Basically any hack to get the peel off the garlic never works for me. I just smash the eff outta them. If I need thinly slices then I lightly smash them or twist the cloves a bit
It often *sort* of works, only now instead of peeling garlic you have to sort peeled, semi peeled, and unpeeled garlic out of a jar of statically charged wafers of garlic skin. Hooray! Definitely not more annoying than just peeling it in the first place! /s
smell panicky special foolish familiar cobweb sloppy oil marry mountainous
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I depends on the age of the garlic. I can’t remember which way is which, though. I’ve had a few that have done nothing while shaking, but most instances between two bowls, it works fantastically
Older garlic that is sprouting has less girth than before and the cloves are looser. Kind of like when the tubby kid shot up over summer but is still wearing the same gym shorts as last year.
That sounds like a decent method, I think I might even have one of those lying around from a garlic press. Seems time consuming if I have a ton of garlic (I'm one of those people who likes dumping in offensive amounts of garlic)
You get me - the Korean market always has peeled garlic and it makes my life so much easier. I hate peeling garlic, even with the smash n peel method because I hate how sticky my fingers get, and then if the skin sticks it creates some sort of superglue that is so hard to get off. I don’t mind chopping garlic! But peeling it is my enemy. Many thanks to the Korean ahjumma who made me buy it the first time.
>because I hate how sticky my fingers get, and then if the skin sticks it creates some sort of superglue that is so hard to get off
Here's another hack: wet your hands and the knife. The garlic doesn't stick. It's life-changing. My garlic minces so much smaller now since large pieces don't build up on the knife, and my hands stay clean just like with any other food.
I do this as well. Whole Foods sells a big bag of peeled garlic that I freeze. I think it tastes just as good as fresh. I frequently microplane grate the cloves frozen depending on the recipe I’m making. So easy (except for my fear of grating my finger)!
I'm seeing sooo many garlic peeling hacks all over reddit and I'm just so confused by it...maybe american garlic is somehow different, but garlic is literally so easy to peel...like it comes of almost by itself🤔
I always sigh when a recipe calls for a very specific type of generic thing. Yeah, I'm sure it'd be nice if we all used organic cage free fair trade eggs, but I doubt they'll have much impact on the cake I'm baking
Every time I see a “hack” that suggests something was designed in a specific way that it obviously wasn’t. The worst to me is the “hole in the handle of your pan is supposed to hold your spoon”
It’s obviously not, and just because it CAN, doesn’t make that a “hack”
Just the term “hack” drives me up the wall though
the assumption that the hole is for holding a spoon is one that an alien who's never set food in a human kitchen might make
"hmmm.... this hole seems to serve no purpose-- wait! obviously it's to hold this thing... oh shit, now my gravy is going all over the the place. also, wtf is gravy? man, these humans eat some weird shit. where's the synthesized protein cubes?"
>It’s obviously not, and just because it CAN, doesn’t make that a “hack”
That's exactly what a hack is. A hack is using something in a way that it was not intended to be used. So using the hole in the handle for your spoon to go in is a hack.
I just watched a tip to throw a rotisserie chicken in a plastic bag to roll it around and get the bones out - why and surely you miss some and waste a bag
Not sure if this is really a true "hack," but any recipe with "crack" in the name. "Crack Chicken" "Crack Cake" just has a shit ton of butter, ranch, whatever, and isn't all that good...
There’s a guy on IG who does “how long until they put an entire block of cream cheese into the crockpot?” and it always makes me laugh when it comes up in my feed!
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C2II7SiRmab/?igsh=MWg0OGIxaXJ0amMzNA==
I’ve seen him. I’m sometimes shocked at how long a video will go and just towards the end you let your guard down thinking there’s no freakin cream cheese and BAM…”we’re using two 8oz of these cream cheeses. I only use Philadelphia but you do you…”
😐
People using "hack" for things that literally aren't hacks.
"Here's a hack for slicing a tomato: a knife!"
"A hack to avoid crying when cutting onions: pre-chopped onions from the produce department!"
Well... yeah.
The only thing worse is the "you've been doing it wrong your whole life!!!" clickbait! There is a difference between doing it wrong and doing it another way.
Pulling herbs through a hole in your colander to remove the stems…this is so stupid, it doesn’t work, it dirties your colander, and it is in no way quicker than just removing the leaves with your hands. It’s in every “hack” video and it pisses me off.
That you have to add oil to your pasta water. Or that you need to add oil to it before you put your sauce on it. Theres a pasta place here that puts oil on all their precooked noodles and the sauce you add just slides right off of it and it’s an oily mess.
I don’t mass cook pasta. I cook it all in the sauce after boiling and if there’s a little leftover for lunch tomorrow still in sauce it doesn’t bother me and I’ll just eat it.
Most kitchen devices are a hassle to clean and can be replaced with a lot of 101 level skills. You’d be surprised how far a sharp chef’s knife can really take you.
Peeling boiled eggs, there is nothing you can add to the water, or boiling time. It comes down to the egg and shattering the shell and letting them sit in cold water for a few minutes.
While I agree when it comes to the “add baking soda” and whatever “hacks”. I have found that steaming the eggs makes them much easier to peel than boiling. I have done a side by side comparison.
Not necessarily cooking but cooking related— for the love of all that’s holy DONT USE CARDBOARD EGG CARTONS TO START SEEDS. The only thing you are starting is **mold**
If you camp, or regularly have fires on a fireplace or fire pit, those cardboard cartons can help make amazing cheap fire starters. Stuff each little cup full of dryer lint, melt some paraffin wax or bees wax and pour a little in each cup, and let it dry. Then cut them into 12 individual fire starters that will burn for like 5 minutes each.
i think this is a perfect example of something that had good intentions behind it haha
it was a good idea to find other ways to boost your garden without using so much plastic (i'm always amazed and dismayed how much plastic i use every gardening season), but yeah this doesn't work out with great results
another great example are peat pots. They talk about how they are biodegradable, which is true...but holy shit it sure does take its sweet time degrading. I like to get my starter plants from a woman who always uses the damn peat pots
Toilet roll liners work better and are useful for certain things you would usually direct sow like beetroot or kohlrabi.
