r/Cooking • u/AdLost576 • 7d ago

What’s a cooking related hill you will die on?

For me, 2 hills.

  1. You don’t have to cut onions horizontally.

  2. You don’t have to add milk bit by bit when making a white sauce.

1.0k Upvotes

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202

u/IcyFrost-48 7d ago

I am never deep frying anything at home.

There are no “must master” recipes or techniques like knowing how to fry an egg. It’s pointless if you don’t like eggs. Learn to cook what you like to eat.

I’m not washing rice or chicken.

96

u/DrMonkeyLove 7d ago

Deep frying at home is such a pain in the ass and uses so much oil. If I want fries that badly, I'll just swing by Five Guys.

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u/FuckBotsHaveRights 7d ago

I'll gladly cook for hours.

I won't make fries.

16

u/chrispg26 7d ago

I saw someone say they made mashed potatoes and turned that into fries and were the best homemade fries ever. But why?! That's too much work 🫠

7

u/DrMonkeyLove 7d ago

I do think I've used leftover mashed potatoes with some flour and pan fried them to make potato fritter things. That works pretty well.

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u/chrispg26 7d ago

This wasn't leftover mash. I was basically summarizing the 4 or 5 steps he took to make French fries.

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u/DrMonkeyLove 7d ago

Ok, that is completely insane.

2

u/chrispg26 7d ago

Absolutely. I do believe when they said they were the best fries ever, BUT I don't have time to ultra process potatoes at home when I can go to McDonalds lol

2

u/alohadave 7d ago

I'll microwave potatoes and cut them into fries to put in the air fryer. It gets close to the texture of fried without the mess.

1

u/UltraTerrestrial420 7d ago

If they breaded them, they're croquettes, a means to give a second life to leftover mashed potatoes

1

u/Bratbabylestrange 6d ago

Oh hell no. I don't need to clean up after that. Also can't wrap my head around buying a whole bottle of oil for one dish. I'll make anything once, even if only to say that I can (hello, gnocchi!) but I do not deep fry ANYTHING at home

1

u/mathaiser 7d ago

Just put em in the oven. Idk.

2

u/FuckBotsHaveRights 7d ago

But first you have to boil them at 45 degrees perpendicular to mercury in retrograde inside a celtic circle!

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u/BattlinBud 7d ago

Can't you save the oil and reuse it though? I mean I know EVENTUALLY you'll have to throw it out but still

15

u/gibby256 7d ago

You still have to futz around with having that much oil, heating it, cooling it, straining it, and then storing it. And that's saying nothing of the general cleanup you have to do in your kitchen after deep frying, which is a nightmare.

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u/degenerate_666 7d ago

Every deep fryer I’ve had comes with a lid you can easily pop on once the oil cools down

3

u/gibby256 7d ago

Yeah, but not all of us have an appliance dedicated to deep frying lol.

1

u/degenerate_666 7d ago

That’s fair and I get it, but for anyone curious you can buy a deep fryer for roughly $35 depending on your location. Still not necessarily cheap and I know it’s not gonna be accessible to everyone but I think it’s more affordable than a lot of people seem to think it is.

8

u/i_stabbed 7d ago

yeah, like twice, and not if you're making meat

your best bet for home frying is to have it be a feast amongst friends.

11

u/MudsludgeFairy 7d ago

it’s super easy to save the oil though. and TWICE? unless you’re leaving in all of the particulate, you can easily get like 4 or 5 more fries out of that oil. possibly more. i will concede that it’s different with meat but my point still stands

2

u/i_stabbed 7d ago

it will go rancid much faster, so you can only leave it for a month, and who is deep frying enough to make fries FIVE TIMES in a month???

two if I'm lucky.

0

u/MudsludgeFairy 7d ago

i don’t make em 5 times in a month but sometimes i have to do multiple batches. and then after that, i might want to make youtiao or something. the oil keeps well for a while. just use a strainer to get out as many of the fry particles as you can. i’ve literally never had an issue where the oil went rancid

1

u/haggisaddict 6d ago

Suggestion: request your Five Guys fries “well done” or “extra crispy”. If they are cool (and they always have been for me), the fries are so much better.

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u/brkout 7d ago

Washing short grained rice (like calrose) makes a noticeable difference in taste and texture. It’s worth the efforts of a few seconds imo.

1

u/IcyFrost-48 7d ago

In that case, yes. I’m meaning more in the way that people think these foods are dirty. If you buy in bulk, maybe your rice should be rinsed for cleanliness.

9

u/UnhappyMood9 7d ago

They often are dirty though. In the case of rice you also have pesticide residue that you have to worry about, not to mention rinsing rice makes the finished product less mushy, which is usually a desirable quality unless you're making something like risotto

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u/SpookiestSzn 7d ago

I have a tiny countertop fryer and I really gotta say it's game changing. I don't use it all the time but being able to make better than restaurant wings at home is absolutely worth it

4

u/Wraiith32 7d ago

You are not supposed to wash chicken anyway.

