10 cooking advice that never works

Do you boil your potatoes and eggs in salted water? Stop, now! Some cooking advice has existed since so long that they are regarded as ultimate cooking truth. Here are 10 cooking advice that never worked and never will!

01/ Wash pasta to stop it from cooking

Some foods like spinach, eggs and potatoes require a cold bath to stop the cooking process after it is done boiling but pasta is not one of them. Pasta does not have too much carryover cooking time, thus does not need to be blanched. In fact, rinsing pasta also removes starch coating that helps the sauce stick to the pasta.

02/ Remove seeds from chilli peppers to reduce heat

Capsaicin gives hotness to chilli peppers and as it happens, the seeds do not have much of it. The hotness of chilli peppers actually comes from white membranes and when the white part is removed, the hotness sticks to the seeds, making them taste spicier.

03/ Add ‘potato’ to a salty dish to reduce saltiness

It is popular cooking advice that adding a whole potato to your cooked dish can absorb excess salt in a salty dish. This advice doesn’t work because the potato becomes salty as it absorbs some salt but it doesn’t act as a magnet for the salt. Congrats! Following this advice will give you a still salty dish and a brined boiled potato.

04/ Stop cooking chicken if it’s not pink any longer

Poultry, especially when not properly cooked is one of the biggest sources of diseases. So if the chicken no longer appears pink on the pan, don’t just assume that it is cooked through. Always use a meat thermometer and only consume chicken when it reaches 165 degrees C.

05/ Put oil to pasta water to prevent it from sticking

If you are really interested in preventing your pasta from cooking, stir it continuously while cooking. Adding oil to boiling water doesn’t work because it mostly stays on the water surface. Also, when the water is strained, it sticks to the pasta and prevents the sauce from seasoning it.

06/ Rinse chicken repeatedly before cooking to remove bacteria

If you reach the recommended internal temperature, most disease-causing bacteria will not survive the cooking process. However, repeatedly rinsing your chicken just puts your kitchen surfaces and hands at risk of spreading bacteria.

07/ Add vinegar to water while boiling eggs to make peeling easier

Vinegar plays no role in making eggs easier to peel. If you first boil the water and then put in the eggs in and cook on lower heat for 10 minutes, they will peel easily. You must shock them by putting them in ice water before peeling.

08/ Marinate the meats to make them tender

It is a long believed cooking advice that marinating the meat makes them tender. WRONG! No matter how much marination you add, it will only stay at the surface and doesn’t get deeper. Thus, marinating can make your meat flavoursome but won’t change the texture.

09/ Put salt to water to make it boil faster

So sorry to break it to you but adding salt does not make it boil faster unless you are intending on adding an amount that can render making your food inedible. The amount of salt that we usually add is not significant and does not make a difference to the cooking time.

from LifeStyle