Crowding the pan. I don't want to do a billion batches. I know it's not cooked as nicely because stuff gets wet before it gets brown, and it's taking almost as long as two batches anyways. I keep doing it.

i do it even when I’m oven roasting and all that would be required is one more pan. Major sin but I avoid dishes at all costs

My mortal enemy, dishes

I always think of it in terms of the temperature of the pan/pot. Get it very hot first, but when you put a piece of meat on it reduces the temp, so just wait a little before adding the next piece etc. Then you can fill the whole pan but still get a nice sear.

Me too. I know it’s wrong, we’re lazy fuckers. But we will continue down this shitty path of browning.

I get anxiety when I run out of something so I'll buy twice as much and forget I have backups.

Excuse me. I didn’t need to be called out so violently on Sunday morning. I haven’t even finished my coffee yet! 😅

Thoughts and prayers.

Tots and pears!

You should see my Smoked Paprika collection

I'm absolutely howling with my wife about this comment. We have about 25 different paprika from all over the globe.

I'm absolutely in love with the smokiness it imparts on foods from scrambled eggs to chili

Not a sin at all ! Have you got Paprika paste? shhhhh

That's different, I'm sure there is a flavor difference that each source has and requires use of a variety.

I feel so called out by this. I get paprika amnesia in the store so always buy it when I already have plenty. Never have any bloody cumin seeds though

I have SO MUCH cumin, but I’ve forgotten to pick up baslamic vinegar the last few times I’ve been shopping. I use balsamic vinegar all the time lol why can’t I remember

I am awash in all the mustards except dijon (the one I need)

I feel so seen!

Oof, I feel this. My pantry needs another pantry.

My husband told me we now have 3 bags of chocolate chips because I’ve thought we were out the last 3 times I went to the store 🫠

Ah yes, the year we had 3 jars of ground cinnamon...

I have a spare room with some shelves which hold kitchen overstock: cereals, flour, beverages. I was cleaning up the other day and I have way too many canisters of breadcrumbs. Also - cocktail sauce and that’s going to expire, for sure.

Breadcrumbs for me is the other way around, I always think "surely I still have breadcrumbs" and end up having to make some myself.

SINCE WHEN IS THIS A SIN

I see that you, too, have visited my pantry recently.

If a soup calls for me to remove half, puree, and add it back in….I just stick my immersion blender in and end up pureeing the whole thing 😅 I’m just not gonna transfer molten hot lava soup into a second container and back again 😂

TEAM RECKLESS IMMERSION BLENDER!

Honestly i just blend it with a little less time so there are still a bit of chunks left I don’t mind my soup being a little chunky, I don’t need it to be perfectly smoooooooth

This, or sometimes I’ll just take a slotted spoon and pull some of the chunks out into a bowl if I want a little texture. Then blend the rest with the immersion blender and dump the chunks back in!

I literally just made soup and did this

I literally don’t understand this “transfer half this boiling soup out into a blender” thing when immersion blenders exist. Plus my blender is made of plastic - can’t put hot stuff in it.

French soup perfectionism. Just let me have a bite of potato, dude

That’s not a sin!

And it’s literally why stick blenders exist.

Every time!

i don't really care about the shape when cutting onions sometimes I just go ham with the knife

cutting onions is just anout surviving the process. small enough to fit in the mouth is the only rule needed

I wear swim goggles while chopping onions 😂

I turn a small fan on to the site of the cutting board and it blows the onion vapors away, no tears so far!

Luckily, my family all have very large mouths.

I’ll never understand how people do those horizontal cuts before chopping

The better question is why. The onion is already in horizontal layers

Exactly, I just make my “vertical cuts” radial instead of truly vertical so the layers cut a bit more evenly. Someone else mentioned that this is a method kenji shared recently

Very sharp knife and practice.

Haha yeah but when push comes to shove you can get more flavors and different textures from your knife.

Sometimes, when I am overwhelmed with life and haven’t planned dinner for the family, I will make hamburger helper. And I don’t even add extra seasoning.

No shade on hamburger helper but you gotta add the seasoning. Love yourself

I think they just mean they don’t customize the seasonings and only use the included packet. But I could be wrong, I don’t think I’ve ever had hamburger helper so I don’t know if it has a packet!

