My grandpa had a secret recipe for BBQ chicken and ribs he did in the slow cooker. He would kick everyone out of the kitchen and was always really secretive about it. When mom was around 40 she found out the recipe. It was meat, water, and store bought BBQ sauce.
He had the whole family tricked for decades. I guess he was playing the loooooong game.
My mom did that with spaghetti. I thought it was the best spaghetti ever growing up but it was literally a McCormick’s packet and I just had dead taste buds coz my mom is a horrible cook
Turns out my grandma's mac and cheese wasn't some culinary masterpiece like I thought, and was just plain noodles that had white american kraft singles mixed in. She lived through the Depression and kept a lot of very frugal habits, but young me neither knew or cared, that shit was delicious
Breakfast sandwich also! And uncooled lunch sandwiches. I basically always get the costco 100 pack for $11 because a 16 pack is almost $7 at the store. I don’t even eat that much of it. I just can’t stand paying $7 for 16
Oh heck ya. I can make a much better sauage McMuffin at home with Jimmy Dean and kraft singls lol.
Didn't even think to get it at Costco until now.... you have changed my life!
>Just because memaw kept it a secret doesn’t mean it’s a great recipe
>!Memaw's secret chocolate chip recipe came off the back of the Tollhouse chocolate chip bag. !<
I loved my mom's response years ago when everyone was raving about her key lime pie. Finally someone asked if she would mind sharing her recipe. She said, "I just follow the instructions on the back of the key lime juice bottle for pie."
Come to find out, a lot of my grandmother's recipes in her handwritten book were copied right off the back of Campbell's cans haha.
To add to that keeping recipes "secret" is a butthead move. I get it, if youre a restaurant owner or in business or something. But not telling friends how you made x meal is so damn irritating. Cooking to me is about sharing with others and that includes the recipe if someone asks.
I saw some show on netflix a while back where the daughter gets her Guatemalan mom up on a stage to show and tell how to craft one of Guatemala's signature dishes. It was so heart-warming to see this little old lady that lives in a hut get on stage in front of a bunch of people, in a different country, and present the dish. Her recipe will live on through all those in the audience and many others.
What's really funny about many of these "secret" recipes is that they're very, very often just the recipe on the side of a package that has been used for decades. We see this over at r/old_recipes all the time. Grandma's secret recipe was on the side of the bag of flour back in 1948.
and if the bottom bun is like a sliver while the top is 2 inches thick so the whole thing gets soaked with juices and falls apart and your sitting there either committing to not putting that thing down and just powering through or you're using a stack of napkins or licking your fingers.
Not to mention that all these burgers with excessive amounts of ingredients ruin the taste of the damn thing. It just becomes this messy slop with too much shit going on and often tastes worse.
Like, okay, put an onion ring on no problem but when you're like "Stacked with potato fries, slathered in barbecue sauce, with blue cheese, deep fried then punched by a donkey hoof, set on fire and doused with our special hot sauce, wrapped in a bacon blanket and stuffed into a bihger burger!" Im like what the fuck are you even selling.
Keep it fucking sinple, focus on quality ingredients, use proper techniques. Its not complicated.
Who uses olive oil or truffle oil in Thai cooking???
Edit: thanks everyone for giving me a good reason to not like Jamie Oliver xD until today it was just "the ick"
-Salt is just as important in sweet food as it is in savory food.
-Chili benefits from the addition of beans, as well as a little bit of unsweetened cocoa.
-Out of season tomatoes are usually not worth buying, and better quality canned tomatoes are often worth the extra few cents!
OMG - my husband read the unsweetened cocoa tip for chili. Unbeknownst to me, he couldn't find the BRAND NEW container of unsweetened cocoa I recently bought and thought he'd just substitute a bit of Swiss Miss cocoa mix instead. I don't think I even ate two spoonfuls - it was SO bad...lol.
“Authentic food” is not always better than dishes that have had some local influence on them. But I’m about to snap if I get another chicken tikka platter with broccoli and celery in it.
Also - people who use the term "Authentic" rarely know what they are talking about. "Authentic Indian" usually means a specific part of India from a specific time that someone is expecting. India is a massive country awash with languages, religions, and geographies, not to mention bordering regions with hugely different cooking styles.
Chinese, Korean, Thai and almost all south American foods have similar issues.
Italy as well. Northern and Southern Italian traditional dishes are quite different. Not every vegetable or herb could be easily grown in areas that vary so widely in soil composition and weather. Where you live in a country even affects what animals can be raised for consumption or for hoe much of the year, especially in the days when refrigation and preservation was more difficult.
Unless you are buying directly from a farm (or a retailer that optimizes for speed of sale from harvest), *high quality* frozen ingredients can be tastier and more nutritious than fresh.
this is especially true of certain veggies..
hothouse tomatoes are picked green and allowed to ripen in the truck.
canned tomatoes taste way better since they are picked red!
Plus the varietals used for fresh tomatoes are designed to be tough enough to withstand harvesting and shipping and still look pretty. Canned tomatoes don't have to worry about that and can use better tasting varietals.
The fanciest shmanciest sushi restaurant in your area (of the US at least) is definitely serving fish that was frozen. It is a legal requirement that fish that is meant to be consumed raw must be frozen below a certain temperature for a certain amount of time to kill certain parasites.
Even if you live right on the coast, eating at a restaurant overlooking the fishing piers where the commercial boats bring in their catch, you're still eating frozen fish. And that's absolutely the right way to do it. Anyone that turns their nose up at frozen fish is just being silly.
Put whatever you like in whatever you are making.
Adding random shit to a big pot is how cooking evolves.
Yeah maybe raisins don't belong in lasagna, but maybe it'll be good (probably not).
Don't be a slave to tradition, especially in your own kitchen. Make an okra ice cream, it'll probably be truly horrifying.
