A four-year-old Reddit post is re-emerging because there are some high-quality cooking tips from professional chefs in it. (God bless Reddit, btw.)
In a post, titled “Chefs of Reddit, what’s your number one useful cooking tip?” Redditor u/jellysnake definitely struck gold.
The post was a hit on the platform, receiving 13.8K comments. Here are some of the best tips shared in the thread.
1. “You can always stop cooking”
“A master chef told me this in culinary school: ‘you can always stop cooking.’ Take it off the burner or out of the oven if you need to. Surprisingly helpful tip”
2. Learn techniques, not recipes
“Learn cooking techniques instead of recipes.
Don’t approach recipes like they’re magic spells in the Harry Potter universe. If you wiggle your nose wrong or put in a spec to much of some seasoning you’re not going to end up with a completely different dish.
Alton Brown does an incredible job of teaching a cooking technique and then showing you a recipe that applies that technique. If you learn a process instead of a rote recipe you will know how to cook dozens of dishes, and it’s really the only way to develop skills in the kitchen.”
3. Chop with the right part of the knife
“Chop with the rear part of the blade, not the tip, in a rolling motion.”
4. More ingredients does not mean “better”
“Keep it simple. Something with 3-4 ingredients that go really well together is better than something with 12 ingredients that clash with each other.”
5. Use cocoa powder to flour chocolate cake pans
“Pastry chef here, not my best tip but the only one I can think of this early on my day off…flouring pans for cakes is a step not to be skipped but when it comes to chocolate cakes, it looks awful so for dark cakes, I use cocoa powder instead.”
6. Add acid
“For sauces and gravies, a splash of apple cider gives a lot of complexity to an otherwise simple sauce.”
7. “Season aggressively”
“If you’re cooking with chicken or pork, season aggressively. Both meats are wonderful seasoning sponges; find a regional spice map or guide and start combining flavors.
EDIT: Since a lot of people are asking, I’d say [this] (http://www.spicesinc.com/p-3746-most-popular-spices-by-cuisine.aspx) is a good place to start when trying to figure out spice mixes.”
8. Food keeps cooking after you take it off the burner
“Heat will remain in your food after turning off the stove and it will continue to cook, so pay attention to your timing. e.g. when you want to add cheese to your omelette, cheese should melt in a plate with heat of the eggs, otherwise you will have over dried omelette, same as overcooked pasta.”
9. Season smartly
“When tasting something like soup or sauce here’s a guide to adding herbs and spices:
Salt: you can taste instantly. After stirring it in if it tastes bland add more. It’s not something that cooks off or in much. In a soup or sauce.
Black pepper/Dry herbs/Most other seasonings: After adding more in don’t taste until at least 15 minutes have passed. These ingredients infuse and release over time and you can really overdo it
Beer/Wine/Alcohol: This varies a lot and in some cases the alcohol should be added way before the other ingredients to simmer with some onions. Anyway, in cases like adding beer to chili which I do often, again dump in about 6-8oz, close the lid and let it infuse. Don’t taste for 20 minutes. If it still tastes alcohol-y after this remove the lid and let it cook off more.
Fresh Herbs: Add late and as close to serving as possible. In the last 15 minutes of cooking. These are full of flavor and are generally best added near serving time for best flavor.”
10. Sharpen your knives
“A sharp knife is a safe knife.”