Give me what you got all, what are your best cooking tips and hacks.  Secret recipes, special ingredients, techniques handed down from the ancient masters, what do you all do to flare up your meals?  Seems most of you are interested in cooking stuff, and lord knows we need more topics here than cspam, so let's see what you got.

My first one was picked up from Chef Ramsey, instead of flavoring pan seared meat, flavor your fat and baste your meat while cooking.  So spring of rosemary and smashed gloves of garlic in with your butter while pan searing steaks, then baste the steak with that while you cook it.  Imparts the flavor, without leaving the final ingredients on the steak.  

Second tip, for great scrambled eggs, you want to leave them on heat just until part solidifies then remove them from heat while you stir.  You dance back and forth like this while you cook them.  The end result is super fluffy eggs.  Also Ramsey based.  WAY different than I learned how to cook scrambled eggs.  


Ramsey steak cooking:





Ramsey's eggs:

Add a tiny pinch of salt to coffee to reduce bitterness. Sugar covers it up, salt interferes with your tongue's ability to taste bitterness.

Add 1 tsp of mayo per two eggs when making scrambled eggs.

Mayo a no go here, but you replace it with yogurt. Another Ramsey hack. Or finish the eggs with butter. Best time to add it is near the end to finish it.

Bit of salt goes on everything really to reduce bitterness. Few things really do not need salt when you cook them.

Related to the basic balance of tastes common things people should know about flavors.

Salt - Cuts down bitterness.
Sugar - Reduce heat of chilies and reduces acidity.
Acid - Balances sweetness and bitterness, and can balance heat from spices.
Chilies - Balances sweetness
Fat - Reduces acidity

Alternatives to common shit to add flavors I like are:

Salt - Soy Sauce in non-Chinese foods is a great way to salt. Great in marinades particularly. Anchovies are a secret in most italian dishes despite people claiming to hate them. Bacon also is a great source of salt.

Sweetness - Honey is usually better than sugar in non-baking recipes. Carrots are a great source of sweetness in many dishes too, like pasta sauces. If you need to also add acid, apple cider vinegar can kill two birds with one stone.

Acid - I hate vinegar and use lime to replace it everywhere I can. Tomatoes also add acid. Wine also works here.

Bitterness - Sometimes you want to add bitterness, and beer, coffee or cocoa are the common ones. Broccoli fills this role in many classic recipes though. Tend to use bitter things to balance out overly sweet or salty things.

Spices - Generally people assume chilies for spice, but cinnamon, turmeric, cumin or raw radishes can hit this role too.  Cinnamon can really make chilies pop too, as Indian cooking shows.  


Great book on cooking is Salt Fat Acid Heat. Super overhyped, but def is worthy of the praise it gets.

Pro tip: Just watch Alton Brown and Good eats.

One of the recent things I do to add some wonderful flavour is roasting whole bulbs of garlic at once. Cut off about a third off the top. Drizzle olive oil and salt, wrap it in foil and put in an oven for about 30-35 mins. Once it cools down enough to handle, squeeze out all of the roasted garlic goodness. Make a paste, add some butter, put it on steaks. Throw it in mashed potatoes. Make some beautiful garlic bread. Brushetta. So many things to be done.

Roasted garlic paste is so easy to make and goes with everything. I do 45 minutes at 375.

Speaking of garlic, never press that shit. It just ruins it. Either slice / mince it or roast it. The rest of the methods just ruin it unless you plan to cook it for hours so it fully dissolves.

A work colleague recommended stone cookware to me and now I've tried it I couldn't agree more. My frypan has lasted years and still has much better non-stick than some Teflon-type pans I've had previously.

Aug 12, 2022 15:44:52 GMT Gyro LC said:

Add a tiny pinch of salt to coffee to reduce bitterness. Sugar covers it up, salt interferes with your tongue's ability to taste bitterness.

Sort of along these lines, coffee added to chocolate in baking is a great way of enhancing the chocolatey flavour. 

How to make a veggie platter with Dr Oz.

If you get a little piece of egg shell in your eggs, don't waste your time trying to get it out. You're fine. Don't be a wuss.

Continuing the egg theme, if you add vinegar to your water when you hard boil eggs they are much easier to peel.

Aug 16, 2022 22:52:51 GMT @admin said:

Continuing the egg theme, if you add vinegar to your water when you hard boil eggs they are much easier to peel.

Same thing with making poached eggs. Add a bit of vinegar to your water and create a vortex before dropping them in. But poached eggs are gross. 

Always brine your chicken breast before cooking it. Having a juicy chicken breast makes you realize how awful chicken breasts generally are. Or even better, stop cooking with them and use chicken thighs instead. 

Aug 17, 2022 2:42:58 GMT Foos said:

Aug 16, 2022 22:52:51 GMT @admin said:

Continuing the egg theme, if you add vinegar to your water when you hard boil eggs they are much easier to peel.

Same thing with making poached eggs. Add a bit of vinegar to your water and create a vortex before dropping them in. But poached eggs are gross. 

Always brine your chicken breast before cooking it. Having a juicy chicken breast makes you realize how awful chicken breasts generally are. Or even better, stop cooking with them and use chicken thighs instead. 

Oh yeah thighs are the way to go with chicken. Especially in a dish. Like say chicken cacciatore… though a good braising helps a breast too.