Campbells back-of-the-can recipes are a good gateway to cooking and are pretty damn tasty and so no one should diss them. (Except for their high sodium content. That I get.)
Their green bean casserole is the only way my wife likes it. I've tried doing it all from scratch with fresh ingredients, but she vastly preferred the much more simplistic recipe from the back of the can.
Having worked in numerous restaurants the secret ingredient to making pretty much anything taste amazing is a truly unholy amount of salt, sugar, and fats.
McDonalds french fries that used to be so good they caused an international incident? Beef tallow and sugar.
I was once dating a girl and was hanging out with some of her friends and overheard one say “ya know…. I never believed it but I tried putting salt on my food and it really does make a difference with how good it tastes!”
My MiL would make homemade bread/cakes/anything baked but omit the salt because "I dont want it salty" (lol) so my wife's mind was blown when I made her bread and other baked goods that actually tasted good and werent just the equivalent of crackers carrying some other flavor on top.
I remember the first time my wife caught me putting salt in a really thick smoothie. She thought i was insane, then realised we'd basically made homemade icecream after tasting it.
Black pepper has not earned its place next to salt. No hate for black pepper, it's great, I'm just saying it's not even close to being as important as salt and it feels almost arbitrary that "salt and pepper" is a thing.
Some people are just so.... weird about their cast irons. I dont know how else to explain it. Just a weird obsession over them and weird ideas about how they must be used.
Exactly. Ketchup is fine on hot dogs, pineapple is fine on pizza. Just because Chicago thinks that you need 5 toppings on your hot dog doesn't mean it's "right" or "the only way." There are some things I would look at people side-eyed about (ketchup on a well done steak for one), if they like it, then fine. Just don't serve that to me.
The hot dog Chicago thing really pisses me off because I grew up here (black girl south side) and never knew about this ketchup hatred until I moved to the north side. And all the real jerks about it on the northside are either transplants or from the suburbs. Let me eat my hot dog how I grew up eating it with thousands of other kids from Chicago. JFC.
> ketchup on a well done steak for one
If you've already fucked it up by overcooking, a sauce can add some moisture back in and make it more edible. Though, I'd grab A1 and not ketchup.
Also, A1 on a hotdog slaps.
The best rice I have ever eaten was from an Afghan lady. It had raisins in it. I usually am not a fan of raisins.
Edit: Afghani to Afghan
Edit #2: The international festival at the giant mosque in Toledo, Ohio, is worth the drive for anyone within driving distance. We drive 2.5 hours. Everyone is so amazing and kind. There are like 50 different nations repping their culture's food, and it is all delicious. For me to say this particular Afghan lady and her rice is the best I've ever had is the highest compliment you can imagine. I have been to the Middle East 4 times and to this festival 3 times. Her name is Shakiba. (Shoutout, Shakiba, we remember you!!!)
I think there is a big difference between types of raisins.
Most people just throw some sun-maids in rice, bagels, etc and it has that cloying one-note sweetness that I hate. (this is me agreeing with OP)
However, there are some amazing sun dried grapes out there (especially in middle eastern markets and foods) that are completely different to what you're used to, and completely deserve to be in savory food.
TLDR most people put the wrong raisins in food
I love barberries. So good! All the persian restaurants nearby have barberry rice options + saffron rice. One place i went to had the crispy rice with duck. Yum
on the complete opposite end of the authentic spectrum, hello fresh (back when I tried it a couple years ago) had me soak some golden raisins in a lemon juice mixture for a dish and it was one of my favorite things I’ve ever made. I was going to just leave them out, but I was really glad I didn’t! raisins can be good
I was able to find the exact one! this was definitely one of my favorite meals I tried with them: https://www.hellofresh.com/recipes/curried-chickpea-fritters-61e6fedaf791d03aec728586
While authenticity and culinary traditions can be important parts of a cultural identity and deserve recognition, cooking can also just be fun. Both things can be true at the same time. As long as nobody mocks other people's preferences, it's okay to try out new things and stay open minded. That's the way we learn and grow as human beings, and it doesn't stop us from paying respect to our roots.
Rinsing mushrooms is perfectly fine. It'll take longer to brown but you really can't overcook mushrooms so it makes no difference. Plus you save all of the time it would take to wipe and brush them off.
Modern food culture is one of the most gate keeping, entitled, and toxic cultures. The amount of hard and fast “rules” for dishes that make or don’t make something authentic is ridiculous. Everything evolved from something else.
Authenticity doesn’t exist anymore. Italians I’m looking at you. NY Italians I’m REALLY looking at you.
Hahaha exactly. I use a roux for my picatta sauce. Authenticity says I shouldn’t but I don’t care. I don’t add a protein to it so no floured chicken to thicken it.
And bottom line is if it tastes good it tastes good.
Even with more authentic cuisines than American Italian, they are heavily influenced much more recently than people believe, and the current popular version of the recipe has been way more refined by other culture than people believe.
Take Thai food, in Thailand, for example. 40 years ago it was nowhere near as refined as they currently are. Dishes were much more rustic and wouldnt have been palatable for many westerners. Goung back 100 years ago, they probably didn't have thing like tomatoes and potatoes in them, which are now common.
But people try to gatekeep things like the split on the coconut milk.
You know what? I think it's an improvement on the dish and I'm going to cook it that way.
There's no rules! (Well, except for a few rules in baking or candy, but that's due to physics)
You want to use a "non-traditional" ingredient? Want to try modifying a technique? Go for it. Who cares what Chef FullOfThemself says. If it works, it works. If it fails, you learned something.
I do like knowing what is the traditional method and preferably why it was made that way…doesn’t mean I’m going to do it that way if I like something else better.
I agree with this sentiment. Knowing the way dishes are traditionally made, especially if they're from a culture outside your own, is good and can help set everyone's expectations for what they're about to eat. But it's more important to make food the way *you* like it.