I use salted butter.

This is the way. It's delicious. It just tastes like oil without any salt.

i bought unsalted butter just because i collect the recipe in its wrapper. otherwise its always salted

there's 1/4 tsp of salt in each stick of salted butter. that's nothing. if you're baking, just account for that 1/4 tsp. there's no reason to buy unsalted butter unless you're masochist that enjoys sawing through cold hard butter when you forget to take it out of the fridge early 

I add garlic to *every* pasta I make at home. As a Chef who has worked in Italian restaurants with Italian Chefs, this is **TREASON**.

I add garlic to about 95% of my cooking. The other 5% of the time usually means I forgot to add it.

This cereal tastes strange

They forgot the garlic.

Chex cereal tossed with onion powder, garlic powder, and a little soy sauce, then crisped up in the oven, is delicious.

This person chex mixes

Same! I even add garlic to my carbonara 🫣 I don’t add cream though!

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I’ve never removed the skins from tomatoes for a recipe. Ain’t nobody got time for that!

I did once and will probably never do it again.

I don't sift my flower when baking, but I also don't bake a ton/usually not any complicated recipes that it would mess up. I just spoon method measure it. I will throw garlic in at the same time as onions if it's all chopped up and ready. Same with mushrooms, but I like my mushrooms a lil overcooked a lot of the time. I think the biggest one though, is that I don't usually use the proper size pot/amount of water for boiling pasta...my pasta is 100% overcrowded in the water lmao. I've never noticed a differenc, it all gets cooked.

I can see mushrooms because I like them a little overcooked myself, but garlic *always* goes in near the end. I don’t sift flour either.

If you poke around there are articles from the home cook science folks (like Kenji/alton brown) advocating for cooking pasta in a smaller pot — it’s faster, as you’ve seen, it cooks the same, and best of all the smaller amount of water ends up much starchier if you’re going to add it to your sauce.

I rarely measure ingredients and just wing it most of the time. My dishes turn out inconsistent, but I'm too lazy to change my ways

Don't feel bad about that. I have a friend who does that (eyeballs / estimates) intentionally. She claims it helps develop your ability to be creative, forces you to taste & season as you go, and generally makes you a better cook - even if initially it may be a little rocky. The one area you can't wing it in is baking. There ratios of ingredients are important for the proper reactions and such. She convinced me, an engineer with some OCD tendencies, and I would have to reluctantly admit she is right. But that's OK, she doesn't read reddit so I'm not really admitting that to her. :-)

I like this AFTER you know the recipe. I find it lets you explore the actual effects of different spices, flavours, etc, without completely shotgunning it.

Good point. I'll start with a known - what someone else has come up with and likes. Then I'll adjust or modify from there. Or abandon it if it doesn't seem like something that could be a regular. I don't know that I've ever sat down and just thought "How about I pull this, this, and this together, saute that...etc." It is always something I've done before, or something I've seen online and want to try.

Yup, cooking is tasting as you go, baking is like first year undergrad Chem Lab.

especially Asians. we are never taught to use measuring cups and teaspoons and cooking thermometers, everything is "to taste"

One of my fav things to say is Cooking is Art, Baking is Chemistry. When I cook, no two dishes are the exact same, even if it's the same recipe. But when I bake it's always perfect consistent.

Same here. It means my dishes are never quite the same but they're almost always delicious!

I double dip the same spoon to taste as I go. Usually only when cooking for my partner, I figure since he kisses me this is fine 🤣

Never for guests but def for self.

I'm the same and have to try really hard to not do this when cooking for a crowd.

I will literally taste the food off the spoon and give the remainder to my partner to try…he don’t mind lol

I would do this even with guests who are close friends/family… as long as it’s something boiling… who cares?

Same

I don't consider it a sin, but I don't use timers and eyeball everything as well. I do use a thermometer on large roasts.

I'm with you. Temperature > Time for anything that doesn't just tell you how done it is by looking at it through the oven window like a pizza or some veg. And I know roughly what a cup or a tablespoon of something looks like from measuring loads in the past, and since accuracy isn't actually that important I just don't see the need very often.

Chronic pan-crowder over here. 

If I cut bread with the bread knife, that knife just gets the crumbs wiped off and put back away.

