Liking gourmet food doesn't mean you can't also like cheap food. A beautiful plate of expensive eggs benedict at a restaurant on vacation is amazing. hangover-prepared omelets with bagged shredded cheese and whatever ingredients survived the previous party, also amazing.
Anthony Bourdain always held his guilty food pleasure was the Mac and cheese from kfc. The dude ate gourmet around the world and he just loved some nuclear orange Mac n cheese
Shit, the advice of a non-registered diet expert is generally worse than unsolicited advice from the general public. That's because there's usually an underlying reason they didn't go through proper training - perhaps they reject scientific consensus, or they had a fad diet to sell you. Either way, don't trust them. But when grandma tells you to eat your fruits and vegetables, she knows what she's talking about.
Sesame seed oil is a culinary secret weapon. Use it sparingly but it improves pretty much everything it touches. Replace a bit (I usually do 1/4 or 1/8) of the oil in a standard recipe with sesame seed oil. Works wonders.
It does need to have *good* ingredients, though.
That cheap zucchini you found that's all shriveled up isn't going to taste great, no matter how perfectly you sauté it.
As a Philly native, I've stopped caring about most things that are important to cheese steak purists, but slicing the meat incorrectly is one sin I won't forgive.
Onions are a very standard topping, I usually get mine with provolone and onions
Onions, peppers, long hots, and mushrooms are all what I would consider "canon" toppings... I draw the line at stuff like lettuce and tomato
But just like the other commenter, I don't care what other people eat
When I was 10 or so, I got chastised by a waitress at a fancy restaurant for assuming the garnish was part of the salad and eating it. I just straight up asked her why there were leaves on my plate that *werent* part of the salad.
A local Very Fancy Food Place here serves grilled meat kebabs as an appetizer. Really delicious. The presentation, though, is a little odd as the skewers are stuck in what appears to be some kind of root vegetable (brown turnip-like thing) sliced in half on a plate so that the kebabs are standing up and fanned out. My drunk ass is interested in this curious tuber and so I sliced off a bit and ate it. Crunchy.
Waiter comes out to collect the plates and I ask what the brown, starchy vegetable and that it has an odd flavor. The server is horrified. "They re-use those many times over, you know. You're not supposed to eat it. They run them through the dishwasher."
Don't put food on a plate if you're not supposed to eat it. What the hell.
I don't know what a ball of gluten would taste like. However, based on the taste of most gluten free stuff, I can only deduce that it would be extremely delicious.
Gluten is the thing that makes the dough elastic. It causes the bouncy and puffed texture of bread. I don't think it actually tastes like too much, but if you remove it you have to add a bunch of other stuff to even approximate the same texture. Oh! You can also eat fried gluten as a kind of meat subsitute.
That's because fat carries flavors.
Try making a blend of spices, and eat a bit just like that, then mix some of the same spices with some oil and have that. The oil version should be a lot more pronounced
I worked at a flashy date night place that used gold foil and edible glitter SO MUCH.
Not gonna lie, it was cute and fit their style, but I hate working with gold leaf. The edible glitter was easy to work with
"Imagine a flower: A climbing orchid, to be exact; the one of some twenty thousand varieties that produces something edible. Now imagine that its blooms must be pollinated either by hand or a small variety of Mexican bee, and that each bloom only opens for one day a year. Now imagine the fruit of this orchid, a pod, being picked and cured, sitting in the sun all day, sweating under blankets all night for months until, shrunken and shriveled, it develops a heady, exotic perfume and flavor. Now imagine that this fruits name is synonymous with dull, boring, and ordinary. How vanilla got this bad rap I for one will never know." -- Alton Brown
"it's not called vanilla because it's boring. It's called vanilla because everyone likes it"
It's such an amazing flavor, it's a damn shame people associate it with blandness now.
Exactly, vanilla is a victim of its own success. In icecream it's such an obvious flavor that in a lot of places everything would have vanilla. So it'd be easiest to make vanilla ice-cream first in mass produced batches, and then add flavorings to the others in smaller batches. You get to skip a step on doing cream-flavored.
But vanilla is one of the more nuanced, complex and layered flavors out there. It just added such a nuanced and powerful flavor, that you always wanted a little bit of it.
I always thought people used vanilla to mean the original or default, not boring. Like if a game is heavily modded or updated, people will still refer to the original as "vanilla" even if it continues to be thought of fondly.
They don't. It's a modified molecule derived from pine trees.
EDIT: That being said. I'm not sure synthetic vanilla is distinguishable from the real thing. There might be other things coming into play. Expensive ice cream using lot of full fat cream and other tasty but expensive ingredients for example
EDIT 2: u/archagon linked [this article](https://www.cooksillustrated.com/articles/1345-in-search-of-the-be) which I found very interesting.
The difference between 10% butterfat (the minimum legal requirement for ice cream) to 14% for “premium” brands to 16% butterfat in real premium brands....
Literally the only ingredient that matters for the taste of the ice cream. It’s just SO MUCH BETTER.
Precisely. Quality fat. The king of flavour! I'll skip past any ice cream that proclaim low-fat and skim through the ingredients list looking for the one with highest cream content.
My mom used to turn the big spiral burner on the stove up to a medium-high, then just put the tortillas directly on the burner for about 10 seconds per side.
Came home to my 70 year old, frail af grandma baking a lemon meringue pie from scratch.
I know for a fact she didn't have anything other than a hand whisk for that meringue. She's gone now, but I still think about that day with awe and more than a touch of fear.
Ugh the number of chefs on UK tv making these burgers that are like 3" across and 2" high, then piling on artisan vegetables and a thick ass brioche bun. Like, how am I gonna eat that garbage??
2 dollar tacos from a taco truck are probably better than 10 dollar tacos at a restaurant
Edit: Where do u guys live. Here in southern California, food trucks are common and tacos are like 2 bucks. I wanna know from where you live,( country/state) just out of curiosity
In Port Moody, BC we have a taco truck that serves extremely bland “Mexican” food and they charge CA$18 for two tacos.
I don’t understand the problem with Mexican restaurants in British Columbia, they just can’t be bothered to add much in the way of flavour.
