Chefs Divulge Cooking Tips That Everyone Should Know

Chefs Divulge Cooking Tips That Everyone Should Know
Image by Salah Jalal from Pixabay

Not everyone excels at cooking, and that's okay.


As long as you can follow recipe directions and paying attention to measuring ingredients, the tasty dishes you prepare should be an accomplishment you should be proud of.

But what about the details that are not necessarily mentioned in cook books that can lead to better results?

Redditor Tw1sted_inc asked:

"Chefs of Reddit, what are some cooking tips everyone should know?"
Unless you are running the Food Network on your TV, 24/7, it appears there is a lot to learn.

Got your cooking aprons on? Let's go!


That's Sharp

"a falling knife has no handle."

ihoardbeer

"The worst cut I've ever had was from trying catch one on reflex. I got sliced across all my fingers, great tip to internalize."

sigourneybeav3r

Spicing Things Up

"Two things for beginners:"

"First, taste as you cook. At various stages of cooking, while safe (not raw meat) taste your food as you cook it. This let's you know if you have too much of something or too little. It also helps you develop your palette for what different seasonings do."

"Second, if you're just starting out and don't know which spices to buy. Pick a specific cuisine you like. Are you a fan of italian food? Focus only on Italian recipes for a while. Most use similar herbs and spices because the cuisine of the area used what they had available to them."

"This will let you learn several recipes without having to buy massive amounts of spices to make it work. Eventually you will build up a good stock and be set to handle most things."

lloydimus87

Highly Flammable

"Oven mits can in fact catch on fire."

YupItsMe81

"A good kitchen should be equipped with a plentiful supply of clean dry towels."

Ben_zyl

Never Ever Do This

"Whatever you do do NOT put your coconut in the microwave."

somedumbrick

"If it's a whole coconut I feel like the coconut water might as it evaporetes create a huge pressure inside of the coconut shell which will build up until it's strong enough to physically shatter the hard shell, at which point it's also strong enough to f'k sh*t up. But pure guesswork :P"

PastelIris

Restaurant Quality

"Three or four times the amount of butter and salt is a big part of why your food doesn't taste like restaurant food."

porkedpie1

Don't Drain The Boiled Water

"For thick and nice sauces, use the water you cook your pasta with."

IZiOstra

Master These Concepts

"Salt is seasoning. It makes food taste more like itself. Acids, like citrus or vinegar can act the also do this. If your food tastes flat, or like it is missing something, try some salt or acid. Acid is also critical for balancing very rich fatty foods. The reason Americans love tomato ketchup so much is the fact that it adds acid and salt to their food. Adding a bit of 'heat' like a pinch of cayenne can also accentuate a the flavor of a dish. Spices are something else. They bring a new and different flavor to the dish."

"In sweets, sugar often takes the place of salt and is usually balanced by acid - see passionfruit, raspberry, citrus, etc. But salt plays an important role in sweets as well - often in unexpected ways. Try putting a pinch of kosher salt into your next batch of whipped cream."

"I could keep going but I'll leave it there. If you can master these concepts you will have a big advantage over most home cooks."

therealdxm

Timing Is Everything

"The amount of garlic flavor is dependent on WHEN you add the garlic. Add it early for light flavor, add it late for bold flavor."

Orbnotacus

In Honor Of The Best Chef – Mom

"I've been crushing the home chef game since [the virus] started. Mom was a massive cook, always cooking up the best sh*t at the church potluck, always giving folks who were sick some Dope a**, none-caseroll, Wildly delicious Puerto Rican-Iowan farmer fusion type sh*t. Everyone agreed she was the best cook they had ever known. So I grew up hearing this and started paying attention when I realized none of my friends moms even cooked at home other than one or two meals a week."

"My mom was making up every single meal from scratch. Oh you want oatmeal? 'I'll bake my own, it's cheaper and better.' Or 'let's make tacos next week, I'll start sprouting the oats so I can grind my own flower for the tortillas' woman was insanely talented. Never made mistakes. Knife skills off the charts. Pressure cooking bones and veggies for a whole day before the chicken noodle soup (at which, of course, she made her own noodles from scratch). Mom's even had her own (massive) garden, and we butchered our own chickens (small hobby farm).

"So when this pandemic hit, I started throwing the f'k down in the kitchen. Well... needless to say I've been using garlic a good bit because—let's be honest if you're not using garlic, you're not cooking most meals right—it's f'king delicious. And this one tip is going to level up my game so f'king hard it's not even funny. RIP, mom. You are hugely missed. I'll keep cooking till I die and every time I hit the recipe/idea just right, imma think of you."

newsydaniel

Companies That Shamelessly Make Terrible Products

Reddit user ricinonthecake asked: 'what companies shamelessly make sh*t products, year after year?'

Be it for clothes, household appliances, or food, sometimes you know you can be one hundred percent confident with certain brands or companies when shopping that you will be getting a quality product.

Unfortunately, this goes both ways.

Some companies have a reputation for exclusively selling and manufacturing low-quality products.

One would think that these companies might reflect on poor sales and bad customer feedback, and attempt to improve their brand with each passing year.

Unfortunately, even if they still get items on the shelf, reviews on Amazon and elsewhere still seem to remain at two stars or less.

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The paranormal is among us at all times.

The ghosts, the spirits, they "live" in their death.

Sometimes a coincidence or a phenomenon is something more.

Leftover essences have been seen and recorded.

Now not everybody is cool with every encounter.

I still have shivers depending on the mood.

But when will we all be on the same page and start living 'Beetlejuice?'

Day-OH!

That could help with the spookiness of it all.

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white police car in wall
Photo by Conor Samuel on Unsplash

Everyone does stupid things, and it's not limited to when you're young either.