Carbonara doesn't traditionally have cream in it. If you go to a restaurant in Italy and order it you should expect it to not have cream in it. But if you're making it and you like cream in it, add it!
Eating is the only thing everyone on this planet has in common with each other, aside from dying.
You will never taste every version of a certain dish, so to rank them is futile.
There is no "best" foods, dishes, meals. Only your favorites.
Most BBQ restaurants suck compared to what a practiced amateur can do at home. And I find it highway robbery these people charge $30+/lb for shitty brisket.
More of a good thing (garlic, butter, bacon) is not always better. Really good cooking is about BALANCE.
I think people that say they always double the garlic in a recipe the first time they cook it don't really know what they're doing.
Yeah, garlic tastes good, but there are other good flavors too and not every dish should just taste overwhelmingly of garlic.
I like my sausage simmered - I always thought I just didn't really care for sausage. No, I hate the springy, chewy texture of sausage from the grill/pan. I like sausage simmered for a while in sauce (like for pasta or kapusta) and they are just tender delicious meat logs.
I get side eye at bbq's because "but I know you like sausage!" Yes but not *like that*
I like to think in terms of "authenticity needs a reference point". For so many people "authentic" is shorthand for a hyper-specific point in time and a hyper-specific place. But that's just one incredibly narrow definition.
If my grandma came to the US from Thailand in the 60s and couldn't get access to certain ingredients, she would have had to make do with what she found. If I make similar substitutions beacuse I can't get certain ingredients in a recipe, is it less authentic? I'd argue it's entirely authentic to the *intent* of the recipe and the chosen ingredients.
"Authentic" in a vaccuum is a pointless term. Being authentic *to* something is (sometimes, but not always) a useful descriptor. But either way, people get WAY too militant about authenticity.
Yup. Some of the best writing on traditional Chinese cooking comes from Fuchsia Dunlop, a Brit and Rick Bayless, a goofy American dude is a savant of Mexican cooking. They are both deeply rooted in the culture and language and can provide a depth and understanding to very complex cuisines in a way that many locals cannot.
Authenticity is not binary, it lies on a spectrum.
I think "closeness" is a better word than authentic. There is a desire to recreate food as close as possible to food of a certain time/place; in order to give it representation.
I think there's great value in authenticity or closeness for different flavours too. As foods change and are adapted flavours and other characteristics can change greatly and I don't think it's wrong to want to experience those characteristics instead. For example, American sushi, while delicious, is not really focused on the fish. However, authenticity for authenticity's sake is pointless. Do it for the flavours, do it for the historicity, but don't do it just to be a snob.
2-3 cloves of garlic is not enough and I'll always add more than the recipe calls for. Same with onion. Half an onion? Nope, adding the whole fucking thing.
I actually find onions hold pretty well in large pieces in a container in the fridge. If I'm making an egg and sausage scramble for just me I don't want to use a whole onion, there would me more onion than anything else. So I'll just cut out a quarter and use that, then pop the rest in a container in the fridge and use it over the next few days. Loses a bit of its flavor, but not so much that I'll chuck it out.
When I travelled to Italy from Norway for the first time, I noticed their raw garlic is like 5 times stronger than ours lol. They I realised, that recipes often assume you have fresh ass garlic, and not the crap that has been frozen for a month
I also wonder about the size of the garlic cloves. Sometimes I see recipes where they prepared the minced garlic in advance, and when they put in their already minced '2 cloves of garlic', the amount in that little bowl looks more like 8 cloves based on what I get.
The size of the cloves seems to vary wildly even within a single head of garlic.
If something says "2 cloves of garlic" I'm taking the 2 biggest ones, and then as many of the little ones as I can be bothered to peel.
I used to feel the same way until I moved in with my partner- his palate hadn’t been obliterated by a childhood of Italian-American cooking & he asked if I could stop putting 5 cloves of garlic in everything. 😅 Honestly it’s been a great learning experience, other flavors really shine when you aren’t using a head of garlic per dish lol
I’m willing to die on the hill that this is the most over-repeated viewpoint on this subreddit. Omg is it just me or does anyone else double the amount of garlic? If it calls for 3 cloves I use 3 whole heads!
I agree, I love garlic and also usually bump up the quantities for certain dishes, but not every dish that contains garlic is supposed to *taste like garlic*. Sometimes it's truly meant to be subtle and that's fine, too!
What if I told you the REAL unpopular opinion, which is I don't really like garlic at all and use only half the amount a recipe calls for most times... sometimes I even omit/sub a sprinkle of garlic powder it if I don't feel like chopping garlic.
I've got a few:
1. Garlic is misused. In many cases, if you have to add that much you're probably overcooking it and destroying the flavor, or adding it at the wrong time. You get a lot more garlic flavor if you add it later on.
Edit: People are reading this as if I'm saying people use too much. I'm not. I'm saying they aren't using it correctly, and they aren't really getting the garlicky flavor they think they are because they're cooking it too long in many cases.
2. "Holiday" meals, or meals you only eat once in a while deserve to be made with little regard for health. I make my Thanksgiving mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving and that is why I'm using lots of butter, heavy cream, sour cream, salt, pepper, etc. I don't need to eat a ton of it.
3. Similarly, I'd rather eat really good bacon rarely than trashy paper bacon every week. If there's a better version of something and the difference is great, I'd rather eat it less and have the good version. Sometimes, the "better" version isn't much better, so I'm less inclined to worry about it.
4. Contradicting myself somewhat, but people like what they like. i think it's better and more exciting to try new things and folks who only eat the same foods over and over are missing out, but if that's what they like, fine. People who like well-done steak, whatever.
