It needs more butter. Yes, I’m sure. No, I don’t need to taste it. Add butter.
I’m so jealous. Sounds like a wonderful experience.
…
Since I’m a simple cook, all mine have been mentioned:
One measuring cup to rule them all.
Which I don’t usually bother with since I’ve got a pretty good eye, quirky taste, and a preference for very forgiving recipes.
I thaw meat on the counter. If I’m planning a meal in advance, that is…usually I only have time to stick it in the microwave. Because I’m hungry, dammit.
Rarely, if ever, bother pre-heating the oven.
Eh, I don’t even make instant potatoes anymore. I’ll buy Shedd’s Country Crock potatoes. Yes, I’m that lazy. But in my defense, they make a “loaded” variety with bacon and sour cream. Mmmmm!
I don’t either, because I use the 96% lean stuff, and there’s practically nothing to drain.
I also put three kinds of beans in my chili, red, black, and pinto. I like beans, except for kidney beans.
Originally Posted by levdrakon
Pretty much all recipes which use ground beef say to brown the beef then drain. I never drain.
If you use buffalo, you really don’t have much (if anything) to drain.
Recipes always say to salt and drain sliced eggplant.
I never do this.
I like beans in chili, too, but I realize that many cooks have strong feelings about this.
I use recipes only when baking. With everything else, I just get real spontaneous, which means I never know what will go into a dish until the time comes.
If I need to defrost something, I throw it into a bowl or pot in the sink, and fill with hot tap water. When the water starts to cool I replace it, usually 2-3 times.
Just the thought of eating unsalted butter reminds me of a quote from the movie A Family Thing where Aunt T says, “Don’t know why anybody’d eat unsalted butter. Might as well eat Vaseline. Got about as much flavor.”
So, is that true or not? 
Oh, and a rule I constantly break is that I spray Pam on a HOT PAN!!!
No, it isn’t.
Salt is added to butter for its preservative qualities. Though it is a bit saltier, that is more of an unintended result.
I cook with regular table salt. I’ve been meaning to upgrade my salt and see if it really makes a difference.
I use the garlic that comes in those little jars, just because I’ve never got into the habit of keeping fresh garlic around. I should really try that one day, too.
And maybe I should re-think my unsalted butter, although it tastes pretty good to me. I was actually proud of myself for using real butter, because I was raised on that diet margarine crap.
Salted butter has a longer shelf life, so with unsalted butter you’re more likely to get “fresh” butter. Not that “fresh” = “better”, since salt preserves the flavor, but I can see where people would think unsalted is better.
I use Plugra. It’s delicious.
I don’t either. I’ve never had a problem with the resultant dishes turning out bitter, as many cookbooks and TV chefs say will happen if you don’t salt and drain eggplant.
Just buy decent eggplants in a decent produce market when they’re not astronomically expensive (ie, in season), and it shouldn’t be a problem, or at least it hasn’t been for me. Or maybe I’m just more tolerant of bitter flavors than some people- I like beer and coffee, which some people think are too bitter.
I generally prefer the long, skinny Japanese or Chinese eggplants to the big globe eggplants. The only thing I make with eggplant that would really work better with the globe eggplants is eggplant parmesan, and I usually use frozen fried eggplant cutlets from Trader Joe’s for that- much easier, and, most of the year, cheaper than whole eggplants (I don’t know how the economics of this works).
Amen to that. If Mr. Neville wants utensils that have to be babied, he can wash them himself. Me, I use the ones that can go in the dishwasher, including the cheap chef’s knife that cost $6 at Safeway, whenever possible.
I wouldn’t cut raw meat on any cutting board that couldn’t go through the dishwasher, so that rules out wood. The dishwasher uses higher temperatures for longer than hand washing, which just has to be safer when you’re dealing with bacteria from raw meat.
I’m afraid to do this. In fact, I won’t even preheat a pan before I put oil or stuff in it. I did this once when I was in college, and some of the oil must have splashed on the burner or something, and there were little flames for a second or so. I’ve been afraid to do anything like that ever since. And it scares me when the pan hisses when I put stuff in it…
No accounting for taste. I make Brussels sprouts that are actually edible, as opposed to the mushy, sulfurous ones that I (mercifully, not very often) had to eat during childhood, about which the less said, the better. When I make them for my dad, he complains that they aren’t cooked enough. Takes all kinds to make a world, I guess.
Yeah, it kills me. “Don’t use my expensive teak cooking utensils!” No prob. I can get a better variety set of bamboo cooking utensils at Wal-Mart for $5, and with regular use they’ll be well seasoned in a few weeks and I’ll wash 'em however I want and they’ll last 5-10 years. Six bucks. And they’ll get used.
Same thing with non-stick teflon type pans. If you find it handy, buy a $10 dollar one and use the hell out of it and buy a new one in three or four years. Don’t buy a $100 dollar one and carefully guard it in the cupboard for twenty years because you dare not actually use it, for precious’ sake.
This is my kitchen stuff philosophy. I’m not very domestic, and tend to be tired when I’m cooking (before breakfast or after work), so I’m not unlikely to make a mistake and damage or destroy some cookware. I figure if you’re like me, it’s better to buy cheap stuff- that way, I’m not out as much money when I use the wrong utensils on it, or whatever.
Ditto with me. If you shop very carefully, you can get a very good chef’s knife for thirty or forty dollars. I’d much rather do that, and use the crap out of it, and replace it in, say, eighteen months, than spend three hundred bucks on a beautiful, razor-sharp knife that can slice through bone like butter but that has to be hand-washed in pH-balanced water and rubbed with a virgin chamois between uses.
(Of course, if you shop stupidly, you can spend that same thirty or forty bucks and come home with a knife that turns into a useless pointy club in a month.)
Seriously, my favorite restaurants have a chef’s counter where you can sit and watch the professionals work, and reflect on the inexpensive-but-practical (and not “cheap”) equipment, and how beat-to-snot it all is. I’ve never once seen a ceramic knife in a working (non-sushi) kitchen, for example. There’s a lesson there.
Who says pointy clubs are useless? You obviously haven’t had to battle many orcs in your kitchen.
Don’t need to. I distract 'em with Bacon Salt and then I just nerve pinch 'em.
What I tend to do, if I haven’t planned ahead, is use the microwave to bring the temperature of the meat up from -20c to somewhere closer to zero, which means that it can then defrost fully on the counter without sitting around for hours. It does mean being attentive while microwaving it, though, to catch it before it starts to melt.
My $230 knife that’s sharpened weekly with a diamond stone and can take the head off of a robot made of bricks in one motion has a lifetime warranty. Have fun plopping down $30/year on knives. Mine’s gonna last forever 
I’ve never seen one in a kitchen, period. Ceramic is brittle and it’s very easy to break if you drop your knife. Accidents like that happen in a kitchen quite often, and ceramic is just, well, a bad idea.