Buy and use an instant read meat thermometer. I put up with so much dried out and scorched meat just because I would absolutely hammer any meat I cooked for fear of getting food poisoning.
this is a great one! on a similar note, an oven thermometer is useful in any oven (even good ones.) it’s extremely frustrating to otherwise nail a recipe and not realize for a long period that it was the oven’s bad, not yours. inhibits building confidence when you don’t know what variable is your enemy.
Recommendation, I definitely need one. Preferably a leave in permanently not trail out probe, although I'm open to the latter just to make a quick spreadsheet for conversions.
Thermoworks makes really good meat thermometers and runs sales pretty often. I haven’t personally used their leave-in probe thermometers (the Thermoworks website calls them “cooking alarms”), but my Thermapen is great for probing quick-cooking cuts of meat.
i’ve had success with a Rubbermaid Oven Thermometer (should be under $10 USD) but anything similar to that style should do the trick! they hang off an oven rack and can be left in at all times. there can still be hot spots inside, sure, though this makes it easier and more accurate to find them
Switching to Kosher from regular Iodized Table salt for my cooking. Who would've guessed it would completely fix a lot of my tendency to over salt and make everything I cook just a little more delicious.
Roasted vegetables >>> steamed. I can’t believe how much I ate steamed vegetables in the name of health, when I could’ve just roasted them and actually liked it.
Everything takes longer than you expect--no recipe has correctly measured their prep time, so start earlier than you think if you want to eat at a given time.
I'd go back and tell myself about dried peppers, and what magic you can do with rehydrating them- there are other flavors than just hot, go and find them.
The reason food often tastes better in restaurants than at home is more salt and more fat. Add them, or not, the choice is yours, but know that that is why.
- Any time you pull a long-handled pan out of the oven, put one of your oven mitts over the handle as soon as you set it down so you don’t absentmindedly grab the very hot handle a few minutes later.
- Mashing potatoes and shredding chicken is so much easier in your stand mixer than by hand (especially since you still will not own a potato masher or a ricer at age 31).
- Remove meats from the fridge and salt them a little while before you’re ready to throw them in the pan.
And, finally, one I figured out while I was still in grad school:
- Order extra chutney when you get Indian food and use it as a marinade later. Mint chutney works really well on chicken thighs, and probably tastes great on lamb too.
There was indeed an incident, years ago, but it wasn’t a cast-iron pan and I only barely touched it, so I managed to walk away without even a first-degree burn.
Okay, enough of you have commented on the pasta water thing not being bullshit that I'll experiment with it this week. I've always rolled my eyes at recipes that demand it.
Looking back, I'm pretty pleased with how I cooked when I was 20. But my number 1 advice for old me would be to sharpen your goddamn knives once in a while.
Recently, one of my lessons has been "actually use that honing rod you bought 10 years ago!"
I felt like my knives were not holding an edge very well because I'd go to cut tomatoes and end up squishing them — but now that I take the extra 10-15 seconds to quickly hone my knives before using them, I'm slicing through them cleanly again for longer intervals between sharpening.
Frozen vegetables are generally as good as fresh. They can save you time!
I always have a bag (or a leftover half) of frozen peas and carrots in the freezer for emergency fried rice. I also keep a costco sized bag of garlic in the freezer, and I have ice cube trays full of garlic/ginger paste for all sorts of things. Being able to effectively use my freezer has made my cooking a lot better because I can have "pantry staples" that are actually fresh.
canned vegetables are trash though, except in very specific circumstances.
And freezing the good, fresh-picked spring peas when they’re available means you get the very best springtime flavor the whole year (or, at least, as long as the peas last).
yes! Frozen peas are often fresher than even fresh peas (not counting farmers' markets) because they get frozen as soon as they're picked, where fresh peas have to get transported to the store and bought by you!
My mind has been blown by good, fresh peas. I started gardening recently and tried growing them this year. I think there might've been one time that I managed to get enough peas together to call for cooking them with some butter and salt in a pan. All the other peas were eaten straight out of the pod by me or (mostly) my kids — mostly the 18 month-old, who demanded I take her outside almost every morning so she could pick some.
Marge Simpson was a wise woman: “You might say the secret ingredient is salt”.
You gotta season your food.
When I was growing up a lot of people shied away from adding salt for health reasons. Which is understandable, processed foods typically have way too much sodium. But if you’re cooking fresh food you need to remember to season.
The other advice I would give younger me is that braising is easy, cheap, and delicious., Just be sure to de-grease the cooking liquid before serving.
The easiest one that took a while to learn: there are recipes you follow, and there are recipes that can be loose guidelines. The difference is very important, since the latter can lead to new discoveries, but if it’s the former and you get too weird, you’re ordering pizza.
(Also, thanks to Scott for shouting out two products from my employer, I’m glad my subscription pays for ads even if our marketing team doesn’t know about it)
Buy and use an instant read meat thermometer. I put up with so much dried out and scorched meat just because I would absolutely hammer any meat I cooked for fear of getting food poisoning.
this is a great one! on a similar note, an oven thermometer is useful in any oven (even good ones.) it’s extremely frustrating to otherwise nail a recipe and not realize for a long period that it was the oven’s bad, not yours. inhibits building confidence when you don’t know what variable is your enemy.
Recommendation, I definitely need one. Preferably a leave in permanently not trail out probe, although I'm open to the latter just to make a quick spreadsheet for conversions.