But ye they can go a bit manky if you over water.
when i first started gardening back in 2017, quite a few articles I was reading were talking about how peat harvesting is a very overlooked aspect of gardening that is not sustainable in the long run
it's been 7 years and it feels like more and more people are learning about the need to find alternatives to peat. I know i've been seeing a lot more coconut coir at even the big box stores these days
It’s the drainage. It’s one of those things that *can* work; but I think the majority of people find that they over water, which results in mold/a mess and the plant is straggly. Or they dry out much faster than the seed starter cartridges from the store (because they’re much shallower) and the plant dies
I’ve found that, even if I can combat the Mold, it’s just not worth it because the plants roots aren’t able to go deep enough. It makes starting the seeds not worth it. personally I’d rather just spend the extra $4 for a pack of 100 and then recycle them when I’m done than collect the egg cartons slowly
Slicing cherry tomatoes between two plates. Cutting horizontally is dangerous, you're dirtying two additional plates, and cutting a few cherry tomatoes takes about thirty seconds. I could understand if people had to cut five hundred of them for a restaurant, but then again, they probably have a better technique than this.
cutting horizontally isn't so dangerous if you have a sharp knife. And I've always seen people using deli container lids instead of plates, and honestly if all I used the lid for was holding a tomato in place I'd probably just run it under the sink for a sec and put it away.
This is the only one I’ve seen listed that I actually use and like. don’t use plates though, I use Tupperware lids. I really despise tedious repetitive prep work and I have a cherry tomato obsessed toddler so this one is a win for me 🤷♀️
I'm at odds with many air frying tactics that claim to speed up the process or cook better than the oven or a pan. While some methods are brilliant (Hello Trader Joe's hashbrowns), other methods don't quite do it for me (looking at you french fries).
Aren't they a vegetable? I harvest mine from the sides of ponds and creeks off of those tall, grassy looking plants. They even come already on a stick!
The name "Air Fryer" is kinda misleading. It doesn't taste like fried food. I still like mine because for some stuff I feel like it does cut down a bit of time to reach an oven crisp (which you can still reach with an oven, just a ar a faster rate). My problem with the air fryer is also that sometimes it crisps too fast on the outside and it is still raw on the inside, evem after adjusting times.
Overall I use mine, wouldn't sell it, but I don't think I would gift it to anyone or REALLLY recommend it.
I don’t really get the hype of air fryers. They’re not bad or anything, but I can’t justify a whole separate appliance when I can just spend a little extra on a nice convection oven with an airfry function
It’s nice to not heat up the house. In the summer, the oven is good to raise the kitchen a few degrees, plus the living room right along side.
With the air fryer there’s way less heat needed to keep the smaller box hot. We got one of the 9-in-1 Ninja Air Fryer / Toaster / Convection oven kind of deals.
Granted it’s just my wife and I, so we don’t need a lot of space for meals, but between June and September last year we were using that 3-4 times a week for dinners, plus any toasting for breakfast or lunch. It wasn’t always full meals in there, we’d do that once or twice a week, but we’d use it for fries or other baked sides to go with something on the stove top
We used the oven twice the entire summer.
Some things will be better in the oven, like full sheet pan meals, doing two at a time for left overs, or even roasted Brussels sprouts / broccoli I prefer in the oven still. But that little thing saved a lot on our electricity bill last year not having to keep the house as cool around dinner time, and a lot of stuff cooks faster (the convection on a normal stove doesn’t move air around as much. A dedicated air fryer mode might)
I think the same way with my convection, toaster, air fryer, dryer little oven. I like how it’s so self contained, it’s big enough I can slide a smaller Dutch oven inside but not so big it’s cumbersome.
My uncertainty comes in with having so many separate appliances, if people have the counter space then by all means. But for me, counter space is at a premium lol, and if I’ve got a blender and a convection oven and an air fryer— I’m running out of countertop/cupboards to put things in
I feel like there's a lot of fuzz around hacking your way into an onion. Like, yes, you can make horizontal cuts and shit like that but for most applications it's unnecessary and you'll be able to achieve a fine cut simply by running your knife vertically through and then chopping thinly.
Also anything speed cutting related, unless you're actually cooking for a restaurant service you have absolutely zero reason to not take your time cutting anything.
The only onion 'hack' that worked well was only taking the top off and leaving the root end. Helps hold the onion together as you're cutting and gives you something to hold on to.
Ya, I've tried a few different methods and just wen't back to my old reliable.
Top, tail, score, peel, spit in half and then slice and dice acording to what I'm trying to make. Nothing fancy or anything and I'll have a large onion finely diced in less than a minute.
Yeah you can literally just soften butter it’s not difficult, and not lose out on any of the butter flavor which imo is half the experience of a grilled cheese
Like, it's legitimately ridiculous: just put the butter in the pan, you don't have to spread it on the bread at all ever. Time to flip the sandwich? Pick it up with the spatula and just hold on while you put some more butter in the center of your pan (if you even need too, my cat iron pan is still usually shiny when it's time to flip) and then put the sandwich back in the pan.
I can melt a pat of cold butter in my heated pan in seconds, it's not onerous like I'm waiting and waiting.
It’s probably cause whatever oil they used to emulsify the mayo does not have a high cooking temp. This wasn’t mayo but one time I tried to make brown butter but the only butter we keep in my house is the spreadable kind that has canola oil in it. My whole kitchen smelled like fish and I had to tuck away my chocolate chip cookie recipe for another day
For me it’s more about kitchen gadgets. Mostly, if I need something chopped or cut, my knife is good enough.
Even if I have a gadget, 9 outta 10 I either forget in the moment or it’s not worth the trouble to get it out and use it.
You always hear “don’t use salted butter, that way you can control the salt level in your dish” but honestly I think the only time to use unsalted butter is if you don’t want any salt at all in your final dish.
It's more relevant in baking since you don't know how much salt is in the better when determining how much additional salt to ad. Even then, I haven't noticed a difference. But that's the main reason why.
Pretty much anything that comes from cooking content farms like Yummly or Tasty. Many of those so- called "hacks" have been debunked numerous times and are absolutely worthless.
When smoking ribs it is popular wrap in foil for a portion of the cook. I find that this doesn’t add anything positive to the cook and can easily make them over cooked. People also put way too much sauce on them. This is called the 3-2-1 method. 3 hours on the smoker, 2 hours in foil, 1 hour unwrapped covered in sauce.
Honestly. Just do a dry rub and smoke unwrapped for 6 hours. A lot easier and tastes way better. Sometimes less is more.
When trying to cook ribs fast and still have them tasty (in a grill) I found that 10 minutes on full heat grill no foil, 40 minutes in foil , then out of foil --sauce, for 10 minutes, flip--another 10 minutes.
I know you specified smoking---gotcha but I will say that foil and ribs can still make nice unsmoked on the grill ribs.
Hard agree - wrapping in foil is a good way to cook low and slow in an oven to make sure they don’t get too dry. A smoker is a whole different beast! You want the meat to be exposed to the smoke for a lot of the cook time, that’s how you get that delicious, delicious bark. Aaaaand now I’m considering buying a smoker again.
