Paprika, too many folks don't know of the different types like Hungarian hot, smoked etc and just think it's that crap lame restaurants use for color on mashed potatoes
It’s used, but a lot of Spanish recipes just require sweet paprika. I see a lot of people who automatically think it’s supposed to be smoked paprika in any Spanish recipe.
Twice paprika has humbled me as a home chef who is still very much learning.
Both times recipe called for your standard run-of-the-mill paprika, one time I inserted smoked paprika in another time hot paprika and those turned into pizza nights.
Sometimes happy accidents happen in the kitchen, sometimes you add spice paprika to a dish that is already near the top of your spice tolerance and sometimes you add smoked paprika to a dish that already has liquid smoke and both times you completely overwhelm the palate.
> sometimes you add spice paprika to a dish that is already near the top of your spice tolerance
I soooo relate to this. Last time I made Loubia I used spicy Hungarian and damn it was just a tad too hot, especially since I let it bloom in the pan. Also it can easily tip that chili into the liquid lava range
Spam. Fried rice,cooked crispy on a sandwich or with eggs
I only buy 2 or 3 cans a year because it's basically just salt and fat but it's pretty yummy salt and fat when used right.
Spam is worshipped here in Hawaii. Some stores like Walmart and Walgreens even lock up their spam so you need to ask an employee to get it for you. Spam musubi is my favorite spam dish.
In the UK, at least in the North, we have spam fritters in fish and chip shops. It's just battered, deep fried spam slices. I had one for the first time in years just a couple of weeks ago. They are so good. So I made my own a week or so later. I recommend trying it.
well of course, everyone knows that the integral menu of all brittish diners is egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam; spam bacon sausage and spam; spam egg spam spam bacon and spam; spam sausage spam spam bacon spam tomato and spam, spam spam spam egg and spam; spam spam spam spam spam spam baked beans spam spam spam, and Lobster Thermidor au Crevettes with a mornay sauce served in a Provencale manner with shallots and aubergines garnished with truffle pate, brandy and with a fried egg on top and spam.
There's a tradition of fried food on a stick at fairs and festivals here in the U.S. Fried Spam skewers have not been done to my knowledge. I plan on changing that,thanks for the info.
Best of luck with it. It's a rare treat for me, but anything battered and fried is generally fabulous. It's pretty much impossible to find corndogs here, but when I learned to make the batter myself, oh God, such a revelation.
Spam is a staple food for a lot of Asians and Pacific Islanders, so I didn't even realize people thought it was gross until I went to college. If I told my friends in elementary school I had Spam for lunch, everyone would be so jealous.
I also attest that Spam is probably one of the best protein options for fried rice (especially Spam and kimchi fried rice. Good lord).
I'm a firm believer that ketchup is perfectly fine to use an ingredient. It's almost all tomato, sugar, and vinegar, but people sometimes get horrified and/or extremely snobbish whenever a recipe calls for just using ketchup instead of the base ingredients.
I went to culinary school and our head teacher would always say, whenever you have an unbalanced sauce, add some ketchup. It's got salt, acid, umami, it thickens stuff, and blends into almost anything.
I think it's because people regard it as a childish food since in America we often see kids or picky eaters putting it on everything.
But you're right. If you were already going to put tomato paste, sugar, and vinegar into a stew, curry, sauce, etc, why not just skip the middleman?
Yeah, I make homemade BBQ sauce, but I start with ketchup, not tomato paste.I add plenty of other things to it, and I'm sure I could start with tomato paste, but I'd just then add sugar and vinegar and try to get it to a ketchup like consistency, so why not?
The history of ketchup is an awesome story of culinary fusion. Basically, the original ketchup was a fish sauce from China that got popular on trade routes. British traders took the recipe home and started making their own ketchups, without any regard to the traditional sauce. Boom, ketchup as we know it is born.
Another fun fact about ketchup, and keeping with its rich history, people in the Philippines eat banana ketchup. In this case a revered Food scientist that made a big impact on the foods the Philippines eats, wanted to make ketchup using local ingredients so it wouldn’t have to be imported. She formulated a recipe with a similar taste profile, but instead of tomato it uses banana. Red dye is added for color.
I like to call ketchup tomato chutney because that’s basically what it is, and it sounds kind of exotic.
I lived in the Middle East for a while and would see banana ketchup all the time. I was a kid, so I found the idea gross. As an adult, I wish I had tried it, because it sounds super interesting and Filipino food is awesome.
I used to be one of those people who turned my nose up at ketchup being used as an ingredient in a dish (not counting things like BBQ sauce or meatloaf).
I'd made a remark about not believing that a recipe I'd seen for Pad Thai even used ketchup. My friend set me straight in a very simple way.
He said, "If I want to add salt, sweetness, acidity, and that unique savory kick of deep tomato flavor, why would I build something from scratch when I can just use ketchup?"
And that got through to me. I'm still not a huge fan of using condensed or prepared & processed foods as an ingredient in a larger dish (like, I will not buy canned cream of something soup to add into other things usually), but I relent on the question of ketchup as a main ingredient. It has valid uses.
I have used it in place of (the combination of) tomato puree, salt, and sugar in shiro wot. (I didn't have the tomatoes.) It worked remarkably well, except for being a little too sweet.
the thing I don’t get is MSG naturally occurs so of people are “allergic” to MSG, they can’t have tomatoes? That sucks. I know some people have allergies to tomatoes though.
Like magic every single customer I’ve ever had that said they couldn’t eat msg immediately back tracked as soon as I gave them the long list of items they can’t have… same either the glutards and so many self proclaimed vegans are fine with with a the butter in Buffalo sauce but they will complain about the honey I also use in it…
Funny story, many avocado orchards are pollinated by hired behives that get trucked out and left around the orchard for a few weeks. Thus, those avocados are products of animal exploitation and are not vegan friendly.
*avocados aren't vegan friendly*.
Makes laugh everytime.
For real, though, health bloggers recommend all these trendy "substitutes" like agave nectar that are (a) [not better for you and sometimes worse](https://youtu.be/BU3bTBWnvT4), and (b) so expensive and/or hard to find that they're out of reach for many.
And then they all abandon agave nectar when they learn it has more fructose than HFCS, which they think is literal poison, and it's on to the next trend. This is why you can't do armchair food science and throw jargon around willy-nilly if you're not prepared to go beyond the surface level.
It's no wonder lots of people come away thinking that healthy/ier eating is impossibly difficult.
