While questionable cooking choices won’t get you arrested, unless you veer into poisoning or arson, they will get you mercilessly mocked and shamed online. So it’s best to learn the dos and don'ts of the culinary arts.
An internet user wanted to know what others would classify as food crimes, and the answers were illuminating. And for those who get scared to take up home cooking after seeing this long list, we wanted to get some beginner tips from professionals. So we reached out to Bintu from Recipes From A Pantry and Monti Carlo from BudgetBytes to get some tips and tricks. So scroll down, take notes, and upvote the ‘crimes’ you agree with.
More info: Reddit
#1
My dad salts the s**t out of his food before trying it. My younger brother seems to have inherited this trait.My aunt (my dads oldest sister) does this and also stirs a healthy spoonful of sugar into her glass of red wine.
Image credits: TahiniInMyVeins
#2
I saw someone eat pineapples with Mayo once at school and it should be considered a war crime
Image credits: ehwhoknowss
#3
I just had a coworker tell me he puts sugar in with his spaghetti nothing else
Image credits: space_tripping_vato
Firstly, we asked Bintu what she would give to a complete beginner. “The biggest tip to getting started is to not bite off more than you can chew (pun intended). Start with easy recipes that require little to no prep and just a couple of ingredients that you can successfully complete. Easy wins build confidence and make you want to keep cooking! That’s why I focus on including many easy, low-stress recipes on my site.”
Monti Carlo, helpfully, gave her list of tips to start with. “Read the recipe, all the way to the end. Make sure you have all of your ingredients prepped before you begin cooking and that you've given yourself enough time to cook the dish. Taste your food throughout the cook and season accordingly. Keep in mind that food continues to cook even after it's off the heat, and adjust accordingly so you don't have an overcooked mess. Don't make new dishes on important nights. Go with your tried and true favorites, or test new recipes before your big event.”
#4
I had a gf that would eat butter from the stick. Like a candy bar.
Image credits: jbpsign
#5
My brother was allergic to cow's milk when we were younger. I have witnessed him pour orange juice into his cereal and eat it.
Image credits: nakedreader_ga
#6
Baked meat with no seasoning. Dry, sandy, and disgusting.
Image credits: Yoda2000675
To go along with helpful tips, we wanted to know what common mistakes or misconceptions a lot of amateur cooks tend to hold. “A common mistake, and one I’ve made too many times to admit, is not checking to make sure you have all of the necessary ingredients before starting a recipe. Luckily, it is often possible to substitute for a missing ingredient, so I like to provide variations and substitution tips for my recipes. You can also DIY a missing ingredient. I never seem to have buttermilk on hand, and when I learned how to make buttermilk it was a total game changer!” Bintu suggested.
#7
My neighbor used to pull all the cheese off her pizza and cover it in ketchup
Image credits: NastySassyStuff
#8
My aunt stirs a spoonful of sugar into her glass of red wine. Now that is a new one for me, and it's unforgivable. An ice cube in wine is pretty common, but sugar in your wine? Absolutely not.
Image credits: HardwareLust
#9
People who 'don't like leftovers'.
Image credits: Yossarian287
Monti Carlo focused more on the techniques of cooking. “I often see new cooks overcrowd a pan, which lowers the temperature in the pan. This prevents the liquid in the ingredients from turning into steam. Since the liquids don't get a chance to escape, they end up sitting at the bottom of the pan, and stew your food instead of searing it. It's also really scary to watch a new cook use a chef's knife. They hold it like a serial killer.”
#10
Putting ice cubes in milk. My daughter does this and it drives me nuts. There's nothing worse than watery milk.
Image credits: Threeloudkids
#11
My mother microwaves salad.Not a meat or egg or other salad.
Salad made up of plants. In the microwave. For 60 seconds.
Image credits: RydNightwish
#12
Multiple open packages of the exact same food.
Image credits: ConstableToad
Lastly, just to show everyone that even the pros make mistakes, we asked both what was the worst meal they ever made. Bintu proposed looking on the bright side:” I like to think of it as a kitchen experiment, not a bad meal - lol! I am all about trying new things in the kitchen, and I love testing out flavor combinations. You don’t know what you’re missing if you don’t take a chance.”
#13
Not breaking Kit Kat’s into their individual sticks before you eat them. A friend of mine once bit sideways into a Kit Kat and we were all horrified.
Image credits: rubensinclair
#14
When I was younger my older brother would eat mustard and nutella sandwiches.
Image credits: Clatuu1337
#15
Putting "caramelized onions" on the menu, and serving onions that have been blanched in sugar syrup.Everyone knows the difference.
Image credits: ultrasupergenius
Monti Carlo brought up her possibly more well-known worst meal:” I can't remember the worst meal I've ever made. Probably the one that got me kicked off of MasterChef 358 years ago, my novice take on Graham Elliot's Tropical Sashimi dish, a favorite of President Barack Obama's.”