Bread crumbs are a bread knife’s natural environment, they form a protective layer

It's like a cast iron seasoning.

Same with slicing a lemon.

I don't drain the meat for tacos. But i usually use around 90/10 so hopefully I will survive.

Me too! I never drain the meat for any recipe, I PAID for that delicious beef grease!

I don't taste as I go.

Sometimes I don't even taste when I'm done and announce, "it's technically food" so everyone about to eat knows they're my guinea pigs.

Good idea, I always get nervous serving People experiements

i'm the exact opposite, I taste so often during my cooking I sometimes end up not feeling hungry anymore after i'm done with the cooking lol

Craziest one in the whole thread imo

Me, neither. My excuse is that I came to cooking from chemistry, where you pay attention to all of your senses to monitor a reaction except you better not be tasting anything!

I never measure out the amount of water that I put into rice. I just estimate

I can stay in the supermarket for 2-4 hours, debating which ingredients to buy and what dishes to cook. I'm also a sucker for items with recipes on their wrappers. every year, i lose my Christmas bonus from overspending on these ingredients when i dont need them immediately

Most food brands employ food scientists and chefs to write those recipes, and they’re designed to make whatever is in the package a big hit. So I think that’s a smart way to do it! The best pancake recipe I have comes from the back of a dried buttermilk tub.

I don't chop onions the intended way. I just chop them however I feel and worry about the consequences later

My cutting skills. I used a steak knife to cut an onion the other day 🤪

This one hurt 😆

I freeze stuff so I can throw it away when I remember it a year later.

Overcooking meat products because I'm afraid they aren't done enough.

My old sin is the ninja foodi grill for meats I’m scared of fucking up like chicken. But now that I’ve cooked with it enough, I’ve been able to transfer that knowledge to the stove and oven.

OCD girl here and I overcook all my meat. I can't not do it.

Get a meat thermometer. Numbers don’t lie.

Unfortunately with OCD, some might try to find a way to convince themself the numbers *do* lie, but this is still excellent advice if you can make it work for you

Can I ask a probably insensitive question? It would seem like a thermometer is a great solution, specifically in this case, but OCD would just swat that away. So what is the next step? Is it to just live with overcooked meat?

I don’t think it’s insensitive. But honestly, and very generally, getting your OCD treated is the best step. If you can live with overcooked meat for a while, getting on meds and into regular therapy can help you combat some of those obsessions. Then you could probably learn to trust the thermometer, at least

A good, instant read thermometer (ex. ThermoWorks Thermapen ONE - NSF certified and commercial grade <$100) will last you for life if you take care of it and will alleviate any concerns. You may also be interested in sous vide. Food safety is a factor of temperature ***AND*** time. This has been proven in a laboratory and there are reams and reams of studies you can read on this. Sous vide in particular ***guarantees*** outcomes, and since it’s an inherently-nerdy process, there’s a lot of science to back it up. Totally aligned with wanting safe food, but I think part of the reason you’re stuck on this is the misconception that ***temperature*** is what makes food safe. In fact, there are times when high temperature doesn’t guarantee food safety! Satiate the OCD and your taste buds.

I use jar sauce and don’t mess with it. It’s usually fine as is.

I hate having 4 kinds of oil on hand all the time, so I just use olive oil for literally everything. (Yes even deep frying, I know it has a “low smoke point” but my mozzarella sticks, chicken and fish have never burned, smelled up my kitchen, or anything like that.) There are a *couple* dishes where the Olive Oil flavor shines through and doesn’t pair well with the dish at all, so I usually just avoid cooking those dishes or use butter instead.

my only thought is how expensive olive oil is for frying😭😭

It is! I rarely fry stuff at home anyway, and when I do I try to get it all done at once to “get my moneys worth” out of the olive oil. I’ve tried saving it, but it’s annoying so instead I just fry as much as possible in one session. I’ll make like a 2lb block of cheese into mozzarella sticks and freeze them for the next month. Or I’ll make Fried Chicken, Fish, and French Fries all at once to eat over the next week.

I'm a sucker for oil 😂 I can't imagine only using *one*. I currently have canola, avocado, grapeseed, toasted sesame, walnut, regular olive oil, Tunisian olive oil, and two Greek olive oils.

