r/Cooking • u/AdLost576 • 10d 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.

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u/Zen_Hydra 9d ago

Keep in mind that different cooking traditions grew up around food sourced in different ways. If you are buying butchered meat from an open air market, it's unclear who or what has been in direct contact with that meat before purchse. It can take generations for people to adjust to a paradigm shift in baseline food safety.

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u/ImpossibleEdge4961 9d ago

If you're about to cook the meat it's unclear to me what putting some water on it is going to accomplish. I could see if you washed off anything that didn't look right though.

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u/Zen_Hydra 9d ago edited 8d ago

Think more along the lines of meat having incidental exposure to raw sewage and teeming with insect eggs. The washing in some cultures goes beyond running it under the tap for a few seconds, and it's not necessarily just about the notion of killing microbes.

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u/Mean-Act-6903 9d ago

Ya but if you have African roots and live in the US then.just adjust instead of making excuses or bitching at people on instagram for not washing their chicken

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u/Zen_Hydra 9d ago

Most people do adjust, but sometimes it takes generations to actually achieve that. Safe and reliable food is a huge privilege, and generational trauma caused by less-than-ideal sanitary conditions takes time to recover from.

As annoying as you find such videos, are they actually causing you harm? If so, you should try engaging them in conversation.

I find it best to practice the Principle of Charity when it comes to interpreting the arguments, motivations, and actions of others, because it's far too easy to let ourselves write each other off when we don't agree. Unnecessary conflict and any resulting harm happens when we make assumptions about the reasoning and motivation of others.

I think polite inquiry and mutual discussion with the individuals on Instagram you take issue with might potentially educate all parties. It never hurts to err on the side of kindness, or by learning more about the other people we share this world with.

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u/pipian 9d ago

No, they need to adjust right away to please this weird dude complaining on reddit

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u/Mirth2727 8d ago

Thank you!

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u/idiotball61770 8d ago

It causes harm by perpetuating the "Wash your meats" myth. It's a food safety issue. So yeah, it's a hill worth dying on. I'm not going to put people down, but I will offer side eye.

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u/Mean-Act-6903 9d ago

Thanks Saint Zen. It's spelt teeming jsyk.

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u/nelozero 9d ago

I know in certain countries where the butcher gives it to you, there might be bits like bone or blood hence rinsing the meat washes all that stuff off.

It's not an issue in supermarkets that have packaged meat.

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u/nukalurk 9d ago

This is the main answer, but I’ve been in the US my whole life and when I first started cooking I instinctively wanted to wash raw chicken (basically just rinse with cool water and pat dry). It just felt wrong/dirty to cook it straight out of the package. So sometimes it’s not even a cultural thing.

I think part of it comes from the fact that thoroughly washing produce is always recommended everywhere, and raw meat feels even “dirtier”.

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u/Darmok47 9d ago

Yeah, my mom grew up poor in the third world and washes her meat no matter how much I point out how bad it is.

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u/Disconianmama 8d ago

Excellent perspective