I am entirely convinced nothing bad will happen if you don’t pre-click the clackers.
Not prepared to take that chance…
Every power tool I pick up has a quick vroom-vroom before I use it properly, just like the tongs. It’s tradition.
I do that with all the power tools too! One time I did that with my circular saw and it made a rattling noise, the blade was starting to come loose and needed tightened. A couple of times I’ve somehow just completely forgotten to tighten drill bits and found out during the pre-use vroom. So I think it legitimately helps get a quick safety gauge before diving into using something
Agreed. Also, I switch it from reverse to forward every time after use even if I have more screws to unscrew.
The click is not for the clacker, it is for the cook.
Sorry, no. Non-clickertation of the clackers is one of the leading causes of early clackers declickeration. Clickeration of the clackers warns of problems early, when maintenance can be applied to the clackers before ongoing misaligned clickeration can have catastrophic effects on your clackers. Remember the old saying: Nine clicks is a fine thing.
It’s a sign we all yearn to be a crab.
The test clicks are so you get an accurate feel for the spring tension. It’s not the end of the world if you don’t do it, but you’re more likely to drop something.
You’re convinced? So you haven’t actually confirmed it? Still can’t resist the test clack even with this hypothesis?
And potentially have my penis fly off? I don’t think so!
I’m almost afraid to ask, but what are clackers? All I could find is the 1960’s children’s toy with two balls on a string. But that can’t be it, can it?
Adding olive oil to boiling water before putting in pasta. Oil and water don’t mix, you’re just wasting oil that sits on the waters surface until you pour it down the drain.
Now if you drain the pasta and THEN add olive oil to it while it’s still steaming hot then it will get absorbed. The only thing you should add to boiling water for pasta is a heavy amount of salt. Those two actually combine and will be absorbed by the pasta.
The oil isn’t for flavor. It’s to prevent the starch from the noodles from forming a foam that boils over and makes a mess. Alternatives to the oil are using a bigger pot, and/or setting the heat lower for a less rambunctious boil.
I do that when cooking beans too. A little oil stops them from boiling over so easily.
Never had it do anything. What does work is paying attention and having enough patience to not cook at full blast.
Patience? That stuff’s basically impossible to find these days.
Olive oil use in general i’d say, other oils are better for cooking. A good olive oil is a finishing oil.
Abundantly agree! It’s a waste to fry olive oil, you’re just destroying the flavor. Canola is my goto for actually cooking, olive is best reserved as a dressing or occasionally a core ingredient in cold dishes like hummus.
Olive oil goes in if there’s a chance I’m going to taste it. If I don’t want to taste a hint of fruity oil in the final product, why the fuck am I using olive oil
I prefer avocado oil for cooking but it’s a lot more expensive.
It is but the smoke point is very high so it beats the pants off olive oil which I consider a finishing oil. I don’t like using olive oil for cooking.
Even though you’re right, don’t ever tell me how to use oil. I will continue to waste olive oil and money.
@inb4_FoundTheVegan @psion1369 I add some oil to pasta just so it dont stick to the bottom of the pan… I didnt believe it before but I think it really work
Okay but water and oil don’t mix, none of the oil ever makes it to the bottom where the pasta would be sticking. Even if you push it down with a spoon it will immediately rise to the surface. The way you prevent sticking is be stirring, you need to disrupt it during the boiling process so the starches don’t form a bond with the metal.
I promise you, olive oil in in water doesn’t help.
I am ashamed that I fell for this stupid idea 10 years ago.
Become convinced that purchasing an expensive knife and spending half of your life fucking around to keep it sharp and protected is a good investment of your time.
Buy a $10 German steel chef knife on sale, get a rada QuickSharp and a (e: Victorinox 14 inch) chef hone and get on with life.
I never spent a fortune on my knives or a lot of time maintaining them but I had a decent set of knives and a chef’s knife I’d sharpen once in a blue moon. Thought I was very smart.
One day I bought a $5 cleaver at the dollar store and it’s basically replaced 75% of my knife work and I abuse it like a redheaded step child.
agreed on the inexpensive knife, but I’ve never had good enough results with any quick sharp pull through tool. I use one knife for basically everything and hone it maybe once a week for fifteen seconds. it’s very easy to keep it sharp if you don’t abuse it (thank you dad for always looking for the sharpest thing in the room regardless of what the task is and for using knives on teflon and steel pans and ceramic plates…). I sharpen it maybe twice a year? I honestly don’t remember if I’ve even sharpened it in 2026
The wheel sharpeners are absolutely the sweet spot combination of speed/efficiency/performance… As long as you are willing to accept a little more knife degradation. And you must hone them immediately after otherwise you’re doomed to having the edges fold. Otherwise yes, I am mostly a hone user to keep cutting tools primed.
