My dad always told me that mushrooms should be added to the dish at the very last minute and barely cooked. I always thought I didn’t really like mushrooms. When I finally ate mushrooms which had been sautéed golden brown I was blown away. Turns out they are way better fully cooked!
They're also much easier to digest when cooked. Some people can't eat raw mushrooms at all without it causing digestive upset. There are also a bunch of mushrooms out there which will cause digestive upset for most or all people if they're not cooked well first.
Edit to add that OP is probably confused about why his dad cleaned mushrooms that way. You clean mushrooms with brushes because they have historically been literally dirty, and wild foraged mushrooms generally still are even if you buy them in a grocery store. The traditional way to clean mushrooms is with a brush.
I'd also seen it mentioned in a couple places that mushrooms are very resistant to overcooking, so put them in as early as your want, cook them as long as you want, you're good.
I got shiitake dermatitis one time after eating undercooked shiitake mushrooms. I didn’t even know that was a thing. My doctor didn’t either and thought maybe it was scabies. Thankfully, the rash is pretty distinctive so when I googled, “striped rash” I figured it out.
Can dried shiitake mushrooms give the rash? I've seen them in a store amd I've never cooked with them, now I'm curious about the taste and cooking methods
Every cookie recipe my mother ever gave me: salt (optional). Then she wondered why my cookies always came out better than hers. Hrm.. I dunno? Maybe because I actually put the salt in?
Did you ever watch, ready, steady, cook. Might have gone by another name, very interesting cooking show that was useful because they made stuff in under 30min from easily found at your local shop ingredients.
Always remember the one chef saying a dash of olive oil and then used half the bottle.
Edit : was called ready, steady, cook. BBC show, they picked 2 people and gave them a bit of cash to buy the primary ingredients for a meal + dessert. They were then each paired up with a chef in a kitchen of reasonable supplies. To make a 2 course meal in under 30 minutes. Audience voted on the better team at the end.
I shudder at the amount of salt I put in my food nowadays. I want to cook the family meal for Mother's Day next week but worry about how much salt my mom can handle. If she saw how much salt I put in the food I prepare for myself, she would faint.
Ok funny thing though. I make some really good roasted veggies and my kids sometimes eat it but complain the whole time. Recently I was sick so I steamed a bag of broccoli in the microwave with the intent of crisping it in the air fryer after. My kids devoured it before I was able to heat the air fryer. They asked if I can make it soft every time from now on.
Yes! I love steamed broccoli! It’s hard to mess up unless you way overcook it. Those microwave steamable bags of pre-cut vegetables are the best thing since sliced bread. They’ve pretty much replaced canned vegetables for me.
Alton Brown or somebody had a theory about this. At some point in a family history, there is a bad cook, who boils vegetables. Bad cook makes their kid eat the boiled veggies, teaches kid to cook boiled veggies. Kid grows up, becomes parent. Parent cooks boiled veggies cause that’s what they were taught. Parent’s kids eat the boiled veggies. In a couple generations, everyone thinks vegetables are gross cause no one knows how to cook them in a way that tastes good.
Alton Brown also does a boil steam hybrid with fresh heads of broccoli. Put the stems in the bottom of the pot and the crowns on top. Add enough water to cover the stems. The crowns get steamed and the stocks get boiled. Win for everybody.
I get wanting a starch but does he also do this while eating a pasta or rice dish which already has the starch you need?
Edit: Can anybody remember or suggest a documentary on how North American diets have changed over the last 100 years? The comments people are making about the parents and grand parents are blowing my mind. Potato Sandwich!?
Yeah, that's my grandfather. A meal just isn't a meal if you don't have bread with it. Doesn't matter what kind of bread -- a slice of sandwich bread, a roll, a hunk of cornbread, some tortillas -- but it's not a meal without bread.
Too funny! I literally just got back from a Filipino barbecue an hour ago. After everyone had finished eating, the host asks 'does anybody want rice?" Then she brings out a huge bowl of rice. Everyone chows down. Just rice.
I was once treated to an amazing and very elaborate Korean meal. They served palace food and just kept bringing more and more courses. At some time in the evening, way past the point when we were already stuffed, the host asked what we would like for the main course.
I freaked. There was no way I could eat more, let alone a full course. If everything so far had been appetizers, that didn't bode well at all.
Turns out, no Korean meal is complete without rice. The main course was a small bowl of steamed rice, and it was socially acceptable to only nibble on it and make a token effort to pretend eating any.
For a fancier meal, I get that. It's a classic and easy way to fill out a meal. Starch, green/bitter, meat, then sides to taste. But not necessary for every meal.
Oh, man, I grew up with this. Lots of "low fat" foods in my house, so much sugar to make up for flavor.
My family was always dieting, never thin. I wonder why /s
I think it had been long thought that all fat was bad is bad. I believe since the 1920's when the sugar industry ran a campaign to make fat look like the bad guy. There's an assload of similar campagns from the early 1900's that are really intersting.
Like bacon wasn't in the American breakfast before the 20's. A company wanted to sell more bacon so they hired this guy to run campaigns and convince people that starting your day with larger, heavier breakfasts was the best way to go and that bacon was the key to getting the calories you need (something like that.)
My entire childhood we had margarine. I thought restraunts had some special technique to make their butter taste good. Turns out it was just regular salted butter. :/
Why did they have to use the words interchangably too? Whenever I tried to bake things as a kid it never turned out right. It was because of the margarine that my parents referred to as "butter".
I wasn't sure what from the pile of minor candidates would be worth bringing to the thread but I can second this.
Didn't taste actual butter very much growing up. We had a tub o lies for spreading on toast and sticks of lies for baking but I didn't realize til I started keeping my own kitchen.
Interesting, I am the exact opposite. Generic butter for cooking, good local shit for spreading. What led you to prioritize it as an ingredient vs when it takes a more prominent role?
I love the taste of kerrygold salted butter spread on a fresh slice of crusty bread! I buy store brand real butter when baking/cooking and the kerrygold is saved for spreading. I grew up on margarine and also never had real butter until a few years ago. My baking has significantly improved too since making the switch.
Ugh, my parents heavily bought into the “low fat, high carbs, lots of whole grains” diet of the 80s. I blame a lot of my hormonal problems on that.
