Cooking

Often recipes are really inefficient and sequenced wrong... Read the whole thing and find the "long pole" , and do that first.. could be starting the oven preheat early, starting the rice cooker right away vs at step 6 or run things in parallel.

This one is a little bit of a hot take, but bottled lemon or lime juice is good for consistency. While fresh will most certainly be better, you may inadvertently juice a bad lemon/lime and potentially ruin a dish. Bottled juices can last a bit longer in the fridge.

chicken (or vegetable) broth in lieu of water to cook rice.

To actually cook things enough. I wasn't cooking them to unsafe levels before, and please don't cook my steak above medium rare, but some foods just taste better cooked more. Almost no one cooks ground meats enough, who the hell wants grey beef, get some color on that bitch. Also if you cook sausage meat enough it gains color and the flat renders out a little it tastes better. Get some colour on those roast veggies and no one likes a pale insipid fry. A change in color is flavor, use it to your advantage. And yes sometimes you want your veggies firm and for the love of god don't overcook your garlic.

Mine is to salt or season from up high.

Use a meat thermometer! All your meat will come out perfect, without being under or over cooked.

Store ripe avocados submerged in water and they last weeks.

I'm a big fan of frozen herbs, frozen cubes of garlic save a ton of time breaking open cloves, frozen basil still has that fresh taste and smell relative to dried.

If you make pizza in a home oven, baking steel is a game changer. It gets nice and hot and makes your crust crispy. Like a pizza stone but better.

If you have a blender, try making your own almond milk for a fraction of the cost. It's easy.

Always salt your pasta water to the equivalent of sea water salty. It'll make your pasta taste much better.

You don't need to slave over a stove for 3 hours to get caramelized onion. Here's what you do. After slicing the onion, get the pan up to a medium heat with a splash of oil. Toss in the onions and add a bit of salt to make them sweat. Once they start to dry out, go golden at the edges, and even stick to the pan a bit, add a splash of water. You do have to stir continuously for this method as well, but it takes much less time. Do this process a few times where you add water, cook it until its dry, another splash of water, cook it until it dries out again, etc. Sometimes I'll even alternate in a splash of white wine for fun. You should have beautiful caramelized onions in 30 min with this method.

Mine is, don’t eat anything solid, hold your poop for 3-days. When the redditors arrive why won’t understand, but whatever food you eat will be the best you ever tasted, they also will remain confused about why there is so much karma on your foodporn posts!

Always keep canned tomatoes in the pantry. Particularly tomato paste. It's a great ingredient that can add a depth of flavor to a variety of dishes.

Whole spices really do make a big difference and it's worth knowing how to use them even if you don't make them part of your everyday cooking. When its time to make a special dish, using whole spicessl that you grind fresh will be worth it.

Use acid in your cooking. Citrus, viniger, wine, yogurt, etc will often upgrade a dish.

Parchment paper/aluminum foil is your friend. Minimize your time scrubbing dishes by minimizing the mess you make when baking food.

Reverse taring - instead of placing the bowl on the scale and taring before weighing, place your ingredients on the scale and tare, and you can then scoop out and see the negative weight of how much you have used. This is especially helpful if you are trying to weigh an ingredient into a hot pan you can’t just set on the scale

When slow cooking a roast lay it on a bed of potatoes or whatever other sides you want, fill the water to the top of the veggies (or taters) then soak the roast in your sauce of choice. Gravity and heat will help the sauce work into the veggies giving them a nice flavor. The roast pretty much always comes out perfectly moist and you get amazing veggies out of the deal.

deglazing. it's when you use an acid to pull all the glaze off the bottom of a pan. it flavors the dish and makes cleaning your pan easier.

rice vinegar and red or white wines are favorites

To get a good sear on a steak in a pan, the pan doesn't have to be super hot, you just have to make sure the contact surfaces are as dry as possible.

If your stew tastes like it's missing something, it's bay leaf.

Don't buy hyperspecialized tools for cooking if you can use more generalized tool for the task with the same amount of effort. You can do a lot with a good chef's knife.

Cut through greasiness with a bit of acid.

Adding a little bit of sugar, but not so much you can taste the sweetness, to otherwise salty dishes will mellow out and enhance the flavor of the dish.

When I have to use parchment paper, I crumple the paper ip into a little ball first, then press it out flat into the cooking vessel (sheet pan or loaf pan or whatnot) and it lays flatter/conforms to the pan better without rolling up all over the place rather than trying to just use a pristine sheet of parchment. It really works great.

Ah, the alchemy of the kitchen! A dash of efficiency, a sprinkle of passion, and a dollop of savviness. First off, mise en place - French for 'put in place.' Prepare your ingredients ahead of time, it can help remove a loot of stress.

Secondly, invest in a sharp knife - it's the Excalibur of the culinary world, turning the toughest veggies into paper.

Lastly, experiment! Like any good inventor, a chef isn't afraid of a few mishaps; it happens to the best of us! You'll surprise yourself with some of things you may come up with 😉

Stop mincing garlic and just get a fucking microplane. Thank you Rachel Ray.

If you're making rice without using a rice cooker, the amount of water you need is not quite a direct ratio like the package suggests. You need a 1:1 ratio of rice to water plus an additional quarter to half cup of water depending how firm you like your rice.

@PoodleDoodle

• when dicing onions cut radially first, then slice across, it saves you that weird half slice that's traditionally used for dicing onions.

• I use cast iron for nearly everything, it survives a hundred years because it's bulletproof not because it's gingerly handled every time it's removed from it's velvet case. People dragged them around on Chuck wagons, you will not kill it with soap. Worst case it gets a little sticky and now you need to cook some bacon in it.

• A splash of acid in your soup or stew at the end really wakes it up.

• Never cook rice without at least a couple bay leaves. Ideally you'll cook it in chicken stock as well, add flavour where you can.

• The best chicken stock in a jar is Better Than Bullion. Hands down. No contest.

• With a splash of oil you can cook eggs even in a sticky cast iron pan.

• Always use hand protection of some kind with a mandolin. I've never seen a non-pro chef go without and not fuck up their hand. Even pros lose the tips of their fingers sometimes too.

• If you want to recreate movie theater popcorn at home you need the following things:
  A whirlypop or other stovetop cooker
  Coconut oil, refined
  Popcorn kernels, quality varies, find a good brand
  Fine salt
  "Popcorn oil" - this is butter flavored oil sold next to the kernels

Here's what you do, set up a bowl to dump your popcorn in, throw some salt in the whirlypop with a spoon of coconut oil, and just a tiny glug of the popcorn oil, not much just a tad. Add your kernels, crank the heat to high and start cranking. Do. Not. Stop. The popcorn will begin to pop after an interminable wait. Keep cranking until it either gets hard to crank or the popping slows down significantly. Then quickly dump your popcorn into the waiting bowl. Do not add salt, you already did this, the fine salt will be well distributed this way. Add a bit of popcorn oil. Shake the bowl a bit to distribute, add more if desired etc. Then enjoy your movie theater popcorn.

It took me years to work out how to do it without the Naks oil, which I bought from a local popcorn shop for awhile.

Use a piping bag to fill muffin tins/cupcakes. Saves so much mess and crumpled paper.

Save a cut of pasta water to thicken up sauces.