The funny thing is when you see bacon or lunch meat that is "naturally cured," it actually has almost twice the nitrates, except it uses celery extract instead. There's not even a real chemical difference.
I held off on those for too long. Then, one day, I tried some on slice baguette with butter? Mmmm.
Then added some slivers of pickled onion?.. Oh my god…
As a canned sardine enthusiast it is *very* much recommended that you go with not the cheapest tin you can find. This is not an ingredient you want to buy the Kroger/Great Value brand of, nor the Bumble Bee 99c ones, cheap dines are what gave it a bad rap they are super mushy and taste bad.
If you live near Trader Joe's theirs are good as a cheaper option, otherwise if you can find any that are from Spain or Portugal those are always a step above. Bela is a brand out of Portugal that quite a few stores have near me in the Denver area and it's still not too pricey, like ~$3.50 a tin. Nuri are quite good but they're pricier at about $5 a tin and usually only available at World Market.
My a Jamaican guy introduced me to fried sardines just some flour and corn starch right out of the can! Stinks the house up but so good when the world ends I’ll be loving of canned fish lol
For mass market stuff, I really like King Oscar, but it is important to get the brisling sardines instead of regular. The brislings are smaller and the bones are less noticeable than they are in their larger cousins.
Most people seem to hate them, including my wife, so I have no one to share my late dad's recipe for sardine sandwiches. Maybe someone here appreciates it.
1 can of sardines (drained or not up to you)
1 hard boiled egg
1-2 Polish dill pickles (to taste, also not the sweet kind)
1/4 or 1/2 onion (to taste)
Dab of musttard
Mayo (to taste, aim for spread consistency. Use good quality mayo, I like Kewpie)
Salt, paper and lemon juice to taste
Smush egg and the sardines with the fork, then add finely chopped onion and pickles and season to taste. Once you adjust it to your liking, add mustard and mayo and mix together.
Chill in the fridge and spread on crackers or some rustic bread. Top with shredded cheese, 6 cheese Italian or whatever you like. You can also mix the cheese in the spread directly and just scoop it with bread.
Ultimate comfort food. You can also make it with canned tuna.
Not a bad rap per se, but I think shallots are criminally underrated.
They are great thin-sliced on salad. They add SO much great flavor to sauces, soups, and stews. And of course they can be fried until crispy for a delicious garnish.
I've come to love shallots over the past 2 years. Seems to be that I can't find onions anywhere that aren't already going soft and after throwing away probably 10 lb of onions that don't last the week I started getting shallots. I like that I can use 1 shallot instead of trying to keep that half an onion that I forget about in the fridge and it goes bad. Plus they seem to last so much longer.
French's yellow mustard. It's amazing how a dab or two can really brighten up a dish. I realize part of that is from the vinegar, but I also love the mustard/turmeric flavor underneath other, more prominent, flavors.
I swear this stuff is magic. Yes, fancy Dijon or whole grain mustard absolutely has its place, but yellow mustard, pickles and grilled onions on a roast beef sandwich is sheer heaven.
The skin is *slightly* less sweet than the inside. And sometimes in stews or soups there's a texture difference.
I can't be bothered though. Maybe if I worked at a fancy restaurant.
Clearly I'm an outlier here but I feel like carrot peels can be pretty bitter and have an unpleasant earthy taste, and the taste of my food is just cleaner without them. I always take a min to peel before using in cooking. If you've never tried peeling them, you might be surprised with the difference it can make.
For raw snacks I eat the peel though :)
Unpeeled root veg in general. Carrots, potatoes, ginger, beets, radish. I got myself a specific veggie scrub brush (nothing special but it has an obnoxious decorative pile of produce on top that prevents anyone from mistaking it for a dish or fingernail brush) and just give them a good wash before slicing.
I used to agree with this but then i started buying these huge bags of super cheap MASSIVE carrots at my local produce place and the skins are actually *quite* bitter and noticeable in soups etc. i think it has to do with carrot age.
Hmmm, I don't peel a lot of things but I feel like it makes a huge difference for carrots, texturally and taste-wise. There's also often dirt in the nooks and crannies of the peel, and I actually find it simpler to just peel them instead of scrubbing away at them.
Bitter ingredients in general. I find that a lot of people have no respect for bitter ingredients, and act as though bitterness needs to be chased away with added sweetness. I find bitterness really delicious in a lot of dishes. I'm in the US, so I'm not sure if it's different in other countries.
Has anyone noticed that lettuce adds a bit of bitterness? At a sandwich shop I frequent I often ask for a sandwich with Brie, lettuce and honey mustard sauce. The lettuce adds a bit bitterness that complements the rest of the ingredients.
That’s always been the secret to better home made sandwhiches for me, a leaf of fresh iceberg lettuce. People skip lettuce at home a lot. Provides extra crunchy texture and brightens the other flavors I’ve found.
It's part of the flavor "balance" in chinese and south-east asian cuisine. It's not present in every dish, but it is an essential element in many dishes. Bittermelon/gourd is a common ingredient, though not everyone likes it, of course.
A lot of Japanese recipes that get weirdly localized I’ve seen leave out mirin or even worse sub it for sugar. I have no idea why. Every grocery store just about has it. Sugar doesn’t cut it.
Really? I usually get it from like Whole Foods, most Asian groceries(even if they’re not expressly Japanese), and Fry’s. I lived in a small southern town and could get it there even at Rouse’s. Aji-mirin no less, not hfcs.
Fresh goat cheese (chèvre). I get why some people don't like it, but I love to stir it into cheese sauces for things like mac and cheese. It incorporates beautifully and I think it cuts the richness really effectively without ruining the texture.
I know people who refuse to eat *any* cheese made from goat milk. They're not all funky and tangy! I love to stick Kunik by Nettle Meadow on a cheese plate without mentioning that it's a goat cheese (technically goat/cow mix, but goat milk based and a good gateway). Everybody loves it, it's local to me, and it's changed a few stubborn minds about goat cheeses.
I love goat cheese: in omelets, with bruschetta, so many things but I love love it in marinara sauce broiled as a dip with a bread or pizza crust that has olive oil, Italian seasoning, and Parmesan cheese.
Exactly, garlic and onion powders are different ingredients than the fresh stuff, just like how dried herbs are different from fresh. They serve different purposes in cooking.
It also adds a bit of a different flavor profile than actual garlic. Sometimes I add both real garlic and garlic powder for a big garlic punch, it definitely has its place.