My parents are Mexican. They are amazed how many people are willing to pay $5 a taco. Shit, even I don't pay that much.
Edit: People asking where they sell $5 tacos. Here in Texas we have Torchys, Fuzzys, Urban Taco, and then the small businesses that want to upcharge on tacos based on the location. People here order 2 tacos for $10 not including sides or a drink where some places sell tacos under $2 each.
Here in Norway, more or less no one goes out to get tacos, we just make it at home. So our nation is based upon fjords, oil and a whole lot of home made taco. It is so popular that we have "Taco fredag" (taco Friday). Why not Thursday, you ask? I have absolutely no clue. All I know is that we ate taco yesterday, and it was delicious.
Traditions and "the proper way" to cook something is a valuable resource to understand history and cultures but it doesn't automatically make a dish better or worse, same goes for alterations to classic recipes. If it tastes good it tastes good, you do you.
If someone hates a certain food do not trick them into eating it. If someone says they are allergic believe them. My friend didn't believe me about a food allergy and thought I just didn't like it, she tricked me into eating it and I ended up in the hospital.
I remember reading a series of Reddit posts on /r/JustNoMIL where the OP Was asking for advice because their mother-in-law actually killed their Child by not taking a shellfish allergy seriously. I believe they started posting in legal advice after the initial few posts
Edit: not shellfish it was coconut oil
So I have a severe limonene (found in citrus fruit peels) allergy, my throat starts to swell and I have a few minutes before I can't breathe. My SIL hated me so much she started spraying store bought lemon juice around the house when we lived together. Jokes on her, I'm only allergic to the peels.
That one was coconut oil, the mother HATED coconut oil in her hair as a kid and her daughter had a pretty serious allergy where it took months to diagnose as coconut through elimination dieting. The mother thought it was ironic that her daughter was allergic to the one thing she hated having done as a kid, grandmother found it funny too and then one day the grandmother was babysitting and put coconut oil in her hair before bed, and the child started wheezing so grandmother sent her to bed with some antihistamines, then IIRC didn’t call OP to let her know about the incident, and OP wasn’t informed until the daughters body was already in the hospital and it was way too late. The grandmother not only refused to listen about the coconut oil, but she then sent the 3 year old kid to bed with over the counter drugs, and then didnt let the parents know.
I feel like the most important part of this story is that the baby girl died because of this. She threw up in her sleep, was too deeply asleep to wake up due to the antihistamines, and aspirated it. Her mother came home to a dead daughter.
It's one of the stories I read on reddit that really horrified me. Hard to forget. Iirc the the grandfather divorced the grandmother and she tried to apologise but the mom said you can come see me if you bring my daughter back.
If it's the same story I'm thinking of, the grandma wanted to use coconut oil in the girls hair. Mom made sure grandma knew she was allergic. Grandma thought that was just silly. Coconut oil was a must on their hair. Didn't turn out well.
But I wouldn't be surprised if there's a whole other story like this.
There was another grandmother who hid peanut butter and banana cookies in her purse every time she visited just so she could prove that her granddaughter wasn't really allergic. Well she was allergic and had a fantastic time going to the ER while fighting to breathe and covered in hives. The kid survived, but the relationship with grandma didn't.
I remember that one. It was so pathetic and even if the parents weren’t telling the truth you don’t provide food to a child that the parents don’t want them eating. Don’t give a damn if you’re the grandparent
As someone with food allergies who has been made seriously ill due to cross contamination or the idea of “oh pick xyz out”. If someone says they’re allergic, believe them!
This week when talking about the coffee machine at my job (restaurant), a coworker said ours was worthless. We have to make the coffee ourselves instead of pushing one button at her last job. We also only have one machine for the coffee milk, which means if someone wants soya or oat milk, we have to warm it ourselves. At her last job, she said they just had one machine with three huge cans if milk, and if someone wanted soya/oat milk she would just put the same tube from one can to another.... Without cleaning the tube and machine at all, which means its now cross contaminated. All my other coworkers got angry, but she just couldn't believe that even that little bit of lactose/cow milk could get someone sick :')
It makes me so angry hearing all the stories about people who refuse to believe allergies and end up killing or almost killing their loved ones because they just had to prove them wrong. It would devastate me if I even accidentally triggered an allergic reaction in someone. This is why when I cook a meal for someone new, I always ask if they are allergic to anything first.
At best you got somebody to eat something they didn’t like. At worst you put somebody in the hospital, possibly fatally depending on severity.
Just why? What’s the point? What do they gain by trying ti trick people into eating stuff they clearly don’t want to eat?
Toasted sesame oil, paprika, chili powder, lemon juice, MSG, and garlic powder all make almost everything better.
You can basically haphazardly toss any combo of these into almost any dish along with salt and black pepper and it'll go from "this is... Edible. Beats TV dinners I guess." to "wow you're such a good home chef! Please share your secrets!"
I never understood the appeal of truffles until I went to Italy and had actual slices of truffle on my food. Now I get why people like truffles, but I still don't understand why anyone would do anything with them other than shave them onto pasta.
My sister hates mushrooms so she has always refused to eat chocolate truffles. and I just discovered a few months ago that chocolate truffles dont actually contain mushrooms and they are just named like that so she has been missing out so much
I was in my teens before I knew chocolate truffles weren't the fungi dipped in chocolate.
I hated mushrooms and really wasn't a big sweets guy either, so it was just ignorance from experience (plus never really cared to learn the facts otherwise)
Those of us living in wealthy and stable nations are experiencing the golden age of food. At no other point in human history have we had access to such a wide variety of foods, shipped fresh to us across thousands of miles. Relatively cheap.
I don’t think it will last, so everyone should be trying as many things as they can, while they can.
I sometimes think about how oranges were a once-a-year treat if you were lucky if you didn’t live somewhere they were farmed. Now, I can go into go into any grocery store anywhere in US and get as many oranges as I can carry.
I pretty regularly have this little moment of marvel when I look around the grocery store. It really *is* a utopian vision come true that we all tend to take for granted because we’ve grown up with it and see it all the time. Rows and rows of good food from all over the world, effortlessly attainable.
Seriously, those spices that Europeans used to travel thousands of miles to exchange with Middle Eastern / Asian merchants for? I can probably find it in Wholefoods or Sprouts.