Anybody that tries to tell me there’s some magic to knives is wayyyyy out there; Too baffled by all the bullshit online to understand that keeping a knife usable is extremely simple, when you focus on the couple key techniques that actually matter.
I freehand cut this hasselback potato with a $5 knife after sharpening it. This is proof I am not just ass-shouting like most self-styled knife “pros”. The biggest technique to understanding knife care is not listening to idiots, but how to know who’s an idiot and who’s not? It isn’t easy for the average person.
I buy cheap knives with the plastic handles from the local butcher as they always have spares. Got a maybe 2000 grit belt for the belt sander. Sharpen the whole lot in about 15 minutes twice a year and they hold well
Partially agree:
Having nice knives is nice, some of the cheap stamped ones are awful and a good knife will last forever.
Equally, having a set of sharpening stones is also really useful to rescue knives, however you should only be using them once every few years, standard knife sharpeners are fine.
They are tools, not your hobby.
you should only be using them once every few years, standard knife sharpeners are fine
Ask any chef, the exact opposite is true.
I don’t think most knife sharpeners can really get rid of nicks in the blade? Needs a proper sharpening stone for that?
I mostly agree with you!
My personal experience with very expensive knives, and I’m telling you I have had some very expensive knives because my brother used to be a chef…
Not worth it. Not to me. My kitchen is a dynamic place, I need to throw things around, let them clatter around in the sink… I have had a chip out of every one of my $400+ knives within 4 weeks of owning them.
I’m done with “good” knives. Cheap German steel for this boy for life. Lol
I cook quite a bit, so I disagree a little. you don’t need a stupid expensive knife, but buying one or two good quality knives is worth it. They probably last as long as you do so it’s not like you have to keep buying more, just buy quality once. I still have a couple cheap knives too. Also, expensive != quality. Choose wisely.
The cheap knives suck at holding an edge. I spend more time “fucking around” keeping the cheap knife sharp than I do the good ones.
Hand wash the knives. The dishwasher detergent will accelerate the loss of the edge and pitting, especially in cheaper steel. Use plastic or wood cutting surfaces, not hard ceramic like plates, or glass.
First hones are worthless if not activity bad for a knife edge. 10 dollar German knives are trash unless you win the lotto or something.
You don’t need to spend hundreds but a good knife will last a lifetime and stay sharp 10 times as long.
“hones are bad for a knife”
Brother, I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but you understand absolutely nothing about knives and you should never try to talk about them again.
LOL I mean people once thought the earth was flat with the same certainty… There were wrong too. I’ve seen high Def images of exactly what a hone does to a knife edge, so umm you can claim whatever…
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And yet you were incapable of following your own advice, interesting…
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Your pretty bitter might to work on that. An your inability to “just let it go” I’ve trolling for like 3 posts now. I can see is cheeto eating Monster drinking unclean adult smashing his keyboard :) makes me happy.
Probably didn’t learn it from YouTube and it’s not exactly cooking related either but tapping the lid of a carbonated drink can before opening it does absolutely nothing.
What actually reduces the fizz explosion you’re trying to prevent is tapping the side of the can multiple times while rotating it so that the bubbles stuck to the inside of the can rise to the surface.
I can confirm people have been pointlessly tapping soda can lids since decades before the existence of Youtube.
It was sort of proven more than 40 years ago that there’s no point to do any of these rituals. You’re just have to wait for the gas to reabsorb. The tapping rituals basically give time for that to happen and act as a placebo for the person so time can elapse.
But then it would be less carbonated, right? So what would be the point?
No. They’re called nucleation sites. These are microscopic imperfections on the inside of the can. When you shake the can a small gas bubble might form there and after that more CO₂ can diffuse into it until the bubble grows large enough to detach and rise. A small pocket is however left behind, so the same site keeps making a steady stream of bubbles. These are what cause the can to immediately overflow when you open it. Tapping the sides before opening causes these small trapped gas bubbles to detach and rise to the surface and then it can be safely opened. If it haven’t been shaken, then there’s no need for this, though there’s no harm either.
The time spent tapping gently gives the carbonation time to settle back in.
Penn and Teller did a little magic explained video on “transferring” the explosion from one can to the other. You spend thirty seconds waving a wand around so the shaken can settles before opening it gently, then violently pop the other can while giving it a squeeze.
I know this. And absolutely 100% still tap the can. Sometimes believing is better than knowing. And by sometimes I mean never. But I will still do it.
I don’t know if this counts but my wife will often be like “I saw this recipe on Instagram that I want you to make” and I have to be like “how many blocks of cream cheese does it involve?” and then she’s like “Awww okay”
I swear 90% of these recipes out therr are the same exact thing with different presentation and they all just taste like bland, underseasoned, cream cheesy meat and vegetables.
