15 utterly ridiculous cooking tips from your parents

My mother’s cookbook says you should boil Brussels sprouts for forty minutes, and some people learn at home that you should wash chicken before it goes into the pan. In short: parents don’t know EVERYTHING. Here are fifteen examples of silly cooking tips people got from their parents.

It makes quite a difference whether your parents can cook or not. Did you think you didn’t like mushrooms simply because your father always stirred them into everything when they were almost raw? Then you’re in for a treat when someone fries them until golden brown in butter.

Gray yolk

‘This is how my parents cooked eggs: put them on in cold water, boil them for fifteen minutes, and then leave them until the cooking water had cooled. Yuck, those greenish-gray yolks.’

Al dente mushroom

‘My father taught me that you should add mushrooms, such as button mushrooms, to a dish at the very last minute. So they were practically raw. I always thought I didn’t like mushrooms. Until I ate fried mushrooms one day—I went completely crazy! So delicious! Much better when they’re cooked.’

Well done

‘When I still lived at home, I didn’t understand why everyone was so crazy about steak. My mother had to cook for eight children, she bought cheap meat and cooked it until it was as dry as cardboard. And then we were told how lucky we were that we could eat steak! I really didn’t enjoy it, but as a child you simply eat whatever is put in front of you without complaining. Only when I moved out and had steak at a dinner party did I realize that I simply hadn’t understood it for eighteen years. It’s my favorite meat now!’

Cooked to mush

‘You have to boil vegetables, always. Whereas I do like grilled and roasted vegetables.’

Looks the same

‘My mother is a sweetheart, but she really can’t cook. She did her best, but it was a disaster every time. If she found a delicious recipe, she would immediately adapt it. If it called for 200 grams of grated cheese, she thought that was too much. So she used half, and 100 grams of grated carrots “because they look the same.”’

Cooked through

‘According to my parents, meat really had to be cooked all the way through—in other words, like a shoe sole. They would only eat chicken once it was completely dried out and overcooked. Steak that was still a little pink? No way, they wouldn’t touch it.’

Restaurant secret

‘We always ate margarine. I thought restaurants had a secret technique for making butter taste so delicious. Turns out it was simply salted butter.’

Not poisoned

‘My parents always precooked the meat for the barbecue before putting it on the grill. They were afraid it otherwise wouldn’t cook through. That’s why I hated barbecue chicken so much: dry, gray and tasteless. A few years ago, they came to our place for a barbecue. My father thought I was going to poison him with chicken or pork that went straight onto the barbecue. Afterwards I heard: the best chicken he had ever eaten.’

Charred

‘After I had barbecued on my own for a year, I realized that you don’t have to grill the meat pitch-black, as we used to at home.’

A la creme

‘Fish fingers, canned spinach and rice were on the table at our house almost every week. I had no idea spinach could also be delicious until I once ate a salad with fresh spinach at my in-laws’.’

Spud

‘If there are no potatoes, it isn’t a meal. Not true, but my parents didn’t know any different.’

Sand scrubs the stomach

‘My grandmother had some, um… interesting views on food. For example: eating foreign dishes was the same as treason. She never washed vegetables, because sand scrubs the stomach. She was the only one who knew how to make a dish, and it was unforgivable to put your own spin on it (an insult aimed at my mother). If something was spoiled, she wouldn’t throw it away but would cook it into a complete pulp. And then she’d be offended when nobody wanted to eat it.’

Tasteless

‘According to my mother, I always had to leave the salt out of the recipe.’

Too sweet

‘My father was genuinely offended when my fiancée added carrots to her Bolognese sauce to make it a little sweeter. His mother is from Sicily, so he knows how it’s done. I looked it up online and what do you know: the original Italian recipe also contains carrot. I always make it that way now, much tastier than with sugar in the sauce.’

In the mash

‘As a child, I knew no other way than that mashed potatoes came from a packet.’

Read also:

• 10x cooking tips from Gordon Ramsay
• These are the very best cooking tips from star chefs
• These really are brilliant kitchen hacks from real life

Source: Bored Panda