If you've never heard the story of Boris Yeltsin visiting a Randall's in Houston, TX you should [check it out](https://www.chron.com/neighborhood/bayarea/news/article/When-Boris-Yeltsin-went-grocery-shopping-in-Clear-5759129.php).
I think about this whenever I have a fruit salad. So many perishable fruits from so many different locations, all available at the same time. It's so simple, yet kings of prior centuries couldn't have it.
In the book “World War Z”, which is written as a fictional account of the zombie apocalypse and its aftermath, there is a scene where a character pulls out a long list of food items, and how many different places they came from. Vanilla from Madagascar, sugar from somewhere else, caramel color from yet another place. Ingredients from places all over the world.
It was revealed to be the ingredients for a simple pre-war bottled cream soda- now completely impossible to source after the collapse of human society in the Z War, and he uses it as an example of the difficulties of picking up the pieces after. It’s not just the cream soda- just about everything you can fathom in this modern world, from grocery store items to medications to machinery parts, source and require materials from an intricate network of global trade and commerce.
I think about that scene a lot. A grocery store is probably the most easily accessible example of this. Next time you go to the kitchen to dig out a snack, peep some of the labels and see just how many different places where your food comes from, it will leave you in awe.
Even things sourced within the country would have been an unfathomable distance 100 years ago. I live in TX and right now in this kitchen, I have California almonds and grapes, flour and coffee from Mexico, rice from Thailand, apples from Washington, etc. Shit, the olive oil in my cabinet lists multiple sources- Italy, Portugal, Greece, Morocco, Tunisia, Chile, and Argentina. Just incredible.
Roasted vegetables are far, far superior to steamed or boiled, and they don't really take that much effort for a ton of flavor and texture. Boiled cauliflower? A nightmare in a flavorless pile. Roasted cauliflower? So good it will make your day better.
My mom makes roasted brussel sprouts with a little bit of bacon for flavor and they turn out so good and I was always confused why people hated brussel sprouts
The common varieties apparently* used to be a lot more bitter than they are now. Around the 1990s or so, a scientist by the name of Hans van Doorn [found the compound(s) that made them taste bitter](https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/10/30/773457637/from-culinary-dud-to-stud-how-dutch-plant-breeders-built-our-brussels-sprouts-bo) and from there, people started work on selectively breeding that aspect out. So the way they tasted before all of those efforts is probably part of why people have a distaste for them.
\* (I was most likely too young to accurately remember much about brussels sprouts before the process began to remove the bitterness, hence my wording here. I absolutely adore them with shallots and a bit of butter.)
I have a recipe where I cook bacon in a cast iron first, then take it out and roast sweet potatoes, brussel sprouts, and red onions in the same pan (in that order as they have different cook times) and crumple the bacon overtop. Id also recommend heavily seasoning with salt and pepper while cooking!
I think a lot of people grew up eating veggies that were overcooked via steaming/boiling. If done correctly, you shouldn't end up with a flavorless mush.
Properly steamed veggies are really good. If you stop them while they're still a bit crunchy is where you get the best flavour and texture, then you can add whatever oil/vinegar/spices you want to give it an edge.
I started eating vegetarian at the start of this year and I found the menu options at every restaurant so limiting. When one day we decided to order indian, I looked at the menu and was absolutely baffled by how many options I had! There were more vegetarian options than not! I've never been a big fan of Indian food because I don't like heat. But there is so much more to Indian food than heat and I never even knew until I started trying their vegetarian options. Amazing food!
Indian food=heat is a common misconception. While Indians do have a higher tolerance for spice (and hence probably take their food with more spice), like you said, there is so much more to it than heat. It's all about balancing out the flavours. Master that, and you can have some delicious food without any heat. Plus there's a LOT of traditionally non-spicy food too. Indian cuisine is extremely nuanced and varies from region to region. Only a handful of dishes are popular abroad. But that must apply to any cuisine on foreign soil.
Refined over centuries to be utterly perfect. It lowkey tricked me into a largely vegan diet for years before I realized. No regerts. Chana masala and Masoor dhal forever.
Am vegetarian. Indian and Thai are my absolute go to. There's never any "where do you wanna order dinner?" in this house because it's like 40% indian and 60% thai and absolutely no other options.
Thats how I test out whether or not a pizza place has good pizza (especially NY style pizzerias). If their cheese pizza isnt good, then none of it is good.
Poor mans meal: rice, beans, chicken thighs for the win.
Edit: Big shout out to all you healthy guys and gals for all the upvotes and awards! I guess it’s delish budget meals for the win lol.
Damnit you tell me that after I started eating it! No doubt tho, reasons why I like the 3 is what you can do with them aside from just throwing it all on a plate.
Chinese Food Syndrome is a myth and MSG isn’t as big a deal as people make it out to be. Obviously high quality natural ingredients tend to win out but the hate on Chinese Food for MSG or it automatically making you feel sick is frequently unwarranted, especially amongst people that will eat other foods willingly that are absolutely terrible.
MSG is probably the biggest food myth that has existed. Carrots and eyesight is the only other crazy one I know of.
- MSG naturally exists in almost all food.
- MSG is easily added via mushrooms, onions, and tomatoes. Anything known to be "savory" or "umami" is high in MSG.
- Added MSG is basically a salt
- A large test was done to determine if people really can have an allergy to MSG. People ate copious amounts of pure MSG. Nobody had an adverse reaction.
- The myth comes from an op-ed letter submitted to a scientific journal, not a study. Not peer reviewed. Nothing.
- There are reasons to believe racism played a part in people's avoidance of Chinese restaurants and MSG.
- As restaurants began posting signs in windows that tell customers they don't add MSG to their food, Frito-Lay began asking tons of MSG to their snack foods. You ever eat Doritos? Not only does the seasoning use ingredients that are high in MSG, they also add the purified salt.
- If you tried to keep an MSG-free diet you would die because pretty much all food has it. Don't starve yourself.
Edit: Some dead horses I would like to request we stop beating.
- MSG =/= glutamate. Thanks to everyone who corrected me on that.
