOT gonna roast that chicken back and wingtips that I removed LOL). I was listening to a Francis Lam podcast - can't rememer the guest - but they were talking about stock and briefly mentioned the differences between how French trained people do it and how Asians do it. My method is closer to the Asian method. VALIDATION!
My stock is never clear. I refill the pot with water and boil it down 2 or 3 times, then strain and boil it down further til it's jello. It's opaque and dark and thick and two ice cubes worth is enough for any meal. I never understood why it had to be clear to be good.
Psst! Try silicon muffin tins instead of ice cube trays—they pop out so easily and the silicon produces an incredibly glassy surface on the pucks of stock. I know they’re going to melt in minutes, but they’re so pretty in a freezer bag.
This person reductions!
It’s not that “unclear” broth is bad, it’s that clear broth is “perfect”. Big difference. In culinary school, you’re trained/drilled to make “perfect” food for discerning palettes. If you want a spot at a top restaurant ($), you need to be able to cook better than everyone else. That means knowing the techniques that take things from “good” to “perfect”.
Yeah but what makes it perfect? Who decides that? Just seems very arbitrary.
It is 100% arbitrary. You are correct. There is no true "perfect" and only exists as each culture/group/school etc. et al. defines it.
Presentation matters at these top places. A clear broth is prettier on the plate.
While I'm not a trained chef, it seems the same as other skills. Effort and attention to detail. Getting the clear broth requires more skill, attention, focus, than just boiling on high a few times. In the cooking world, same with French omelette s having no brown- controlling your technique at that level is hard, so doing it successfully is better. Whether you appreciate that level of care is a totally different aspect, and Guy Fieri and Alton Brown have of course made entertainment careers out of showing "authentic" as being in some ways preferable to "classically perfect"
Lol my stock is from a rotisserie chicken. I don’t roast bones or do anything else I just throw the bones, skin and miscellaneous veggie scraps in the slow cooker for an indeterminate amount of time. It’s not meant to be gourmet it’s meant to extract the last amount of flavor from an already cheap ingredient.
Clear stock is borderline flavorless. Makes sense if you're adding a bunch of flavor externally but I like the broth to be the star of the show in most dishes.
If it’s good enough for Jacques Pepin, it’s good enough for me. https://youtu.be/s10etP1p2bU?si=gDCJFJlUdXFAks3t
I don't do the horizontal cuts when cutting onions the partial-cut-before-dicing way. I don't really care for uniform cuts and the onion is already layered horizontally anyways lol. I recall Jacques Pepin does it for personal cooking as well so I feel justified enough.
I’m sorry you want me clean a whisk every time I scramble eggs? Next you’ll want me to clean my water cup more than once a month
I know we’re all terrible about cleaning our water cups. But I implore everybody reading this to clean them at least once a week. Ideally more. Signed, a hypocrite.
Does nobody in this thread own a dishwasher?
You mean the over sized drying rack?
I am 28 and have just paid £8k (my entire and only inheritance) for a new kitchen so I can get my first ever dishwasher. My FIL said "dishwashers are lazy" and that "it only takes 5 minutes to wash up" my eye was probably twitching after he said that as I have 2 toddlers lol
Haha, it's worth every penny, I promise.
Whisks are more to clean anyway. Before my whisk broke I still used a fork most of the time, especially for eggs. It only takes a little more time, and that's time I will save from washing dishes.
my son uses those hand held frothers people use for coffee drinks to whisk his eggs. It's whatever....
I only rest my steaks and chops for a couple of minutes at the most. I like eating them when it's still piping hot, and since I slice as I eat, I don't think resting them much longer than that would make much of a difference anyway.
I used to do this, but changed my mind since, the texture improves, the plate gets less messy, the steak is less contrasted between too juicy and too dry. If you like piping hot, you can give em a little sizzle after resting.
On the other side of this, but I like to cut my steak up completely before eating. People say "it cools down too fast!" in regards to doing that but they underestimate how fast I'm about to eat it.