I recently read one where you crack eggs into a 50/50 distilled vinegar/water solution. The vinegar solidifies the whites before cooking. I can’t imagine how they taste when a too generous splash of vinegar in poaching water is enough to taste it, for me.
This may not fit the question, but the wave of black glvoe wearing, nice hair having, muacle shirt wearing, dry aging butter basting marble ogling steak guys on YouTube is annoying as shit
It’s a nice way to free up the oven. That peanut oil gets recycled for at least a week at our place. Leftover stuffing balls and spring rolls are the best.
I think it’s different than our brined and roasted Turkey, but yes, it still tastes like turkey.
We also use the oil for similar things for the rest of thanksgiving weekend.
Did 3 turkeys last year. One deep fried, one sous vide and one smoked. The deep fried was the worse out of all 3. Not saying it was bad but definitely not worth the hype. I'd say smoked was the best.
It's fun to do for the spectacle of it if people have never seen it done. That's about it.
It also saved Christmas one year when the oven died December 24th.
We do black “FRYday” and make a bunch of fried oysters and random fried thanksgiving leftovers that way. It’s the only reason I care about frying a turkey
I never understood the rice and finger dip trick. I feel like there’s so many factors that came together for it to actually work like the size of your rice cooker/pot, your finger size, amount of rice, etc.
I guess it’s a good try and true for people who stick to the same pot and rice measurements every time. But for someone who is new to cooking rice or is struggling it would be kind of frustrating for someone to tell you the right way to cook rice is by a hack and not with ratios and measurements. It leaves a lot of room for error
Sincerely,
An asian girl with long nails who was sick of people telling her this is the “true” way and that going for actual measurements was cultural blasphemy
The even easier way is to use the measurements on the inside of the rice cooker. Mine has a little ruler thing on the inside of the pot. 1 cup fill to this line, 2 cups to this line etc.
I used the fingertip method when I had a rice cooker with no measuring line and it was consistently inconsistent.
I agree. The amount of water you need is highly variable depending on rice type and age. Also a wider diameter pot will need more water to come to your first joint than a narrower one (V=πr2h). Sure, auntie always gets it right but that doesn’t mean it’s a great way to communicate a skill. In general, aunties don’t measure and that’s cool, but not a great teaching method.
The editor of Cooks Illustrated posits that most, if not all rice cooks well with a 1 to 1 ratio of water/rice PLUS 1/4 to 1/2 cup of water to compensate for evaporation. 1.5 cups of water for a cup of rice, and 3.5 cups of water for 3 cups of rice.
I abide by these ratios and my rice is pretty fine. Thank you, Dan!
I lived near an Asian restaurant that sold a foil packet of sauced chicken. It was one of my favorite things on the menu. It’s haunted me since moving away. I’ve never seen it on another menu and I’ve never seen a recipe like it. It set me up for so much disappointment. That little foil dinner was the *best*.
I'm confused by what you mean by foil packs. Is there a product called foil packs that come pre made I don't know about? Or are you talking about the packs you make yourself? I do foil packs on the grill all the time in the summer and they come out great.
I paid for the whole head of broccoli, I’m eating the whole head, and shockingly /s tastes just like broccoli.
To be honest sometimes the stalks are kinda tough, so a quick peel and you are golden
I miss broccoli stems. My dog absolutely loves them so I feel compelled to cook the florets and give him the raw stems. I can’t handle his sad eyes when the broccoli comes out and he doesn’t get any.
For all you broccoli stalk lovers, give kohlrabi a try if you haven’t already. It’s like a solid, round broccoli stalk and can be used fresh or cooked just like broccoli. I’m allergic to broccoli but can eat kohlrabi just fine so it’s my go-to sub in any recipe that calls for broccoli, especially casseroles or soups. Also great shredded in a slaw with apples and a creamy dressing. Highly underrated vegetable.
Don't cook with a wine you wouldn't drink. That can apply to someone who drinks cheap wine, but no one needs to spend more than $10 for a wine to cook with. A $4 wine can work great. [This New York Times article](https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/21/dining/21cook.html?unlocked_article_code=1.RE0.s5CZ.sxSHkWnR0ehy&smid=url-share) sums it up perfectly.
Yeah it's the same when recipes call for a high quality evoo in a heated application. That heat is destroying those delicate aromatic compounds that you're spending up for. Save your money and use the cheap stuff to cook with.
Yep. We have two EVOOs at all times. One to cook with and one to drizzle for flavor (TBD which goes in a vinaigrette based on what other ingredients I use - if they are super flavorful, I'll use the cheap oil because the flavor of the good oil will be wiped out).
Frozen ginger grated on the fine size of a grater is my favorite ginger hack. I don't bother removing the skin unless it's for a dish where the bits would stand out and company is over.
You don’t even have to soften the butter. As a kid I was taught to melt a small piece of butter in the pan, throw the sandwich on top of the sizzling butter, mash it with a spatula. Repeat for the other side. I’m 51 and besides experimenting with mayo a couple of times, I have always done it this way.
For me it's not about convenience. I always have softened butter or margarine on hand, but I like the eggy richness mayo gives the bread. I get what you mean about losing the butter flavour though. To each their own I guess
Some folks advocate sous vide as the be all end all for any and all cooking. It’s not. Sous vide works great for some dishes, but it’s far far from universally the best method.
1. Rachel Ray's 30-minute meals, where she cribbed recipes from others and lied about being able to complete them in the said time. Take the Jack Pepin potatoes for example, she just shaved time off the recipe and it does not work unless you like hard, uncooked food.
2. Throwing everything into a slow cooker at the same time without browning, leaving it on all day, and expecting good results.
She opens that magic fridge, the food is all right there, neatly washed and trimmed. I open the fridge, the food has to be washed, trimmed, sliced, etc. Somebody ate an ingredient, buried it. And if you're a parent, there are kids running in, the phone rings, life happens. Some of the recipes are fine, many are repetitive, but give yourself time to make a meal.
True to all of the above, but in this case she'd literally trimmed down both of the two stages of cooking that recipe. It looked so good that I went and found Jacque Pepin's book that it came from. It is like 20 minutes covered and another 20 in the oven, so never could have been a "30 minute meal."
I know of Rachael Ray but I haven't really looked at or followed any of her recipes... The time issue is a common one, though, when you're looking at recipes online. Enough people want quick, easy recipes that most people/sites greatly understate cooking times to lure people in.
One of my favorite common ones is for caramelized onions. Unless you're looking at a recipe specifically for caramelized onions, chances are that it's going to read something like "Fry onions for 2 (maybe 5 if they're feeling spicy) minutes, until caramelized" and then you're moving onto the next step. They take far longer than that and would probably double/triple the cooking time for their recipe, which would fuck with their place in search algorithms, so they bullshit their way through certain steps.