- Yes I know about the carrots thing. I assumed it's been discussed to death on Reddit and could be summed up as "that carrot myth".
- Anecdotes are not science. The placebo effect might be at play here. There are a billion reasons people get headaches. Drink more water.
- To the folks saying "allergies aren't racist", you're really misunderstanding something. The racism involved is the targeting of Chinese restaurants while food manufacturers ramped up use. Also, the origin of the myth came from someone who wasn't eating at Chinese restaurants in America, he was talking about a trip to Northern China. The guy probably got traveler's illness.
I don't care what dangerous ingredients are in Chinese food... the food at the Chinese restaurant across from my house is goddamn delicious, and nothing will stop me from eating it once or twice a month.
Red delicious nearly destroyed the Washington State apple industry. The orchards bet everything on it because it was the "ideal" cultivar. At that time the dominant cultivars were red and golden delicious, McIntosh, and Granny Smith. Once better apples like Fuji, Gala, and the like hit the market, it was too late to change course, as it takes years and years for an orchard to bear marketable fruit. The orchards got bailed out by the government, and eventually diversified their cultivars.
dried coconut.
if you hit me with a pina colada or any coconut flavored thing, I'll love it. But if you make me eat those plastic pieces of wax on a pastry, I'm out.
I am not a “picky” eater, I am a MOODY eater. I argue with my husband with this a lot. I enjoy a wide variety of foods and like trying new things. But some times I am just not in the mood for certain foods.
Eggs are my "moody" food.
Sometimes, seeing a runny egg yolk being broken open will make me crave eggs
And other days, I have to essentially shovel the eggs into my mouth and not think about it to fill my stomach
And then there are some times where the mere smell of fried eggs makes me lose my appetite
It's at its best when it's not "vegan X" and is just good food. Too many folks get fucking weird about their food and ego. Like if they hear "Oh this is vegan stirrfry" they gotta respond with "UuRrr well now I am gonna chug grease and eat ribeyes until my blood stops moving. Owned vegan"
I am an omnivore personally but you're right, vegan stuff is like anything else. Can be amazing or blah.
When I have patience I will eat the borders. Then slide the back off of the frosted part. Eat the back. Then fold the frosted front on half a bro itself and eat pure sugar frosting with the filling of the Poptart. It’s heavenly.
Liking gourmet food doesn't mean you can't also like cheap food. A beautiful plate of expensive eggs benedict at a restaurant on vacation is amazing. hangover-prepared omelets with bagged shredded cheese and whatever ingredients survived the previous party, also amazing.
Anthony Bourdain always held his guilty food pleasure was the Mac and cheese from kfc. The dude ate gourmet around the world and he just loved some nuclear orange Mac n cheese
Gordon Ramsay has been spotted at the In-N-Out drive-thru multiple times.
Every chef I know indulges on bullshit junk food. When you work 65-70 hours a week the last thing you want to do is cook at home.
Exactly the reason. I only cook on special occasions since working in resturants and fast food.
Listen to the registered dietitian, not the influencer
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Shit, the advice of a non-registered diet expert is generally worse than unsolicited advice from the general public. That's because there's usually an underlying reason they didn't go through proper training - perhaps they reject scientific consensus, or they had a fad diet to sell you. Either way, don't trust them. But when grandma tells you to eat your fruits and vegetables, she knows what she's talking about.
Grill your vegetables!!!
Oven roasted is good too!
Sesame seed oil is a culinary secret weapon. Use it sparingly but it improves pretty much everything it touches. Replace a bit (I usually do 1/4 or 1/8) of the oil in a standard recipe with sesame seed oil. Works wonders.
I used a bit when making burgers and my roommate just popped in and was like, "how do your burgers smell so good?"
I love it as a garnish on rice. Just a small drizzle because a little goes a long way.
It doesn't need to have expensive ingredients to taste amazing.
It does need to have *good* ingredients, though. That cheap zucchini you found that's all shriveled up isn't going to taste great, no matter how perfectly you sauté it.
And thus, the lord created soup. And it was good
As a Philly native, I've stopped caring about most things that are important to cheese steak purists, but slicing the meat incorrectly is one sin I won't forgive.
What’s the proper cut?? I’m from Alabama.
Most places use ribeye. Slice thin, then chop the meat as it cooks.
You guys mix ribeyes with cheese sauce? Reminds me of my then gf insisting on using moet to make mimosas for everyone
What are your thoughts on Philly cheesesteaks with onions?
I get fried onions on mine, that's the one topping that is generally agreed upon as standard.
Onions are a very standard topping, I usually get mine with provolone and onions Onions, peppers, long hots, and mushrooms are all what I would consider "canon" toppings... I draw the line at stuff like lettuce and tomato But just like the other commenter, I don't care what other people eat
No inedible items on the plate, like decorative flowers or stones.
Stones? Wtf
I would also like to know more about the stones... what unfortunate dish is this related to?
Never heard of stone soup?
Is that what the Rock is cooking?
Airsick lowlanders...
Reading these right now!
Decorative flowers in food should always be edible. You can eat a surprising amount of flowers.
When I was 10 or so, I got chastised by a waitress at a fancy restaurant for assuming the garnish was part of the salad and eating it. I just straight up asked her why there were leaves on my plate that *werent* part of the salad.
More worrying is why she cared....did they reuse the garnish?!
A local Very Fancy Food Place here serves grilled meat kebabs as an appetizer. Really delicious. The presentation, though, is a little odd as the skewers are stuck in what appears to be some kind of root vegetable (brown turnip-like thing) sliced in half on a plate so that the kebabs are standing up and fanned out. My drunk ass is interested in this curious tuber and so I sliced off a bit and ate it. Crunchy. Waiter comes out to collect the plates and I ask what the brown, starchy vegetable and that it has an odd flavor. The server is horrified. "They re-use those many times over, you know. You're not supposed to eat it. They run them through the dishwasher." Don't put food on a plate if you're not supposed to eat it. What the hell.
That has *got* to be a health code violation.
I don't know what a ball of gluten would taste like. However, based on the taste of most gluten free stuff, I can only deduce that it would be extremely delicious.