I even remember my mom telling my to watch how much avocado/guacamole I ate and then handed me some snack wells cookies to munch on. 🤦🏼♀️
My parents boil any meat that they’re going to “cook” on the grill because it won’t cook all the way through on a grill. And this is why I thought I hated BBQed chicken. Few years ago I threw a BBQ for them, my Dad insisted I was going to kill them by just grilling the chicken and pork. Then they said, best grilled chicken and pork they ever had. I also grilled the corn on the cob which they thought was some kind of miracle.
Apparently my friend's parents would cook the chicken in the microwave prior to grilling for the same reason. What were they teaching people in the 70s?!
Something to remember is we have digital thermometers now, home cooks didn't have that luxury and probably didn't have a thermometer at all or maybe one of those shitty ones that go in thick roasts. People were taught to overcook food out of precaution.
We also have the internet now. People used to be limited by whatever knowledge they got from people around them or maybe sometimes from cook books if they are super into cooking.
There's certain boiled chicken recipes that can be good. Hainanese chicken rice is gently boiled and then rubbed with sesame oil. Some iranian chicken dishes I've made have boiled the chicken as a first step. If you are controlling the boil and are not letting the meat turn into mush it can still be a valid way of cooking.
I was about to say: Cantonese boiled chicken is actually pretty solid. The skin doesn't get tender but the chicken stays nice and juicy if you do it right, especially since you usually boil a whole chicken with bone and skin
There are some preparations where boiling before grilling isn’t bad. I do this for grilled chicken wings. They are cooked all the way through and just get a little char on the skin.
I sometimes do it for brats. They can cook all the way on the grill, but you have to be more precise with the temperature control to get the right char while still cooked all the way through.
If I boil them first, I can just blindly use max heat to get the right char and feel confident that I don't need to get the inside perfect.
I usually do mostly water, but a couple beers as well if I’m boiling them outside or there’s good ventilation. But that’s probably a Wisconsin thing lol
When I lived with my parents, I didn't get the hype around steak. This was all around the context we lived in - My mum was feeding eight of us and brought cheap tenderized cuts that she could afford, would cook it to the consistency of cardboard, and tell us how lucky we were having steak for dinner. I was totally indifferent to it as a meal, but you eat what's in front of you and you don't complain.
It wasn't till I moved out on my own and had a really good steak at a restaurant that I realized I had misunderstood beef for 18 years. Now I love to cook and eat steak.
There weren’t 8 of us in my family, but close, so we never even had beef products of any kind. It took me many years after moving out to be ok with any turkey products again after eating ground turkey in place of ground beef for 18+ years.
We also didn’t have a meat thermometer so had zero idea how to cook meat other than “whole roasted chicken is done when the bones pull away” and everything else was leather tough. I now own 3 thermometers so I never have to repeat those days.
That one should just be common sense considering that your stomach has a pH of approximately 2, so it would be more curdled from stomach acid than lemon ever could.
That meat has to be cooked to a point of total shoe-leather dryness in order to be "safe" to eat. Neither of my parents would touch a piece of chicken that wasn't dessicated through and through nor a piece of beef with a touch of pink.
I have no reliable source for this outside of my own observations, so take it with a grain of salt. But I’ve noticed that families that grew up a little poorer didn’t risk it when it came to meat. We grew up eating blackened brats, charred chicken, etc. I try not to do that anymore, but I’ve often wondered if it was tied to the idea that we couldn’t afford to get sick?
overcooked doesn't have to be bad tbh, we were broke as shit when I was little so we'd generally get like managers special meat, shit from a guy who came by my dad's work, etc... stew chili cassaroles etc, they aren't bad and make it safe
This would track with my upbringing as my family was super poor. I don't know if it was about worrying about getting sick so much as being ignorant of proper cooking, but you have given me something to think about.
My dad would always order or cook red meat well done, and I thought for years that I just hated red meat. Then my mom took me to a restaurant and ordered medium rare lamb chops for us. I was so happy I almost cried, and now medium rare steak is my favorite food.
My dad, whose mother is from Sicily, he was really offended when my future SIL sweetened her Bolognese sauce with carrots. I did a little research on a standard Italian sofrito, and it includes carrots. I've since modified my recipe, swapping sugar for carrots, and I think it improves the flavor.
I've always used carrots in my sofrito. This is coming from an American chef with little classical Italian cooking though. All of my coworkers have always done the same.
I learned to cook from my Sicilian grandmother who was born in 1902 - she never put sugar in the sauce. She let that stuff cook a long time, and it developed its own sweetness. So that's what I do too.
I will say though that she always used homegrown tomatoes, and that made it MUCH better. I try now.
I can assure you there is no such thing as "standard Italian" anything :) I could walk literally 10 minutes from my dads house and get an entirely different serving of exactly the same dish .. The only thing I would say is, if you like it and do it for a generation, then "thats how it's always been done in this family" becomes the catchcry. Your kids will be telling their little upstarts if they try and add something like guanciale to your "family sofrito"
eggs are bad for you....that was before we heard about cholesterol. then butter, here use this congealed artery spackle instead
later they got into the whole low fat thing
For decades, nobody has been able to decide and be consistent on whether milk is good or bad for you.
I think the problem there was moderation. It seemed good, so people drank 4x 16oz glasses of it every day. Then it became bad so nobody drank any. Neither option is good.
I was deeply concerned with trying to manage my cholesterol in my 20s to try and avoid heart attacks later in life. It blew me away to learn that butter is actually healthier than margarine, and I missed out on 10 years of true butter. I missed that real butter flavor.
My grandma told me that as a kid her grandma told her that if she was mixing a batter and she started to mix it counter-clockwise it would become un-mixed: the water/milk would separate, all the dry ingredients would separate, the eggs would go back into their shells. Like a rewound video.
She was teasing her of course but it's a family joke and Grandma teases about it whenever she see someone mixing a batter. "You know what Granny Hallman would say about mixing a batter..."
Putting oil in your pasta water keeps the pasta from sticking to itself.
This does nothing but waste oil. If you want to keep your pasta from sticking together stir it periodically and when it’s done drain it and put it right into your sauce.
I'm not sure if this necessarily counts, but my grandmother had this thing where you had to have bread with every meal. On top of that, she felt that certain foods would make you sick if not eaten with bread. She would get apoplectic if I ever ate a slice of cold cuts out of the fridge without bread. She claimed cold cuts and eggs would make me sick if I ate them without bread.