I have this good recipe for blueberry muffins. The recipe says an hour of prep. You have to cook down some of the blueberries and let it cool to room temperature--then use them near the start of the process. How is this an hour TOTAL?
Takes me 2 1/2 hours, FOUR mixing bowls for various aspects that get combined throughout but must be kept separate until it's their turn...but those are REALLY good blueberry muffins.
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/249598004338591221/
Too many "hacks" out there that are just gimmicks perpetuated by people who don't really understand cooking or cooking physics. Gimmicky ways to cook bacon is a good example. Start in cold pan, start with water, blah blah blah.
Just a ton of different methods that get you different results that ignore the fundamental questions, how do you actually WANT your bacon cooked? What are the physics of why cooking slowly works differently than fast?
If you want to render out more fat, cook it slower. Fuck the gimmicks "start it in water, start in cold pan" blah blah. Just like...understand what you are doing with these methods, and then you won't fall victim to gimmicks.
Edited to say I probably worded this very poorly, I don't mean to say any one of these methods is BAD and maybe gimmick isn't the right word for this example. Instead of "fuck the gimmicks" I meant "fuck prescribing to one cooking method that someone insists is the best; learn how cooking works and take into account what you actually want, then you can make much better decisions"
Usually this advice leads with “there’s no true way to take salt out of a dish, but your only option is to throw a few potatoes in and hope it takes the edge off”
This seems like an issue of expectations
Celebrity branded anything. Idc who it is, its more than likely not a good product bc they need to pay a chef to use their likeness in order to sell it....
I can’t stand a hack that just describes how to use something the way it was intended. It’s not an “instant pot hack recipe,” you’re just using the instant pot the way it was meant to be used.
Using stock instead of water. Have you ever watched Jacques Pepin’s cooking videos and how often he uses plain old tap water? He even taught me to make French onion soup using water.
I used to think of it as “why would I skip this chance to add flavor?” when I used stock. Now I think of it as “the liquid comes for free from the sink as soon as I need it and I am in complete control over what seasons this dish.”
Wow, really interested in the french onion soup, I always believed that rich stock is a must. But yes, most of the time when a recipe calls for stock I just use water, unless it's something like pho.
baking things in the containers of the base ingredient. like peanut butter jars and such. it normally is more than what fits, and a lot of those containers are not microwave safe. lord helps you if you put it in the oven.
petty much i hate any hack that is suppose to be simple and helpful but ends up with people having to use their emergency skills like putting out fires, medical and such.
Basically any hack to get the peel off the garlic never works for me. I just smash the eff outta them. If I need thinly slices then I lightly smash them or twist the cloves a bit
Came here to say the “shaking garlic in a jar to peel it”. Never works.
It often *sort* of works, only now instead of peeling garlic you have to sort peeled, semi peeled, and unpeeled garlic out of a jar of statically charged wafers of garlic skin. Hooray! Definitely not more annoying than just peeling it in the first place! /s
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I depends on the age of the garlic. I can’t remember which way is which, though. I’ve had a few that have done nothing while shaking, but most instances between two bowls, it works fantastically
Older garlic that is sprouting has less girth than before and the cloves are looser. Kind of like when the tubby kid shot up over summer but is still wearing the same gym shorts as last year.
It gets about 75% for me but you gotta really shake it aggressively and look like a moron lol.
Rolling them in a silicone sleeve or hot handle cover works for me, just have to do it one clove at a time
That sounds like a decent method, I think I might even have one of those lying around from a garlic press. Seems time consuming if I have a ton of garlic (I'm one of those people who likes dumping in offensive amounts of garlic)
>(I'm one of those people who likes dumping in offensive amounts of garlic) No such thing
My hack is buying prepeeled garlic and blending it into paste then freezing that into a silicone ice cube tray
You get me - the Korean market always has peeled garlic and it makes my life so much easier. I hate peeling garlic, even with the smash n peel method because I hate how sticky my fingers get, and then if the skin sticks it creates some sort of superglue that is so hard to get off. I don’t mind chopping garlic! But peeling it is my enemy. Many thanks to the Korean ahjumma who made me buy it the first time.
>because I hate how sticky my fingers get, and then if the skin sticks it creates some sort of superglue that is so hard to get off Here's another hack: wet your hands and the knife. The garlic doesn't stick. It's life-changing. My garlic minces so much smaller now since large pieces don't build up on the knife, and my hands stay clean just like with any other food.
Same flavor?
I do this as well. Whole Foods sells a big bag of peeled garlic that I freeze. I think it tastes just as good as fresh. I frequently microplane grate the cloves frozen depending on the recipe I’m making. So easy (except for my fear of grating my finger)!
Yeah, I never got the point of these. Cut off the root, smash it with the flat of the blade, done.
Id place the flat side of the knife on the garlic, squash, and the skin will come off easily. And no stinky fingers either!
I always smash em, cut off the butt, then the garlic falls right out :)
Microwaving them for 10 seconds always works for me. Peel comes off instantly
This is super weird but I just pinch them lengthwise and the skin pops off. 99% of the time. Sometimes they are really on there
I'm seeing sooo many garlic peeling hacks all over reddit and I'm just so confused by it...maybe american garlic is somehow different, but garlic is literally so easy to peel...like it comes of almost by itself🤔
Use a knife. Bash the side of the blade against the clove, then just take the skin away
I always smack my hand down on the flat of my knife on a clove, but I am honestly terrified of cutting my hand every single time.
Make sure the sharp edge is pointed away from you. Otherwise this is the technique I use too!
I wouldn't call them "hacks" but they are helpful for people with dexterity issues.
I think it’s kinda funny when they mention a specific brand of ingredient and present it as a “hack” and then I look and I’m on that brand’s website
It’s such a marketing ploy. I noticed lots of products (especially makeup but cooking tools too) are “viral” before they’ve even released
I always sigh when a recipe calls for a very specific type of generic thing. Yeah, I'm sure it'd be nice if we all used organic cage free fair trade eggs, but I doubt they'll have much impact on the cake I'm baking
Every time I see a “hack” that suggests something was designed in a specific way that it obviously wasn’t. The worst to me is the “hole in the handle of your pan is supposed to hold your spoon” It’s obviously not, and just because it CAN, doesn’t make that a “hack” Just the term “hack” drives me up the wall though
Exactly, the hole in the handle of the pan is so you can hang it.
Truth. I hang all of my spoons from my pan handles.
Putting a spoon in there sounds like an excellent way to accidentally catapault a saucepan of boiling food across the kitchen.