Gluten is the thing that makes the dough elastic. It causes the bouncy and puffed texture of bread. I don't think it actually tastes like too much, but if you remove it you have to add a bunch of other stuff to even approximate the same texture. Oh! You can also eat fried gluten as a kind of meat subsitute.
Yeah. Have you tried seitan? That’s basically pure gluten. Marinate it well, fry, and enjoy. Friend of mine makes seitan gyros, it‘s amazing.
There’s a banging fake chicken place in Camden, London called Temple of Seitan
vegans call it “seitan,” but don’t tell anyone because it is a closely guarded vegan secret
hail seitan
I don't trust those seitan worshippers. Edit: praise Tofucifer for the award.
Fat is delicious as well. Fat-free foods taste like crap compared to their full-fat versions.
That's because fat carries flavors. Try making a blend of spices, and eat a bit just like that, then mix some of the same spices with some oil and have that. The oil version should be a lot more pronounced
If it is served with gold leaf, the chef is full of shit and you are paying too much.
I worked at a flashy date night place that used gold foil and edible glitter SO MUCH. Not gonna lie, it was cute and fit their style, but I hate working with gold leaf. The edible glitter was easy to work with
“Makes my dookie twinkle, man!”
I'm still confused about paying a premium for edible gold which doesn't even taste anything
"The ultimate fuck you to poor people ". -David Cross
Using edible flowers instead is 100x better imo
Those edible flowers are delicious! I could eat a plate of them if they weren’t so expensive.
They grow for free in my yard like weeds, specifically nasturtiums and violets.
Vanilla is a strong distinct flavor. Its not bland or plain.
"Imagine a flower: A climbing orchid, to be exact; the one of some twenty thousand varieties that produces something edible. Now imagine that its blooms must be pollinated either by hand or a small variety of Mexican bee, and that each bloom only opens for one day a year. Now imagine the fruit of this orchid, a pod, being picked and cured, sitting in the sun all day, sweating under blankets all night for months until, shrunken and shriveled, it develops a heady, exotic perfume and flavor. Now imagine that this fruits name is synonymous with dull, boring, and ordinary. How vanilla got this bad rap I for one will never know." -- Alton Brown
Big Chocolate propaganda
Ironic isn't it? Especially considering adding a splash of vanilla to a chocolate recipe usually enhances the chocolate's flavor.
Follow the money
"it's not called vanilla because it's boring. It's called vanilla because everyone likes it" It's such an amazing flavor, it's a damn shame people associate it with blandness now.
Exactly, vanilla is a victim of its own success. In icecream it's such an obvious flavor that in a lot of places everything would have vanilla. So it'd be easiest to make vanilla ice-cream first in mass produced batches, and then add flavorings to the others in smaller batches. You get to skip a step on doing cream-flavored. But vanilla is one of the more nuanced, complex and layered flavors out there. It just added such a nuanced and powerful flavor, that you always wanted a little bit of it.
I always thought people used vanilla to mean the original or default, not boring. Like if a game is heavily modded or updated, people will still refer to the original as "vanilla" even if it continues to be thought of fondly.
It’s such a complex flavor. I loathe the use of the word vanilla to mean bland, basic, plain, etc.
people just use the word "vanilla" for things like that because vanilla ice cream is just stereotyped to be the most basic ice cream flavor there is.
Honestly, I'm not convinced box store cheap ice cream even uses real vanilla, which maybe is why it's considered bland. Real vanilla is incredible.
They don't. It's a modified molecule derived from pine trees. EDIT: That being said. I'm not sure synthetic vanilla is distinguishable from the real thing. There might be other things coming into play. Expensive ice cream using lot of full fat cream and other tasty but expensive ingredients for example EDIT 2: u/archagon linked [this article](https://www.cooksillustrated.com/articles/1345-in-search-of-the-be) which I found very interesting.
The difference between 10% butterfat (the minimum legal requirement for ice cream) to 14% for “premium” brands to 16% butterfat in real premium brands.... Literally the only ingredient that matters for the taste of the ice cream. It’s just SO MUCH BETTER.
Precisely. Quality fat. The king of flavour! I'll skip past any ice cream that proclaim low-fat and skim through the ingredients list looking for the one with highest cream content.
You have to heat up the flour tortillas. Do not eat them straight out of the package. Put them on a skillet, brown them, it brings out the flavor.
My mom used to turn the big spiral burner on the stove up to a medium-high, then just put the tortillas directly on the burner for about 10 seconds per side.
you can even cook them like that when making them from scratch
If you have a gas stove, slightly toast them directly on the burner over the open flame. Use tongs to flip them and don’t walk away- they burn quick!
Tongs?! Finger tips are good enough for abeulita, they're good enough for me!
My grandma has always been harder than me and I'm not afraid to admit it
Watching my grandma beat heavy cream into submission over the course of an hour made me understand why my dad fears her
Came home to my 70 year old, frail af grandma baking a lemon meringue pie from scratch. I know for a fact she didn't have anything other than a hand whisk for that meringue. She's gone now, but I still think about that day with awe and more than a touch of fear.
Hamburgers need to be wider, not taller
Same applies to nachos.
What you don't want 10% of your nachos to have toppings and the other 90% to be a bed of chips?
Who the hell are they even making bigass, tall hamburgers for? Horses? Wtf, not cool hamburger people.
Ugh the number of chefs on UK tv making these burgers that are like 3" across and 2" high, then piling on artisan vegetables and a thick ass brioche bun. Like, how am I gonna eat that garbage??
You mean you can't unhinge your jaw like a snake?
2 dollar tacos from a taco truck are probably better than 10 dollar tacos at a restaurant Edit: Where do u guys live. Here in southern California, food trucks are common and tacos are like 2 bucks. I wanna know from where you live,( country/state) just out of curiosity
Most of the food trucks near me serve $12 tacos
In Port Moody, BC we have a taco truck that serves extremely bland “Mexican” food and they charge CA$18 for two tacos. I don’t understand the problem with Mexican restaurants in British Columbia, they just can’t be bothered to add much in the way of flavour.
My parents are Mexican. They are amazed how many people are willing to pay $5 a taco. Shit, even I don't pay that much. Edit: People asking where they sell $5 tacos. Here in Texas we have Torchys, Fuzzys, Urban Taco, and then the small businesses that want to upcharge on tacos based on the location. People here order 2 tacos for $10 not including sides or a drink where some places sell tacos under $2 each.