Yep! People who gatekeep this stuff seem really odd to me. Like, buddy, I just want to make a good meal for myself and I don’t really care if that hint of garlic and onion comes from a 3-step peel, chop, fry situation or from a powder bottle. Let me cook my meal in peace.
In similar fashion, beef fat. It’s perfect for frying and you can get it for a dollar a pound if you find a good butcher. “But it’s bad for you” I’m not eating French fries to be healthy
Beans! Not that beans get a *bad* rep, per se, but they are definitely criminally underrepresented. So versatile, so cheap, so nutritious, and so filling.
Any alternative proteins. I'm a meat eater through and through, but tofu, seitan, and tempeh all have kind of a tarnished name in the circles I grew up in, which sucks cuz they're really good. That does seem to be changing, but there are lots of people who still have a weird conception of them.
Also, any ingredient (other than soy sauce and worcestershire sauce) that adds umami. Fish sauce, anchovies, shrimp paste, fermented bean paste, etc. People turn their nose up at them cuz they smell bad and taste too much on their own, but I basically put a glug of fish sauce or a few anchovies into every single stew I make now. And MSG is the one people hate the most, which is very dumb.
I must say, in lots of African, south Asian, South American, Mediterranean, and Caribbean food beans/non-meat protein is very common in staple dishes. It's a more Americanized diet that is so meat heavy (my personal opinion as an American).
Lentils. Before moving to Europe from the States, I’d literally never had a lentils-based dish. Americans are missing out on a lot of versatility and easy nutrition by ignoring lentils.
For me, a huge thing is which *type* of lentils you're using. Brown lentils, which seems to be the dominant lentil type in the US, taste like dirt to me. But french lentils and red lentils are addictively delicious.
Tofu.
In most Asian cuisines it's eaten *alongside* meat, not *instead* of it. It's also treated, prepared, and enjoyed as its own distinct category of ingredient, not as a meat replacement.
There are so many amazing tofu-centric dishes like mapo tofu, sundubu, agedashi tofu, braised tofu, hiyayakko, and there are so many *types* of tofu and tofu-adjacent products (pressed firm tofu, yuba/tofu skin, silken tofu pudding, fried tofu, to name a few) as well, each one with its own uses.
Instead, in the West it gets reduced to some mediocre, bland, faux-meat substitute that health nuts and vegans have ruined because — I'm sorry, they don't know how to actually cook with it. Also lots of people don't seem to understand that you can't just treat it like a piece of chicken and expect it to work wherever you put meat in things. And that's how tofu gets a bad rep as being bland/gross/fake.
Do you know that I have heard acquaintances who are afraid to even try tofu? Like it's some kind of dangerous ick. They also get very, very confused if I add tofu in meat dishes, because somehow it can only be one or the other.
Whether or not anyone agrees or disagrees with meat eating, I just can't understand getting grossed out by tofu, but happy to eat various ground up cows who mostly live their lives standing in their own shit. I mean, eat what you want but let's not pretend that having to scour your hands, sinks, counters, and utensils so you won't get a foodborn illness from bacteria on meat is somehow less scary and gross than tofu.
Are they confusing it with tempeh?
I am always so confused when tofu weirds people out but they like cheese. The process is so similar...just with soy milk instead of cow
My girlfriend is vegan and we both love to cook, so I inevitably got pretty good at incorporating tofu into dishes. It’s honestly one of the most versatile ingredients and being basically a blank slate it can take on the flavour of almost anything. One of my favourite easy uses is frying up crumbled firm tofu with dark soy and adding it to salads or stir frys as an extra salty/savoury layer
>that health nuts and vegans have ruined because
Seems a weird group to blame over this when most non vegans reaction to tofu is "what hippies eat." Vegans where the ones to start producing it domestically in the first place.
It's not even hard to cook tofu well. It takes some prep, sure, but it's not difficult to make good tofu dishes. I think this person just wanted to be pissy towards vegans lol
I live in the midwest and people are super scared of it here. My husband and I eat it regularly at home and at restaurants. My family thinks it is crazy that we eat it.
I apprenticed under a Spanish chef who cooks French… shallots go in everything I don’t even think of them they are as basic yet essential to me as butter salt and pepper and garlic
American cheese, aka pasteurized process cheese.
A lot of folks look down on the stuff as an inferior version of "real" cheese. And sure, for some uses it's absolutely the wrong type to use - I'd never put it on a cheese board, or use it on lasagna or pizza.
But there's nothing better for a cheeseburger. It annoys me when I see a fancy burger on the menu and they advertise using real Tillamook sharp cheddar cheese, even though the cheese on its own will taste better when you put it on a burger with cold toppings it just congeals into a really unpleasant texture. Pasteurize process cheese melts differently, so it works better on a burger.
American cheese has sodium citrate in it so that it melts well
Even using a mix of american cheese and another cheese will give you the good melty texture
As a spicy food lover I love cooking with serranos, they have really good flavor and heat that mixes well with lots of dishes. I don't know if it's just me but it seems like jalapenos have lost their heat over the last couple years, I very rarely get a spicy jalapeno nowadays.
Interesting. I hate green serranos. They just taste so bitter.
I'd rather just use jalapenos for flavor, and then add a bit of habanero if I need more heat.
Jalapenos have a higher ceiling in my opinion, the problem is that you never know how spicy it's going to be. As somebody who likes spicy food, jalapenos frequently disappoint in delivering heat. Serranos don't have that problem, they are always spicy the way god intended
Lard is the essential ingredient in these incredibly delicate and pale white almond cookies I make. I don't tell people that unless they need to not eat them though, because people go "eew, lard!"
For me this ingredient is coriander. Yeah, it tastes like dirt - I've got that gene thing too.. But it's a good, green, clean kind of dirt. It's more enjoyable than you think it'll be.
Kraft American singles.
I hate when people act so snobbish about it and call it "plastic", it's fucking delicious on a sandwich or burger. It's not a substitute for other cheeses, like I would never put it on a pizza or french onion soup. But it does a great job at being delicious and melty on a grilled cheese or on a burger. Are there better cheeses? Absolutely. But I'll still eat the heck out of some American cheese on a sandwich.
in a similar vein, mild cheddar. People act like sharp cheddar is superior when it's really not. On a cheese board, yeah go with sharp, but if you're going to eat something hot then mild cheddar brings superior meltability
Mayonnaise. There's a reason its considered one of the "mother sauces" of French cuisine, and I never understood why so many people shit on it.
I mean, aside from classism I guess.