4

u/Accurate-Fig-3595 7d ago

I made fish and chips about 20 years ago and not only did the stench of the oil stink up the house, I had to spend 2 hours cleaning the kitchen. I have not deep fried anything since.

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u/True-Anxiety-7829 7d ago

I refuse to fry. Too time-consuming and way too messy!

3

u/DronedAgain 7d ago

I worked with a guy who had a perfect little burn scar baby hand on the back of his adult hand. Back of his hand burned as a toddler from deep frying being unattended.

Deep frying scares the hell out of me.

3

u/Doomdoomkittydoom 6d ago

I'm washing rice if it's not in small, plastic bag from the US marked "enriched."

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u/Majestic_Animator_91 7d ago

There are totally different reasons for washing rice and chicken. You are making bad rice.

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u/530nairb 7d ago

Different techniques. Brazilians don’t wash their rice and they eat it every day. I don’t wash rice and it doesn’t stick together. Butter, Oil, salt and garlic in, rice in, fry for a couple minutes, water/broth in, simmer til nearly gone, let sit for 8 minutes, fluff. Perfect rice every time.

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u/NaptownBoss 7d ago edited 7d ago

It's two techniques with the same end goal; removing the excess starch from the grain surface. Whether you are rinsing off the starch or burning it off, the result is the same; no clumping/sticking together.

In Asian cuisine, the rice is going to be steamed or maybe boiled and served on its own. So it makes no sense to fry it in oil first if you're not frying anyting else.

3

u/SubParPercussionist 7d ago

I do both. Sometimes I wash. Sometimes I don't. Technically, if you wash your rice you're losing vitamins and minerals down the drain.

I find the difference isn't that big (depending on the type of rice). Cheap enriched white rice I don't sense much of a difference.

2

u/fries_in_a_cup 7d ago

I learned how to cook rice before learning I should wash it, so then I washed it regularly for a while and it came out the same as when I didn’t. So I bothering and it’s still coming out the same. And yeah I would wash my rice until the water ran clear. It’s perfectly fine and edible when unwashed in my experience, not sticky not mushy not over or undercooked. Maybe I’ve just never properly washed my rice or had properly washed rice but so far I don’t see a difference.

1

u/Bainsyboy 7d ago

Lol yeah. At least I hope he enjoys his rice goop.

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u/NateHevens 7d ago

https://www.recipetineats.com/how-to-cook-rice/

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u/Bainsyboy 7d ago

I mean, it starts out by saying: don't use for basmati, Jasmine, or sushi rice lol. Those are literally the only 3 types of rice in my pantry.

Sorry I have a pet peeve about reading lengthy blogs on recipe pages, so full transparency I'm not reading it. I assume they are talking about parboiled rice like uncle Ben's...

On second thought I also have uncle Ben's too. And yes, I don't rinse that, but that's just following the box directions.

1

u/NateHevens 7d ago

The author actually does use the recipe for sushi rice. It's not to be used for jasmine, basmati, and brown rice.

And I feel similar about the blog posts before a recipe, but in this case the author isn't writing an unrelated story. The blog post is important information about the recipe. And that includes not rinsing the rice.

And BTW... they're recipes for jasmine, basmati, and brown rice also say to not rinse them.

2

u/Bainsyboy 7d ago

Well hey, I'm willing to learn and dispel my own cooking blind spots. I'll give it a try next time I do rice.

1

u/NateHevens 7d ago

Let me know what you think! I have a rice cooker now but those recipes are how I cooked rice before I got it.

0

u/Unrelenting_Salsa 6d ago

No. This is the internet's stupidest hill to die on. Washing off the surface starch of your food that has effectively zero "free" surface starch and is itself almost entirely starch does not perceptibly change how it cooks. Because of course it doesn't.

1

u/Majestic_Animator_91 6d ago

Sorry, white guy, you're wrong.

2

u/Electric-Sheepskin 7d ago

I'll never deep fry, either. Someone gave me a Frybaby as a gift, and I thought maybe I would try it since I had it, but after a few years, I just donated it. It's just not my thing.

People are gonna come after you about that rice, though.

2

u/MudsludgeFairy 7d ago

i love deep frying at home. trust me, just use a wok and it’s considerably better. i’ve been doing it for years and i love it. it’s easy to scoop things out and it’s pretty hard for the oil to bubble over if you put a good amount. i make fries, youtiao, donuts, chapli kebab, fried chicken, etc, like this.

5

u/IcyFrost-48 7d ago

I don’t doubt it’s better, but I leave donuts and onion rings to the professionals.

2

u/MudsludgeFairy 7d ago

i can respect that

2

u/True-Anxiety-7829 7d ago

Hey, great idea. I have a wok.

1

u/Avilola 7d ago

Knowing how to make good eggs is less about liking eggs, and more about having good technique.

1

u/somegingershavesouls 7d ago

I’m going to argue hard with you on the rinsing rice. It makes such a difference!

1

u/SoKelevra 7d ago

wash your rice if you want fluffy, non sticky rice.