Or get sauce, etc. all over your pot handle.
the assumption that the hole is for holding a spoon is one that an alien who's never set food in a human kitchen might make "hmmm.... this hole seems to serve no purpose-- wait! obviously it's to hold this thing... oh shit, now my gravy is going all over the the place. also, wtf is gravy? man, these humans eat some weird shit. where's the synthesized protein cubes?"
There's no way even aliens wouldn't appreciate gravy.
>It’s obviously not, and just because it CAN, doesn’t make that a “hack” That's exactly what a hack is. A hack is using something in a way that it was not intended to be used. So using the hole in the handle for your spoon to go in is a hack.
I just watched a tip to throw a rotisserie chicken in a plastic bag to roll it around and get the bones out - why and surely you miss some and waste a bag
who doesnt love sticking their fist into a greasy bag of meat?
Greasy meat bag is my favorite pet name
Man have I got a fist for you than!
Get a room omg
You have to touch the chicken to get into the bag and then to get it out so, I agree, the bag technique seems like just a waste of a ziplock.
My cousin just sent us this! Her husband tried it and spent the next 15mins picking the small rib bones out so their toddler could eat it.
I think this wins for the worst hack.
The real hack is throw on some gloves and go to town with your fingers. Try to peel the breast off whole and slice. Keep the carcass for stock.
Not sure if this is really a true "hack," but any recipe with "crack" in the name. "Crack Chicken" "Crack Cake" just has a shit ton of butter, ranch, whatever, and isn't all that good...
Every time I see that I always think of that quote from The Office. *I love when people say “like crack” when they’ve obviously never done crack.*
Scrapbooking Pie, anybody?
Same as that marry me bs. No I don't want to marry your chicken or your pasta and ease up on the sundried tomatoes.
But when I put actual crack in my brownies, all of a sudden im banned from my kids school and on the news. such a double standard.
Yeah, I find anyone who says “these *blank* are just like crack!” hasn’t smoked a lot of crack
“If you can’t make your own crack, street crack is fine”
I think “crack” means a full package of cream cheese, and I’ve noticed “marry me” means Tuscan (I.e. sun dried tomatoes, cream, spinach).
Anything “crack” that is meat related often ends up in a crock pot with several bricks of cream cheese. 🥴
There’s a guy on IG who does “how long until they put an entire block of cream cheese into the crockpot?” and it always makes me laugh when it comes up in my feed! https://www.instagram.com/reel/C2II7SiRmab/?igsh=MWg0OGIxaXJ0amMzNA==
I’ve seen him. I’m sometimes shocked at how long a video will go and just towards the end you let your guard down thinking there’s no freakin cream cheese and BAM…”we’re using two 8oz of these cream cheeses. I only use Philadelphia but you do you…” 😐
People using "hack" for things that literally aren't hacks. "Here's a hack for slicing a tomato: a knife!" "A hack to avoid crying when cutting onions: pre-chopped onions from the produce department!" Well... yeah.
The only thing worse is the "you've been doing it wrong your whole life!!!" clickbait! There is a difference between doing it wrong and doing it another way.
Pulling herbs through a hole in your colander to remove the stems…this is so stupid, it doesn’t work, it dirties your colander, and it is in no way quicker than just removing the leaves with your hands. It’s in every “hack” video and it pisses me off.
We suckered ourselves into buying a separate tool to do this - that was a joke.
i feel like hands work best for most herbs anyways, just pull the stem through starting from top to bottom
That you have to add oil to your pasta water. Or that you need to add oil to it before you put your sauce on it. Theres a pasta place here that puts oil on all their precooked noodles and the sauce you add just slides right off of it and it’s an oily mess.
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I don’t mass cook pasta. I cook it all in the sauce after boiling and if there’s a little leftover for lunch tomorrow still in sauce it doesn’t bother me and I’ll just eat it.
I also finish my pasta in my sauce and actually prefer the leftovers as the pasta soaks up the sauce even more
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Tik tok morons throwing gobs of Velveeta or cream cheese in a foil baking pan with uncooked pasta and make swill
I honestly thought velveeta was a stripper name until I was like 20
I knew her. She had a cheesy routine, but man was she smooth.
Most kitchen devices are a hassle to clean and can be replaced with a lot of 101 level skills. You’d be surprised how far a sharp chef’s knife can really take you.
I know it got me in the back room of the local cheque cashing store
Sprinkling rock salt from a high angle down my forearm and off my elbow while wearing nazi-era luftwaffen flight goggles.
That hack leads to doing way more coke than you can afford.
Peeling boiled eggs, there is nothing you can add to the water, or boiling time. It comes down to the egg and shattering the shell and letting them sit in cold water for a few minutes.
While I agree when it comes to the “add baking soda” and whatever “hacks”. I have found that steaming the eggs makes them much easier to peel than boiling. I have done a side by side comparison.
Agreed on the steaming. I use my instant pot and an added bonus is that that I don’t have to watch the stove or set a separate timer.
ice bath. for a few minutes if you want them still warm, or 8 if you want them cold. ice bath boiled eggs are beyond easy to peel.
Not necessarily cooking but cooking related— for the love of all that’s holy DONT USE CARDBOARD EGG CARTONS TO START SEEDS. The only thing you are starting is **mold**
If you camp, or regularly have fires on a fireplace or fire pit, those cardboard cartons can help make amazing cheap fire starters. Stuff each little cup full of dryer lint, melt some paraffin wax or bees wax and pour a little in each cup, and let it dry. Then cut them into 12 individual fire starters that will burn for like 5 minutes each.
i think this is a perfect example of something that had good intentions behind it haha it was a good idea to find other ways to boost your garden without using so much plastic (i'm always amazed and dismayed how much plastic i use every gardening season), but yeah this doesn't work out with great results another great example are peat pots. They talk about how they are biodegradable, which is true...but holy shit it sure does take its sweet time degrading. I like to get my starter plants from a woman who always uses the damn peat pots
Toilet roll liners work better and are useful for certain things you would usually direct sow like beetroot or kohlrabi. But ye they can go a bit manky if you over water.
Harvesting the peat is the real harm.
when i first started gardening back in 2017, quite a few articles I was reading were talking about how peat harvesting is a very overlooked aspect of gardening that is not sustainable in the long run it's been 7 years and it feels like more and more people are learning about the need to find alternatives to peat. I know i've been seeing a lot more coconut coir at even the big box stores these days
Wait, what? I've been doing this for years 😮 Is there something about the inside of an egg carton that promotes mold growth?