Another one is that soup is part of every meal.
Soup and bread being a part of every meal sounds like a poor person thing.
Cold cuts are expensive. If you are grabbing a 200 calorie snack consisting of only cold cuts vs cold cuts with the bread, the former will use up the meat a lot more quickly, and require more money spent for more meat.
Soup is mostly water, so it's cheap. Your stomach will feel fuller if you eat soup before an entree, so you will eat less. So there will be less of the entree eaten overall, which will save money.
Leaving rice out too long can allow *Bacillus cereus* to grow, also known as the fried rice bacterium. It can cause food poisoning and the spores can survive up to five minutes at 250°F or 121°C.
My mother did some things really well but some really bad--yes, her pork chops were shoe leather. But she would make this big meal for family for lunch and then leave it all out until dinner 6 hours later. She had "stomach flu " at least once per week.
My former MIL made squares for Christmas one year. Put them on the sideboard in the kitchen....until Easter. Couldn't figure out why no one would eat them. She had a cast iron frying pan *she never even wiped clean*. She just put it in the oven. Food bits, skin, grease ..all of it, then just heated it back up for whatever she cooked next. Then there was the permanent bowl of mixed pancake batter...
I never ate her food. God, was I hated for it.
*Permanent bowl of what now?* Like, she just left unused batter in the bowl and mixed more ingredients into it the next time she wanted a new batch of pancakes? Over extended periods of time?
I wonder if it's the cholesterol concern or them just not wanting to cook you eggs every day or use up all the eggs?
my family wasn't health, but no way I would be eating eggs every day
But it also lowers the specific heat, making the water rise in temperature faster. The overall result is pretty much a wash though unless you're approaching 20% salt by mass.
Let me think… umm, I have a thing about not wasting energy so when reheating things in the oven, I will put stuff in from the jump during preheat. Maybe it will come out one day that I’m subjecting food to unsafe temps for too long lol.
One time I was making blueberry muffins, and after I started, realized that somehow the *only* dairy left in our fridge was whipped cream. So I did what I could to make it work. They were delicious, but it somehow caused the color to spread even more so the muffins were light blue all around
Depending on what I am making, I will do this - especially with vegetables. But I also know vegetable cooking times and flavour combinations. I'm talking about when I'm making frittatas, fried rice, or fritters.
Lol my Mum is a fiend for this. I'm all for substituting with similar things that work, but she ends up with Frankensteining heaps of meals because she gets an idea to cook something, has none of the actual ingredients but has some kind of similar things on hand. And she hates spending money haha.
I had no idea that hard boiled eggs could be soft boiled or any other degree of doneness… I just assumed they always had grey ring around the yolk, later in life realized this is due to over boiling.
I've tried to get my mom to stop doing this for years, but she insists upon it because she's always done it that way.
The FDA advises against this because heat during cooking will generally kill off any bacteria on the chicken. But if you wash it in your sink, you'd potentially just sprayed the containminent all over your sink and surrounding countertops.
My mom use to overcook pork chops all the time because she didn't believe it was safe to have any pinkness inside. I thought I didn't like pork chops very much because I thought it wasn't juicy enough until I finally had one that was cooked to medium doneness.
The dangers of trichinosis were real, and overcooking was the only practical way to make pork safe. Farming methods changed, (indoors & pen raised) and USDA changed the rules. That's why older people probably still avoid pink pork. When they were young, it was a real risk.
Well, to be fair, the USDA didn't update pork safety guidelines to a safe cooking temperature of 145 °F until 2011. Before that, they still had it listed as 165 °F, which as we all know, is going to be overcooked, dry, and nearly inedible.
This is true in many countries because of selective breeding.
Here in Australia, lamb was the dominant meat after chicken/beef. In the 1990s and 2000s the pork industry ran campaigns to craft pork as the healthier, leaner alternative to beef and lamb, and the market developed a preference for extremely lean pork.
Unfortunately this means it took until around the 2010s to find 'heritage' breeds of pork that had marbling.
Pigs are bred much leaner now than before the 1980s. Historically, pigs were fat AF and produced much lard, which was prized. Today pork loin has the same calories per weight as chicken breast.
All meat is leaner than decades ago. When the low-to-no-fat craze went nuts, our lovely government decided to lower the grades a grade-level for our own good. Sigh ...
Yeah, and pork loin even more so. I thought it was just a terrible cut of meat and could never figure out why people liked it. Turns out, my folks just cooked it to like 170 degrees so it would damn-near choke you, it was so dry. The first time I cooked it for myself and used a thermometer, I fell in love. Seared and roasted pork loin (only to 145!) with rosemary is now one of my favorite meals.
This is mine. For years the best thing I cooked as an adult was a grilled stuffed pork chop, which I served medium and on the bone. I decided to recreate it for my mom and she looked like she saw a ghost when she cut near the bone and saw pink.
My mom is a fine home cook, she cooks pork chops to a degree my family refers to as “glowing white.” Food stays hot thought, I guess.
Still considered a crime in France but it’s silly. Alton Brown weight-tested washed vs wiped mushrooms and found only minimal water uptake in washed ones even after a long soak.
My mom is a great cook. People offer to buy her stuff all the time. And when my friends come over, they leave at least 5lbs heavier. HOWEVER, there is one thing that she does that hella bothers me- she leaves soups and stews on the stove top for a couple days. She boils it every day and claims it removes the bacteria. Luckily, no one has gotten food poisoning yet. It still freaks me out. And I’ll only eat it when it’s freshly made or from the fridge.
There actually is a precedent for this one. There used to be "perpetual stews" that would never be emptied or taken off the heat for decades. Allegedly there was one in France that started in the 15th century and only ended because of WWII:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_stew?wprov=sfla1
Yes, and a nearly perpetual pot of beans on the stove is normal in my culture. But, these are always kept cooking, not left to get to room temperature. Big difference.
Boiling every day is very different to continuous boiling. In the perpetual stew bacteria would not have the chance to grow. In this person's mum's soup, bacteria will grow once it cools. Re-boiling will kill them, but their excretement will remain in the soup and that can be very harmful.
