Chef

Or, the recipes that are more trouble than they’re worth. Mine are:

Miso soup - the dashi smell always gets stuck in my nose and ruins it for me. I’ve tried a few instant soup mixes, and they were fine but it’s usually cheap enough to just get this from a restaurant instead.

And

Anything with aioli.

I’m curious to hear what you all think! If this has already been posted somewhere, please let me know 🙂

I wager everyone here knows some of these things, but I’m gonna list everything I can think of in regards to eating healthy and well. I’m gonna make this a list with sections, so hopefully it’s easy enough to parse.

—————-LEGUMES———————

-Buy these dried as often as possible. Keep a stock of beans, lentils, and dried chickpeas around if you can. They’re cheap, almost always available, and virtually imperishable. As such, assuming you don’t throw them out and keep them properly stored, buying these is a 100% return on your investment.

-Legumes are one of the most versatile options in your kitchen. As long as you soak them and put them in the fridge before you go to bed they’ll be available the next day to cook quickly. These are the best thing to have if you’re looking to stretch a meal because of their nutrient density and the fact that they’re just damn delicious on their own.

-Look into middle-eastern and African cuisine for creative ways to use these ingredients. Some really common examples are lentil curry, hummus, falafels, and putting chickpeas in a shakshuka. This isn’t a recipe post, so look up how to make them yourself - some grandma has a better (and probably even cheaper) recipe than I do.

————-GRAINS AND CEREALS ————

-Like legumes, these are very versatile. However, I find most people know very little about them outside of wheat and maybe oats. I highly recommend learning what the most commonly eaten grans and cereals in your locality are, and then finding the affordable ones. There will be at least one. I guarantee it.

-FLOUR is an essential staple, unless you’re celiac or gluten free - a topic on which I won’t speak because I’m confident anyone who has to deal with those issues knows more than I do. I recommend grabbing all-purpose flour due to its gluten content being a middle ground between low-gluten pastry flour and high-gluten bread flour. You can still use it to make bread, and it has a myriad other uses as a binder or thickener for sauces.

-RICE is amazing, as most know already, but seriously - it’s one of the most important crops in the world. It’s kept civilizations alive on its back for all of recorded history, and it’ll keep you alive, too. There is no better “fill me up” food I can think of. Wait for those huge sacks of rice to go on sale (it happens pretty frequently), then buy 2. They last forever. Ideally grab long-grain rice if you’re just looking for a side-dish or fried rice base, but in a pinch short grain’ll do

I learned recently that I should not be eating uncooked mushrooms because they are poisonous and can cause stomach aches ☠️

We have always used the whole mushroom and never bothered to strip them of their outer skin or discard their stalks. We add them at the very last minute to our dishes when cooking so that we can retain their texture as much as possible.

Now I'm wondering if we've been practicing poor mushroom etiquette this entire time.

Edit: Thank you to everyone who has answered this question. I really appreciate knowing that the button mushrooms we eat are okay for raw consumption and that there's no specific reason to not use their stalks/eat the mushroom whole. :)

Also, to clarify, we're vegetarian and avoid meaty textures whenever possible. We add fresh mushrooms at the very end of our cooking so as to heat them through but retain as much of the original uncooked texture as possible.

All old mushrooms go into pureed soup after cooking them down for eons. :)

Edit 2: I've removed the comparison to herbs from my original write up. It wasn't a proper comparison and has led to several nasty DMs.

I’ll start. Whenever the main characters have to share a bed/space for body heat and it just escalates from there.

Chef’s kiss, Michelin star, and all the food related jokes.

What’s yours?

Edit: Wow! Thanks for all the replies! I can’t get to everyone, but thanks for sharing! Whoever gave me my award, thank youuuuuuu! It’s my first one ever. 🥰

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I live with family and I’ve always just used the knives we have. They were sharp enough , they cut the food and did what needed to be done.
I was gifted a new chef’s knife over Christmas and using it for the first time felt like what getting glasses for the first time felt like. Im experiencing the world differently now. The knife practically slid through all the veggies I was cutting. It felt like it was an extension of my arm. I can’t believe I’ve been settling for shitty knives my whole life.

Has anyone else had this moment when they first got a decent knife?

Edit: yall I just got some random chefs knife and now you’re all making me look forward to when I can buy a legit well crafted knife 😭