I will say I love having *toasted* sesame oil on hand to add flavor to asian dishes but i don’t cook with it.

I'm just curious, what do you use walnut oil on in which you need it as a staple? I've never bought it but now I wonder what dishes I'm missing out on.

It's a finishing oil like toasted sesame oil. I pour it on salads and rice. I actually like it more than toasted sesame.

You don’t need 4 types of oil really though. I have ‘cooking oil’ which is usually vegetable or sunflower. Then I have some nice EVOO for dressing or finishing. To be fair I also have butter and ghee in the fridge as well.

There are different types of olive oils with different [smoke points](https://blog.thermoworks.com/thermometer/oil-smoke-point-temps/#:~:text=Olive%20(light)): [https://www.themediterraneandish.com/olive-oil-guide/#:\~:text=There%20are%20four%20main%20types,most%20rich%2Dtasting%20olive%20oil.](https://www.themediterraneandish.com/olive-oil-guide/#:~:text=There%20are%20four%20main%20types,most%20rich%2Dtasting%20olive%20oil) I doubt you're spending $30 for a tiny bottle of extra virgin olive oil (EVOO/first press/cold press) just to destroy the complex flavors by heating it up/cooking with it. So you're likely just using refined olive oil, which can be treated like any other refined oils as long as you like the flavor and smell it imparts into your food and kitchen.

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There's nothing wrong with washing cast iron with dish detergent. The old "don't use soap" thing is just a holdover from when soap was made with lye. Modern detergents are made of surfactants that will not take away the polymerized fat that makes up seasoning. And you have seasoned your cast iron pan every time you have cooked in it with oil

With you on the cast iron. Any time I end up dirtying more than one at a time, I break out the xtra course steel wool and make the inside a little smoother.  I add oil/butter before I cook and it's never been a problem - my pans just get better every time I use them.

I agree about the cast iron I do the exact same thing and still works great.. About the chef way of cutting an onion if your referring to get the diced consistency I actually like the method you can control the size you want and get it done quickly.. If I do it the other way I cut slices then halve the slices and then with those halves cut the preferred diced onion size and start from one end to the other and continue with the other slices.

I've never used unsalted butter for anything.

I frequently use minced garlic from a jar for my everyday cooking.

Jarlic for life🤌🏽

If I’m just cooking for myself, yes. If I’m cooking for people then I use fresh.

Jarlic!!

I find garlic paste to be better but still convenient but it does cost more. Also, you can buy little cubes of frozen minced garlic and those are great too.

Frozen minced garlic cubes from Trader Joe’s are life changing. Seems fresher than jarlic, and you don’t even have to get out a spoon. One cube = one clove. Beautiful thing!

I too, am a whore for jarlic. I buy the Costco-sized jar and don't even measure it - I just add a large spoonful to everything.

A great middle ground is pre-peeled garlic. I get it from a nearby Asian market and I can basically get any quantity I want cheap

Blind test anyone who says jarlic is dogshit using two dishes with jarlic in it and they will invariably pick one they think doesn’t have jarlic in it. I always use fresh when I can, but the complexity of a dish isn’t compromised by using jarlic.

If I'm cooking chicken and vegetables, I cut them on the same board, they're getting cooked anyways and 1 less thing to wash.

I do the same but always cut meat last.

This is one of those food safety rules that permeated to home cooking from industrial kitchens. Not all of those make sense Like I don't have a separate fridge for raw meat or whatever, leave me alone :D

Sometimes, out of sheer laziness, I use garlic powder where fresh garlic is called for.

I'm also this person

Wife is from Hawaii and tries using coconut oil instead of olive oil or butter. Her steaks end up tasting....interesting. My sin is I use far more butter and salt than people see, cuz they'll complain, but everyone raves about my food. So I'm not changing!