With fried chicken try brining in buttermilk…

Almost always thighs are better for chicken. Very few dishes really benefit from breast over thighs.

Buttermilk brine is def a southern hack for sure. Down there it is just assumed you are doing it.

I never have buttermilk at home. So when I do need it I use a cup of whole milk and a tablespoon of lemon juice. Mix it up and let it sit for a while before adding it to the recipe or brine.

That works but is not entirely the same. Do southern US cooking and you just have to have the buttermilk around. Goes into the chicken, the mash potatoes, biscuits, cornbread, pancakes and icebox pie. Like southern cooking puts that shit in everything. It is a major keypoint of the southern taste.

Aug 17, 2022 17:47:09 GMT c said:

That works but is not entirely the same. Do southern US cooking and you just have to have the buttermilk around. Goes into the chicken, the mash potatoes, biscuits, cornbread, pancakes and icebox pie. Like southern cooking puts that shit in everything. It is a major keypoint of the southern taste.

Yuh it be like this.


I don’t eat cornbread not made with it.

Thought of another one cooking dinner last night - when frying tofu really press it dry with paper towel first for maximum crispiness. People also recommend coating it in cornflour first but I've found that's not especially necessary.

It will fry nicely, but can add some flavor with the cornstarch if you season it.

But the secret to tofu is first pressing out the majority of water with weight or a tofu press, then doing the squeeze to get what a pressing does not. I still starch mine to make it extra crispy, season it and to give sauce some extra stuff to bind to but yeah, is not entirely needed.

That said I learned the hard way that cornstarch will not save tofu that has not been pressed enough though.

Any tips for actually enjoying cooking?

Embarrassingly I only learned to cook a few years ago and even then it’s just basic stuff and I just feel dissatisfied cooking for 20-30 mins to just eat it quickly.

Aug 12, 2022 19:33:16 GMT Foos said:

Pro tip: Just watch Alton Brown and Good eats.

My mom loves that show and has a myriad of them recorded on the PVR.

I love knowing many of you enjoy cooking. My brother (from a different mother) does all the cooking in their household.  I am finding this to be more of a recent development with less emphasis on pink and blue household jobs. 

Personally, I am very utilitarian in my cooking.  I don't enjoy cooking or baking, therefore my cooking is 'serviceable' and often quick.  I used to enjoy it.  I made lasagna from scratch, every Sunday I made a pork or beef roast with all the trimmings, but my ex was a very ungrateful human and consistently bitched about something not being perfect, so I stopped cooking and haven't enjoyed it since.  Now it's akin to yard work for me.  It makes a mess and takes time I could be reading or doing something else I enjoy. 

I love strawberries (okay all berries), but hate cleaning them but this straw strawberry cleaning hack has saved me hours.  I'll sit and watch GH and just clean strawberries now:




HINT: I found much greater success with metal straws which can be cleaned and reused.  I have one big one for bigger strawberries and normal sized ones well for smaller strawberries.

Also we have a couple of larger mason jars to store berries in the fridge and it works:





Anyone else try either one of these?

Making a chilli and throwing random vegetables in it, is a great way to get heaps of vitamins/proteins without someone feeling like they are just eating a plate of vegetables.

Every time I make up a chilli, I use 3 different capsicums colours, tomato, spinach. Occasionally I’ll throw in corn, carrots, mushrooms. Whatever random fresh veggies I have around that I may not have another use for just yet. It’s going into it.

Throw some cheese on top with sour cream and nacho chips 🤤 makes for great leftovers too. Even if you aren’t sure something would taste good in the chilli, 99% of the time all you can taste is the chilli flavour.

I love making chili in the winter sandylea. Like you said, any veggies in the fridge go in it. I love doing chili on top of tater tots with melted cheese.

I ruined myself and made a brisket and chorizo based chili. Every other chili ever made cannot compare.

I really want to go to Canada to try some of Foos and RT's cooking!

Aug 18, 2022 14:27:57 GMT System said:

Any tips for actually enjoying cooking?

Embarrassingly I only learned to cook a few years ago and even then it’s just basic stuff and I just feel dissatisfied cooking for 20-30 mins to just eat it quickly.

Prepare everything before you start.  It makes cooking far less stressful.  

Aug 23, 2022 15:12:04 GMT Foos said:

I love making chili in the winter sandylea. Like you said, any veggies in the fridge go in it. I love doing chili on top of tater tots with melted cheese.

I ruined myself and made a brisket and chorizo based chili. Every other chili ever made cannot compare.

That sounds amazing and I must try it 🤤

Great tip from Bloomberg on beating the inflation with cheap meals.

Bumping this because I am on a big roasted vegetable kick at the moment. For some reason everyone gravitates towards boiling or steaming veggies when this is the worst way to cook them, it saps all the flavour out. I used to hate cruciferous vegetables like Brussels sprouts and broccoli but when you get a bit of char on those bad boys they are actually really nice.

Roasting is the way to go. Triggers the Maillard reaction. Look at potatoes. Steam or boil them they do not get a lot of flavor. But roost or fry them, and now you are in flavor city.

Nov 28, 2022 23:56:13 GMT c said:

Roasting is the way to go. Triggers the Maillard reaction.

Oh yeah talk dirty to me. Voulez vous coucher avec moi ce soir?

Grandma's secret ingredients were heavy whipping cream and hog lard.

iron maiden, Strawberries are awesome, I've also been eating a lot of apples lately as well.