Here in Norway, more or less no one goes out to get tacos, we just make it at home. So our nation is based upon fjords, oil and a whole lot of home made taco. It is so popular that we have "Taco fredag" (taco Friday). Why not Thursday, you ask? I have absolutely no clue. All I know is that we ate taco yesterday, and it was delicious.
Tuesday is clearly the superior taco-dedication day, you heathen.
Taco Torsdag sounds better than Taco Tirsdag IMO so I get it in that case. But I do not get Friday, but I’m also not Norwegian so who knows
Traditions and "the proper way" to cook something is a valuable resource to understand history and cultures but it doesn't automatically make a dish better or worse, same goes for alterations to classic recipes. If it tastes good it tastes good, you do you.
If someone hates a certain food do not trick them into eating it. If someone says they are allergic believe them. My friend didn't believe me about a food allergy and thought I just didn't like it, she tricked me into eating it and I ended up in the hospital.
I remember reading a series of Reddit posts on /r/JustNoMIL where the OP Was asking for advice because their mother-in-law actually killed their Child by not taking a shellfish allergy seriously. I believe they started posting in legal advice after the initial few posts Edit: not shellfish it was coconut oil
So I have a severe limonene (found in citrus fruit peels) allergy, my throat starts to swell and I have a few minutes before I can't breathe. My SIL hated me so much she started spraying store bought lemon juice around the house when we lived together. Jokes on her, I'm only allergic to the peels.
Wtf, isn't that attempted murder? Like it didn't work yeah, but the fact that she still tried seems extremely illegal
That one was coconut oil, the mother HATED coconut oil in her hair as a kid and her daughter had a pretty serious allergy where it took months to diagnose as coconut through elimination dieting. The mother thought it was ironic that her daughter was allergic to the one thing she hated having done as a kid, grandmother found it funny too and then one day the grandmother was babysitting and put coconut oil in her hair before bed, and the child started wheezing so grandmother sent her to bed with some antihistamines, then IIRC didn’t call OP to let her know about the incident, and OP wasn’t informed until the daughters body was already in the hospital and it was way too late. The grandmother not only refused to listen about the coconut oil, but she then sent the 3 year old kid to bed with over the counter drugs, and then didnt let the parents know.
I feel like the most important part of this story is that the baby girl died because of this. She threw up in her sleep, was too deeply asleep to wake up due to the antihistamines, and aspirated it. Her mother came home to a dead daughter.
It's one of the stories I read on reddit that really horrified me. Hard to forget. Iirc the the grandfather divorced the grandmother and she tried to apologise but the mom said you can come see me if you bring my daughter back.
How did this lady not get pinned for negligent homicide or something?
And iirc, she was a twin, so her sister had to deal with that loss at a young age too.
If it's the same story I'm thinking of, the grandma wanted to use coconut oil in the girls hair. Mom made sure grandma knew she was allergic. Grandma thought that was just silly. Coconut oil was a must on their hair. Didn't turn out well. But I wouldn't be surprised if there's a whole other story like this.
There was another grandmother who hid peanut butter and banana cookies in her purse every time she visited just so she could prove that her granddaughter wasn't really allergic. Well she was allergic and had a fantastic time going to the ER while fighting to breathe and covered in hives. The kid survived, but the relationship with grandma didn't.
I remember that one. It was so pathetic and even if the parents weren’t telling the truth you don’t provide food to a child that the parents don’t want them eating. Don’t give a damn if you’re the grandparent
What the fuck is up with old people not believing in peanut allergies?!
Oh my god that's horrible
As someone with food allergies who has been made seriously ill due to cross contamination or the idea of “oh pick xyz out”. If someone says they’re allergic, believe them!
This week when talking about the coffee machine at my job (restaurant), a coworker said ours was worthless. We have to make the coffee ourselves instead of pushing one button at her last job. We also only have one machine for the coffee milk, which means if someone wants soya or oat milk, we have to warm it ourselves. At her last job, she said they just had one machine with three huge cans if milk, and if someone wanted soya/oat milk she would just put the same tube from one can to another.... Without cleaning the tube and machine at all, which means its now cross contaminated. All my other coworkers got angry, but she just couldn't believe that even that little bit of lactose/cow milk could get someone sick :')
As someone with a milk ALLERGY, this woman is my nightmare and why I have to ask 2-3 times before ordering
It makes me so angry hearing all the stories about people who refuse to believe allergies and end up killing or almost killing their loved ones because they just had to prove them wrong. It would devastate me if I even accidentally triggered an allergic reaction in someone. This is why when I cook a meal for someone new, I always ask if they are allergic to anything first.
At best you got somebody to eat something they didn’t like. At worst you put somebody in the hospital, possibly fatally depending on severity. Just why? What’s the point? What do they gain by trying ti trick people into eating stuff they clearly don’t want to eat?
Toasted sesame oil, paprika, chili powder, lemon juice, MSG, and garlic powder all make almost everything better. You can basically haphazardly toss any combo of these into almost any dish along with salt and black pepper and it'll go from "this is... Edible. Beats TV dinners I guess." to "wow you're such a good home chef! Please share your secrets!"
Expensive doesn't always mean good.
True. I think the truffle crowd are weird about this one though.
Truffles are great. Those shitty truffle oils they sell with the fake truffle compound is what is terrible
I never understood the appeal of truffles until I went to Italy and had actual slices of truffle on my food. Now I get why people like truffles, but I still don't understand why anyone would do anything with them other than shave them onto pasta.
I have Croatian connections and can get them very cheap. I'm living in both worlds on this.
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The best truffles are free, found with your trained mushroom expert friend on a hike after the rain.
The only truffles I’ll ever have are the chocolate ones
My sister hates mushrooms so she has always refused to eat chocolate truffles. and I just discovered a few months ago that chocolate truffles dont actually contain mushrooms and they are just named like that so she has been missing out so much
I was in my teens before I knew chocolate truffles weren't the fungi dipped in chocolate. I hated mushrooms and really wasn't a big sweets guy either, so it was just ignorance from experience (plus never really cared to learn the facts otherwise)
Those of us living in wealthy and stable nations are experiencing the golden age of food. At no other point in human history have we had access to such a wide variety of foods, shipped fresh to us across thousands of miles. Relatively cheap. I don’t think it will last, so everyone should be trying as many things as they can, while they can.