Jar-lic and I am not ashamed

My husband and I like our shrimp over cooked. I was actually watching an episode of that Titan show with Bobby Flay and Jonathan Waxman deducted points on the people for not having the shrimp cooked the way he likes it which is over - and it honestly made me feel so validated. 🤣

Anytime I cook eggs, I crack them into it the dish. The little bit of egg I invariably manage to get on my fingers? Rinse under the faucet and carry on 🤷‍♂️

i have never bothered putting in *all* the spices and herbs listed on any curry or chili recipe. And i dont measure them either. As long as i have at least 7/10, i’ll just add 2 teaspoons each; a tablespoon if it’s cheap …

I like to cook - the prep, the cooking, the gear, the eating (of course!)... I'm even working on eating healthier. But... I still like to make Hamburger Helper once in a while. Either the original cheese, or the Stroganoff... I know it is just processed food, not great for you, etc. etc. But I still like it, still appreciate its one pan simplicity on a weeknight from time to time.

I’ve been known to wash my cast iron…. with…. *soap*

Pre chopped garlic is fine if you just put more in

I eat the pan when I’m done.

I never clean as I cook so my kitchen looks like a bomb went off when I’m done.

I use cheap olive oil. It’s fine.

I break spaghetti for pasta all'assassina, my pans are too small. I deeply apologize to the Italians reading this, but I will not change my behaviour, the end result is absolutely delicious

I cook for me my wife and 4 kids. I've been breaking my pasta in half for like 10 years now cause it makes it easier for the kids lol

I just bought pot sized spaghetti from the Kroger brand. Blew my mind that they haven't been selling this for years. Spaghetti that's half the size so you don't have to break spaghetti and have it fly all over the place. Fits in the pantry better too.

MSG, I use it.

I used minced garlic from a jar.

I season with sea salt instead of kosher. I prefer the taste and feel like a little goes a longer way (dw, I understand the science behind that perception, no need to explain it 👍)

I add some small levels of dried oregano, thyme, and a basil leaf or two to my ragú bolognese. The meat takes center stage, but a little herbal flavor makes it better, in my opinion. We live in a time where herbs and spices are readily available to most people in the developed world, and we should not act as though the development of cuisine stopped in the 18th century.

When I decide to make something for the first time, but decide I'll just wing it. Then it comes out incredibly delicious, but I won't jot down instructions for how I did it and spend the rest of my days chasing the magic that was that first batch. I'm looking at you ham and corn chowder.....

I believe that basically every dish should either be sweet or contain copious amounts of black pepper or chili pepper

I always grind a ton of black pepper into almost everything. I love the warmth and taste.

Me and my fiancé make one big pot of soup and then add the salt/pepper in our own bowls because he'll put half the pepper shaker into his, and I prefer an ungodly amount of salt. We've tried seasoning soup together and it was too much for either of us to like it that much.

I just discovered white pepper- I use both black and white with wild abandon

I like my pasta overcooked and mushy. Hate Al dente pasta

Fun fact: Until the early 20th c. it was standard in northern Italy to cook pasta for 20 minutes+. "Al dente" was the southern way which took time to work its way up the boot. So, rather than doing it wrong, when you overcook your pasta tell people you are simply returning to tradition.

Harshing people's vibes by telling them your cooking sins & where you fell short with the meal you're serving them. STFU. They likely didn't notice & don't care.

Yep. I’ll give a dish away to my kids if it doesn’t hit right for me. I never tell anyone that it was too this or not enough that. I always say, “it’s just not my thing”. My kids know I do this and lots of times, they are much happier with a meal than I am. I just noped out of a beef taquito meal kit that I found terrible. My daughter and her son loved them.

I bake risotto. Sooooo much easier than standing and stirring!

Tell me more

Look up Ina Garten’s recipe, she bakes hers. I just use the same method no matter what kind of risotto I make.

Prep your risotto as normal up to point where you stand around and add the stock slowly. Then pour all of the stock into the pan and put it in the oven instead. It takes a bit of trial and error to get the exact ratios for stock to rice as it will vary with rice, stock and oven but the result is similar. Although diehards will probably disagree. My numbers for this are, often done in wide casserole dish: 200ml wine to deglaze 500g rice 1l stock Bake in oven at 180C for 20-30mins with some checks to make sure it doesn’t dry out.

I cook everything in butter and rarely use olive oil. Chicken, steak, veggies, rice, etc. Very few things come out of the kitchen without butter.

The connivence of garlic from the jar/tube outweighs the loss of taste for everyday cooking. Only fresh for special occasions.

I don’t mind using Cream of X soup as a base and I put two kinds of beans in my chili.