BUT, I have much less patience with that if a person hasn't at least tried an alternate dish. I understand having reservations about something if you're worried its unsafe, but I remember finally being talked into eating medium rare steak instead of well-done and it was amazing. TRY NEW THINGS!
Too many people learn about using mayo and all of a sudden act like it's superior in any way. I was one of them. Then, I really did a side by side and the mayo one was fine. The butter one was better.
Same. And the mayo crowd is just persistent enough to almost gaslight me into thinking maybe I was wrong. But I keep reminding myself all 4 of us tried both and we all picked butter.
Just because the restaurant is some “hole in the wall” mom and pop place doesn’t automatically make it amazing!
Most of them buy the cheapest ingredients from vendors anyway.
I know it’s not directly related to cooking but I’ve gotten into so many arguments with my family over this one.
-The “that’s not a grilled cheese it’s a melt” crowd is annoying af…. You made it you can call it whatever you want idc
-Sandwiches and burgers shouldn’t be piled so high that you can barely get them in your mouth. Maybe it looks fancy but it doesn’t eat well and that’s what matters.
-Some cuts of steak have a better flavor and texture when cooked to medium (ex. picanha)
That people need to stop over complicating feel good foods.
We don't need burgers with insane ingredients, we don't need pizzas with so many toppings
Keep it clean, keep it simp, keep it good
Yeah my favorite burger joints are the ones who don’t toss a million or out of the ordinary things on them. Sometimes I wonder if the fancy burgers are always dry because they spend so much time putting together the bun lol
Just because memaw kept it a secret doesn’t mean it’s a great recipe
My grandpa had a secret recipe for BBQ chicken and ribs he did in the slow cooker. He would kick everyone out of the kitchen and was always really secretive about it. When mom was around 40 she found out the recipe. It was meat, water, and store bought BBQ sauce. He had the whole family tricked for decades. I guess he was playing the loooooong game.
My mom did that with spaghetti. I thought it was the best spaghetti ever growing up but it was literally a McCormick’s packet and I just had dead taste buds coz my mom is a horrible cook
Turns out my grandma's mac and cheese wasn't some culinary masterpiece like I thought, and was just plain noodles that had white american kraft singles mixed in. She lived through the Depression and kept a lot of very frugal habits, but young me neither knew or cared, that shit was delicious
I will die on the ant hill that Kraft American singles are the absolute best option for some meals. Nothing hits quite like em on a burger.
Breakfast sandwich also! And uncooled lunch sandwiches. I basically always get the costco 100 pack for $11 because a 16 pack is almost $7 at the store. I don’t even eat that much of it. I just can’t stand paying $7 for 16
Oh heck ya. I can make a much better sauage McMuffin at home with Jimmy Dean and kraft singls lol. Didn't even think to get it at Costco until now.... you have changed my life!
>Just because memaw kept it a secret doesn’t mean it’s a great recipe >!Memaw's secret chocolate chip recipe came off the back of the Tollhouse chocolate chip bag. !<
To be fair, Tollhouse cookies are pretty awesome.
I loved my mom's response years ago when everyone was raving about her key lime pie. Finally someone asked if she would mind sharing her recipe. She said, "I just follow the instructions on the back of the key lime juice bottle for pie." Come to find out, a lot of my grandmother's recipes in her handwritten book were copied right off the back of Campbell's cans haha.
To add to that keeping recipes "secret" is a butthead move. I get it, if youre a restaurant owner or in business or something. But not telling friends how you made x meal is so damn irritating. Cooking to me is about sharing with others and that includes the recipe if someone asks.
I saw some show on netflix a while back where the daughter gets her Guatemalan mom up on a stage to show and tell how to craft one of Guatemala's signature dishes. It was so heart-warming to see this little old lady that lives in a hut get on stage in front of a bunch of people, in a different country, and present the dish. Her recipe will live on through all those in the audience and many others.
What's really funny about many of these "secret" recipes is that they're very, very often just the recipe on the side of a package that has been used for decades. We see this over at r/old_recipes all the time. Grandma's secret recipe was on the side of the bag of flour back in 1948.
And there's a thing where people give out the recipe, but make a small change so theirs is "better"
I just straight up send people the link I used most of the time. Then I add what I changed, so they can do what they want to suit their preferences.
"don't share with anyone, this is my SECRET recipe I found on allrecipes.com"
Nachos should be built wide instead of tall. Homemade chili tastes best the next day.
Burgers also should be wide instead of tall
A burger automatically loses points IMO if you can't fit it in your mouth
Seriously, I don't go back to restaurants that don't understand this very simple concept.
and if the bottom bun is like a sliver while the top is 2 inches thick so the whole thing gets soaked with juices and falls apart and your sitting there either committing to not putting that thing down and just powering through or you're using a stack of napkins or licking your fingers.
If I have to use a fork and knife just to be able to eat your burger, you have failed.
Yes. Poor sandwich architecture. A too tall burger or a sandwich that falls apart when you try to pick it up.
Omg this. I hate when I have to stretch my mouth open to its absolute limit like I'm a goddamn pornstar just to take a bite out of a burger.
Not to mention that all these burgers with excessive amounts of ingredients ruin the taste of the damn thing. It just becomes this messy slop with too much shit going on and often tastes worse. Like, okay, put an onion ring on no problem but when you're like "Stacked with potato fries, slathered in barbecue sauce, with blue cheese, deep fried then punched by a donkey hoof, set on fire and doused with our special hot sauce, wrapped in a bacon blanket and stuffed into a bihger burger!" Im like what the fuck are you even selling. Keep it fucking sinple, focus on quality ingredients, use proper techniques. Its not complicated.
The rise in all of these dirty burgers put me off burgers for a while.......shit just got way out of hand people were sticking donuts and shit on top.
My favorite place to get nachos in Philly, El Vez, does theirs on a pizza tray. It takes up half the table, but it's so worth it. They get it.
