Recently, Fuzzy-Ad6843 asked r/AskReddit, "Chefs of Reddit, what’s a common cooking rule everyone follows that is actually complete bullshit?" So we thought we'd share some of the top results.
1. "No '10 minute meal' takes 10 min. Maybe 30."
"It does take just 10min if you follow the video and cut one onion and then magically turn it into a bowl of five cut onions."
2. "Just wash your damned mushrooms."
"This should be higher. The mushrooms are mostly water by weight! Washing dirt off the surface won’t make them anymore wet than cooking them will."
3. "No matter how thin you slice it, garlic will not liquify in the pan."
"Even if you crush it into paste, it'll still be tiny little garlic bits."
4. "Treating recipes like gospel. You're allowed to change what you do to fit your tastes. You can add a little less onion to the soup if you want, or substitute that habanero for a jalapeño, or just nix the cilantro, or whatever. If it tastes good to you and maybe even the folks you are serving, I don't care what Alton Brown has to say on the matter. Also, watch Alton Brown, the guy's phenomenal."
5. "The only knife skills anyone realistically needs is how to properly hold a knife so you have better control over it."
"Your average home cook isn't chopping five onions, a whole stalk of celery, and so on. Is it nice to get them done quickly? Sure. It's all about going the speed you're comfortable with though. You don't need chef knife skills, just well enough that you do it right and safe. Adam Ragusea did a video on this and his sped-up B-roll shots show him with his fingers flat and in the way, speeding through the cutting dangerously. Slowed down he's methodical and making a cut maybe every three seconds."
6. "Most people already know this but ‘searing meat to seal in the juice’ is a total myth. Searing is great, just not for that reason."
7. "Not really a rule per se, but a lot of home cooks have an issue with seasoning. They're afraid to. Season that shit."
8. "When I worked at a pizza place, it was more effective to work without gloves because the cross-contamination was worse with them on. We would always have a wash sink close at hand too to make keeping hands clean easier."
9. "Assuming there's one right or authentic way."
"Almost nothing is the one, definitive, most correct and authentic way of anything. Cuisine changes constantly as borders adjust and people move and tastes change. Techniques change right alongside the cuisine, so just relax and have fun and do what tastes best. Thinking under-seasoned means it needs more salt.
It may, but it may also need an acid or a base, or something bitter, or sweet, or some umami to balance it out. When I need to adjust seasoning I like to start with the acid since that's the easiest to correct if you're wrong, and then go from there."
10. "Avoiding a decent wooden chopping board because of ‘contamination.’ People I know have these awful glass chopping boards for that reason, and they just feel unsafe to cut on because the knife slips around."
11. "Washing chicken does the exact opposite of what you think – it spreads harmful bacteria all over the place instead of having it quarantined to one area to be cooked off."
12. "Salting your beaten eggs before cooking them harms nothing. I have no idea where the ‘if you pre-salt your eggs they'll come out grey and liquidy’ rumour got started, but there's nothing to it."
13. "'Your pasta water should taste like the sea.' First of all, the sea is way saltier than you think; secondly, if you actually salted your water that heavily, the pasta would be inedible."
14. "I don’t think everyone follows, but 90% of these extra kitchen gadgets can be replaced with a chef's knife."
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