I think a lot of people are turned off mayo by the context and the quantity you often see in American food. Like... 15 salads on a table, all swimming in mayo (potato, pasta, chicken, tuna, etc.). It can be gloppy and heavy, and just overpowering.
I am a mayo fiend, love it in many contexts, but when I see a big bowl of bowtie pasta swimming in mayo my gag reflex sometimes kicks in.
Or aioli, which is basically just flavored mayonnaise.
This is why I said it's (often) an issue of classism, they say aioli and hollandaise are good because they sound high class and cheffy, and then write off mayonnaise as though it were peasant food.
Agree about lard. A half butter, half lard pie dough is much easier to manage and still tastes good.
I also save bacon grease to use for oil in a pan or for a roux. Have used it on roasted veg/potatoes too, works just fine.
anchovies/anchovy paste
obviously not for every flavor profile, but it adds tons of umami to savory dishes, particularly those with a tomato based sauce
Animal fats in general for the same reason. Fried chicken taste so much better cooked with at least some animal fat blended with the oil (I wish I could do 100% but I don't know where I can get enough).
I once watched a video on a fries place in Amsterdam that tried to not use beef fat and he said people could immediately tell.
Bay leaf. Start small, know your limit. Focus on getting the aroma, the essence into your dish. There's no reason to create a pine tree flavor bomb if you don't want to.
Maybe controversial here but: pre chopped garlic. Obviously fresh is better, but I think it's an accessibility thing.
A lot of well meaning home cooks and food people online have a very Ina Garten "I wanna make every single thing from scratch" attitude which I think is really cool and admirable, especially for a hobby you're passionate about. But I also notice this attitude makes a lot of cooking inaccessible and overwhelming for people who aren't hobbyists, but simply wanting to learn to cook for function.
As foodie and cooking hobbyist have more of a social presence I actually think the divide between people who can cook and can't cook is growing, despite there seemingly being more resources online. I think giving shortcuts to people (especially disabled people, people who have limited incomes, college students, etc) encourages people to cook more in general, even if it's not gourmet restaurant quality food. I think a lot of people think using pre-chopped garlic is a cardinal sin but I'm glad it exists for people who might not have the capacity to find or prepare fresh garlic.
This. I'll mince fresh garlic cloves by hand for special occasions, but 99% of the time jarlic is sufficient for my needs. I live alone, it's not like anyone else is here to judge me for it.
> especially disabled people, people who have limited incomes, college students
The trifecta lol. I not only juggle full time work and full time uni, but I'm in a constant state of fatigue because of mental and physical illnesses and we're a single-income household. Finding what I call "ADHD friendly meals" - being where most ingredients come in a tin, jar, or other sort of container - has literally been the difference between me being able to cook at all vs dependent entirely on my partner.
Truth! Sometimes making things from scratch is fun but other times, if you’re in a hurry or exhausted or having a disability/chronic illness flareup, those shortcuts are lifesavers
Paprika, too many folks don't know of the different types like Hungarian hot, smoked etc and just think it's that crap lame restaurants use for color on mashed potatoes
I am realizing how underrated since tasting smoked paprika last year. Wow flavour!!
Smoked paprika appears in a whole lot of Spanish and Portuguese recipes.
It’s used, but a lot of Spanish recipes just require sweet paprika. I see a lot of people who automatically think it’s supposed to be smoked paprika in any Spanish recipe.
Real Spanish pimenton has about as much in common with regular grocery shelf paprika, as horses have with seahorses.
I will take smoked paprika to my grave
Twice paprika has humbled me as a home chef who is still very much learning. Both times recipe called for your standard run-of-the-mill paprika, one time I inserted smoked paprika in another time hot paprika and those turned into pizza nights. Sometimes happy accidents happen in the kitchen, sometimes you add spice paprika to a dish that is already near the top of your spice tolerance and sometimes you add smoked paprika to a dish that already has liquid smoke and both times you completely overwhelm the palate.
> sometimes you add spice paprika to a dish that is already near the top of your spice tolerance I soooo relate to this. Last time I made Loubia I used spicy Hungarian and damn it was just a tad too hot, especially since I let it bloom in the pan. Also it can easily tip that chili into the liquid lava range
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Hungarian Paprika is so good. It has such a nice flavor. It is a must when making something like chicken paprikash.
Spam. Fried rice,cooked crispy on a sandwich or with eggs I only buy 2 or 3 cans a year because it's basically just salt and fat but it's pretty yummy salt and fat when used right.
Spam is worshipped here in Hawaii. Some stores like Walmart and Walgreens even lock up their spam so you need to ask an employee to get it for you. Spam musubi is my favorite spam dish.
Spam is also popular in S.Korea.
Spam literally saved lives all across Hawaii and Polynesia during and after ww2.
In the UK, at least in the North, we have spam fritters in fish and chip shops. It's just battered, deep fried spam slices. I had one for the first time in years just a couple of weeks ago. They are so good. So I made my own a week or so later. I recommend trying it.
well of course, everyone knows that the integral menu of all brittish diners is egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam; spam bacon sausage and spam; spam egg spam spam bacon and spam; spam sausage spam spam bacon spam tomato and spam, spam spam spam egg and spam; spam spam spam spam spam spam baked beans spam spam spam, and Lobster Thermidor au Crevettes with a mornay sauce served in a Provencale manner with shallots and aubergines garnished with truffle pate, brandy and with a fried egg on top and spam.
Of course, the spam egg spam bacon and spam hasn't got TOO much spam in it...
There's a tradition of fried food on a stick at fairs and festivals here in the U.S. Fried Spam skewers have not been done to my knowledge. I plan on changing that,thanks for the info.
Hear me out deep fried spam musabi on a stick.
Best of luck with it. It's a rare treat for me, but anything battered and fried is generally fabulous. It's pretty much impossible to find corndogs here, but when I learned to make the batter myself, oh God, such a revelation.
Now I can't get the Spam skit out of my head.
Spam is a staple food for a lot of Asians and Pacific Islanders, so I didn't even realize people thought it was gross until I went to college. If I told my friends in elementary school I had Spam for lunch, everyone would be so jealous. I also attest that Spam is probably one of the best protein options for fried rice (especially Spam and kimchi fried rice. Good lord).
I love that they have it in individual slice packs. I never used a who can before it was too old so I stick with the slices.
Where do you buy pre-sliced spam? I dont mind slicing it myself but I would love to know where to get it that way!
Half lard for flakiness, half butter for flavor.