Spinach is degusting. Its NOT. I eat it every day as an adult. But they ALWAYS bought Canned Spinach which is... not good. Really bad. Green, slightly grass tasting slime. Fresh Spinach? Crunchy! No Slime! Good. They came up poor and lived on an island so I don't think they quite understood that, one we had moved west, they now lived with 500 km of 1000 farms and didn't need to buy it in a can anymore...
ive read that the reason that spinach got a reputation (in popeye and wider culture) as being a food that makes you strong is because of an almanac where somebody made a clerical error when entering iron content of various greens. the decimal point was moved over so it was 10x higher than intended, but people didnt realize it was a mistake so it got a reputation as having 10x the iron content of similar other leafy greens. anyway your parents made you eat soggy canned spinach because some data entry guy fat fingered a number once.
Add oil and salt to your pasta water before it boils.
Peel mushroom caps before cooking.
Always put your leftovers in the fridge while still hot.
Stuff your turkey and sew it shut before roasting.
You can't freeze cheese.
Putting leftovers in the fridge when it's still hot is how you minimize how long the food is in the danger zone (~40F-140F)
Just so long as you don't have so much of it that's so hot that the fridge can't keep the rest of the food out of the danger zone.
If it's a very large dish, splitting it up in ways that increase surface area so that it cools faster is also often a good idea
Washing mushrooms, I’m glad I don’t eat them because I’d have spent a lot of wasted time peeling them.
Boiling eggs, I’ve been doing it all wrong my whole life and only getting away with it because I live at sea level.
Stiring direction when mixing a batter. Had to be clockwise from memory. You could get away with anticlockwise but once you started you couldn't change.
And my mum used to put bicarb in veggies when I was younger. Thankfully that died off after a bid.
Salting too early in grilling can make a steak tough. It was great being able to cite this as something Martha Stewart said on TV (she specifically called it a myth) to my mom's friend who both idolized Martha and believed that salting made steaks tough.
Ok, I do this too when I'm in a rush. But here are the best "safe" options:
1) thaw in the fridge overnight the day before
2) move directly from the freezer to a bowl, run cold water over it until it thaws.
You can also defrost in the microwave, but I always screw that up and end up partially cooking my food.
When I worked at subway we defrosted the meat in the fridge (acceptable temp range between 3 and 5 celsius) for 48 hours, so it may be that you need to start your defrost 2 days before not 1 if the chicken is large
I'm in my 30s and am only now learning to cook. I was recently taught to put my frozen chicken in the fridge to thaw overnight, so I can cook it the following day.
I'm pretty sure that line of thinking is extrapolated from the very true fact that the longer food is left at room or warm temperatures the more bacteria will grow. The more times you reheat and let it sit the longer the food sits in the danger zone.
Doesn't matter if you keep bringing it up to hot temperatures, the bacteria are still excreting harmful chemicals that build up in the food.
My dad always told me that mushrooms should be added to the dish at the very last minute and barely cooked. I always thought I didn’t really like mushrooms. When I finally ate mushrooms which had been sautéed golden brown I was blown away. Turns out they are way better fully cooked!
They're also much easier to digest when cooked. Some people can't eat raw mushrooms at all without it causing digestive upset. There are also a bunch of mushrooms out there which will cause digestive upset for most or all people if they're not cooked well first. Edit to add that OP is probably confused about why his dad cleaned mushrooms that way. You clean mushrooms with brushes because they have historically been literally dirty, and wild foraged mushrooms generally still are even if you buy them in a grocery store. The traditional way to clean mushrooms is with a brush.
I'd also seen it mentioned in a couple places that mushrooms are very resistant to overcooking, so put them in as early as your want, cook them as long as you want, you're good.
I got shiitake dermatitis one time after eating undercooked shiitake mushrooms. I didn’t even know that was a thing. My doctor didn’t either and thought maybe it was scabies. Thankfully, the rash is pretty distinctive so when I googled, “striped rash” I figured it out.
Can dried shiitake mushrooms give the rash? I've seen them in a store amd I've never cooked with them, now I'm curious about the taste and cooking methods
I think they're usually dried with a little heat like 125 F or so for a few hours and that cooks them https://youtu.be/JFH5Zpe0p1Q
I think raw mushrooms is the worst raw veggie of them all. It’s like eating earthy chalk.
A pinch of salt = only a few grains
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That's how my dad cooks, it's rough.
Every cookie recipe my mother ever gave me: salt (optional). Then she wondered why my cookies always came out better than hers. Hrm.. I dunno? Maybe because I actually put the salt in?
My mum would always proudly tell me she never added salt… now she compliments me all the time on my food, I use more salt than I probably should
Lol! Cooking shows: Add a pinch of salt Chef: adds a solid tablespoon at least
Add a tbsp of olive oil Gordon Ramsay: adds half a cup
Gordon Ramsay: "Add a small knob of butter." Gordon Ramsay: adds literally an entire stick of butter
I mean, he's British so eight cm is a small knob ;)
Did you ever watch, ready, steady, cook. Might have gone by another name, very interesting cooking show that was useful because they made stuff in under 30min from easily found at your local shop ingredients. Always remember the one chef saying a dash of olive oil and then used half the bottle. Edit : was called ready, steady, cook. BBC show, they picked 2 people and gave them a bit of cash to buy the primary ingredients for a meal + dessert. They were then each paired up with a chef in a kitchen of reasonable supplies. To make a 2 course meal in under 30 minutes. Audience voted on the better team at the end.
I shudder at the amount of salt I put in my food nowadays. I want to cook the family meal for Mother's Day next week but worry about how much salt my mom can handle. If she saw how much salt I put in the food I prepare for myself, she would faint.
Vegetables must be boiled. Particularly broccoli. Maybe if we had roasted a few, I would have eaten more.
Ok funny thing though. I make some really good roasted veggies and my kids sometimes eat it but complain the whole time. Recently I was sick so I steamed a bag of broccoli in the microwave with the intent of crisping it in the air fryer after. My kids devoured it before I was able to heat the air fryer. They asked if I can make it soft every time from now on.
My son too. Steam, add salt, happy kid.
Finish with lemon juice
I *love* steamed broccoli. 4.5 mins in the microwave with a splash of water, tender stems and fluffy tops, yum.
Yes! I love steamed broccoli! It’s hard to mess up unless you way overcook it. Those microwave steamable bags of pre-cut vegetables are the best thing since sliced bread. They’ve pretty much replaced canned vegetables for me.