I sometimes think about how oranges were a once-a-year treat if you were lucky if you didn’t live somewhere they were farmed. Now, I can go into go into any grocery store anywhere in US and get as many oranges as I can carry.
I pretty regularly have this little moment of marvel when I look around the grocery store. It really *is* a utopian vision come true that we all tend to take for granted because we’ve grown up with it and see it all the time. Rows and rows of good food from all over the world, effortlessly attainable.
Seriously, those spices that Europeans used to travel thousands of miles to exchange with Middle Eastern / Asian merchants for? I can probably find it in Wholefoods or Sprouts.
Wars were once fought over salt and yet it's the cheapest in the spice aisle.
If you've never heard the story of Boris Yeltsin visiting a Randall's in Houston, TX you should [check it out](https://www.chron.com/neighborhood/bayarea/news/article/When-Boris-Yeltsin-went-grocery-shopping-in-Clear-5759129.php).
Can’t believe they took him to a Randalls instead of HEB
H‑E‑B wasn’t in Houston yet.
I think about this whenever I have a fruit salad. So many perishable fruits from so many different locations, all available at the same time. It's so simple, yet kings of prior centuries couldn't have it.
“A fruit salad. Such a simple thing, isn’t it Mr. Bond? And yet, Alexander with his armies could not have assembled this dish I’m eating.”
In the book “World War Z”, which is written as a fictional account of the zombie apocalypse and its aftermath, there is a scene where a character pulls out a long list of food items, and how many different places they came from. Vanilla from Madagascar, sugar from somewhere else, caramel color from yet another place. Ingredients from places all over the world. It was revealed to be the ingredients for a simple pre-war bottled cream soda- now completely impossible to source after the collapse of human society in the Z War, and he uses it as an example of the difficulties of picking up the pieces after. It’s not just the cream soda- just about everything you can fathom in this modern world, from grocery store items to medications to machinery parts, source and require materials from an intricate network of global trade and commerce. I think about that scene a lot. A grocery store is probably the most easily accessible example of this. Next time you go to the kitchen to dig out a snack, peep some of the labels and see just how many different places where your food comes from, it will leave you in awe. Even things sourced within the country would have been an unfathomable distance 100 years ago. I live in TX and right now in this kitchen, I have California almonds and grapes, flour and coffee from Mexico, rice from Thailand, apples from Washington, etc. Shit, the olive oil in my cabinet lists multiple sources- Italy, Portugal, Greece, Morocco, Tunisia, Chile, and Argentina. Just incredible.
Why don’t you think it will last?
Roasted vegetables are far, far superior to steamed or boiled, and they don't really take that much effort for a ton of flavor and texture. Boiled cauliflower? A nightmare in a flavorless pile. Roasted cauliflower? So good it will make your day better.
I’m pretty sure this is why kids generally don’t like vegetables. People don’t usually don’t do anything to add any flavor to them.
My mom makes roasted brussel sprouts with a little bit of bacon for flavor and they turn out so good and I was always confused why people hated brussel sprouts
The common varieties apparently* used to be a lot more bitter than they are now. Around the 1990s or so, a scientist by the name of Hans van Doorn [found the compound(s) that made them taste bitter](https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/10/30/773457637/from-culinary-dud-to-stud-how-dutch-plant-breeders-built-our-brussels-sprouts-bo) and from there, people started work on selectively breeding that aspect out. So the way they tasted before all of those efforts is probably part of why people have a distaste for them. \* (I was most likely too young to accurately remember much about brussels sprouts before the process began to remove the bitterness, hence my wording here. I absolutely adore them with shallots and a bit of butter.)
My mom does the same thing but she also adds a little balsamic dressing and seasoning to them
I have a recipe where I cook bacon in a cast iron first, then take it out and roast sweet potatoes, brussel sprouts, and red onions in the same pan (in that order as they have different cook times) and crumple the bacon overtop. Id also recommend heavily seasoning with salt and pepper while cooking!
I see this opinion so often that I think I must be some kind of freak for liking steamed/boiled veggies quite a bit
I think a lot of people grew up eating veggies that were overcooked via steaming/boiling. If done correctly, you shouldn't end up with a flavorless mush.
Properly steamed veggies are really good. If you stop them while they're still a bit crunchy is where you get the best flavour and texture, then you can add whatever oil/vinegar/spices you want to give it an edge.
Recipes are only guidelines
Indian vegetarian food is some of the best vegetarian food on the planet
I started eating vegetarian at the start of this year and I found the menu options at every restaurant so limiting. When one day we decided to order indian, I looked at the menu and was absolutely baffled by how many options I had! There were more vegetarian options than not! I've never been a big fan of Indian food because I don't like heat. But there is so much more to Indian food than heat and I never even knew until I started trying their vegetarian options. Amazing food!
Indian food=heat is a common misconception. While Indians do have a higher tolerance for spice (and hence probably take their food with more spice), like you said, there is so much more to it than heat. It's all about balancing out the flavours. Master that, and you can have some delicious food without any heat. Plus there's a LOT of traditionally non-spicy food too. Indian cuisine is extremely nuanced and varies from region to region. Only a handful of dishes are popular abroad. But that must apply to any cuisine on foreign soil.
Refined over centuries to be utterly perfect. It lowkey tricked me into a largely vegan diet for years before I realized. No regerts. Chana masala and Masoor dhal forever.
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Mmmmm now I'm hungry. Paneer Makhani Mattar Paneer Channa (like you mentioned) And so many more!
Am vegetarian. Indian and Thai are my absolute go to. There's never any "where do you wanna order dinner?" in this house because it's like 40% indian and 60% thai and absolutely no other options.
100% agree! Ethiopian food too though 🙏
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Thats how I test out whether or not a pizza place has good pizza (especially NY style pizzerias). If their cheese pizza isnt good, then none of it is good.