Thermoworks makes really good meat thermometers and runs sales pretty often. I haven’t personally used their leave-in probe thermometers (the Thermoworks website calls them “cooking alarms”), but my Thermapen is great for probing quick-cooking cuts of meat.
i’ve had success with a Rubbermaid Oven Thermometer (should be under $10 USD) but anything similar to that style should do the trick! they hang off an oven rack and can be left in at all times. there can still be hot spots inside, sure, though this makes it easier and more accurate to find them
Sorry, there should be a ?, would love a thermometer recc.
Switching to Kosher from regular Iodized Table salt for my cooking. Who would've guessed it would completely fix a lot of my tendency to over salt and make everything I cook just a little more delicious.
Roasted vegetables >>> steamed. I can’t believe how much I ate steamed vegetables in the name of health, when I could’ve just roasted them and actually liked it.
I would love to be able to tell my younger self “you don’t dislike broccoli, you dislike *under-seasoned steamed* broccoli.”
My kids love roasted broccoli. My parents are astounded. Guess how we used to eat broccoli growing up?
I'm embarrassed to admit it took a Hungry Root recipe card for me to learn this lesson.
Two things:
You don’t need a giant block of terrible knives. You just need one good knife.
Buy the good butter and don’t be stingy with it. The Europeans intrinsically get this.
Everything takes longer than you expect--no recipe has correctly measured their prep time, so start earlier than you think if you want to eat at a given time.
You have to let frozen things thaw.
cannot be said enough (literally, as my wife still does not know).
that one and "you can't cook it faster by turning up the heat to 11, that just burns the outside and leaves the inside mush or burns food to the pan"
I'd go back and tell myself about dried peppers, and what magic you can do with rehydrating them- there are other flavors than just hot, go and find them.
The reason food often tastes better in restaurants than at home is more salt and more fat. Add them, or not, the choice is yours, but know that that is why.
- Any time you pull a long-handled pan out of the oven, put one of your oven mitts over the handle as soon as you set it down so you don’t absentmindedly grab the very hot handle a few minutes later.
- Mashing potatoes and shredding chicken is so much easier in your stand mixer than by hand (especially since you still will not own a potato masher or a ricer at age 31).
- Remove meats from the fridge and salt them a little while before you’re ready to throw them in the pan.
And, finally, one I figured out while I was still in grad school:
- Order extra chutney when you get Indian food and use it as a marinade later. Mint chutney works really well on chicken thighs, and probably tastes great on lamb too.
ooh, that pan handle idea is a great one, and also a "there was an incident" (cc: hooverstreetrag) suggestion if I've ever heard one
There was indeed an incident, years ago, but it wasn’t a cast-iron pan and I only barely touched it, so I managed to walk away without even a first-degree burn.
Okay, enough of you have commented on the pasta water thing not being bullshit that I'll experiment with it this week. I've always rolled my eyes at recipes that demand it.
Looking back, I'm pretty pleased with how I cooked when I was 20. But my number 1 advice for old me would be to sharpen your goddamn knives once in a while.
Recently, one of my lessons has been "actually use that honing rod you bought 10 years ago!"
I felt like my knives were not holding an edge very well because I'd go to cut tomatoes and end up squishing them — but now that I take the extra 10-15 seconds to quickly hone my knives before using them, I'm slicing through them cleanly again for longer intervals between sharpening.
It's gonna blow your mind at what it does to the creaminess/consistency of sauces.
Why were we so dumb about the pasta water?
Because we grew up using colanders so we just assumed the water was supposed to be poured down the drain.
My big piece of advice would be that the heating element of the stove top doesn't have to be cranked all the way up just because you're hungry now.
But I AM hungry now!
🎶I need prepared nourishment and I’m hungry now🎶
[chorus appears] CALL J.G. WENTWORTH! 877-FOOD-NOW!
Roast vegetables
Frozen vegetables are generally as good as fresh. They can save you time!
I always have a bag (or a leftover half) of frozen peas and carrots in the freezer for emergency fried rice. I also keep a costco sized bag of garlic in the freezer, and I have ice cube trays full of garlic/ginger paste for all sorts of things. Being able to effectively use my freezer has made my cooking a lot better because I can have "pantry staples" that are actually fresh.
canned vegetables are trash though, except in very specific circumstances.
And freezing the good, fresh-picked spring peas when they’re available means you get the very best springtime flavor the whole year (or, at least, as long as the peas last).
yes! Frozen peas are often fresher than even fresh peas (not counting farmers' markets) because they get frozen as soon as they're picked, where fresh peas have to get transported to the store and bought by you!
My mind has been blown by good, fresh peas. I started gardening recently and tried growing them this year. I think there might've been one time that I managed to get enough peas together to call for cooking them with some butter and salt in a pan. All the other peas were eaten straight out of the pod by me or (mostly) my kids — mostly the 18 month-old, who demanded I take her outside almost every morning so she could pick some.
Marge Simpson was a wise woman: “You might say the secret ingredient is salt”.
You gotta season your food.
When I was growing up a lot of people shied away from adding salt for health reasons. Which is understandable, processed foods typically have way too much sodium. But if you’re cooking fresh food you need to remember to season.
The other advice I would give younger me is that braising is easy, cheap, and delicious., Just be sure to de-grease the cooking liquid before serving.
The easiest one that took a while to learn: there are recipes you follow, and there are recipes that can be loose guidelines. The difference is very important, since the latter can lead to new discoveries, but if it’s the former and you get too weird, you’re ordering pizza.
(Also, thanks to Scott for shouting out two products from my employer, I’m glad my subscription pays for ads even if our marketing team doesn’t know about it)