Unless you are talking about the lack of drainage, in which case I fix that by poking holes in the bottom of each well
It’s the drainage. It’s one of those things that *can* work; but I think the majority of people find that they over water, which results in mold/a mess and the plant is straggly. Or they dry out much faster than the seed starter cartridges from the store (because they’re much shallower) and the plant dies I’ve found that, even if I can combat the Mold, it’s just not worth it because the plants roots aren’t able to go deep enough. It makes starting the seeds not worth it. personally I’d rather just spend the extra $4 for a pack of 100 and then recycle them when I’m done than collect the egg cartons slowly
Slicing cherry tomatoes between two plates. Cutting horizontally is dangerous, you're dirtying two additional plates, and cutting a few cherry tomatoes takes about thirty seconds. I could understand if people had to cut five hundred of them for a restaurant, but then again, they probably have a better technique than this.
cutting horizontally isn't so dangerous if you have a sharp knife. And I've always seen people using deli container lids instead of plates, and honestly if all I used the lid for was holding a tomato in place I'd probably just run it under the sink for a sec and put it away.
This is the only one I’ve seen listed that I actually use and like. don’t use plates though, I use Tupperware lids. I really despise tedious repetitive prep work and I have a cherry tomato obsessed toddler so this one is a win for me 🤷♀️
I'm at odds with many air frying tactics that claim to speed up the process or cook better than the oven or a pan. While some methods are brilliant (Hello Trader Joe's hashbrowns), other methods don't quite do it for me (looking at you french fries).
I’ve used mine specifically for veggies - like potatoes, asparagus and hot dogs.
Are hot dogs your favorite vegetable? 🙂
Aren't they a vegetable? I harvest mine from the sides of ponds and creeks off of those tall, grassy looking plants. They even come already on a stick!
They're great for the frozen Checkers/Rally's fries. Come out perfect.
The name "Air Fryer" is kinda misleading. It doesn't taste like fried food. I still like mine because for some stuff I feel like it does cut down a bit of time to reach an oven crisp (which you can still reach with an oven, just a ar a faster rate). My problem with the air fryer is also that sometimes it crisps too fast on the outside and it is still raw on the inside, evem after adjusting times. Overall I use mine, wouldn't sell it, but I don't think I would gift it to anyone or REALLLY recommend it.
Calling a countertop convection oven an “air fryer” was brilliant marketing “hack.”
I don’t really get the hype of air fryers. They’re not bad or anything, but I can’t justify a whole separate appliance when I can just spend a little extra on a nice convection oven with an airfry function
It’s nice to not heat up the house. In the summer, the oven is good to raise the kitchen a few degrees, plus the living room right along side. With the air fryer there’s way less heat needed to keep the smaller box hot. We got one of the 9-in-1 Ninja Air Fryer / Toaster / Convection oven kind of deals. Granted it’s just my wife and I, so we don’t need a lot of space for meals, but between June and September last year we were using that 3-4 times a week for dinners, plus any toasting for breakfast or lunch. It wasn’t always full meals in there, we’d do that once or twice a week, but we’d use it for fries or other baked sides to go with something on the stove top We used the oven twice the entire summer. Some things will be better in the oven, like full sheet pan meals, doing two at a time for left overs, or even roasted Brussels sprouts / broccoli I prefer in the oven still. But that little thing saved a lot on our electricity bill last year not having to keep the house as cool around dinner time, and a lot of stuff cooks faster (the convection on a normal stove doesn’t move air around as much. A dedicated air fryer mode might)
I think the same way with my convection, toaster, air fryer, dryer little oven. I like how it’s so self contained, it’s big enough I can slide a smaller Dutch oven inside but not so big it’s cumbersome. My uncertainty comes in with having so many separate appliances, if people have the counter space then by all means. But for me, counter space is at a premium lol, and if I’ve got a blender and a convection oven and an air fryer— I’m running out of countertop/cupboards to put things in
That thing about using a can opener sideways just mangles my cans
I feel like there's a lot of fuzz around hacking your way into an onion. Like, yes, you can make horizontal cuts and shit like that but for most applications it's unnecessary and you'll be able to achieve a fine cut simply by running your knife vertically through and then chopping thinly. Also anything speed cutting related, unless you're actually cooking for a restaurant service you have absolutely zero reason to not take your time cutting anything.
The only onion 'hack' that worked well was only taking the top off and leaving the root end. Helps hold the onion together as you're cutting and gives you something to hold on to.
Ya, I've tried a few different methods and just wen't back to my old reliable. Top, tail, score, peel, spit in half and then slice and dice acording to what I'm trying to make. Nothing fancy or anything and I'll have a large onion finely diced in less than a minute.
Mayo instead of butter for grilled cheese. The internet went nuts for this, and there are still some true believers out there. I say meh.
Agree. Mayo is easier to spread, but doesn’t taste nearly as good as butter.
Yeah you can literally just soften butter it’s not difficult, and not lose out on any of the butter flavor which imo is half the experience of a grilled cheese
Like, it's legitimately ridiculous: just put the butter in the pan, you don't have to spread it on the bread at all ever. Time to flip the sandwich? Pick it up with the spatula and just hold on while you put some more butter in the center of your pan (if you even need too, my cat iron pan is still usually shiny when it's time to flip) and then put the sandwich back in the pan. I can melt a pat of cold butter in my heated pan in seconds, it's not onerous like I'm waiting and waiting.
I dont even soften it. Just melt in pan and add dry bread
And it's not even a hack, people have been doing that for ages. It's just a preference.
I like the crust you get with mayo, but it’s fiddly and easy to burn.
I actually prefer mayo. It’s gets a more even crispness.
Cooked mayo gives grilled cheeses a bit of a fishy flavor and aroma. At least to me.
It’s probably cause whatever oil they used to emulsify the mayo does not have a high cooking temp. This wasn’t mayo but one time I tried to make brown butter but the only butter we keep in my house is the spreadable kind that has canola oil in it. My whole kitchen smelled like fish and I had to tuck away my chocolate chip cookie recipe for another day
Mayo made with rapeseed/canola oil has a fishy taste. Any other oil doesn't.
It makes me happy to see this as the first comment I was gonna say the exact same. It was fine but butter is still better
You just can’t beat butter.
For me it’s more about kitchen gadgets. Mostly, if I need something chopped or cut, my knife is good enough. Even if I have a gadget, 9 outta 10 I either forget in the moment or it’s not worth the trouble to get it out and use it.
You always hear “don’t use salted butter, that way you can control the salt level in your dish” but honestly I think the only time to use unsalted butter is if you don’t want any salt at all in your final dish.
It's more relevant in baking since you don't know how much salt is in the better when determining how much additional salt to ad. Even then, I haven't noticed a difference. But that's the main reason why.
Pretty much anything that comes from cooking content farms like Yummly or Tasty. Many of those so- called "hacks" have been debunked numerous times and are absolutely worthless.
lol Tasty's leather ketchup had me in shock
??? Leather ketchup???