When I was 10, my best friend and I snuck out of her house in the middle of the night and hitchhiked to Tukery Hill for ice cream. I can't even count all the ways that could've gone wrong.

Eight years later, my friend and I drove his new car on the sheets of ice on our college campus, trying to see how fast we could go.

The tires skidded on the ice several times, and back then, we thought it was fun.

The stupidity spurred on by impulsivity doesn't ever truly go away.

Redditors can attest to that, as they are sharing what may be the stupidest things they've ever done.

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Customer service jobs are not for the faint of heart.

Dealing with people at their angriest and rudest does not breed a positive work environment.

Customer service can be a downright toxic job.

And if it's not the customers setting your spirit on fire, it's the companies themselves.

Some companies seem to revel in creating discontent.

That's why these types of jobs have such high turnover.

Redditor Psychological-Name15 wanted the customer service reps out there to give us some truths, so they asked:

"Customer service workers of Reddit, what secret can you reveal from your former company?"

I want to know about the inner workings of Comcast!!

I loathe them!

Oh Dear

Jennifer Lopez Smh GIF by American IdolGiphy

I used to work in tech support for Citi Bank. The people working there are not intelligent. My favorite interaction went like this..."

"Banker - How do I type the upside down I?"

"Me - Ma'am, that's an exclamation point."

slappy_mcslapenstein

The Crappy People

"In every CS job I’ve ever had: we will bend over backward to help a nice person. We will expedite any complaint, give maximum compensation, and harass other areas of the business for you."

"We will do the absolute bare minimum to help a shi**y person and if you’re really bad, we will do everything in our power to make sure you get nothing but what you’re legally entitled to and it will be a process to get that."

11catsinahumansuit

"I don’t work in CS but 100% the same for us in IT a nice person will get new stuff while a shi**y person will get questionable secondhand crap that will take 12 months to fix! I will make sure that you wait as long as humanely possible to have anything fixed!"

Sharp-Demand-6614

Go to Holiday Inn

"If you ask for a supervisor calling Marriott you will just get another person who is not a supervisor, but say they are."

cryptnificent

"Yep. I've seen this done numerous times across multiple industries. Usually, it only involves an actual sup if it's a genuine problem or if they want to make a point."

"The last job I had was in towing junk cars. Two of the inside buyers, one male, and one female, would bounce that sup card around constantly. Idk how no one ever put it together. We'd get repeat callers and repeat sellers so I don't know."

ItsBobFromLumbridge

Heartless

"Worked at a contracted call center for Centrelink. The manager told us to deny as many emergency payments as possible and they would back us no matter what. They were actively working towards a culture that despised the callers and churned staff to get heartless right-wingers who hated the poor."

Rizza1122

"I feel ya. My best mate is a quadriplegic. Centrelink denied his disability pension because he wasn’t disabled enough."

Less-Storage

Go to Home Depot

You Are Dumb Patrick Star GIF by SpongeBob SquarePantsGiphy

"I worked at Lowes. I didn't know anything about anything in the electrical department yet that's where they put me without any training."

Eattherich187

Not training people is not just a Lowes thing.

There are too many unqualified people doing too many things.

Switcharoo

Drag Race What GIF by TAZOGiphy

"Can confirm it's an unwritten policy for deli departments in Coles Supermarkets to change the written expiry dates on their tickets so they can sell out-of-code products at full price."

REDDIT

A Little Sunshine

"I worked at a call center for the billing department of a major internet and cable service provider. We were authorized to give up to $90 credit per customer on their bill but only as a last resort. Always remember to be nice to all customer service workers. You never know just how much they can help with a friendly attitude."

Axel_Dunce

"Former call center employee here. Highly accurate. Use your manners, and well fix your issue. Anything else, just makes us want to take longer, and you won't get a credit. Just because we are authorized, doesn't mean you'll get the credit for being an a**hat. haha. I've been verbally abused a few times for asking them not to swear at me. Lol."

Ok-Ad-7247

LELU

"I worked for a major telco company for many years in something called a ‘LELU’ which stands for Law Enforcement Liaison Unit. This 'unit' is pretty self-explanatory, but it essentially is a team who worked directly with the police/FEDS to monitor people's information for things such as obtaining communications history of call logs, SMS loss, etc."

"However, most importantly, the software we used, we as agents could directly see all your SMS texts, including MMS and their explicit imagery of whatever you were sending. This would include sexting, naked images, family photos, and everything. There were instances where people abused this position by stalking or 'monitoring' their SO’s comings and going’s."

MidniteMischief

Cookies!!

"I worked at a cafe chain called 'The Cookie Man,' 95% of their cookies arrived in cardboard boxes layered with bubble wrap. The last 5% arrived as pre-made dough that we would bake on-site to make the place smell like fresh cookies."

"I also worked at a cupcake shop. It's literally just packet mix that you add eggs and oil to before baking/piping pre-made icing onto. Don't waste your money on these places, 90% of these chain shops are the same and most are severely underpaying their workers (this is for Australia btw). Just purchase some packet mix from the supermarket and call it a day."

Frequent-Selection91

Look in the Back

"I was a Store Manager for a very large grocery chain and I can tell you that 95% of the time when customers complain to the manager, we may be professional and show empathy, and even resolve the problem."

"But then we usually just make fun of or talk crap about the person who complained to the other employees. And when a customer is really rude when we go 'look in the back' for something, we legit just stand around and talk to other employees, and make zero effort to look for the item."

A_Womans_Thoughts

From the Box

Kaitlin Olson Brunch GIF by The MickGiphy

"I once worked at 'the area's premiere day spa'; the mimosas were made with Sunny D and not real orange juice, and the wines came out of a box."

SailorVenus23

Sunny D and champagne?!?!

What in the name of Lucifer?

Who does that?!

Do you have anything to add? Let us know in the comments below.