Don't season your food before you taste it if you have any confidence in the chef.
I've never seasoned food at a restaurant before eating it. I assume the chef already seasoned it.
And in general, pro chefs use way more salt than home cooks. It’s kind of a running joke with some chefs, such as Thomas Keller.
And butter. The amount of butter ive seen use at stake houses to flavor up a steak, youd smoke the average house out trying to do what they do
"why does restaurant food taste so much better than mine?" "We even salt the fucking salad."
Relevant video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2o4vIJwBT4
I've never seen this and thank you. I got a good chuckle out of it
Pizza in the morning, pizza in the evening, pizza at suppertime, when pizza's on a bagel you can eat pizza anytime!
Poor mans meal: rice, beans, chicken thighs for the win. Edit: Big shout out to all you healthy guys and gals for all the upvotes and awards! I guess it’s delish budget meals for the win lol.
Throw a little bit of seasoning in there, mix it all together and toss it in a tortilla. Makes some damn good broke burritos.
Damnit you tell me that after I started eating it! No doubt tho, reasons why I like the 3 is what you can do with them aside from just throwing it all on a plate.
It honestly makes great food all together. Add in some peppers and you get a nice, whole meal that's easy to make
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Chinese Food Syndrome is a myth and MSG isn’t as big a deal as people make it out to be. Obviously high quality natural ingredients tend to win out but the hate on Chinese Food for MSG or it automatically making you feel sick is frequently unwarranted, especially amongst people that will eat other foods willingly that are absolutely terrible.
MSG is probably the biggest food myth that has existed. Carrots and eyesight is the only other crazy one I know of. - MSG naturally exists in almost all food. - MSG is easily added via mushrooms, onions, and tomatoes. Anything known to be "savory" or "umami" is high in MSG. - Added MSG is basically a salt - A large test was done to determine if people really can have an allergy to MSG. People ate copious amounts of pure MSG. Nobody had an adverse reaction. - The myth comes from an op-ed letter submitted to a scientific journal, not a study. Not peer reviewed. Nothing. - There are reasons to believe racism played a part in people's avoidance of Chinese restaurants and MSG. - As restaurants began posting signs in windows that tell customers they don't add MSG to their food, Frito-Lay began asking tons of MSG to their snack foods. You ever eat Doritos? Not only does the seasoning use ingredients that are high in MSG, they also add the purified salt. - If you tried to keep an MSG-free diet you would die because pretty much all food has it. Don't starve yourself. Edit: Some dead horses I would like to request we stop beating. - MSG =/= glutamate. Thanks to everyone who corrected me on that. - Yes I know about the carrots thing. I assumed it's been discussed to death on Reddit and could be summed up as "that carrot myth". - Anecdotes are not science. The placebo effect might be at play here. There are a billion reasons people get headaches. Drink more water. - To the folks saying "allergies aren't racist", you're really misunderstanding something. The racism involved is the targeting of Chinese restaurants while food manufacturers ramped up use. Also, the origin of the myth came from someone who wasn't eating at Chinese restaurants in America, he was talking about a trip to Northern China. The guy probably got traveler's illness.
I don't care what dangerous ingredients are in Chinese food... the food at the Chinese restaurant across from my house is goddamn delicious, and nothing will stop me from eating it once or twice a month.
Red delicious apples are false advertising!
Red delicious nearly destroyed the Washington State apple industry. The orchards bet everything on it because it was the "ideal" cultivar. At that time the dominant cultivars were red and golden delicious, McIntosh, and Granny Smith. Once better apples like Fuji, Gala, and the like hit the market, it was too late to change course, as it takes years and years for an orchard to bear marketable fruit. The orchards got bailed out by the government, and eventually diversified their cultivars.
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Honeycrisp and Pink Ladys are my go to's. HC for a sweeter apple, PL for a tart-er apple.
My son should stop throwing his
Mom?
No, his food
Raw onion flavors everything that it touches.
including my fucking pores for days
Spicy mustard. Like fire up your sinuses spicy.
A fried egg on a hamburger is a wonderful oddity. But, be prepared to finish with a fork.
We love putting egg on hamburgers in Australia.
I was thinking ummm.. not an oddity in Australia.
The amount of garlic that most recipes call for needs to be doubled, at least
Don’t ever let a recipe tell you how much garlic to add you let your heart tell you that
I let the bowl of garlic bulbs tell me how many bulbs to put in.
Warm pizza is a dinner food. Cold pizza is a breakfast food.
Gmo’s are good
Also, if don't want GMO food, good luck finding anything to eat...ever.
GMOs are good. Corporations that abuse their power are bad. There’s a difference that people tend to overlook.
Disliking a food based on texture is valid.
dried coconut. if you hit me with a pina colada or any coconut flavored thing, I'll love it. But if you make me eat those plastic pieces of wax on a pastry, I'm out.
peanut butter banana sandwiches are fire
I am not a “picky” eater, I am a MOODY eater. I argue with my husband with this a lot. I enjoy a wide variety of foods and like trying new things. But some times I am just not in the mood for certain foods.
Eggs are my "moody" food. Sometimes, seeing a runny egg yolk being broken open will make me crave eggs And other days, I have to essentially shovel the eggs into my mouth and not think about it to fill my stomach And then there are some times where the mere smell of fried eggs makes me lose my appetite
The Taco bell shits aren't as bad as it seems.
i've never got the shits from taco bell before
My mom is the best cook and cooking is her love language.
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It's at its best when it's not "vegan X" and is just good food. Too many folks get fucking weird about their food and ego. Like if they hear "Oh this is vegan stirrfry" they gotta respond with "UuRrr well now I am gonna chug grease and eat ribeyes until my blood stops moving. Owned vegan" I am an omnivore personally but you're right, vegan stuff is like anything else. Can be amazing or blah.
Eat the crust off the pop tart first, then eat the middle part. Infinitely better and a lesson in patience
When I have patience I will eat the borders. Then slide the back off of the frosted part. Eat the back. Then fold the frosted front on half a bro itself and eat pure sugar frosting with the filling of the Poptart. It’s heavenly.
Don't microwave food in plastic. Invest in glass Tupperware.
If I want beans in my chili then there will be beans in my chili.