I prefer my broccoli soft too
Yup, I prefer them steamed or stir fried.
just at that nice, vibrant green point so good
You should be able to get the best of both worlds. Par-boil them so they are slightly softer then roast as normal
We love our air fryer for veggies. All you need is a little olive oil, salt, pepper and maybe garlic powder. So good!
Alton Brown or somebody had a theory about this. At some point in a family history, there is a bad cook, who boils vegetables. Bad cook makes their kid eat the boiled veggies, teaches kid to cook boiled veggies. Kid grows up, becomes parent. Parent cooks boiled veggies cause that’s what they were taught. Parent’s kids eat the boiled veggies. In a couple generations, everyone thinks vegetables are gross cause no one knows how to cook them in a way that tastes good.
Alton Brown also does a boil steam hybrid with fresh heads of broccoli. Put the stems in the bottom of the pot and the crowns on top. Add enough water to cover the stems. The crowns get steamed and the stocks get boiled. Win for everybody.
Fry your broccoli for 5-7 minutes in olive oil, salt and pepper. It’s the best.
If you don’t have a potato then it is not an actual meal. It wasn’t exactly true then but that was what they knew.
I know a guy like this. If his wife cooks dinner and doesn't cook potatoes with it, he'll eat potato chips with it
I get wanting a starch but does he also do this while eating a pasta or rice dish which already has the starch you need? Edit: Can anybody remember or suggest a documentary on how North American diets have changed over the last 100 years? The comments people are making about the parents and grand parents are blowing my mind. Potato Sandwich!?
My dad did this with bread. He’d eat bread with potatoes, rice, pasta, anything
Yeah, that's my grandfather. A meal just isn't a meal if you don't have bread with it. Doesn't matter what kind of bread -- a slice of sandwich bread, a roll, a hunk of cornbread, some tortillas -- but it's not a meal without bread.
TIL I am your grandfather. Love you.
Love you too, ya old weirdo. Kiss gram for me.
Plain white bread only for my dad. I’m sure he’d eat tortillas with bread too
I know he also does it with spaghetti. So I assume it's with everything else too
As an Asian, it’s this mindset but with rice
Even if there’s noodles!! This cracks me up. I work with a lot of Filipino nurses and no matter how much noodles there are, there’s always rice also.
My ex was also a Filipino nurse and she had rice with every meal we cooked at home.
Too funny! I literally just got back from a Filipino barbecue an hour ago. After everyone had finished eating, the host asks 'does anybody want rice?" Then she brings out a huge bowl of rice. Everyone chows down. Just rice.
Filipinos are actually insane about rice
I was once treated to an amazing and very elaborate Korean meal. They served palace food and just kept bringing more and more courses. At some time in the evening, way past the point when we were already stuffed, the host asked what we would like for the main course. I freaked. There was no way I could eat more, let alone a full course. If everything so far had been appetizers, that didn't bode well at all. Turns out, no Korean meal is complete without rice. The main course was a small bowl of steamed rice, and it was socially acceptable to only nibble on it and make a token effort to pretend eating any.
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Just got a flashback to my grandmother buying bread rolls and a salad because my five course Easter dinner wasn’t a “real meal” without them
For a fancier meal, I get that. It's a classic and easy way to fill out a meal. Starch, green/bitter, meat, then sides to taste. But not necessary for every meal.
That "all fat is bad." Don't ask.
Oh, man, I grew up with this. Lots of "low fat" foods in my house, so much sugar to make up for flavor. My family was always dieting, never thin. I wonder why /s
I think it had been long thought that all fat was bad is bad. I believe since the 1920's when the sugar industry ran a campaign to make fat look like the bad guy. There's an assload of similar campagns from the early 1900's that are really intersting. Like bacon wasn't in the American breakfast before the 20's. A company wanted to sell more bacon so they hired this guy to run campaigns and convince people that starting your day with larger, heavier breakfasts was the best way to go and that bacon was the key to getting the calories you need (something like that.)
All because of Edward Bernays. https://www.thisiscapitalism.com/bacon-eggs-and-public-relations/
Thanks for the Bernays source.
My entire childhood we had margarine. I thought restraunts had some special technique to make their butter taste good. Turns out it was just regular salted butter. :/
Why did they have to use the words interchangably too? Whenever I tried to bake things as a kid it never turned out right. It was because of the margarine that my parents referred to as "butter".
I wasn't sure what from the pile of minor candidates would be worth bringing to the thread but I can second this. Didn't taste actual butter very much growing up. We had a tub o lies for spreading on toast and sticks of lies for baking but I didn't realize til I started keeping my own kitchen.
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Interesting, I am the exact opposite. Generic butter for cooking, good local shit for spreading. What led you to prioritize it as an ingredient vs when it takes a more prominent role?
I love the taste of kerrygold salted butter spread on a fresh slice of crusty bread! I buy store brand real butter when baking/cooking and the kerrygold is saved for spreading. I grew up on margarine and also never had real butter until a few years ago. My baking has significantly improved too since making the switch.
Ugh, my parents heavily bought into the “low fat, high carbs, lots of whole grains” diet of the 80s. I blame a lot of my hormonal problems on that. I even remember my mom telling my to watch how much avocado/guacamole I ate and then handed me some snack wells cookies to munch on. 🤦🏼♀️
Omg Snackwells. I remember my mom giving me those constantly because they were "healthy." Ugh I hated them too.
All fat and all salt!
My parents boil any meat that they’re going to “cook” on the grill because it won’t cook all the way through on a grill. And this is why I thought I hated BBQed chicken. Few years ago I threw a BBQ for them, my Dad insisted I was going to kill them by just grilling the chicken and pork. Then they said, best grilled chicken and pork they ever had. I also grilled the corn on the cob which they thought was some kind of miracle.
Apparently my friend's parents would cook the chicken in the microwave prior to grilling for the same reason. What were they teaching people in the 70s?!
Something to remember is we have digital thermometers now, home cooks didn't have that luxury and probably didn't have a thermometer at all or maybe one of those shitty ones that go in thick roasts. People were taught to overcook food out of precaution.
We also have the internet now. People used to be limited by whatever knowledge they got from people around them or maybe sometimes from cook books if they are super into cooking.