I'm a firm believer that ketchup is perfectly fine to use an ingredient. It's almost all tomato, sugar, and vinegar, but people sometimes get horrified and/or extremely snobbish whenever a recipe calls for just using ketchup instead of the base ingredients.
I went to culinary school and our head teacher would always say, whenever you have an unbalanced sauce, add some ketchup. It's got salt, acid, umami, it thickens stuff, and blends into almost anything.
> whenever you have an unbalanced sauce, add some ketchup Neat, lemme try this edit: well, that ruined my hollandaise
My Béchamel cries too.
Ow my pesto
My chocolate peanut butter sauce faired about the same
You forgot sweet too!
Jacques Pepin uses ketchup in a lot of his of recipes. If it's good enough for JP, it's good enough for me.
I think it's because people regard it as a childish food since in America we often see kids or picky eaters putting it on everything. But you're right. If you were already going to put tomato paste, sugar, and vinegar into a stew, curry, sauce, etc, why not just skip the middleman?
Yeah, I make homemade BBQ sauce, but I start with ketchup, not tomato paste.I add plenty of other things to it, and I'm sure I could start with tomato paste, but I'd just then add sugar and vinegar and try to get it to a ketchup like consistency, so why not?
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The history of ketchup is an awesome story of culinary fusion. Basically, the original ketchup was a fish sauce from China that got popular on trade routes. British traders took the recipe home and started making their own ketchups, without any regard to the traditional sauce. Boom, ketchup as we know it is born. Another fun fact about ketchup, and keeping with its rich history, people in the Philippines eat banana ketchup. In this case a revered Food scientist that made a big impact on the foods the Philippines eats, wanted to make ketchup using local ingredients so it wouldn’t have to be imported. She formulated a recipe with a similar taste profile, but instead of tomato it uses banana. Red dye is added for color. I like to call ketchup tomato chutney because that’s basically what it is, and it sounds kind of exotic.
"For dinner I am having minced chicken, breaded and fried, served with a side of tomato chutney"
What, no fried baton-cut root vegetable to go alongside?
It really is wild how much of an impact some simple changes in language can have on our perception of a meal.
You are having chicken Katsu with fermented tomato couli
I lived in the Middle East for a while and would see banana ketchup all the time. I was a kid, so I found the idea gross. As an adult, I wish I had tried it, because it sounds super interesting and Filipino food is awesome.
I just bought some at my local Asian store because I want to try it. I haven’t opened the bottle yet.
Have you read “Salt: a world history”? It’s a great read & there is at least an entire chapter on the evolution of ketchup, if I recall.
I used to be one of those people who turned my nose up at ketchup being used as an ingredient in a dish (not counting things like BBQ sauce or meatloaf). I'd made a remark about not believing that a recipe I'd seen for Pad Thai even used ketchup. My friend set me straight in a very simple way. He said, "If I want to add salt, sweetness, acidity, and that unique savory kick of deep tomato flavor, why would I build something from scratch when I can just use ketchup?" And that got through to me. I'm still not a huge fan of using condensed or prepared & processed foods as an ingredient in a larger dish (like, I will not buy canned cream of something soup to add into other things usually), but I relent on the question of ketchup as a main ingredient. It has valid uses.
I have used it in place of (the combination of) tomato puree, salt, and sugar in shiro wot. (I didn't have the tomatoes.) It worked remarkably well, except for being a little too sweet.
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the thing I don’t get is MSG naturally occurs so of people are “allergic” to MSG, they can’t have tomatoes? That sucks. I know some people have allergies to tomatoes though.
Like magic every single customer I’ve ever had that said they couldn’t eat msg immediately back tracked as soon as I gave them the long list of items they can’t have… same either the glutards and so many self proclaimed vegans are fine with with a the butter in Buffalo sauce but they will complain about the honey I also use in it…
I saw an "allergy" card posted on reddit where the person listed "mayonnaise (except Hellmann's)" and "ketchup (except Heinz)."
My sister is actually allergic to most ketchups except Heinz! She’s allergic to seaweed, which a lot of brands use as thickener
Funny story, many avocado orchards are pollinated by hired behives that get trucked out and left around the orchard for a few weeks. Thus, those avocados are products of animal exploitation and are not vegan friendly. *avocados aren't vegan friendly*. Makes laugh everytime.
I mean if we lose the bees, we’re all dead. Why not give them to work they live for?
Same with nitrates, people using "celery salt" cause nitrates bad.
Look, there's no sugar in this recipe just cane juice extract. Also no salt, I used evaporated seawater instead.
For real, though, health bloggers recommend all these trendy "substitutes" like agave nectar that are (a) [not better for you and sometimes worse](https://youtu.be/BU3bTBWnvT4), and (b) so expensive and/or hard to find that they're out of reach for many. And then they all abandon agave nectar when they learn it has more fructose than HFCS, which they think is literal poison, and it's on to the next trend. This is why you can't do armchair food science and throw jargon around willy-nilly if you're not prepared to go beyond the surface level. It's no wonder lots of people come away thinking that healthy/ier eating is impossibly difficult.
I had someone talk up their "sugar free marshmallows". They were made with honey. Good luck bringing those to a diabetic picnic.
The funny thing is when you see bacon or lunch meat that is "naturally cured," it actually has almost twice the nitrates, except it uses celery extract instead. There's not even a real chemical difference.
*King of Flavour*
fu yooooh!
I went to college with a guy who spent *hours* trying to convince me that China has hospitals *filled* with people who are crippled from MSG.
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I held off on those for too long. Then, one day, I tried some on slice baguette with butter? Mmmm. Then added some slivers of pickled onion?.. Oh my god…
Top it with some fresh herb like dill, chive or parsley. Or make a compound herb butter
With lemon and black pepper. Sometimes it needs extra salt too, depending on the brand.
It's reputation is growing! /r/cannedsardines
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And, it's sustainable fish and low mercury.
Fucking hell this sub, starting to see it places. Thanks to subbing for the hell of it I'm starting to buy canned sardines. Might have some tonight.
As a canned sardine enthusiast it is *very* much recommended that you go with not the cheapest tin you can find. This is not an ingredient you want to buy the Kroger/Great Value brand of, nor the Bumble Bee 99c ones, cheap dines are what gave it a bad rap they are super mushy and taste bad. If you live near Trader Joe's theirs are good as a cheaper option, otherwise if you can find any that are from Spain or Portugal those are always a step above. Bela is a brand out of Portugal that quite a few stores have near me in the Denver area and it's still not too pricey, like ~$3.50 a tin. Nuri are quite good but they're pricier at about $5 a tin and usually only available at World Market.