If you want to explore their recipes, guides, tips, and tricks, you can find Bintu’s work at Recipes From A Pantry and Monti Carlo at BudgetBytes. And if, instead, you want to keep exploring food crimes, check out our other article here.
#16
There was an old recipe card... I dry heave to even think of it... Baked whole bananas, wrapped in ham, smothered with hollandaise.
Image credits: gerardkimblefarthing
#17
Chopped tomatoes in bechamel? That's just Mormon queso.
Image credits: Judas_Feast
#18
Adding certain powdered spices at the end of cooking, close to when you turn off the heat. Most spices must be added early in the cooking process to get them to bloom, get rid of the raw taste, and really blend with the other ingredients. This goes for powerful spices like cayenne, cumin, coriander powder, etc...
Image credits: deleted
#19
Boiling most vegetables. Steaming, roasting, grilling or even raw veggies are better than boiled vegetables.
Image credits: pierremanslappy
#20
I cannot stand the way my mother eats sandwiches. Take, for example, a roast beef sandwich. She takes it all apart and eats the roast beef and then the bread separately. It's meant to be eaten all together...that's what makes a sandwich taste good!
Image credits: ApprehensiveCard6
#21
Not something I've seen, but my parents said when I was 4 I'd sneak into the doritos, lick all the powder off some chips, and put them back in the bag.When my parents would try to eat some, they'd suddenly be horrified by grabbing a cold and soggy chip.
Image credits: Forhaver
#22
When people do not warm their flour tortillas.
Image credits: ties__shoes
#23
Severely overcooking steak. I have a relative who likes his steak cooked extra well done. I don’t know how he even gets it down. Why bother getting nice steak if you're going to over-cook it to death?!
Image credits: TiltedNarwhal
#24
Grilling burgers and not putting the cheese on the burger while it's on the grill or toasting the buns.
Image credits: Kunkyskunts
#25
Any sort of flavored hummus or a dip called ‘hummus’ that doesn’t use chickpeas. The word hummus means chickpeas in Arabic, so if it doesn’t have chickpeas it's not hummus. Call it any other dip, but don't confuse it for hummus.#26
Making a burger that is so fat I can't fit my mouth around it. I want to be able to taste all of the toppings in each mouthful without ingredients falling out of the bun.
Image credits: onehitwondur
#27
I used to share a house with a guy, and every time a bottle or jar of sauce was only about a third full, he would fill it up with water and shake it 'to get his money's worth.' That's not saving money, it's just making your condiments taste awful.#28
This is my own food crime confession: I really love to eat lemons as you would eat an orange or a clementine — by peeling it and eating the whole thing. For some reason I love the sourness. Of all my strange food preferences, this one really causes witnesses to cringe.#29
Using Miracle Whip instead of mayonnaise or sour cream in a recipe like Deviled Eggs or potato salad. There is nothing that ruins a good plate of food like biting into that sweet, fake-tasting goop.#30
Using cauliflower as a 'healthy' ingredient replacement and saying it tastes the same. Cauliflower is a great vegetable. You can make rice out of it, you can use it to bulk up a curry, you can slice and roast or fry it. But it tastes like cauliflower. It's never going to taste like potato or rice or meat. So let's not pretend. You're always going to be disappointed when it doesn't taste as good.#31
I didn’t try it, so I might be unfair, but those 50s-70s cookbooks with jelloed everything, like big jelloed roasts and jelloed mayonnaise salads really freak me out. I don’t know if it actually tastes good, but it seems pretty heinous to me
Image credits: yurachika
#32
Throwing out foods that are cosmetically imperfect even though they’re perfectly fine to eat. I say this since my sister does it. If she finds a single wilted green in her tub of lettuce, she’ll throw the whole thing out.
Image credits: YukiHase
#33
My mom used to make this s**t called pear salad. It was canned pears topped with a huge pile of shredded cheddar cheese and either mayonnaise or sour cream. I've never tried it. It looks as unappetizing as physically possible to me. She loves it.Also I once spent an hour making mushroom risotto and my roommate doused it in ranch. I'm still not over that.
Image credits: phuqo5
#34
Italian: Undressed noodles with a pool of sauce on top.(I don't fuss that much with carbonara purism. I think non Italian redditors get more worked up about it than Italians TBH. Mostly I don't know why people call something carbonara that's not.)
Image credits: joemondo
#35
Using a food processor for a recipe that clearly states to grind herbs together with a mortar and pestle until it becomes a paste. It takes a good amount of time, but this is the cooking method for a reason. Tossing the ingredients into a food processor or blender just isn't the same. I am Cambodian, and this is a true offense in our home when cooking.
Image credits: koalandi
#36
My mother-in-law's burrito recipe. Room temperature flour tortilla, boiled hot dog, canned black olives, and shredded carrots.source https://www.boredpanda.com/crimes-against-food/
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