What's your worst cooking/baking habit?
Posted by Allychristine on Apr 15, 2010 · Member since Dec 2007 · 15438 posts
Mine (at least recently) is making things too salty! I think it's just because I know we like salt, so I've been going a bit overboard. I am also pretty confident about seasoning things without tasting a whole lot. I had some homemade refried beans that were inedible on their own, and some other salty things. I need to remember to just add salt later!
What about you?
i'm always suspicious of the measurements given for slicing/dicing/etc. Like "1/2 inch cubes" always seems to be 3/4-1 inch, "1/4 inch" is 1/2 inch, etc (based off recipes w/ photos of the final product). I have decided for when I never write a cookbook, that I will give accurate dimensions (& weight/volume! i hate it when the weight doesn't match the volume for a particular ingredient*). It'll be like "cut the onion into 3/16" cubes." Every one will love that, I'm sure.
I totally agree! Or even if there are not photos, it just seems REALLY small. Trying to slice an eggplant 1/8th inch thick..just seems pretty silly.
yeah, and then it's worse when you *do* follow the measurements and it doesn't cook properly/get done with the rest of the ingredients as a result.
i always considered "chopped" to be like a large, sloppy dice, but then after working in a kitchen i realized that, to the cafeteria chefs, it means practically quartering an onion. Makes me wonder...
yeah, and then it's worse when you *do* follow the measurements and it doesn't cook properly/get done with the rest of the ingredients as a result.
i always considered "chopped" to be like a large, sloppy dice, but then after working in a kitchen i realized that, to the cafeteria chefs, it means practically quartering an onion. Makes me wonder...
Yeah, chopped is..chopped..not quartered. Something like: http://www.grit.com/uploadedImages/GRT/blogs/Lori/4-chopped-onion.jpg
The Vietnamese sandwich recipe in Conscious Cook calls for like a block of tofu, cut into 8 slices, 1/4 inch thick, or something. How the heck do you only get 8 slices from a block, in 1/4 inch pieces? I think I get like 10- 1/2 inch pieces.
I thought of another one last night as I was waiting for my rice to cook--NOT WAITING FOR THE RICE TO COOK! When I'm hungry and that's the last thing I'm waiting on, I almost always serve a crunchy rice. I kind of got around this by getting a rice cooker, and I just make myself wait on that. But this was in a soup and I really wanted to eat sooner than the time allotted. Oh well. It was still good.
Those onions look chopped to me.
I don't really pay enough attention to recipes. When it says an onion, I just chop it how I want it. I don't know if I've ever followed the size directions!
I also don't mess around with seitan. I've only made it a handful of times, and I'm still a bit intimidated by it. So, I follow closely on those recipes. I haven't had any problems yet, so maybe I'll get more adventurous.
that reminds me of a bad habit - not waiting for the pressure cooker to depressurize or whatever it does.....it takes so damn long, so I poke the little valve and release the steam that way....not sure if that's good or bad, but I always feel like Im doing something bad when I do it...
Making stuff up as I go along, loving the result...then going oh, CRAP what did I do? :-D
I also don't pay attention to the instructions on how to chop things. I just do what I want with them, especially onions. I have to mince them in tiny, tiny pieces, or my daughter picks them all out and I end up with a pile of onion in the middle of the table.
I can't follow a recipe, there is something in my brain that prevents this from happening. I see a recipe as a list of ingredients ( or suggested ingredients) and that is all. Which is fine in my kitchen, as I am really good at cooking on the fly. However people tend to get mad when I tweak their cooking when at other peoples homes. I tend the help out in the kitchen and end up thinking to myself "why the heck would you do that, if you did/added this it would be WAY BETTER!"
I also cook and season by tasting everything, and I hate baking or cooking non gluten free things, cuz I can't taste them. And my husb is no help, he has no sense of taste, seriously I think all his taste buds are dead. I could feed him crap and he would never know.
When I bake I like to experiment, which usually messes it up royal.
Also, I always taste test and keep using the utensil I put in my mouth... I try my best not to when I'm sick though, at least. Ha...
that reminds me of a bad habit - not waiting for the pressure cooker to depressurize or whatever it does.....it takes so damn long, so I poke the little valve and release the steam that way....not sure if that's good or bad, but I always feel like Im doing something bad when I do it...
It's not bad. These days the pans are better made as to safety valves than they were say 40 yrs ago.