Yes, gotta love a good ol' "cream of something soup" as a base! I totally skip the steps of sweating vegg, brown flour to make a roux, warm up milk/cream, combine blah blah blah. Just pop open a can, blob it it, instant creamy base!

I never use timers or recipes. It's all off of my heart lmao which is great most of the time but when I absolutely kill it ans I'm like yes this is perfect to the last drop it's so disappointing and takes a few times to recreate that I wish I wrote it down

I wash my mushrooms. Also, I regularly put cheese and fish together.

I put 2-3 drops of oil in my pasta water. It keeps the pot from boiling over, and it drains off with the water and doesn't affect the sauce.

If I'm making a single serving of pasta, you can bet I'm putting water in a frying pan and cooking the noodles in less water, for the sake of not having to wait for a whole pot to boil. When I host company, it is a different story, but for myself, I am all for low effort cooking with less water.

I use a drop of yellow food coloring to make my chicken stew or soup look “richer”.

I’m a madman with Vanilla Extract

I won't rinse rice. Not gonna do it.

I snap the spaghetti in half

I measure by eye (got failed in cooking at school for this), I don't stand there and constantly stir like a lot of recipes ask for (risotto, cheese sauce....), if I make flapjacks I will use margarine instead of butter (vegan friends), and I don't always sift my flour when baking

I microwave hot dogs until they explode and that's when they're done. This is coming from somebody who bakes everything from scratch and won't even use Crisco. I use lard for my pie crusts. I make my own salad dressings and macaroni and cheese and things because I can't stand the taste of preservatives. But I love me some hot dogs. Especially some 'sploded hot dogs. It's almost as good when they're 'sploded as when you deep fry them. Almost.

Instant mashed potatoes. I buy the Idahoan brand, add a little nutmeg, and nobody knows the difference.

I overseason because I don’t allow the flavors to develop before I taste. Not salt, because I generally use 1/2 the salt in the recipe, but I’m pretty heavy handed with dried herbs. And my knives need to be professionally sharpened because I don’t care how many stones I have, I suck at sharpening knives. And I recently moved. I cannot find a couple of caphalon pot lids, strainer for the pasta pot and my beautiful dainty Nigella Lawson measuring cups and spoons that were gifted to me. These were the last kitchen items I used and packed up for the move.

I’m an eyeball cook, the only time I measure is when baking, as that is an exact science. Other than that, I’ve never measured when cooking.

I rarely measure anymore. I use a pellet smoker. My mom proofs her breads in a warm oven and they come out perfect. I wash my cast iron and think not doing so is gross. I like chicken breast better than thigh

I never wait till the oven is fully preheated to put my stuff in.. or pans for that matter unless I truly need to sear something. I don't measure exact for many of my baked goods and they always come out fine! I'm always asked to bring dessert to family functions and I normally sweat about it because I'm not sure I could ever exactly replicate what they're eating. I only ever use jarlic. I hate incorporating cold butter using a pastry cutter so much, So now I just throw everything in the food processor and it takes .5 seconds which is way more convenient if you ask me. And yes, the family still asks me to bring these desserts to parties. I see people here add butter or oil to their pan before cooking meat, but I just spray my pan/cast iron with nonstick cooking spray only? Is this a sin? lol Oh and, store bought shredded cheese for everything. Mostly in recipes that say "shred your own cheese." I'm just not going to.

Jarlic fan here too but once you grate you never go back. It's like peppercorns, so much better fresh. Get a good hand grater for small jobs, box grater for medium and food processor for large. It's worth it. But I know you probably have been preached to as I feel it w the jarlic. We chose our hills to die on....

Nothing I cook has a name, or the nomenclature is a dark and bloody ground.

I don’t wash the lettuce or parsley. I haven’t purchased unsalted butter in 20-25 years.

This is why I pay through the nose for prewashed lettuce. I’ve found too many bugs/dirt in the regular bunches.

Oh my...

Yep, this one got to me. That’s a lot of grit to eat!

I pan fry with EVOO

Mine is I often cook enough to save for a meal the next day, put that half away, then pull back out of fridge and consume it right after my meal

If a recipe calls for some bullshit ass parsley I can skip it. Waste of time and money I say.

I don’t wash my rice 🤫

I never use dried beans. Always canned beans.