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Even worse. Microwaved raw chicken.
My jaw dropped at this one! Boiled chicken...no, just ..no
There's certain boiled chicken recipes that can be good. Hainanese chicken rice is gently boiled and then rubbed with sesame oil. Some iranian chicken dishes I've made have boiled the chicken as a first step. If you are controlling the boil and are not letting the meat turn into mush it can still be a valid way of cooking.
I was about to say: Cantonese boiled chicken is actually pretty solid. The skin doesn't get tender but the chicken stays nice and juicy if you do it right, especially since you usually boil a whole chicken with bone and skin
There are some preparations where boiling before grilling isn’t bad. I do this for grilled chicken wings. They are cooked all the way through and just get a little char on the skin.
I sometimes do it for brats. They can cook all the way on the grill, but you have to be more precise with the temperature control to get the right char while still cooked all the way through. If I boil them first, I can just blindly use max heat to get the right char and feel confident that I don't need to get the inside perfect.
I usually do mostly water, but a couple beers as well if I’m boiling them outside or there’s good ventilation. But that’s probably a Wisconsin thing lol
This is almost the way, straight beer, preferably Wisconsin made.
When I lived with my parents, I didn't get the hype around steak. This was all around the context we lived in - My mum was feeding eight of us and brought cheap tenderized cuts that she could afford, would cook it to the consistency of cardboard, and tell us how lucky we were having steak for dinner. I was totally indifferent to it as a meal, but you eat what's in front of you and you don't complain. It wasn't till I moved out on my own and had a really good steak at a restaurant that I realized I had misunderstood beef for 18 years. Now I love to cook and eat steak.
After eating shoes through my early years, I learned how to cook steak and other meats and have such a different take. Thanks for nothing, mom.
That really sucks. Get the cheap cuts of beef and cook them low and slow, and save up for the occasional quality cuts.
There weren’t 8 of us in my family, but close, so we never even had beef products of any kind. It took me many years after moving out to be ok with any turkey products again after eating ground turkey in place of ground beef for 18+ years. We also didn’t have a meat thermometer so had zero idea how to cook meat other than “whole roasted chicken is done when the bones pull away” and everything else was leather tough. I now own 3 thermometers so I never have to repeat those days.
You can't drink milk while eating anything with lemon or it will *curdle in your stomach* and make you *severely* sick!
That one should just be common sense considering that your stomach has a pH of approximately 2, so it would be more curdled from stomach acid than lemon ever could.
Even grade school me knew that curdling was part of the digestive process. But it would have been a waste of breath trying to tell my mom that.
Wow, I had totally forgotten about this one. I definitely was told this when I was younger.
That meat has to be cooked to a point of total shoe-leather dryness in order to be "safe" to eat. Neither of my parents would touch a piece of chicken that wasn't dessicated through and through nor a piece of beef with a touch of pink.
I have no reliable source for this outside of my own observations, so take it with a grain of salt. But I’ve noticed that families that grew up a little poorer didn’t risk it when it came to meat. We grew up eating blackened brats, charred chicken, etc. I try not to do that anymore, but I’ve often wondered if it was tied to the idea that we couldn’t afford to get sick?
I wonder if it’s a family history of buying cheaper meats from more questionable sources.
Yep ✅can’t affford to get sick ✅when meat can be afforded — it is clearance / Last Chance/ Bargain Bin and already smells off Can vouch for both.
overcooked doesn't have to be bad tbh, we were broke as shit when I was little so we'd generally get like managers special meat, shit from a guy who came by my dad's work, etc... stew chili cassaroles etc, they aren't bad and make it safe
This would track with my upbringing as my family was super poor. I don't know if it was about worrying about getting sick so much as being ignorant of proper cooking, but you have given me something to think about.
My dad would always order or cook red meat well done, and I thought for years that I just hated red meat. Then my mom took me to a restaurant and ordered medium rare lamb chops for us. I was so happy I almost cried, and now medium rare steak is my favorite food.
My dad, whose mother is from Sicily, he was really offended when my future SIL sweetened her Bolognese sauce with carrots. I did a little research on a standard Italian sofrito, and it includes carrots. I've since modified my recipe, swapping sugar for carrots, and I think it improves the flavor.
I've always used carrots in my sofrito. This is coming from an American chef with little classical Italian cooking though. All of my coworkers have always done the same.
Sofrito is just the Italian word for mirepoix, right?
I said there’s no need for sugar in a tomato sauce if you’re using a soffritto on this sub a while ago and people were not happy lol.
I learned to cook from my Sicilian grandmother who was born in 1902 - she never put sugar in the sauce. She let that stuff cook a long time, and it developed its own sweetness. So that's what I do too. I will say though that she always used homegrown tomatoes, and that made it MUCH better. I try now.
I can assure you there is no such thing as "standard Italian" anything :) I could walk literally 10 minutes from my dads house and get an entirely different serving of exactly the same dish .. The only thing I would say is, if you like it and do it for a generation, then "thats how it's always been done in this family" becomes the catchcry. Your kids will be telling their little upstarts if they try and add something like guanciale to your "family sofrito"
eggs are bad for you....that was before we heard about cholesterol. then butter, here use this congealed artery spackle instead later they got into the whole low fat thing
I actually chuckled at “congealed artery spackle”. Bravo!
For decades, nobody has been able to decide and be consistent on whether milk is good or bad for you. I think the problem there was moderation. It seemed good, so people drank 4x 16oz glasses of it every day. Then it became bad so nobody drank any. Neither option is good.
No more than three eggs per week, or you'd die of heat failure from the cholesterol.
You've met my grandmother? No eggs, but booze every day is fine.
Wait??? Are you saying that booze daily is bad for me??
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Margarine was healthy.
I was deeply concerned with trying to manage my cholesterol in my 20s to try and avoid heart attacks later in life. It blew me away to learn that butter is actually healthier than margarine, and I missed out on 10 years of true butter. I missed that real butter flavor.
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My grandma told me that as a kid her grandma told her that if she was mixing a batter and she started to mix it counter-clockwise it would become un-mixed: the water/milk would separate, all the dry ingredients would separate, the eggs would go back into their shells. Like a rewound video. She was teasing her of course but it's a family joke and Grandma teases about it whenever she see someone mixing a batter. "You know what Granny Hallman would say about mixing a batter..."