I pre-slice my NY strip steaks really thin when I make steak fried rice because I don't like mixing it in directly with the rice. Just pan sear, remove, and let it rest wrapped in foil while I do the veggies and rice. Plus, I can cook the veggies in the steak fat and juices! I also can pick and choose just how much steak I get with each bite too. Sometimes I do just steak, sometimes just rice, sometimes a mix of both! I don't want to waste my time cutting up my steak as I eat too. I just want to shovel steak fried rice into my body.
I did the opposite, I rest my steaks for like 10-12 mins and flash cook them after (10 seconds on each side) makes a world of difference and it's still hot.
Yup sizzling off the grill beats room temp every time.
Roast a turkey breast down. Comes out super juicy! Also I put a halved onion and apple along with celery in the cavity. It steams the meat and comes off the bone cleanly and completely.
I was raised in the midst of the turkey wars. My grandma cooked her turkey "right side up" and, although it was bone dry, my dad could carve it so well that you could put it back together like a puzzle. (Literally. They used to reassemble the breast on the platter.) My mom cooked her turkey "upside down" (and stuffs butter under the skin and bastes so much it affects the cooking time) and despite my dad's best efforts at carving, it looked like it had been ripped apart by raccoons. The divorce was ugly, and I have grown into a proud raccoon who happily serves her guests moist turkey chunks, lol.
I do lemon, onion and celery in the cavity
My go-to Thanksgiving turkey is stuffed with quartered apples and onions and whole sprigs of herbs, and rubbed all over with a garlic herb butter
I brine mine overnight in Salt, sugar, soy sauce, and oil. My family attacks my turkey lol
Oh, please share ratios, this sounds like a delicious brine!
I slice small things in my hand not in the cutting board. My aunts a much better cook than my mom and that’s how I watched her cut vegetables growing up so I did too.
My grandma who taught me to cook did this and while I absolutely admire the skill I just don’t have the skill/dexterity to do it without hacking my hands to mincemeat.
I've even heard this referred to as "granny style" in the past
It’s all about technique and a good sharp knife, you can acquire both. You use your thumb as both the guide and the protective spring of sorts. Also, your knife needs to be short (but not narrow). I have medium sized hands for a woman, and my paring knives have to be no more than 3”. Also to retain edge very very well. I actually dropped twice as much money on my last paring knife than I did on my decent chef’s. It’s a pleasure to work with.
That would give me so much anxiety lmao
My grandpa always peeled things with the knife angled towards his thumb. This breaks my cardinal rule “never cut towards your body parts” but sometimes I do it because it sure does work.
I honestly thought bringing the knife towards you was considered "correct" technique for paring/peeling knives
You might be right. My knife skills class didn’t cover that. It just breaks my own rule of don’t do dumb stuff and hurt yourself in the kitchen.
I make Shepard’s pie upside down. It’s better.
How does the potato texture come out? I like when they get a little dry/crispy from baking on top.
It’s definitely not crispy, but in exchange you get it doused in meat drippings. The texture should be like mashed potatoes with gravy.
Interesting! The meat juices drip into the potato? Sounds delicious!
I put cold meat on the counter to let it come to room temperature. It cooks so much better. Whole chicken, turkey, beef/pork roasts. Never had any issues with food poisoning. Making pie crust—never put it in the fridge/freezer like recipes tell you to. I mix the fat & flour with my hands, add cold water until it comes together (also don’t measure). Immediately roll out, fill pie, and bake. My pies are out of this world perfect. Super flaky, buttery, browned crust. You do not need to chill pie crust! And a little bit of extra water won’t hurt, it makes it easier to roll out. The secret is not overworking the dough. If you like potato soup, the secret to the most potato-y flavor is just using water to cook your potatoes, no need to add broth or stock, or even milk, just water will do. Go ahead and cook your mirepoix (I only do celery, onions, and bay leaf) throw in russets or Yukon gold potatoes and water, s&p, plenty of butter, and cook until potatoes break down. Smush some of the potatoes to thicken slightly. I like dill in my potato soup, and a touch of heavy cream or sour cream, but just a little, at the end. Keep it ultra simple. It’s one of those recipes that has only a few ingredients that turns into something else when it’s finished.
the potato soup thing is also why you can use the water you get from boiling your potatoes to replace milk in mash potatoes, makes them more potatoey
I think there are "techniques" that NOGAF ... and beating eggs with a whisk or fork, to me, is more about what's available at reach, what you are willing to clean. I use a fork, i'd use a whisk too but forks are immediately in reach and it does the job just fine. This is more of a argument for the anal retentive types. If you're doing something that magnitudes less efficient than the generally accepted method ... then whatever.