If you want to depressurize quickly without removing the weight, fill the sink about half-way up the pan with water and immerse it. It will make a horrid bubbly noise when the hot pan hits the water but it helps.
My worst cooking habit is when I cook spaghetti or other pasta I always cook far too much for 2. This comes of growing up with brothers who ate like vengance, so spaghetti for one meal was always at least 2 lbs of raw pasta, sometimes more.
I can't follow a recipe, there is something in my brain that prevents this from happening. I see a recipe as a list of ingredients ( or suggested ingredients) and that is all. Which is fine in my kitchen, as I am really good at cooking on the fly. However people tend to get mad when I tweak their cooking when at other peoples homes. I tend the help out in the kitchen and end up thinking to myself "why the heck would you do that, if you did/added this it would be WAY BETTER!"
El Hubbito says that "To Revvie, recipes are like the Pirate Code...guidelines."
Oh...and my favorite mixing tool is my hands... :D
I put looooads of chilli, in everything!! Chilli paste, raw chillis, chilli powder, insanity sauce....lol even if cooking for wimps!
because of messing with the order of ingredients in baking recipes, I've completely forgotten to add leavener twice in the past couple months. =/
In fact... when I was making chocolate cupcakes for the gift exchange, I accidentally made them without leavener. I didn't realize this until I found that they hardly puffed up at all in the oven (I had made the recipe before, so I knew something was up). I redid it and made proper ones. Fortunately, the unleavened ones were kind of like brownies and the bf liked them.
Sometimes but cutting corners/saving time I'm making it more difficult :p
I add ingredients out of order and forget things too. I don't think I've ever forgotten leavener, but I've left out oil, egg subs, vanilla and/or spices, etc. Even when I don't leave something out, it's a bad habit because I have to read the entire ingredient list several times to make sure I included everything. If I followed it in order I could just pick up where I left off.
I also use the same utensil to taste several times, but it's usually just DH and me so who cares? And even if I'm cooking for other people, I'm sure all the germs get cooked and killed. ::) Sometimes I do the opposite and don't taste something at all, then when I serve it I'm like "oops, it might need salt/hot sauce/etc."
And I add lots of spice to everything. I try to tone it down when we have people over, but "mild" to me is "hot" to almost everyone else. Then I have to apologize to the red-faced and runny-nosed guests. Oops.
Sometimes I do the opposite and don't taste something at all, then when I serve it I'm like "oops, it might need salt/hot sauce/etc."
I pretty much never taste anything, ever. Well, until it's done/served.
I dunno, maybe I trust recipes/myself too much? Like, if there's anything we think wasn't awesome about a meal, I'll change it for next time, but I won't adjust as I go the first time.
I'm with the sticking your hands in everything crowd.
And I taste things to the point of there being less than half left by the time I'm done cooking.
yeah, i taste stuff all the time. sometimes i catch myself/have to remind myself while making food for other people... like, oh right, they probably don't want my saliva in this cake batter... hmm.
i've forgotten vanilla too. sometimes it really doesn't make a difference. if i were any more of a cheapskate i would choose to leave it out of most things.
My worst cooking habit is eating the veggies as I cut them up. I usually end up with 3/4th the amount I start with. I do sample the dish a couple of times as it cooks and sometimes double dip. No one else eats my food so it doesn't matter. When I bake I will sometimes estimate measurments.
yeah, i taste stuff all the time. sometimes i catch myself/have to remind myself while making food for other people... like, oh right, they probably don't want my saliva in this cake batter... hmm.
definitely this. I just can't help myself! If I'm cooking for others I have to really really really ry hard not to eat the batter/whatever and even then I sometimes find my self doing it anyway
My worst cooking habit is eating the veggies as I cut them up. I usually end up with 3/4th the amount I start with.
this too. I try to cut up extra veggies or make extra sauce just so I know there'll be enough for the meal after I've eaten tons during cooking.
I never used to add salt to anything at all, but over the past year or so I have started to and now I'm paranoid about my salt consumption. However as I tend to cook from scratch and not use preprepared sauces and stuff I probably eat less salt than most people....at least that's what I tell myself.
One of my other bad habits is flying by the seat of my pants in the kitchen, creating as I go, and then forgetting what I did.
Since I found VW though, I do better at quick-write-down-the-basics so I can submit it if it's good! I never measure anything. I just "some" it.
Pages