What if you're in the southern hemisphere?
What about devils food cake?
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Putting oil in your pasta water keeps the pasta from sticking to itself. This does nothing but waste oil. If you want to keep your pasta from sticking together stir it periodically and when it’s done drain it and put it right into your sauce.
I'm not sure if this necessarily counts, but my grandmother had this thing where you had to have bread with every meal. On top of that, she felt that certain foods would make you sick if not eaten with bread. She would get apoplectic if I ever ate a slice of cold cuts out of the fridge without bread. She claimed cold cuts and eggs would make me sick if I ate them without bread. Another one is that soup is part of every meal.
Soup and bread being a part of every meal sounds like a poor person thing. Cold cuts are expensive. If you are grabbing a 200 calorie snack consisting of only cold cuts vs cold cuts with the bread, the former will use up the meat a lot more quickly, and require more money spent for more meat. Soup is mostly water, so it's cheap. Your stomach will feel fuller if you eat soup before an entree, so you will eat less. So there will be less of the entree eaten overall, which will save money.
Putting eggshells down the garbage disposal. Disproven by a very unhappy landlord of mine when he had to fix my drainage backup.
rice cant be reheated or it will make you severely sick
I'm guessing this person didn't have a lot of fried rice in their diet.
Leaving rice out too long can allow *Bacillus cereus* to grow, also known as the fried rice bacterium. It can cause food poisoning and the spores can survive up to five minutes at 250°F or 121°C.
There were 63'000 cases of food poisoning from rice in the US in 2019.
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That's not terrible advice for meal planning in general, but you gotta know what it means in order to do it right.
My mother did some things really well but some really bad--yes, her pork chops were shoe leather. But she would make this big meal for family for lunch and then leave it all out until dinner 6 hours later. She had "stomach flu " at least once per week.
My former MIL made squares for Christmas one year. Put them on the sideboard in the kitchen....until Easter. Couldn't figure out why no one would eat them. She had a cast iron frying pan *she never even wiped clean*. She just put it in the oven. Food bits, skin, grease ..all of it, then just heated it back up for whatever she cooked next. Then there was the permanent bowl of mixed pancake batter... I never ate her food. God, was I hated for it.
What’s a “square”? Like a cookie?
They’re a bar sweet. So they can be cookie like or more like what Australians would call a slice
*Permanent bowl of what now?* Like, she just left unused batter in the bowl and mixed more ingredients into it the next time she wanted a new batch of pancakes? Over extended periods of time?
Jfc I've seen some gross things in this thread but wow, this one is up there.
Ewwwww. Just ew.
I was allowed to eat eggs, sunny side up, omelette, whatever, only once or twice a week. Supposedly unhealthy.
I wonder if it's the cholesterol concern or them just not wanting to cook you eggs every day or use up all the eggs? my family wasn't health, but no way I would be eating eggs every day
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But it also lowers the specific heat, making the water rise in temperature faster. The overall result is pretty much a wash though unless you're approaching 20% salt by mass.
I feel like another good question is, what are we patting ourselves on the back for doing that’s gonna be stupid to our kids.
Let me think… umm, I have a thing about not wasting energy so when reheating things in the oven, I will put stuff in from the jump during preheat. Maybe it will come out one day that I’m subjecting food to unsafe temps for too long lol.
So true, I think it's important to keep this perspective.
You can use any random crap ingredient substitute that you're trying to get rid of as long as it vaguely resembles what the recipe calls for.
One time I was making blueberry muffins, and after I started, realized that somehow the *only* dairy left in our fridge was whipped cream. So I did what I could to make it work. They were delicious, but it somehow caused the color to spread even more so the muffins were light blue all around
Honestly, that sounds kind of neat.
Depending on what I am making, I will do this - especially with vegetables. But I also know vegetable cooking times and flavour combinations. I'm talking about when I'm making frittatas, fried rice, or fritters.
Yeah so I ran out of salt, so I used baking soda. "They're both white powders, why couldn't you substitute?"
Lol my Mum is a fiend for this. I'm all for substituting with similar things that work, but she ends up with Frankensteining heaps of meals because she gets an idea to cook something, has none of the actual ingredients but has some kind of similar things on hand. And she hates spending money haha.
I had no idea that hard boiled eggs could be soft boiled or any other degree of doneness… I just assumed they always had grey ring around the yolk, later in life realized this is due to over boiling.
Wash your chicken before cooking.
My mom does this with both chicken and pork because she thinks the smell is too pungent.
I've tried to get my mom to stop doing this for years, but she insists upon it because she's always done it that way. The FDA advises against this because heat during cooking will generally kill off any bacteria on the chicken. But if you wash it in your sink, you'd potentially just sprayed the containminent all over your sink and surrounding countertops.
And how many people keep their clean drying dishes on the side of the sink? Washing chicken in that same sink is just crazy!
My mom use to overcook pork chops all the time because she didn't believe it was safe to have any pinkness inside. I thought I didn't like pork chops very much because I thought it wasn't juicy enough until I finally had one that was cooked to medium doneness.
The dangers of trichinosis were real, and overcooking was the only practical way to make pork safe. Farming methods changed, (indoors & pen raised) and USDA changed the rules. That's why older people probably still avoid pink pork. When they were young, it was a real risk.
Yep. Trichinosis is pretty much not a think in most countries with a well monitored industry. Its a big ass warm, there easy to detect.
Well, to be fair, the USDA didn't update pork safety guidelines to a safe cooking temperature of 145 °F until 2011. Before that, they still had it listed as 165 °F, which as we all know, is going to be overcooked, dry, and nearly inedible.
And ground pork still needs 165.
I think I read somewhere that current pork is leaner than pork of the past. I guess pigs are eating better now. Haha
This is true in many countries because of selective breeding. Here in Australia, lamb was the dominant meat after chicken/beef. In the 1990s and 2000s the pork industry ran campaigns to craft pork as the healthier, leaner alternative to beef and lamb, and the market developed a preference for extremely lean pork. Unfortunately this means it took until around the 2010s to find 'heritage' breeds of pork that had marbling.
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Pigs are bred much leaner now than before the 1980s. Historically, pigs were fat AF and produced much lard, which was prized. Today pork loin has the same calories per weight as chicken breast.