A month ago, my wife saw a nice looking cookie recipe on Instagram. When she tried it herself, the cookies came out looking amazing. We had to throw them out because they tasted awful.
For chocolate chip cookies, go with Alton Brown’s newest version on YouTube.
That recipe is light years ahead of any other recipe I’ve tried. Just make sure to rest the dough in the fridge for a minimum of 6 hours. It really does make a difference. Also get them in the oven when they are still cold, don’t let the dough warm up.
Sounds to me like your purchasing subpar cream cheese
After my third Hello Fresh meal (during the first few months of COVID mind you) I was like “why does every recipe begin/bennigans/end with “AND NOW ADD THE BAG OF CREAM CHEESE!!”).
Cancelled soon after the “spicy firecracker meatball sichuan hell!” Meal that culminated in “and now add one tsp of Sriracha to 1/2 cup cream cheese to dress your arugula! (Use less sriracha if it’s too spicy fam!)” Or some such bullshit.
In summation: fuck Hello Fresh (and also use cream cheese where it’s supposed to be used: on bagels, as a frosting base and sometimes in TexMex as a condiment, ya sickos.)
There is possibly one clown who copied BS elbow-salt non-ironically.
Salt is better sprinkled from higher up though, it’s more even.
It hits with a higher velocity allowing it to penetrate the target food. Fancy restaurants will use a step ladder and pop out a couple ceiling tiles to get that extra height. They say after 12 ft you can’t taste it but they just have uncultured palates
The real reason chefs use coarse kosher salt is because its sharp edges let it penetrate deep into the food using this method, like a rain of tiny shuriken.
But you don’t have to look like a complete prat when doing so. That’s a choice.
Also, just dumping salt from high up give you a slightly larger dusting in one spot. If you’re trying to spread it evenly, you only need to go like 3-4 inches up and move your hand around as you sprinkle. lol.
No, you don’t have to do that, but a sprinkle from a foot or so up is better when cooking.
Cracking eggs on the counter instead of on the edge of a bowl.
I crack eggs on the bowl edge, and have for 50 years, literally since I was 10 years old and my mom taught me to make scrambled eggs. Maybe one in 50 gets a piece of shell in the egg, no big deal, just pull it out.
I don’t get any shells when I crack it on a flat surface but do on an edge of anything. Learned that this was the case for me back in the 80s.
As long as it works it works.I crack my eggs on my ear. Haven’t heard any complaints about shells.
While I do agree both are viable, and mostly just doing what you are used to works best, I have to disagree in a vacuum.
I find that cracking on the edge of a bowl tends to push the shards of the shell inside and rupture the membrane if you hit a bit too hard, and then the egg takes it with it for a ride. When you do it against a flat surface, it’s easier to get an even cracks you can pull apart without the membrane breaking, which keeps the shell together. Honestly, just gives you more of a margin of error if nothing else; if you’re super used to it, as you said, it’s probably not a problem worth trying to fix.
I don’t know if doing it one handed makes a difference. just my two cents as an ex-professional baker.
Well, if you are a counter cracker you might use too much force if you switch to bowl edge. The bowl edge is pointier, the counter is flat. But it’s just a calibration thing.
Sometimes my bowl wobbles and the egg doesn’t crack, so I whack the egg with the edge of my utensil. And yes, any shell bits are easy to remove.
I feel this may also be a thing dependant on egg quality. I grew up on eggs from well-fed, backyard chickens and the strength of their shell was high compared to most store bought ones (bar a few organic farms).
I cracked store bought on the bowl and ended up fishing shells out of the mix for a few months after that before I switched.
I crack on the counter because with the bowl edge it gets on the counter and drips down the side of the bowl. With the counter it only gets on the paper towel that I set there to contain the shells.
You do you, and agreed even worst case is a really minor inconvenience, but 1/50 is significantly more common than what I get cracking on the counter. I’ve gotten shell in my food once in the last several years. Plus when done right it won’t break the membrane so you don’t get any egg white anywhere until it is above the pan
I crack with the blade of a knife (since I generally have one handy to chop whatever else I am including in the dish). I can get a very good crack with minimal force. Since it is such a small break, there aren’t any large pieces of shell to get into the food. I don’t cook recipes that require separating the white from the yolk, so I am not sure how often I break the membrane between the two, but from casual observation, it is almost never.
Why do you want to become dumb and useless?
Maybe they want to start a big YouTube channel.
Well, the more charitable interpretation would be to identify things that they might’ve picked up that are bullshit so they can stop doing those things. lol
But that’s not how the human works. In general, you go where you look at, and you become what you spend time with.