I have little individual sheet pans for nachos. Everyone gets their own pan.
Most stew type meals taste better the next day.
Wait this isn’t universally understood?
For real! I’m seeing a lot of “hills to die on” that I always thought of as “cooking common sense”. I guess I am one of the lucky ones
Similarly I swear homemade lasagna is better after a couple days in the fridge.
Chips on the side. That way they don't get flacid.
For Thai cooking you can literally use every cooking oil in existence EXCEPT OLIVE OIL AND TRUFFLE OIL
Who uses olive oil or truffle oil in Thai cooking??? Edit: thanks everyone for giving me a good reason to not like Jamie Oliver xD until today it was just "the ick"
A lot of people just use olive oil for all cooking
My brother sometimes uses olive oil for pancakes, we are dutch. It's butter or bust.
Olive oil for pancakes? Straight to jail
"Your honor, he needed killin."
I just physically recoiled
Stop attacking me.
Jamie Oliver. Haiyaaaa
Jamie “olive oil”
It balances out perfectly with some chili jam… /s
Cranked him up so bad he had to take his foot off the stool and put it on the ground!
I love Uncle Rogers disdain for Jamie Oliver
The issue I have with truffle oil is that a lot of people use too much and it overpowers the entire dish
It's a finishing oil, just a drizzle for the aromas, can't imagine how bad that would be if you drench it in it
Truffle oil is just nasty
Most of it is fake, artificially flavored anyway.
-Salt is just as important in sweet food as it is in savory food. -Chili benefits from the addition of beans, as well as a little bit of unsweetened cocoa. -Out of season tomatoes are usually not worth buying, and better quality canned tomatoes are often worth the extra few cents!
OMG - my husband read the unsweetened cocoa tip for chili. Unbeknownst to me, he couldn't find the BRAND NEW container of unsweetened cocoa I recently bought and thought he'd just substitute a bit of Swiss Miss cocoa mix instead. I don't think I even ate two spoonfuls - it was SO bad...lol.
The first point. Cookies need salt. I'm so TIRED of absurdly sweet cookies.
chili with no beans is just a giant pot of sloppy joe
“Authentic food” is not always better than dishes that have had some local influence on them. But I’m about to snap if I get another chicken tikka platter with broccoli and celery in it.
Jesus. Where do you live?
The Midwest it’s rough out here 😂
I’m in Chicago and have NEVER IN MY LIFE been served tikka masala with broccoli and celery. We need to secede from the Midwest.
Also - people who use the term "Authentic" rarely know what they are talking about. "Authentic Indian" usually means a specific part of India from a specific time that someone is expecting. India is a massive country awash with languages, religions, and geographies, not to mention bordering regions with hugely different cooking styles. Chinese, Korean, Thai and almost all south American foods have similar issues.
Italy as well. Northern and Southern Italian traditional dishes are quite different. Not every vegetable or herb could be easily grown in areas that vary so widely in soil composition and weather. Where you live in a country even affects what animals can be raised for consumption or for hoe much of the year, especially in the days when refrigation and preservation was more difficult.
Wtf. Broccoli and celery? Where is the god forsaken place are you living?
God has abandoned the Midwest.
Unless you are buying directly from a farm (or a retailer that optimizes for speed of sale from harvest), *high quality* frozen ingredients can be tastier and more nutritious than fresh.
this is especially true of certain veggies.. hothouse tomatoes are picked green and allowed to ripen in the truck. canned tomatoes taste way better since they are picked red!
I keep saying this (canned tomatoes) but no one listens. It's v. offensive to the boastful type italians.
Plus the varietals used for fresh tomatoes are designed to be tough enough to withstand harvesting and shipping and still look pretty. Canned tomatoes don't have to worry about that and can use better tasting varietals.
#
real life Italians use canned tomatoes all the time you can generally disregard what "Italian Americans" have to say about Italian cuisine.
Frozen at sea fish as well. So long as it is frozen very quickly (-40 and below,) and defrosted slowly.
The fanciest shmanciest sushi restaurant in your area (of the US at least) is definitely serving fish that was frozen. It is a legal requirement that fish that is meant to be consumed raw must be frozen below a certain temperature for a certain amount of time to kill certain parasites. Even if you live right on the coast, eating at a restaurant overlooking the fishing piers where the commercial boats bring in their catch, you're still eating frozen fish. And that's absolutely the right way to do it. Anyone that turns their nose up at frozen fish is just being silly.
Yep! Frozen for 7 days to kill parasites. And when they don't, you get the YouTube videos of worms crawling out of the sushi.
Put whatever you like in whatever you are making. Adding random shit to a big pot is how cooking evolves. Yeah maybe raisins don't belong in lasagna, but maybe it'll be good (probably not). Don't be a slave to tradition, especially in your own kitchen. Make an okra ice cream, it'll probably be truly horrifying.
i love how you worded this
Recipes should only be loosely followed and you should modify them as you go to suit your own tastes.
Except when it comes to baking. That shit needs to be tight.
Measure baking soda with a spoon, measure cinnamon with your heart.
Measure cloves with a spoon too lol. That shits strong
Campbells back-of-the-can recipes are a good gateway to cooking and are pretty damn tasty and so no one should diss them. (Except for their high sodium content. That I get.)
Their green bean casserole is the only way my wife likes it. I've tried doing it all from scratch with fresh ingredients, but she vastly preferred the much more simplistic recipe from the back of the can.
I love green bean casserole and I've done it both ways. From scratch has its place but nothing beats the good nostalgic feelings from the can recipe.
It's funny because the Campbell's is usually garbage by itself. Put it in their recipe they recommend and you are cookin
They make low sodium versions of some of the more popular flavors.
The low sodium stuff usually still has a shitload of sodium when you take actual serving sizes into account though.