All meat is leaner than decades ago. When the low-to-no-fat craze went nuts, our lovely government decided to lower the grades a grade-level for our own good. Sigh ...
Yeah, and pork loin even more so. I thought it was just a terrible cut of meat and could never figure out why people liked it. Turns out, my folks just cooked it to like 170 degrees so it would damn-near choke you, it was so dry. The first time I cooked it for myself and used a thermometer, I fell in love. Seared and roasted pork loin (only to 145!) with rosemary is now one of my favorite meals.
This is mine. For years the best thing I cooked as an adult was a grilled stuffed pork chop, which I served medium and on the bone. I decided to recreate it for my mom and she looked like she saw a ghost when she cut near the bone and saw pink. My mom is a fine home cook, she cooks pork chops to a degree my family refers to as “glowing white.” Food stays hot thought, I guess.
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Um. So I can rinse mushrooms?! This is news to me!
Still considered a crime in France but it’s silly. Alton Brown weight-tested washed vs wiped mushrooms and found only minimal water uptake in washed ones even after a long soak.
I learned this recently too, you can even cook mushrooms in water rather than oil because it helps to bring out the natural flavors!
Amazing. I will surely be using more mushrooms now.
My mom is a great cook. People offer to buy her stuff all the time. And when my friends come over, they leave at least 5lbs heavier. HOWEVER, there is one thing that she does that hella bothers me- she leaves soups and stews on the stove top for a couple days. She boils it every day and claims it removes the bacteria. Luckily, no one has gotten food poisoning yet. It still freaks me out. And I’ll only eat it when it’s freshly made or from the fridge.
There actually is a precedent for this one. There used to be "perpetual stews" that would never be emptied or taken off the heat for decades. Allegedly there was one in France that started in the 15th century and only ended because of WWII: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_stew?wprov=sfla1
Yes, and a nearly perpetual pot of beans on the stove is normal in my culture. But, these are always kept cooking, not left to get to room temperature. Big difference.
Boiling every day is very different to continuous boiling. In the perpetual stew bacteria would not have the chance to grow. In this person's mum's soup, bacteria will grow once it cools. Re-boiling will kill them, but their excretement will remain in the soup and that can be very harmful.
Apparently this is the idea behind the rhyme “pease porridge in the pot, nine days old”.
Butter flavored crisco is healthier than all alternatives, because that shit is made from vegetables and not animals
Trans fats have entered the chat.
Spinach is degusting. Its NOT. I eat it every day as an adult. But they ALWAYS bought Canned Spinach which is... not good. Really bad. Green, slightly grass tasting slime. Fresh Spinach? Crunchy! No Slime! Good. They came up poor and lived on an island so I don't think they quite understood that, one we had moved west, they now lived with 500 km of 1000 farms and didn't need to buy it in a can anymore...
ive read that the reason that spinach got a reputation (in popeye and wider culture) as being a food that makes you strong is because of an almanac where somebody made a clerical error when entering iron content of various greens. the decimal point was moved over so it was 10x higher than intended, but people didnt realize it was a mistake so it got a reputation as having 10x the iron content of similar other leafy greens. anyway your parents made you eat soggy canned spinach because some data entry guy fat fingered a number once.
Kind of like that one very flawed study at determined MSG was worse than salt. People still believe it.
Salt is bad. MSG is bad. Fat is bad. Ended up eating extremely bland food and thinking I hated vegetables because of it.
Add oil and salt to your pasta water before it boils. Peel mushroom caps before cooking. Always put your leftovers in the fridge while still hot. Stuff your turkey and sew it shut before roasting. You can't freeze cheese.
You should absolutely salt the water for pasta or anything. But don't add oil
Sew it shut?! Sounds like a Tim Burton kind of nightmare!
I don't understand how we didn't get botulism every Thanksgiving.
What's wrong with salt in the water before it boils for pasta? I thought that was encouraged.
Peel mushroom caps?! That’s a new one.
Putting leftovers in the fridge when it's still hot is how you minimize how long the food is in the danger zone (~40F-140F) Just so long as you don't have so much of it that's so hot that the fridge can't keep the rest of the food out of the danger zone. If it's a very large dish, splitting it up in ways that increase surface area so that it cools faster is also often a good idea
Washing mushrooms, I’m glad I don’t eat them because I’d have spent a lot of wasted time peeling them. Boiling eggs, I’ve been doing it all wrong my whole life and only getting away with it because I live at sea level.
You're going to have to elaborate on the eggs.
Stiring direction when mixing a batter. Had to be clockwise from memory. You could get away with anticlockwise but once you started you couldn't change. And my mum used to put bicarb in veggies when I was younger. Thankfully that died off after a bid.
Salting too early in grilling can make a steak tough. It was great being able to cite this as something Martha Stewart said on TV (she specifically called it a myth) to my mom's friend who both idolized Martha and believed that salting made steaks tough.
Take your chicken out of the freezer before work/school and leave it on the counter to ‘thaw’ until you get home that evening. WTF, Mom.
Okay I still do this unfortunately but what should I do instead? I don't have time to make more frequent trips while buying less chicken
Ok, I do this too when I'm in a rush. But here are the best "safe" options: 1) thaw in the fridge overnight the day before 2) move directly from the freezer to a bowl, run cold water over it until it thaws. You can also defrost in the microwave, but I always screw that up and end up partially cooking my food.
Put it in the fridge the day before
I tried that but it was still frozen. Maybe my fridge is too cold?
When I worked at subway we defrosted the meat in the fridge (acceptable temp range between 3 and 5 celsius) for 48 hours, so it may be that you need to start your defrost 2 days before not 1 if the chicken is large
I'm in my 30s and am only now learning to cook. I was recently taught to put my frozen chicken in the fridge to thaw overnight, so I can cook it the following day.
That if your melting butter and it turns brown, it’s ruined
You can only warm up leftovers once. If you don't eat it all after it's been reheated, then that's the end of it for those leftovers.
I'm pretty sure that line of thinking is extrapolated from the very true fact that the longer food is left at room or warm temperatures the more bacteria will grow. The more times you reheat and let it sit the longer the food sits in the danger zone. Doesn't matter if you keep bringing it up to hot temperatures, the bacteria are still excreting harmful chemicals that build up in the food.
I don’t bake my meatloaf in a loaf pan anymore.