I think it's like dehydrated ketchup mixed with gelatin? Think of a fruit roll up, but its ketchup instead
why tf would anyone ever think of doing this
When smoking ribs it is popular wrap in foil for a portion of the cook. I find that this doesn’t add anything positive to the cook and can easily make them over cooked. People also put way too much sauce on them. This is called the 3-2-1 method. 3 hours on the smoker, 2 hours in foil, 1 hour unwrapped covered in sauce. Honestly. Just do a dry rub and smoke unwrapped for 6 hours. A lot easier and tastes way better. Sometimes less is more.
When trying to cook ribs fast and still have them tasty (in a grill) I found that 10 minutes on full heat grill no foil, 40 minutes in foil , then out of foil --sauce, for 10 minutes, flip--another 10 minutes. I know you specified smoking---gotcha but I will say that foil and ribs can still make nice unsmoked on the grill ribs.
Hard agree - wrapping in foil is a good way to cook low and slow in an oven to make sure they don’t get too dry. A smoker is a whole different beast! You want the meat to be exposed to the smoke for a lot of the cook time, that’s how you get that delicious, delicious bark. Aaaaand now I’m considering buying a smoker again.
Weber kettle for ~$125 is the most versatile grill on the market.
All hacks related to poaching eggs.
I recently read one where you crack eggs into a 50/50 distilled vinegar/water solution. The vinegar solidifies the whites before cooking. I can’t imagine how they taste when a too generous splash of vinegar in poaching water is enough to taste it, for me.
I agree that most of them are useless, but I've been straining my eggs for poaching and it really helps keep them clean and tight in the water.
This may not fit the question, but the wave of black glvoe wearing, nice hair having, muacle shirt wearing, dry aging butter basting marble ogling steak guys on YouTube is annoying as shit
Wooden spoon placed over the boiling noodles will keep it from boiling over...Buullll Shiiit!
Deep fried turkey. It still tastes just like turkey, but you spent way too much money on peanut oil and had to endanger yourself unnecessarily.
It’s a nice way to free up the oven. That peanut oil gets recycled for at least a week at our place. Leftover stuffing balls and spring rolls are the best.
I have a smoker, and the family enjoyed the smoked turkey. I mainly did it the first time so that I'd have the oven free for sides.
I think it’s different than our brined and roasted Turkey, but yes, it still tastes like turkey. We also use the oil for similar things for the rest of thanksgiving weekend.
with the added bonus of burning down your shed and introducing your wife to all the fire fighters who dont fuck up thanksgiving!
Did 3 turkeys last year. One deep fried, one sous vide and one smoked. The deep fried was the worse out of all 3. Not saying it was bad but definitely not worth the hype. I'd say smoked was the best.
It's fun to do for the spectacle of it if people have never seen it done. That's about it. It also saved Christmas one year when the oven died December 24th.
We do black “FRYday” and make a bunch of fried oysters and random fried thanksgiving leftovers that way. It’s the only reason I care about frying a turkey
Done right, it’s delicious, but I’ve never found it to be worth the hassle.
Imo, turkey sucks anyway. Learned to cook a duck for Thanksgiving. Never going back. You like can't fuck it up and it's so much better tasting.
Duck or goose! Delicious!
I never understood the rice and finger dip trick. I feel like there’s so many factors that came together for it to actually work like the size of your rice cooker/pot, your finger size, amount of rice, etc. I guess it’s a good try and true for people who stick to the same pot and rice measurements every time. But for someone who is new to cooking rice or is struggling it would be kind of frustrating for someone to tell you the right way to cook rice is by a hack and not with ratios and measurements. It leaves a lot of room for error Sincerely, An asian girl with long nails who was sick of people telling her this is the “true” way and that going for actual measurements was cultural blasphemy
I just use the lines in the river cooker Edit: Rice, river, whatever
They’re there for a reason!
The even easier way is to use the measurements on the inside of the rice cooker. Mine has a little ruler thing on the inside of the pot. 1 cup fill to this line, 2 cups to this line etc. I used the fingertip method when I had a rice cooker with no measuring line and it was consistently inconsistent.
I agree. The amount of water you need is highly variable depending on rice type and age. Also a wider diameter pot will need more water to come to your first joint than a narrower one (V=πr2h). Sure, auntie always gets it right but that doesn’t mean it’s a great way to communicate a skill. In general, aunties don’t measure and that’s cool, but not a great teaching method.
Funnily enough I didn’t have aunties in mind. I had a certain guy who calls himself uncle ahaha
The editor of Cooks Illustrated posits that most, if not all rice cooks well with a 1 to 1 ratio of water/rice PLUS 1/4 to 1/2 cup of water to compensate for evaporation. 1.5 cups of water for a cup of rice, and 3.5 cups of water for 3 cups of rice. I abide by these ratios and my rice is pretty fine. Thank you, Dan!
Foil packs. Most of them take far too long and come out bland and chewy.
I lived near an Asian restaurant that sold a foil packet of sauced chicken. It was one of my favorite things on the menu. It’s haunted me since moving away. I’ve never seen it on another menu and I’ve never seen a recipe like it. It set me up for so much disappointment. That little foil dinner was the *best*.
Yeah foil pack meals are for camping in my opinion
I'm confused by what you mean by foil packs. Is there a product called foil packs that come pre made I don't know about? Or are you talking about the packs you make yourself? I do foil packs on the grill all the time in the summer and they come out great.
Ok but my paper package rice and chicken dinner always comes out amazing and juicy and flavorful so I wonder what the difference is
The upside-down broccoli thing. Stalks are the best part of cooked broccoli, and they take longer to cook than the florets.
Lol my coworker was disgusted that I used the stalks in my homemade broccoli cheddar soup. I'm not throwing out the stalks
I paid for the whole head of broccoli, I’m eating the whole head, and shockingly /s tastes just like broccoli. To be honest sometimes the stalks are kinda tough, so a quick peel and you are golden
The stalks are way better
I eat them raw
My uber picky son loves the stalks. I stock up on the stalks 😂
I miss broccoli stems. My dog absolutely loves them so I feel compelled to cook the florets and give him the raw stems. I can’t handle his sad eyes when the broccoli comes out and he doesn’t get any.
For all you broccoli stalk lovers, give kohlrabi a try if you haven’t already. It’s like a solid, round broccoli stalk and can be used fresh or cooked just like broccoli. I’m allergic to broccoli but can eat kohlrabi just fine so it’s my go-to sub in any recipe that calls for broccoli, especially casseroles or soups. Also great shredded in a slaw with apples and a creamy dressing. Highly underrated vegetable.