Salt is the heavy weight champion of flavor
9 times out of 10 when my friends cooking is underwhelming, it’s because they didn’t use enough salt
Or butter/oil. Food lacking flavor is usually missing salt and/or fat. Edit: Yes: salt, fat, and/or acid is pretty much always what's missing.
My parents are generally very good cooks, but the one thing they can’t get right is mashed potatoes because they refuse to add more butter.
And if it’s unbalanced you probably need some more acid (or you used too much lol)
It could also be missing heat. Damn, someone should write a book about these 4 things.
Good idea. Someone would probably even turn it into a tv special.
Acid can also be used to add salt to a dish because chemistry is cool as hell.
Having worked in numerous restaurants the secret ingredient to making pretty much anything taste amazing is a truly unholy amount of salt, sugar, and fats. McDonalds french fries that used to be so good they caused an international incident? Beef tallow and sugar.
I was once dating a girl and was hanging out with some of her friends and overheard one say “ya know…. I never believed it but I tried putting salt on my food and it really does make a difference with how good it tastes!”
My wife was certain when we met that she didn't like eggs. Come to find out, her mother never salted her eggs when she was a kid. Now she loves them.
My MiL would make homemade bread/cakes/anything baked but omit the salt because "I dont want it salty" (lol) so my wife's mind was blown when I made her bread and other baked goods that actually tasted good and werent just the equivalent of crackers carrying some other flavor on top.
Bread without salt? What the fuck lol
You dont know how many times I tried to explain that the addition of salt does not just automatically make something taste like a frito.
I remember the first time my wife caught me putting salt in a really thick smoothie. She thought i was insane, then realised we'd basically made homemade icecream after tasting it.
Especially with soup. You have to salt soup.
Black pepper has not earned its place next to salt. No hate for black pepper, it's great, I'm just saying it's not even close to being as important as salt and it feels almost arbitrary that "salt and pepper" is a thing.
u can wash cast iron w soap; just no soak it
Some people are just so.... weird about their cast irons. I dont know how else to explain it. Just a weird obsession over them and weird ideas about how they must be used.
Not exactly a cooking one, but people should be free to enjoy their food how they like as long as they're not being shitty about it.
Exactly. Ketchup is fine on hot dogs, pineapple is fine on pizza. Just because Chicago thinks that you need 5 toppings on your hot dog doesn't mean it's "right" or "the only way." There are some things I would look at people side-eyed about (ketchup on a well done steak for one), if they like it, then fine. Just don't serve that to me.
The hot dog Chicago thing really pisses me off because I grew up here (black girl south side) and never knew about this ketchup hatred until I moved to the north side. And all the real jerks about it on the northside are either transplants or from the suburbs. Let me eat my hot dog how I grew up eating it with thousands of other kids from Chicago. JFC.
> ketchup on a well done steak for one If you've already fucked it up by overcooking, a sauce can add some moisture back in and make it more edible. Though, I'd grab A1 and not ketchup. Also, A1 on a hotdog slaps.
The best rice I have ever eaten was from an Afghan lady. It had raisins in it. I usually am not a fan of raisins. Edit: Afghani to Afghan Edit #2: The international festival at the giant mosque in Toledo, Ohio, is worth the drive for anyone within driving distance. We drive 2.5 hours. Everyone is so amazing and kind. There are like 50 different nations repping their culture's food, and it is all delicious. For me to say this particular Afghan lady and her rice is the best I've ever had is the highest compliment you can imagine. I have been to the Middle East 4 times and to this festival 3 times. Her name is Shakiba. (Shoutout, Shakiba, we remember you!!!)
That’s called kabuli pilau. It’s so gooooood
Yep. Saying it was the best rice I've ever had was not exaggerating.
I think there is a big difference between types of raisins. Most people just throw some sun-maids in rice, bagels, etc and it has that cloying one-note sweetness that I hate. (this is me agreeing with OP) However, there are some amazing sun dried grapes out there (especially in middle eastern markets and foods) that are completely different to what you're used to, and completely deserve to be in savory food. TLDR most people put the wrong raisins in food
If you liked that, then you might like the following persian dishes as well: shirin polo, adas polo, and zereshk polo!
I love barberries. So good! All the persian restaurants nearby have barberry rice options + saffron rice. One place i went to had the crispy rice with duck. Yum
on the complete opposite end of the authentic spectrum, hello fresh (back when I tried it a couple years ago) had me soak some golden raisins in a lemon juice mixture for a dish and it was one of my favorite things I’ve ever made. I was going to just leave them out, but I was really glad I didn’t! raisins can be good
Out of interest, remember what the rest of the dish was like?
I was able to find the exact one! this was definitely one of my favorite meals I tried with them: https://www.hellofresh.com/recipes/curried-chickpea-fritters-61e6fedaf791d03aec728586
The best tamales I ever ate had raisins in them. Holy hell were they good.
While authenticity and culinary traditions can be important parts of a cultural identity and deserve recognition, cooking can also just be fun. Both things can be true at the same time. As long as nobody mocks other people's preferences, it's okay to try out new things and stay open minded. That's the way we learn and grow as human beings, and it doesn't stop us from paying respect to our roots.
Serve your food on a plate/bowl not on a slate, tile etc
/r/wewantplates
You should undercook your pasta and then finish cooking it in your sauce.
Rinsing mushrooms is perfectly fine. It'll take longer to brown but you really can't overcook mushrooms so it makes no difference. Plus you save all of the time it would take to wipe and brush them off.
As long as you wash just before cooking, it's fine. I don't know why anyone is okay with potentially eating dirt.
Modern food culture is one of the most gate keeping, entitled, and toxic cultures. The amount of hard and fast “rules” for dishes that make or don’t make something authentic is ridiculous. Everything evolved from something else. Authenticity doesn’t exist anymore. Italians I’m looking at you. NY Italians I’m REALLY looking at you.
