If your pasta always comes out bland, your sauces taste off, and every other dish you make ends up burnt to a crisp, it’s worth following a few everyday cooking rules. But as the saying goes, rules are meant to be broken, especially after you’ve learned your way around a kitchen. Knowing which guidelines are dogma and which are meant to be flouted isn’t always easy, however. That’s why we’ve crowdsourced five common food and cooking rules that rebellious Redditors from r/FoodHacks refuse to follow.
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‘Never Mix Cheese and Seafood’
Italians are notoriously exacting when it comes to food and drink. A cappuccino after noon? Unthinkable. Mixing cheese and seafood? A culinary crime. That said, there are both gustatory and historical reasons for these food faux pas. Some cheeses could overshadow the typically delicate flavors of fish, for instance. And geographically, most of Italy’s cheesemaking regions are landlocked, meaning that their cuisines likely developed without accounting for, say, Venetian delicacies like Bigoli in salsa. But in a world full of tuna melts and shrimp mac and cheese, Redditors say to heck with this rule.
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‘Don’t Break Spaghetti’
If you’ve ever had to cook spaghetti in a small pot, on a tiny hot plate, because your closet-sized studio doesn’t have a kitchen (rent is expensive!), you’ve likely flouted this rule. Because unless you’ve got a large 11-quart pot, you’re gonna have to break that spaghetti in half. While this doesn’t change the flavor of the spaghetti, it might change how you eat it. “The reason why you should not break pasta is that it’s supposed to wrap around your fork,” chef Carolina Garofani writes for Slate. Still, this is a small price to pay, Redditors say, and so you shouldn’t feel bad if you break this rule.
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‘Don’t Wash Mushrooms’
Given that mushrooms are porous, moisture-filled sponges, it makes sense why experts recommend wiping rather than rinsing them. “Excess moisture is the enemy,” as Jesse Sparks writes for Bon Appetit. But some home chefs — including a vocal contingent of Redditors — can’t get over the dirt and grime and always wash their mushrooms. “There’s no way of getting all the mud/manure off with just wiping,” one commenter writes. Sparks adds that if you must wash ’em, you should rinse them quickly and immediately dry them with a towel.
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‘Food Must Taste Like Itself’
The idea that food should aspire to complementary, subtle flavor pairings — that each ingredient should taste like itself — is less a rule and more a Western culinary philosophy. And like most things, its origins are historical. Krishnendu Ray, associate professor of food studies at NYU, says that when spices became cheap and mainstream in 17th-century Europe, spiced foods became unfashionable in the ruling class’ eyes. “They moved on to an aesthetic theory of taste,” Ray explains in an interview with NPR. “Rather than infusing food with spice, they said things should taste like themselves. Meat should taste like meat, and anything you add only serves to intensify the existing flavors.” Although that attitude persists in Western cooking today, some Redditors say they are embracing a more global approach to food.
‘Always Follow the Recipe’
Many Redditors didn’t name a particular “rule” that they refuse to follow; rather, they simply said that they knew when to diverge from a recipe. For instance, one top commenter says that they always add five times the amount of garlic called for, while another Redditor almost always doubles or triples the spices and seasonings. “I only use recipes if I am learning a new dish. Otherwise, I never measure or time anything. I just eyeball it all. And my food comes out excellent … maybe that’s just my luck?” a commenter writes.
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