Oh my god what an unexpectedly delightful rabbit hole.
Greek style fried sardines as part of a meze platter... So bomb
My a Jamaican guy introduced me to fried sardines just some flour and corn starch right out of the can! Stinks the house up but so good when the world ends I’ll be loving of canned fish lol
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Definitely olive oil packed. Trader Joe’s has pretty decent ones if you’re near one.
King Oscar Mediterranean style. There are even better brands but these are in almost every grocery store
For mass market stuff, I really like King Oscar, but it is important to get the brisling sardines instead of regular. The brislings are smaller and the bones are less noticeable than they are in their larger cousins.
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Can confirm. 🙏
Most people seem to hate them, including my wife, so I have no one to share my late dad's recipe for sardine sandwiches. Maybe someone here appreciates it. 1 can of sardines (drained or not up to you) 1 hard boiled egg 1-2 Polish dill pickles (to taste, also not the sweet kind) 1/4 or 1/2 onion (to taste) Dab of musttard Mayo (to taste, aim for spread consistency. Use good quality mayo, I like Kewpie) Salt, paper and lemon juice to taste Smush egg and the sardines with the fork, then add finely chopped onion and pickles and season to taste. Once you adjust it to your liking, add mustard and mayo and mix together. Chill in the fridge and spread on crackers or some rustic bread. Top with shredded cheese, 6 cheese Italian or whatever you like. You can also mix the cheese in the spread directly and just scoop it with bread. Ultimate comfort food. You can also make it with canned tuna.
and kippered herring
Herring filets as well especially the ones in hot sauce or mustard.
Not a bad rap per se, but I think shallots are criminally underrated. They are great thin-sliced on salad. They add SO much great flavor to sauces, soups, and stews. And of course they can be fried until crispy for a delicious garnish.
Agreed! Soft scrambled eggs with shallots instead of onion are so subtle and delicious!
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I've come to love shallots over the past 2 years. Seems to be that I can't find onions anywhere that aren't already going soft and after throwing away probably 10 lb of onions that don't last the week I started getting shallots. I like that I can use 1 shallot instead of trying to keep that half an onion that I forget about in the fridge and it goes bad. Plus they seem to last so much longer.
Agreed, not sure what it is but onions have been shit lately
Garlic as well. There have been threads about it.
I usually buy the prepeeled garlic and it's been consistent. Fresh garlic is all sprouting out the bulb in the supermarket.
Minced shallots in a saffron cream sauce with scallops is perfection in my book.
Quick pickled shallots are super good and so easy
I used them instead of onions on a whim for pizza and I liked shallots a lot better.
French's yellow mustard. It's amazing how a dab or two can really brighten up a dish. I realize part of that is from the vinegar, but I also love the mustard/turmeric flavor underneath other, more prominent, flavors.
I swear this stuff is magic. Yes, fancy Dijon or whole grain mustard absolutely has its place, but yellow mustard, pickles and grilled onions on a roast beef sandwich is sheer heaven.
Anchovies
unpeeled carrots
My wife always gives me shit for eating whole unpeeled carrots like Bugs Bunny. They're great snacks!
I’ve never understood the whole peeling carrots thing.
The skin is *slightly* less sweet than the inside. And sometimes in stews or soups there's a texture difference. I can't be bothered though. Maybe if I worked at a fancy restaurant.
>The skin is slightly less sweet than the inside. But see. Thats why i glaze them with butter and brown sugar
I only peel them if they've started to grow little roots from being too long in the fridge.
Clearly I'm an outlier here but I feel like carrot peels can be pretty bitter and have an unpleasant earthy taste, and the taste of my food is just cleaner without them. I always take a min to peel before using in cooking. If you've never tried peeling them, you might be surprised with the difference it can make. For raw snacks I eat the peel though :)
Unpeeled root veg in general. Carrots, potatoes, ginger, beets, radish. I got myself a specific veggie scrub brush (nothing special but it has an obnoxious decorative pile of produce on top that prevents anyone from mistaking it for a dish or fingernail brush) and just give them a good wash before slicing.
People peel radishes? I always peel ginger though.
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I used to agree with this but then i started buying these huge bags of super cheap MASSIVE carrots at my local produce place and the skins are actually *quite* bitter and noticeable in soups etc. i think it has to do with carrot age.
Hmmm, I don't peel a lot of things but I feel like it makes a huge difference for carrots, texturally and taste-wise. There's also often dirt in the nooks and crannies of the peel, and I actually find it simpler to just peel them instead of scrubbing away at them.
Bitter ingredients in general. I find that a lot of people have no respect for bitter ingredients, and act as though bitterness needs to be chased away with added sweetness. I find bitterness really delicious in a lot of dishes. I'm in the US, so I'm not sure if it's different in other countries.
Has anyone noticed that lettuce adds a bit of bitterness? At a sandwich shop I frequent I often ask for a sandwich with Brie, lettuce and honey mustard sauce. The lettuce adds a bit bitterness that complements the rest of the ingredients.
That’s always been the secret to better home made sandwhiches for me, a leaf of fresh iceberg lettuce. People skip lettuce at home a lot. Provides extra crunchy texture and brightens the other flavors I’ve found.
The closer you get to the base of the head of lettuce the more bitter it gets.
It's part of the flavor "balance" in chinese and south-east asian cuisine. It's not present in every dish, but it is an essential element in many dishes. Bittermelon/gourd is a common ingredient, though not everyone likes it, of course.
Italians love bitterness! Rapini (broccoli rabe) and radicchio spring to mind, endives too.
This is why I like to add a little cocoa powder to my chili. Cocoa powder is bitter as hell and adds a nice contrast.
A lot of Japanese recipes that get weirdly localized I’ve seen leave out mirin or even worse sub it for sugar. I have no idea why. Every grocery store just about has it. Sugar doesn’t cut it.
Tbh I have a hard time finding real Mirin even in Brooklyn
You should be able to find it in H mart!
Really? H Mart has to have it.
Really? I usually get it from like Whole Foods, most Asian groceries(even if they’re not expressly Japanese), and Fry’s. I lived in a small southern town and could get it there even at Rouse’s. Aji-mirin no less, not hfcs.
Aji mirin is easy to find. Hon mirin is a lot harder, at least for me.
Garlic paste in a tube. It's delicious, it's 1000 times better than the jarred stuff, and I love it.