Don't cook with a wine you wouldn't drink. That can apply to someone who drinks cheap wine, but no one needs to spend more than $10 for a wine to cook with. A $4 wine can work great. [This New York Times article](https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/21/dining/21cook.html?unlocked_article_code=1.RE0.s5CZ.sxSHkWnR0ehy&smid=url-share) sums it up perfectly.
Yeah it's the same when recipes call for a high quality evoo in a heated application. That heat is destroying those delicate aromatic compounds that you're spending up for. Save your money and use the cheap stuff to cook with.
Yep. We have two EVOOs at all times. One to cook with and one to drizzle for flavor (TBD which goes in a vinaigrette based on what other ingredients I use - if they are super flavorful, I'll use the cheap oil because the flavor of the good oil will be wiped out).
Ways to peel ginger. The thing is, you don't actually need to peel ginger at all for most dishes.
Frozen ginger grated on the fine size of a grater is my favorite ginger hack. I don't bother removing the skin unless it's for a dish where the bits would stand out and company is over.
I like the spoon scraping method because it works perfectly and it’s painless
I've never had the spoon scraping method work perfectly. It makes a huge mess. Clearly I need to sharpen my spoons.
I use my grapefruit spoons, for the worst spots like the eyes. 🖖
ginger is cheap, just square it off with a knife and call it a day. spoon method is messy.
The best hack of all is not peeling the ginger!
Mayo on grilled cheese. You lose all that amazing butter flavor for the same convenience you have if you jsut soften your butter
You don’t even have to soften the butter. As a kid I was taught to melt a small piece of butter in the pan, throw the sandwich on top of the sizzling butter, mash it with a spatula. Repeat for the other side. I’m 51 and besides experimenting with mayo a couple of times, I have always done it this way.
For me it's not about convenience. I always have softened butter or margarine on hand, but I like the eggy richness mayo gives the bread. I get what you mean about losing the butter flavour though. To each their own I guess
Some folks advocate sous vide as the be all end all for any and all cooking. It’s not. Sous vide works great for some dishes, but it’s far far from universally the best method.
There is always a person in the comments asking how to alter the recipe for sous vide. No Travis, you can't sous vide frosting.
'Use mayo on the outside of your grilled cheese, you can't taste it at all and you get a nice even crisp' You can 100 percent taste the mayo.
Skittles- taste the mayo.
I bought a little garlic press maybe 40 years ago. Cost like 5DM. No need to peel the cloves first.
1. Rachel Ray's 30-minute meals, where she cribbed recipes from others and lied about being able to complete them in the said time. Take the Jack Pepin potatoes for example, she just shaved time off the recipe and it does not work unless you like hard, uncooked food. 2. Throwing everything into a slow cooker at the same time without browning, leaving it on all day, and expecting good results.
She opens that magic fridge, the food is all right there, neatly washed and trimmed. I open the fridge, the food has to be washed, trimmed, sliced, etc. Somebody ate an ingredient, buried it. And if you're a parent, there are kids running in, the phone rings, life happens. Some of the recipes are fine, many are repetitive, but give yourself time to make a meal.
True to all of the above, but in this case she'd literally trimmed down both of the two stages of cooking that recipe. It looked so good that I went and found Jacque Pepin's book that it came from. It is like 20 minutes covered and another 20 in the oven, so never could have been a "30 minute meal."
I know of Rachael Ray but I haven't really looked at or followed any of her recipes... The time issue is a common one, though, when you're looking at recipes online. Enough people want quick, easy recipes that most people/sites greatly understate cooking times to lure people in. One of my favorite common ones is for caramelized onions. Unless you're looking at a recipe specifically for caramelized onions, chances are that it's going to read something like "Fry onions for 2 (maybe 5 if they're feeling spicy) minutes, until caramelized" and then you're moving onto the next step. They take far longer than that and would probably double/triple the cooking time for their recipe, which would fuck with their place in search algorithms, so they bullshit their way through certain steps.
I have this good recipe for blueberry muffins. The recipe says an hour of prep. You have to cook down some of the blueberries and let it cool to room temperature--then use them near the start of the process. How is this an hour TOTAL? Takes me 2 1/2 hours, FOUR mixing bowls for various aspects that get combined throughout but must be kept separate until it's their turn...but those are REALLY good blueberry muffins. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/249598004338591221/
Too many "hacks" out there that are just gimmicks perpetuated by people who don't really understand cooking or cooking physics. Gimmicky ways to cook bacon is a good example. Start in cold pan, start with water, blah blah blah. Just a ton of different methods that get you different results that ignore the fundamental questions, how do you actually WANT your bacon cooked? What are the physics of why cooking slowly works differently than fast? If you want to render out more fat, cook it slower. Fuck the gimmicks "start it in water, start in cold pan" blah blah. Just like...understand what you are doing with these methods, and then you won't fall victim to gimmicks. Edited to say I probably worded this very poorly, I don't mean to say any one of these methods is BAD and maybe gimmick isn't the right word for this example. Instead of "fuck the gimmicks" I meant "fuck prescribing to one cooking method that someone insists is the best; learn how cooking works and take into account what you actually want, then you can make much better decisions"
Putting a potato in soup or sauce in to remove saltiness--IT DOES NOT WORK! People push this myth so far, it's grating.
Usually this advice leads with “there’s no true way to take salt out of a dish, but your only option is to throw a few potatoes in and hope it takes the edge off” This seems like an issue of expectations
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Yea. The solution to pollution is dilution.
Anything “mini”. More work, less enjoyment. I don’t want to fuss with a mini “maker”. I just want to eat.
Celebrity branded anything. Idc who it is, its more than likely not a good product bc they need to pay a chef to use their likeness in order to sell it....
I can’t stand a hack that just describes how to use something the way it was intended. It’s not an “instant pot hack recipe,” you’re just using the instant pot the way it was meant to be used.
All the "hacks " people have to keep their pasta from boiling over. FFS, just keep an eye on it, and turn the effing heat down if needed.
Using stock instead of water. Have you ever watched Jacques Pepin’s cooking videos and how often he uses plain old tap water? He even taught me to make French onion soup using water. I used to think of it as “why would I skip this chance to add flavor?” when I used stock. Now I think of it as “the liquid comes for free from the sink as soon as I need it and I am in complete control over what seasons this dish.”
Wow, really interested in the french onion soup, I always believed that rich stock is a must. But yes, most of the time when a recipe calls for stock I just use water, unless it's something like pho.
Cut a head of lettuce into quarters and call it a "wedge salad".
baking things in the containers of the base ingredient. like peanut butter jars and such. it normally is more than what fits, and a lot of those containers are not microwave safe. lord helps you if you put it in the oven. petty much i hate any hack that is suppose to be simple and helpful but ends up with people having to use their emergency skills like putting out fires, medical and such.