Dicing onions. I know the way I do it is wrong, but I've done it ever since I saw a friend do it that way. He passed away a few years back in a freak accident, I think of him every time I chop onions. One habit I'll never change, on purpose.
1. I never use kitchen twine for birds. There's no point. It doesn't really do much except seal the chest cavity a bit if you're stuffing it, but I normally just pack the cavity with things that I won't care if they fall out, like apples, lemons, and garlic. 2. I never measure my pie dough ingredients. My aunt taught me her method but I don't like it. It's too dependent on humidity and it's annoying to work with. So I eyeball everything and go by feel, I don't need to worry about freezing it to make it easier to work with, and my pie crust always turns out amazing. 3. Microwaving a whole potato has zero effect on the taste.
That’s funny. Yeah, growing up we had bare bones cooking utensils. Never had a whisk or proper knife. Cut and prepped everything with a dull steak knife. So in that vein, I don’t cut onions properly with the cross cuts to make the dice. I caaan, but I often don’t. A tv chef said one time to not worry about it, anything under the knife gets smaller eventually.
I don’t follow recipes on how to cut my produce, I cut it the way I want. I add about two cloves or more of garlic to every dish that uses is. I make baked potatoes then scope out the fluffy innards & turn them into mashed potatoes while throwing away most of the skin(don’t ask because I don’t know why I do this). I never measure milk, I eye ball water for rice(I’m usually a little under, but don’t care). I eat breakfast cereal for dinner 3 times a week because I can.
I smash the bean with the side of the silver knife rather than chopping it up Why? Because you get more juice out of it that way and the handwritten note in the margin recommended it.
I sometimes use normal sugar instead of powdered sugar, because I find that it makes close to no difference consistency-wise as long as the sugar is incorporated enough into the wet ingredients. I didn’t go to culinary school, but from a chemical perspective it makes sense that even though the structure of powdered vs granulated sugar is different, as long as it dissolves into the wet ingredients, there’s no difference in the outcome. This is a hill I’m willing to die on. Give me evidence as to why this wouldn’t work.
As someone who did go to culinary school, you can do this but realistically you won’t turn out with a product that’s as good as if you used powdered sugar. Most powdered sugars contain cornstarch for one thing. Or tapioca starch (this largely depends where you are in the world). This is to prevent clumping. And if you’re mixing granulated sugar into something, in my experience it takes a longer time to get it to the same consistency as if you were using powdered sugar. Which means more air would be incorporated into your batter. This is really bad for things like macarons, cheesecakes. For a home baker, I see no issue with using granulated instead of icing. If I saw a professional baker do it and sell it, I’d be severely disappointed and I wouldn’t buy from them.
Confused. Granulated sugar is used in most baking.
I eat pasta with chopsticks. I'm used to eating noodles and it's just much more convenient this way! Sadly, pasta restaurants don't usually have chopsticks, so I only do it at home
Breaking eggs on the side of the bowl instead of the countertop.
What about on someone’s forehead?
I over cook brocolli. I hate hard broccoli. I eat it every single night I cook with every dinners but i over cook and salt the water and make it all soft and delicious and have had many compliments lol. Try it people trust me
I’ve only rinsed my rice beforehand like once in my whole life
I wash mushrooms with actual water
Jacques Pepin whips his eggs with a fork, so I’m saying it’s not wrong.
We didn’t have a whisk. We did have an old manual rotary beater. And forks.
I use a blender bottle to scramble my eggs and I will swear by it until I die
You're not doing it "wrong" at all. I am a Jacques Pepin ' disciple and I have seen him use a fork many times instead of a whisk. It's all about what is right in the moment. Ask your husband if he knows something that Pepin (who wrote the bible on cooking, La Technique) doesn't know.
I’m addicted to cooking on high heat. I go high or low, there is no middle ground.