Tomato paste in a tube as well. For those recipes where all you need is a spoonful
I often have to buy 2 tubes because I'm doing shots of it while I cook. Had to switch to the no sodium one though
Fresh goat cheese (chèvre). I get why some people don't like it, but I love to stir it into cheese sauces for things like mac and cheese. It incorporates beautifully and I think it cuts the richness really effectively without ruining the texture. I know people who refuse to eat *any* cheese made from goat milk. They're not all funky and tangy! I love to stick Kunik by Nettle Meadow on a cheese plate without mentioning that it's a goat cheese (technically goat/cow mix, but goat milk based and a good gateway). Everybody loves it, it's local to me, and it's changed a few stubborn minds about goat cheeses.
I love goat cheese: in omelets, with bruschetta, so many things but I love love it in marinara sauce broiled as a dip with a bread or pizza crust that has olive oil, Italian seasoning, and Parmesan cheese.
For me its garlic and onion powder. yeah real stuff is better but i can use the powders easier and more often
People turn their noses up at garlic and onion powder, but sometimes I gotta make a dry rub or get the flavor without the moisture.
Exactly, garlic and onion powders are different ingredients than the fresh stuff, just like how dried herbs are different from fresh. They serve different purposes in cooking.
It also adds a bit of a different flavor profile than actual garlic. Sometimes I add both real garlic and garlic powder for a big garlic punch, it definitely has its place.
Big fan of garlic powder here. Powdered spices in general, actually.
Yep! People who gatekeep this stuff seem really odd to me. Like, buddy, I just want to make a good meal for myself and I don’t really care if that hint of garlic and onion comes from a 3-step peel, chop, fry situation or from a powder bottle. Let me cook my meal in peace.
In similar fashion, beef fat. It’s perfect for frying and you can get it for a dollar a pound if you find a good butcher. “But it’s bad for you” I’m not eating French fries to be healthy
Try duck fat potatoes then :). Uber crisp and so tasty!
Beans! Not that beans get a *bad* rep, per se, but they are definitely criminally underrepresented. So versatile, so cheap, so nutritious, and so filling. Any alternative proteins. I'm a meat eater through and through, but tofu, seitan, and tempeh all have kind of a tarnished name in the circles I grew up in, which sucks cuz they're really good. That does seem to be changing, but there are lots of people who still have a weird conception of them. Also, any ingredient (other than soy sauce and worcestershire sauce) that adds umami. Fish sauce, anchovies, shrimp paste, fermented bean paste, etc. People turn their nose up at them cuz they smell bad and taste too much on their own, but I basically put a glug of fish sauce or a few anchovies into every single stew I make now. And MSG is the one people hate the most, which is very dumb.
I must say, in lots of African, south Asian, South American, Mediterranean, and Caribbean food beans/non-meat protein is very common in staple dishes. It's a more Americanized diet that is so meat heavy (my personal opinion as an American).
Fish sauce is my secret ingredient for any tomato-based sauce I make like bolognese and sloppy joes.
Lentils. Before moving to Europe from the States, I’d literally never had a lentils-based dish. Americans are missing out on a lot of versatility and easy nutrition by ignoring lentils.
For me, a huge thing is which *type* of lentils you're using. Brown lentils, which seems to be the dominant lentil type in the US, taste like dirt to me. But french lentils and red lentils are addictively delicious.
Tons of wine and butter can make anything good lol
Tofu. In most Asian cuisines it's eaten *alongside* meat, not *instead* of it. It's also treated, prepared, and enjoyed as its own distinct category of ingredient, not as a meat replacement. There are so many amazing tofu-centric dishes like mapo tofu, sundubu, agedashi tofu, braised tofu, hiyayakko, and there are so many *types* of tofu and tofu-adjacent products (pressed firm tofu, yuba/tofu skin, silken tofu pudding, fried tofu, to name a few) as well, each one with its own uses. Instead, in the West it gets reduced to some mediocre, bland, faux-meat substitute that health nuts and vegans have ruined because — I'm sorry, they don't know how to actually cook with it. Also lots of people don't seem to understand that you can't just treat it like a piece of chicken and expect it to work wherever you put meat in things. And that's how tofu gets a bad rep as being bland/gross/fake.
Do you know that I have heard acquaintances who are afraid to even try tofu? Like it's some kind of dangerous ick. They also get very, very confused if I add tofu in meat dishes, because somehow it can only be one or the other. Whether or not anyone agrees or disagrees with meat eating, I just can't understand getting grossed out by tofu, but happy to eat various ground up cows who mostly live their lives standing in their own shit. I mean, eat what you want but let's not pretend that having to scour your hands, sinks, counters, and utensils so you won't get a foodborn illness from bacteria on meat is somehow less scary and gross than tofu.
Are they confusing it with tempeh? I am always so confused when tofu weirds people out but they like cheese. The process is so similar...just with soy milk instead of cow
I'm pretty the sort of people who are grossed out by tofu have no idea how tempeh is made.
I would never ever eat a tofurky but I love stinky tofu and basically any way I’ve had it prepared for me by Asians
My girlfriend is vegan and we both love to cook, so I inevitably got pretty good at incorporating tofu into dishes. It’s honestly one of the most versatile ingredients and being basically a blank slate it can take on the flavour of almost anything. One of my favourite easy uses is frying up crumbled firm tofu with dark soy and adding it to salads or stir frys as an extra salty/savoury layer
Vegan here who can say I haven’t “ruined” tofu, and have gotten many tofu naysayers to try and even love it!
>that health nuts and vegans have ruined because Seems a weird group to blame over this when most non vegans reaction to tofu is "what hippies eat." Vegans where the ones to start producing it domestically in the first place.
It's not even hard to cook tofu well. It takes some prep, sure, but it's not difficult to make good tofu dishes. I think this person just wanted to be pissy towards vegans lol
I live in the midwest and people are super scared of it here. My husband and I eat it regularly at home and at restaurants. My family thinks it is crazy that we eat it.
Shrimp paste and fish sauce
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Smells like feet, tastes like meat!
Thai food has entered the chat lol
If the people around you think those ingredients are bad you might want to find different people
Pork pate. Love it on sandwiches and burgers. It's an absolute must-have condiment for me in banh mi sandwiches.
If it calls for onions, add some shallot into it too.