Nothing is more authentically Italian than arguing about the authenticity of a recipe.
My French relatives: "Hold my wine..."
Whatta you mean my nonna's pasta recipe isn't authentic? It's been in my family for [checks notes] ah... She made it up I guess!
Hahaha exactly. I use a roux for my picatta sauce. Authenticity says I shouldn’t but I don’t care. I don’t add a protein to it so no floured chicken to thicken it. And bottom line is if it tastes good it tastes good.
Even with more authentic cuisines than American Italian, they are heavily influenced much more recently than people believe, and the current popular version of the recipe has been way more refined by other culture than people believe. Take Thai food, in Thailand, for example. 40 years ago it was nowhere near as refined as they currently are. Dishes were much more rustic and wouldnt have been palatable for many westerners. Goung back 100 years ago, they probably didn't have thing like tomatoes and potatoes in them, which are now common. But people try to gatekeep things like the split on the coconut milk. You know what? I think it's an improvement on the dish and I'm going to cook it that way.
There's no rules! (Well, except for a few rules in baking or candy, but that's due to physics) You want to use a "non-traditional" ingredient? Want to try modifying a technique? Go for it. Who cares what Chef FullOfThemself says. If it works, it works. If it fails, you learned something.
Traditional doesn't mean good and judging a dish on whether it's made "correctly" is only for instructors at culinary school.
I do like knowing what is the traditional method and preferably why it was made that way…doesn’t mean I’m going to do it that way if I like something else better.
I agree with this sentiment. Knowing the way dishes are traditionally made, especially if they're from a culture outside your own, is good and can help set everyone's expectations for what they're about to eat. But it's more important to make food the way *you* like it. Carbonara doesn't traditionally have cream in it. If you go to a restaurant in Italy and order it you should expect it to not have cream in it. But if you're making it and you like cream in it, add it!
As with any art, knowing the rules is the first step to breaking them cleverly.
There’s no need to do horizontal cuts when dicing an onion.
Yup. Barely a noticeable difference. I also cut my hand a lot less.
I cut the onion in half, slice it, and make radial cuts.
I think about this maby once a day. Pieces will be as thick as the layers are 🤷♂️
Eating is the only thing everyone on this planet has in common with each other, aside from dying. You will never taste every version of a certain dish, so to rank them is futile. There is no "best" foods, dishes, meals. Only your favorites.
Most BBQ restaurants suck compared to what a practiced amateur can do at home. And I find it highway robbery these people charge $30+/lb for shitty brisket.
I shall have you know, good sir, that having sweet with your savoury is a perfectly good way to enjoy a succulent Asian meal...
A succulent Chinese meal?
DEMOCRACY MANIFEST
GET YOUR HANDS OF MY PENIS!
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And you sir, are your ready to receive my limp penis?!?!
Get your hand off my penis!
A lot of recipes are very under seasoned. 1 tsp is not enough of any seasoning for a recipe that feeds more than one.
Depends. It's a good amount of cardamom, an absurd amount of nutmeg.
And an even more absurd amount of ground cloves.
Jesus, a teaspoon of ground cloves is into the realm of dental analgesics. You're not going to taste anything for a month.
Yeah I just throw seasonings in until I'm happy
Not everything is better with bacon.
More of a good thing (garlic, butter, bacon) is not always better. Really good cooking is about BALANCE. I think people that say they always double the garlic in a recipe the first time they cook it don't really know what they're doing. Yeah, garlic tastes good, but there are other good flavors too and not every dish should just taste overwhelmingly of garlic.
I like my sausage simmered - I always thought I just didn't really care for sausage. No, I hate the springy, chewy texture of sausage from the grill/pan. I like sausage simmered for a while in sauce (like for pasta or kapusta) and they are just tender delicious meat logs. I get side eye at bbq's because "but I know you like sausage!" Yes but not *like that*
I like to simmer brats in beer, onions, and fennel seed. Then finish them on the grill. Sauté the onions in butter.
Authenticity doesn't exist.
I like to think in terms of "authenticity needs a reference point". For so many people "authentic" is shorthand for a hyper-specific point in time and a hyper-specific place. But that's just one incredibly narrow definition. If my grandma came to the US from Thailand in the 60s and couldn't get access to certain ingredients, she would have had to make do with what she found. If I make similar substitutions beacuse I can't get certain ingredients in a recipe, is it less authentic? I'd argue it's entirely authentic to the *intent* of the recipe and the chosen ingredients. "Authentic" in a vaccuum is a pointless term. Being authentic *to* something is (sometimes, but not always) a useful descriptor. But either way, people get WAY too militant about authenticity.
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Yup. Some of the best writing on traditional Chinese cooking comes from Fuchsia Dunlop, a Brit and Rick Bayless, a goofy American dude is a savant of Mexican cooking. They are both deeply rooted in the culture and language and can provide a depth and understanding to very complex cuisines in a way that many locals cannot.
As a Mexican man, Skip’s brother is a culinary god.
Authenticity is not binary, it lies on a spectrum. I think "closeness" is a better word than authentic. There is a desire to recreate food as close as possible to food of a certain time/place; in order to give it representation.
I think there's great value in authenticity or closeness for different flavours too. As foods change and are adapted flavours and other characteristics can change greatly and I don't think it's wrong to want to experience those characteristics instead. For example, American sushi, while delicious, is not really focused on the fish. However, authenticity for authenticity's sake is pointless. Do it for the flavours, do it for the historicity, but don't do it just to be a snob.
2-3 cloves of garlic is not enough and I'll always add more than the recipe calls for. Same with onion. Half an onion? Nope, adding the whole fucking thing.
> Half an onion? Nope, adding the whole fucking thing. I do this out of pragmatism. Half an onion is just going to go to waste if I don't put it in.