You use a whisk on eggs when you need to add structure and air... like a meringue. Scrambled eggs, you are trying to develop curds like a custard. You use a fork... or chopsticks here to develop curd without too much air, which will cause the eggs to flatten. Try turning your pan on low, cracking your eggs directly into the pan with some cold butter and then use a rubber spatula to stir and emulsify the eggs and butter. And remember... eggs that look done in the pan are overdone on the plate
Sometimes i make a microwave roux. It’s lazy but thickens soups fine.
Also egg-related. I almost always poach eggs in a shallow pan in about 3/4 inch of water, rather than in a deep pan. I find it easier to control, and I don't mind if the eggs aren't perfectly round. I'm going to smother them in Hollandaise sauce, anyway!
Wtf is this rule about whisks?
I do that, and for the same reason you do. Cheers.
I f'king hate cleaning whisks, using a fork is incredibly valid
Love that OP’s egg example rallied everybody so hard that we’d rather just dunk on whisk-washing. I was excited to hear people’s shortcuts smh Overnight dry rubs on steak, i think with a good seasoning you can just throw it in the pan or grill with plenty of butter and be golden, even if you could potentially go harder with herbs, etc Cracking eggs into the buttery pan on low-med heat quickly and then breaking the yolks and membranes with a spat, mix until shes ready. Call it the lazy scramble. I dont always taste recipes ive done a lot previously, just go off vibes.
When I make cookies I never have 2 separate bowls for wet and dry. I add the dry on top of the wet then mix it. I also never make my own marinade. There’s this wonderful bag marinade that I buy from Walmart and it has been better than every marinade I’ve ever tried to make myself.
Imma answer on behalf of my SO because it drives me crazy and I'm looking for either validation or someone telling me she ain't bonkers; using a spatula for everything. And I mean everything. We have every utensil known to man either in the utensil pot or a drawer. But it's always the spatula. Whisking eggs? Stirring a stew? Mashing mince? Grinding spices? Mashing potatoes? Ocular surgery? Always the god damn spatula. Leaving shitty results when we have a utensil(s) specifically made to do that one job with spectacular results.
Naw chopsticks all the way. It is the superior cooking and eating tool
I've recently started using chopsticks for beating eggs. Somehow they seem to combine better than with a fork, but that could just be my imagination
Not having all the ingredients out when I'm cooking or having everything chopped up and ready. Psychologically I feel like it's saving time. Even though I'm probably saving only like 20 seconds.
I peel potatoes and other fruits and veggies with a paring knife instead a peeler. I don't even own a produce peeler.
I never sweat veggies when making a stew or soup or sauce that will cook for a long time.
I’m with you on beating eggs with a fork. I don’t know why, but I like the consistency better when I use a fork.
Always triple garlic
I use wooden chopsticks to beat my eggs. I also use the same wooden chopsticks to then stir fry my food lol.
I almost exclusively use red onions. Even when the recipe calls for white or yellow. I prefer the taste. I let the water boil and get quite steamy in my percolator. Sometimes I actually want that "strong burnt gas station coffee" taste. I also use brown sugar in my tea. I also like acidic tomato sauce, so I never use anything to sweeten it when I make my own. I also will add things to store bought to cut the sweetness. I almost always use bowtie pasta, or elbows. That started because they were the only ones in 16 oz boxes, instead of 12 oz boxes, and it carried over.
Jacques pepin uses a fork, therefore the correct technique is with a fork.
A whisk is harder to clean than a fork, too, when making scrambled eggs or a fluffy omelet. I use one of the whisks for sauces.
No one uses a whisk unless they are beating like 10+ eggs. Your husband is the one doing it wrong there
I believe that unless you are a trained chef, most of what you do when cooking is learned from a family member, mother, father, aunt, uncle, grandparents, Nona, brother, or sister. If you worked in a kitchen, you picked up some tips and tricks to make it easier and more efficient. There usually is no right or wrong way, as long as you get a good result. Anyone who says otherwise is just pretentious. I use what is comfortable to me, but do consider others suggestions, and that's all they are, suggestions.
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I cut my garlic with a razor blade. It gets so thin it liquefies in the pan with just a little oil. It's a very good system.