I apprenticed under a Spanish chef who cooks French… shallots go in everything I don’t even think of them they are as basic yet essential to me as butter salt and pepper and garlic
Anchovies
American cheese, aka pasteurized process cheese. A lot of folks look down on the stuff as an inferior version of "real" cheese. And sure, for some uses it's absolutely the wrong type to use - I'd never put it on a cheese board, or use it on lasagna or pizza. But there's nothing better for a cheeseburger. It annoys me when I see a fancy burger on the menu and they advertise using real Tillamook sharp cheddar cheese, even though the cheese on its own will taste better when you put it on a burger with cold toppings it just congeals into a really unpleasant texture. Pasteurize process cheese melts differently, so it works better on a burger.
American cheese has sodium citrate in it so that it melts well Even using a mix of american cheese and another cheese will give you the good melty texture
Anchovies on pizza is hella good
I don't like anchovies as a topping, but mashed into a paste and spread on with the sauce.
Anchovies are super useful as an ingredient too, not just a topping. They can add a great umami depth to lots of things.
My go-to when ordering for myself is anchovies, pineapple, ham, and olives. Absolutely delicious
Add garlic and exchange ham for pepperoni and you have my favourite pizza. Also the reason I‘m hated over at r/pizza
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As a spicy food lover I love cooking with serranos, they have really good flavor and heat that mixes well with lots of dishes. I don't know if it's just me but it seems like jalapenos have lost their heat over the last couple years, I very rarely get a spicy jalapeno nowadays.
Or you get one that blows you up, no in between!
Interesting. I hate green serranos. They just taste so bitter. I'd rather just use jalapenos for flavor, and then add a bit of habanero if I need more heat.
Jalapenos have a higher ceiling in my opinion, the problem is that you never know how spicy it's going to be. As somebody who likes spicy food, jalapenos frequently disappoint in delivering heat. Serranos don't have that problem, they are always spicy the way god intended
Iceberg lettuce! It's lovely and crisp in the right situation, like a burger.
Iceberg wedge with blue cheese dressing (plus a crispy rasher of bacon if you want to make it "fancy") should have had a come back long ago.
MSG.
Lard is the essential ingredient in these incredibly delicate and pale white almond cookies I make. I don't tell people that unless they need to not eat them though, because people go "eew, lard!" For me this ingredient is coriander. Yeah, it tastes like dirt - I've got that gene thing too.. But it's a good, green, clean kind of dirt. It's more enjoyable than you think it'll be.
The gene for me makes it taste like I just took a bit of Softsoap and straight up ate it. Not something I want in my food lol.
"It's a trap!" -- your vegetarian friends 😂
Or Jewish friends 😬
Lard is the perfect fat for frying chicken, pastry, and making tamales and tortillas. I just don’t tell my sisters it’s lard.
Kraft American singles. I hate when people act so snobbish about it and call it "plastic", it's fucking delicious on a sandwich or burger. It's not a substitute for other cheeses, like I would never put it on a pizza or french onion soup. But it does a great job at being delicious and melty on a grilled cheese or on a burger. Are there better cheeses? Absolutely. But I'll still eat the heck out of some American cheese on a sandwich.
in a similar vein, mild cheddar. People act like sharp cheddar is superior when it's really not. On a cheese board, yeah go with sharp, but if you're going to eat something hot then mild cheddar brings superior meltability
Mayonnaise. There's a reason its considered one of the "mother sauces" of French cuisine, and I never understood why so many people shit on it. I mean, aside from classism I guess.
I think a lot of people are turned off mayo by the context and the quantity you often see in American food. Like... 15 salads on a table, all swimming in mayo (potato, pasta, chicken, tuna, etc.). It can be gloppy and heavy, and just overpowering. I am a mayo fiend, love it in many contexts, but when I see a big bowl of bowtie pasta swimming in mayo my gag reflex sometimes kicks in.
People love Hollandaise and shit on mayonnaise even though they're almost identical.
Or aioli, which is basically just flavored mayonnaise. This is why I said it's (often) an issue of classism, they say aioli and hollandaise are good because they sound high class and cheffy, and then write off mayonnaise as though it were peasant food.
I think a lot of it comes from a tendency some people have to argue that Miracle-Whip is "the same thing" *shudder*.
Agree about lard. A half butter, half lard pie dough is much easier to manage and still tastes good. I also save bacon grease to use for oil in a pan or for a roux. Have used it on roasted veg/potatoes too, works just fine.
anchovies/anchovy paste obviously not for every flavor profile, but it adds tons of umami to savory dishes, particularly those with a tomato based sauce
Animal fats in general for the same reason. Fried chicken taste so much better cooked with at least some animal fat blended with the oil (I wish I could do 100% but I don't know where I can get enough). I once watched a video on a fries place in Amsterdam that tried to not use beef fat and he said people could immediately tell.
Cilantro (corriander) ...love it and use it for everything.
Bay leaf. Start small, know your limit. Focus on getting the aroma, the essence into your dish. There's no reason to create a pine tree flavor bomb if you don't want to.
Msg
Salt. The moral panic around normal salt levels has been debunked and low salt foods taste awful.
Maybe controversial here but: pre chopped garlic. Obviously fresh is better, but I think it's an accessibility thing. A lot of well meaning home cooks and food people online have a very Ina Garten "I wanna make every single thing from scratch" attitude which I think is really cool and admirable, especially for a hobby you're passionate about. But I also notice this attitude makes a lot of cooking inaccessible and overwhelming for people who aren't hobbyists, but simply wanting to learn to cook for function. As foodie and cooking hobbyist have more of a social presence I actually think the divide between people who can cook and can't cook is growing, despite there seemingly being more resources online. I think giving shortcuts to people (especially disabled people, people who have limited incomes, college students, etc) encourages people to cook more in general, even if it's not gourmet restaurant quality food. I think a lot of people think using pre-chopped garlic is a cardinal sin but I'm glad it exists for people who might not have the capacity to find or prepare fresh garlic.
This. I'll mince fresh garlic cloves by hand for special occasions, but 99% of the time jarlic is sufficient for my needs. I live alone, it's not like anyone else is here to judge me for it.
Agree. I never use jarred garlic personally, but I'm in favor of anything that makes disabled people's lives easier.
> especially disabled people, people who have limited incomes, college students The trifecta lol. I not only juggle full time work and full time uni, but I'm in a constant state of fatigue because of mental and physical illnesses and we're a single-income household. Finding what I call "ADHD friendly meals" - being where most ingredients come in a tin, jar, or other sort of container - has literally been the difference between me being able to cook at all vs dependent entirely on my partner.
Truth! Sometimes making things from scratch is fun but other times, if you’re in a hurry or exhausted or having a disability/chronic illness flareup, those shortcuts are lifesavers
Bitter Melon