That’s the correct technique for paring according to Alton Brown.
I’ve always heard that you aren’t supposed to CUT something with the knife blade toward you. I suppose that peeling is technically cutting, but I never thought so.
Another reason might of course be that unsalted butter allows you to add salt to taste; after all, it’s much easier to add more than it is to remove some. I slightly messed up a bolognese recently because I was experimenting with using pancetta at the start and forgot about the higher salt content, so between that and the salted butter it ended up pretty overseasoned without me adding any extra.
Still tasted ace, mind. Pancetta is brilliant.
My sins are legion.
I almost never preheat. I don’t measure carefully. I never sift anything. I can’t resist slicing into homemade bread as soon as it’s out of the oven. I never let eggs warm up to room temperature before adding them to the recipe. I never peel spuds, not even if they’re going to be mashed. I use all-purpose flour even when the recipe calls for cake flour. I’ve been known to add cheese to seafood-and-pasta dishes.
You shouldn’t do that anyway. I don’t know why so many restaurants do. The result is a soggy bland potato rather than the the crisp-skinned tasty delight of my childhood memories.
I regularly thaw meat on the counter, BUT I leave it in the package and wrap it in a dish towel for a bit of insulation. This works out just right to have thawed but still cold meat ready for dinner if I take it out before I go to work. I similarly thaw turkeys in one-two days in a picnic cooler. IME it takes about a week in the 'fridge.
re. the wet vs dry measuring cups: The only reason for this is that the dry cups are meant to be full to the top so you can strike off dry ingedients if you are anal and the wet cup has extra space over the top line so you don’t spill… I routinely use just one cup for all the ingrediants, and I try to work it out so that the later ones wash out the leftovers from the earlier ones.
Another rule I didn’t know about. Soon I’m going to have a whole list of rules I didn’t even know I was flagrantly disregarding!
I share most of the above, and more
However, I don’t counter thaw because my barking friend would have it gone in no time. He hasn’t figured out the sink yet, so that’s where it goes.
Cake flour – pfft
Unsalted butter - no, no, no
Different measuring cups - yea, right
raw dough - mmmmm
wash hands after any contact with shudder raw meat - not likely
use by dating for anything other than milk - just marketing genius at work
combined with:
throwing perfectly good/wrapped tightly food out of the freezer just cause it’s been hanging out for a while
Blasphemer 
That is probably a mistake.
I’m in college, so all of them. Reading through this thread I learned a lot. Now I can willfully disregard the rules instead of doing it out of ignorance.
I’ve got one set of rules that I’ll follow when I’m cooking.
I am far, far more finicky and following the rules when I try my hand at non-bread baking.
I rarely let things warm to room temperature before cooking with them.
I have had rare pork. (overall, meh. I’ll stick with it well-done. It’s just not the difference in flavor I notice with beef)
I will simmer the ever-loving hell out of my pinto beans when I make refried beans.
I like chilis and beef stews to have the meat falling apart, so they get cooked for a long time in my kitchen. If I’m counting on vegetables being recognizable when I dish up the finished product, I’ll add a second batch of veggies to the completed stew to satisfy the need some people have for visible veggies.
I use a lot of “by guess and by God” measurements when I’m cooking. I never do that for any but one or two baking recipes I make.
I don’t measure* SHIT*! If it looks right, it tastes right!
Did I mention I drink?
Wait wait wait. Isnt chili supposed to have beans in it? Is this some sort of sophisticated cooking woosh that I am not picking up on, or have I been laboring under an incorrect definition of ‘chili’?
I dont like chili anyway, the presence of beans really wouldnt swing my around to the pro-chili camp, but I thought chili was essentially mostly beans.
love
yams!!
There are regional differences in just what constitutes a chili. Just as there are for BBQ, and cornbread, to name a couple other dishes I’ve seen heated arguments fought over. There are even Philistines who contend that Manhattan Clam Soup should be given the honorable name of Chowder.
I can’t say where it is that the bean-less chili is considered the standard - I think it’s Texas and other areas generally in the South, but I wouldn’t want to wager anything I cared about on that understanding. For myself, chili without beans just doesn’t seem right.
I add alcohol to a pan over a fire. Never once singed my eyebrows. This includes the high octane stuff!
As you can see by post #28 above, there are some strong opinions about what should be in chili (or what should be called chili). Suffice it to say, never ask for beans in your chili in Texas. You’ll get a bowl full of shredded beef stewed in spicy pepper sauce and you’ll like it because that’s what they call chili and you don’t want to tell them otherwise. If you go to Cincinnati and ask for chili 5 ways, you’ll get it with ground beef and beans served over spaghetti and topped with chopped onions and shredded cheddar.
We’ve had a few discussions about chili here in the past and it can get pretty heated so best we not go there. It’s probably worse than the Conservatives vs Liberals discussions.
I wash my mushrooms under running water! OMG! (Not portobellos though.) Take that, Rachael Ray!
Regarding aluminum foil and baked potatoes –
Restaurants wrap them in foil because it keeps them hot. It also makes the skin inedible and makes them too soggy. But some people think they MUST be wrapped in foil! To me, they taste horrible. Bake a potato in the oven for an hour naked and see what a crispy skinned yummy product you get!
As for my sins, I can think of only one (besides most of those mentioned above; thawing, etc.) – I put way too much buttermilk in my cornbread. Like two cups when it calls for a cup and a half. And let me tell you it is Dee. Lish. Us.
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Measuring cups are measuring cups. A cup is a cup.
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Thawing meat on the counter is the simplest way.
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Unsalted butter is a waste of perfectly good butter.
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Most of the measurements given in recipes for herbs and spices need to be doubled or tripled. (A paltry teaspoon of cinnamon in the oatmeal cookies? Faugh! A tablespoon at least!)
Every time I make chili, it is different. Last night I used refried black beans, and added orange marmalade (along with the standard spices). If that was a mistake, you couldn’t tell the way everyone wolfed it down. I also use ketchup by preference, not pureed tomatoes or whatever.
But measuring into your hand isn’t a mistake - it saves time fussing with measuring spoons. For a while, you measure it out with a spoon, dump it into your hand, and look at it. After a while you can recognize what is a teaspoon, what is a tablespoon, and then you can skip the measuring. You are always going to taste and correct the seasoning anyway.
If it tastes good and nobody gets sick, you did the recipe right.
Regards,
Shodan