Well, I tend to agree with that statement as a generality, but not specifically.
If you study WWII history in Germany, do you somehow become nazi? If just learning about something or discussing it made you become the thing, we’d all have a much more careful approach to the internet.
So in this specific instance, I wildly disagree that’s how “the human works” and I find that statement to be nonsensical in this context.
If you study WWII history in Germany, do you somehow become nazi?
The topic is broad. For what reason, or purpose, do you study that time? There are many possibilities.
You could develop an interest in soldiers. Or in Nazis. Or in their counterparts, the resistance. Or international politics of a time when that looked so much easier than nowadays…
Of course you could develop an interest. That’s a radically different assertion than “you become what you spend time with”.
Okay, I’m done with you.
Horizontal cuts when dicing an onion. I’ve concluded that this is some kind of virtue-signal that says “see, I went to culinary school.”
I went to culinary school, they do teach the horizontal cut method, and it is indeed inferior. Plus it lowers your yield, is more dangerous, and produces an inferior end result. All one needs to do is look at how the layers of an onion are constructed to see that it’s stupid.
My preferred is the angled lengthwise cuts (starting at roughly 30 degrees, straight up and down in the middle, and ending at roughly negative 30 degrees). The angle isn’t super critical. Then, so your cross cuts. No faffing about with the pieces hanging from your initial lengthwise cuts and then trying to do the horizontal, and produces a better “dice” (you rarely get perfect cubes with any method anyway).
Yeah, doing a horizontal cut first greatly destabilizes the other cuts. I go back and forth with using it.
There does seem to be a pretty good difference in how diced it looks when you do it, though? Demonstrated here
That dickhead cut it coarser, and stacked it messier on purpose. Fuck that asshole. How does one horizontal cut fix any of that? Why not 2 or 3 or 5 horizontal cuts? Complete bullshit.
Basically the layers on the sides are more vertical and the horizontal cut can reduce the size of those layers to make the dice look more consistent. It’s pretty basic stuff and doesn’t require you to engage in conspiracy theory type thinking about onions.
Radial slicing gets the same results with less effort.
Adding a bit of starchy water to your pasta after it’s cooked, to make the tomato sauce stick better. Sorry, just trolling, this one works like a charm.
Boil down some of the pasta water. It will keep in the fridge for a while and then you can go extra thicc extra quick. If I didn’t have leftovers I’d do a carbonara.
Oil in pasta water. Though it’s much much older than YouTube.
It changes the surface tension and keeps the pot from boiling over. Very useful if you’re also preparing a couple other dishes.
It most certainly does not keep the pot from boiling over. I’ve had it happen plenty. Same with the “place a wooden spoon across the top of the pot to prevent boilover” trick. That does not work either.
I agree that the wooden spoon thing is horse shit. Never once seen it work. The oil in the water does work for me. Now I know that many things may affect this. If you crank your stove up to eleven, maybe nothing will help. Maybe your altitude will affect it in some way. I live at about 350m above sea level. What I can say for sure is that in a large pot of water, at a rolling boil on my stove, about 3 tablespoons of oil in the water and a full pack of pasta, my pot will not boil over, but it absolutely will if I don’t add the oil.
It also interferes with the water getting into the pasta.
If you’re making a couple other dishes, just make the pasta near the end.
Edit: correction, meant to say “with the sauce getting onto the pasta”
I’m curious about this but I’m also not buying it in the slightest.
Oil floats, pasta sinks.
I just realized I made a sleepy typo: meant to say the sauce, not the water. Here’s a source on it:
Mis-handling ingredients that will be ‘cooked anyways’, and therefore should be handled with unwashed hands, knives, etc.
I do that, but have in no way got that from videos. Just from standard fecklessness.
Do “pros” really do shit like that?
I remember watching some TV chefs handle raw meat, give their hands a quick wipe with a towel on their waist, and then handle all sorts of other things. It works on a show because it’s all just for the camera but if it’s for human consumption, you’d just be turning every handle and knob you touch into a possible source of contamination.
“standard fecklessness”
Lol. Y’all can put that on my tombstone.
Anything Jamie Oliver does
Overcook beef steak.
You’d think they’d see modern stuff and undercook it, and while there is some of that, I most often come across people who learned to cook many years ago, and somehow still do that instead of improving.
I know why, too. People develop odd tastes and flavors when left cooking alone for long periods of time. You could introduce peanut butter and marinara spaghetti, and if you forced somebody to eat it for a year straight, their tastes would be super skewed.
This is also why some stoners end up having… Eccentric taste.
I wonder if that’s why some people actually like the taste of tobacco or actual alcohol…
The human brain is certainly fascinating.
I wonder if you could run a study to try to (ethically) prove that all likes and dislikes are subjective.