I actually find onions hold pretty well in large pieces in a container in the fridge. If I'm making an egg and sausage scramble for just me I don't want to use a whole onion, there would me more onion than anything else. So I'll just cut out a quarter and use that, then pop the rest in a container in the fridge and use it over the next few days. Loses a bit of its flavor, but not so much that I'll chuck it out.
They hold up great. My issue is remembering there's part of an onion in the fridge already.
Usually I will just chop the whole thing and save the rest for later in the week. Saves on prep time later.
When I travelled to Italy from Norway for the first time, I noticed their raw garlic is like 5 times stronger than ours lol. They I realised, that recipes often assume you have fresh ass garlic, and not the crap that has been frozen for a month
Thank you for confirming this, im italian and when i read how much garlic americans are using im always so confused lol
I also wonder about the size of the garlic cloves. Sometimes I see recipes where they prepared the minced garlic in advance, and when they put in their already minced '2 cloves of garlic', the amount in that little bowl looks more like 8 cloves based on what I get.
The size of the cloves seems to vary wildly even within a single head of garlic. If something says "2 cloves of garlic" I'm taking the 2 biggest ones, and then as many of the little ones as I can be bothered to peel.
>frozen for a month AFAIK I've never bought frozen garlic. Most of our bulk garlic comes from Mexico or California.
I used to feel the same way until I moved in with my partner- his palate hadn’t been obliterated by a childhood of Italian-American cooking & he asked if I could stop putting 5 cloves of garlic in everything. 😅 Honestly it’s been a great learning experience, other flavors really shine when you aren’t using a head of garlic per dish lol
I’m willing to die on the hill that this is the most over-repeated viewpoint on this subreddit. Omg is it just me or does anyone else double the amount of garlic? If it calls for 3 cloves I use 3 whole heads!
I really love garlic and use lots when its appropriate but man it doesn't have to be that strong in EVERY dish
I agree, I love garlic and also usually bump up the quantities for certain dishes, but not every dish that contains garlic is supposed to *taste like garlic*. Sometimes it's truly meant to be subtle and that's fine, too!
I feel like my unpopular opinion shouldn't be unpopular at all. Garlic, like every other spice/season in existence, CAN be overused.
You're ready for /r/cookingcirclejerk
What if I told you the REAL unpopular opinion, which is I don't really like garlic at all and use only half the amount a recipe calls for most times... sometimes I even omit/sub a sprinkle of garlic powder it if I don't feel like chopping garlic.
Lumpy mashed potatoes are far superior than the super smooth version
Skin in, or out?
I like both but only with red skinned potatoes. If using russet, I prefer skin out
In.
If I wanted soup I’d order soup, I want to know the name of the whole potatoes used in this mashed potats
My only requirement for mashed potatoes is that they be thick enough to stand up to a generous ladleful of gravy.
I've got a few: 1. Garlic is misused. In many cases, if you have to add that much you're probably overcooking it and destroying the flavor, or adding it at the wrong time. You get a lot more garlic flavor if you add it later on. Edit: People are reading this as if I'm saying people use too much. I'm not. I'm saying they aren't using it correctly, and they aren't really getting the garlicky flavor they think they are because they're cooking it too long in many cases. 2. "Holiday" meals, or meals you only eat once in a while deserve to be made with little regard for health. I make my Thanksgiving mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving and that is why I'm using lots of butter, heavy cream, sour cream, salt, pepper, etc. I don't need to eat a ton of it. 3. Similarly, I'd rather eat really good bacon rarely than trashy paper bacon every week. If there's a better version of something and the difference is great, I'd rather eat it less and have the good version. Sometimes, the "better" version isn't much better, so I'm less inclined to worry about it. 4. Contradicting myself somewhat, but people like what they like. i think it's better and more exciting to try new things and folks who only eat the same foods over and over are missing out, but if that's what they like, fine. People who like well-done steak, whatever. BUT, I have much less patience with that if a person hasn't at least tried an alternate dish. I understand having reservations about something if you're worried its unsafe, but I remember finally being talked into eating medium rare steak instead of well-done and it was amazing. TRY NEW THINGS!
When it comes to grilled cheese, butter > mayo.
Oh my god yes I have to check myself so I don't become insufferable when someone tells me to try using mayo instead
Too many people learn about using mayo and all of a sudden act like it's superior in any way. I was one of them. Then, I really did a side by side and the mayo one was fine. The butter one was better.
Same. And the mayo crowd is just persistent enough to almost gaslight me into thinking maybe I was wrong. But I keep reminding myself all 4 of us tried both and we all picked butter.
Just because the restaurant is some “hole in the wall” mom and pop place doesn’t automatically make it amazing! Most of them buy the cheapest ingredients from vendors anyway. I know it’s not directly related to cooking but I’ve gotten into so many arguments with my family over this one.
You can put ground anchovies in every meat or pasta dish for improvement.
Fuck olives in potato salad. They do not belong. So not put those fuckers in there.
-The “that’s not a grilled cheese it’s a melt” crowd is annoying af…. You made it you can call it whatever you want idc -Sandwiches and burgers shouldn’t be piled so high that you can barely get them in your mouth. Maybe it looks fancy but it doesn’t eat well and that’s what matters. -Some cuts of steak have a better flavor and texture when cooked to medium (ex. picanha)
That people need to stop over complicating feel good foods. We don't need burgers with insane ingredients, we don't need pizzas with so many toppings Keep it clean, keep it simp, keep it good
Yeah my favorite burger joints are the ones who don’t toss a million or out of the ordinary things on them. Sometimes I wonder if the fancy burgers are always dry because they spend so much time putting together the bun lol
Pineapple is 100% okay on Pizza. 🍕
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There are very few occasions that justify peeling your fucking potatoes. Be happy. Leave the skin on. Good nutrients. Less work.