You Are Using Your Utensils WRONG! (and other)

Spoons to stir always cause a splash and a mess, use a fork or a knife. Forks mix better than spoons.

Using knives to spread things is silly, use a fork or a spoon. Much easier to portion and spread.

Don't use peelers for your carrots or potatoes, you end up wasting, use a serrated knife to get the outer layer off the carrots, and keep the skins on the potatoes, that is where the vitamins are. Graters are the way to go if you like smaller thin pieces, I never use a knife with a cutting board, either.

When I cut onions, I just peel the outer layer under cold water and then I cut small pieces while holding it in my hand, turning the onion as I go until I get to the core, sometimes I use the core and sometimes I do not, but this is the safest way and get the most out of each.

When I use green peppers, I just use my hand to tear pieces from the pepper and I use the entire pepper (Not the stem), including the seeds, when I make a sauce. When I use jalopenos, I take a spoon and flatten it, then use the whole thing (Not the stem).

I never core garlic. I peel under cold water and cut into small pieces directly into the pan or pot for most dishes. Sometimes, I will just drop whole cloves after crushing with a fork (to release the flavor).

I never cut Broccoli, I just tear the pieces off with my hand, the only part I may cut is the very bottom piece, but usually that goes to the compost.

Nothing gets thrown in the trash, whatever is left is compost.

I cut carrots while holding them in my hand, little pieces right into the pan, I do not worry about perfect cuts for anything. I am only interested in flavor and taste, presentation is overrated, does what you cook sit there very long to be looked at? No.

Bring me a plate of food and make sure it is cooked properly, when it comes to certain recipes, there is a reason to keep things separated, but if you are trying to conserve space on the table, mix it all together, unless you are just really intent on keeping everything separated. It depends on the situation, parties or family gatherings might require more dedication, but just me and my spouse, who cares, we eat it all together and haven't been dissatisfied yet.

Salads should be separated and the the lettuce should be cold and crisp, to do this I tear the lettuce by hand, rinse in cold water and place in the freezer for 10 minutes.

When a recipe calls for water to be added, I use the water from my steamed vegetables, unless it calls for cold water, but that is usually not an issue. The water from the steamed vegetables will have flavor and vitamins in it.

When I make rice or pasta, I will sautee vegetables and garlic in the pot with olive oil and if I feel like it bacon, too, then when I am ready I will add the water (water from steamed veggies if I have it) necessary for the rice or pasta, bring it to a boil and then add them into the vegetables (bacon), when I am cooking rice I will just let it be, pasta, I will drain most of the water (saved for gravy or de-glazing or to water the compost) and then if I am using a sauce for that dish, rice or pasta, I just add it in and stir it up.

I very rarely add salt to any recipes, if so very little. I prefer garlic when a recipe calls for salt.

a reply to: searcherfortruth


keep the skins on the potatoes, that is where the vitamins are.

that's also where the pesticides are. I recommend cutting off at least 1/4" all around before cooking & eating

Why are you telling us that your way is the right way?

Things like using forks to stir, i disagree. spoons move more liquid around when mixing liquid with liquid. If i whisk an egg for an omelette i use *gasp* a whisk or if i dont have a clean one at hand a fork - this is fairly common knowledge.

Your post comes across as condescending even though some of your techniques arnt actually better. Perhaps if you pitched it in a way that was a guide to perhaps better use of utensils and some reasons it would be better received. Using peelers for things like carrots are very good, it takes amazing skill with an knife to peel a carrot as well as a peeler does.

Sure spoons can spread if you like to have to use your finger to get out all the stuff out of the inside of the spoon, unless you use the outside of the spoon. If so you're much better off just using a knife.

The whole vitamins are inside the potato skin is a complete myth. While they do contain a higher amount of vitamins than the flesh it is completely dwarfed by the weight of the potato. You would need to eat 15 skins to one skinned potato to get the amount of vitamins in the flesh.

Just my two cents

Everyone has their own way of cooking, but to say it's wrong, just because we don't do it your way, is being a bit of an ass. Walk into any cooking school and you'll be told many of your techniques are wrong. And by the way, presentation does matter. I don't want to look at a pile of glop and think "Well, there's dinner".

a reply to: searcherfortruth

Wrong? Hmmmmm.....

I've managed to feed myself and my family quite well over the years doing all these wrong things... and most people think I'm an excellent cook... Fancy that!

All I know is that I use a spoon every morning to mix my coffee and I never make a "splash or a mess" while doing so. I also think presentation matters, maybe less than taste but it matters. I do love me some potato skins though, I always eat the whole baked potato.

Seriously what is the purpose of this post?

A fork would tear the bread and the back of a spoon is curved so buttering corners would be a pain and you cover a lot less surface of the bread with those utensils. Sorry to tell you this but a knife spans the width of bread meaning you'd have much more coverage as opposed to other utensils as well that, a knife is flat so it is much easier to spread evenly.
And a peeler tends to cut thinner than most could do by hand so you actually waste less of the vegetable by using one.
And cutting things in your hand is foolish, when things are in your hand you tend to cut towards yourself as opposed to a chopping board where the sharp side of the knife doesn't face you.

A lot of what you have wrote is personal preference and the rest lacks sense. And your tone is arrogant throughout

a reply to: searcherfortruth

Knives are far better at spreading than spoons, and spoons are far better than forks and knives at stirring... who violently stirs things with a spoon? It's supposed to be a gentle stir most of the time, unless you're making something like Alfredo.

I've worked in restaurant kitchens my whole life, and although those ways of YOUR kitchen work, the way we do things in kitchens at work have been used for decades.
A good example is the onion, just slice the onion in half (from stem to top, not through the middle) and peel back first layer to the stem, leave stem intact, and slice how ever you want, less mess and less crying.

Here's some good advice tho.
Always have at least one properly sharpened knife, if you love to cook invest in a good quality french / chef knife and a steel + wet stone and learn to use it. Accidents happen because of dull knives.
Always have a decent meat thermometer.
Keep your kitchen clean and organized.
Have at least one of these essential cooking tools.
- A good non-stick pan
- Wooden spoon
- A good whisk
- Heat resistant spatula
- At least one table and teaspoon
- Two medium sized pots
- One large stock pot
- Pearing knife
- Wood and plastic cutting board, one for raw meat (plastic), wood for everything else.
- A cookie tray, or an aluminum tray of some sort.
- And a casserole tray, dish, what ever, something deep to bake things in the oven.

It's limited, but it's the basics you need to pretty much cook anything.

Also gotta add:

It's a myth that most nutrients are 'in the skins' of fruits and veggies, what you see on the outside is a dense skin to protect the nutrient rich innards, it's like the bark of a tree, it's nearly dead, mostly condensed sugars.

I dont know about a lot of the things you've recommended, each to their own I guess but one thing I'd like to add from my own experience is that once you've used the back of a tablespoon for spreading butter instead of a standard butter knife, you'll never look back. Seen a woman everymorning in a snack van at work buttering hundreds of rolls for the day and she always used the back of a spoon, I tried it after that and Ive never used a knife again. More surface area on the spoon, the curves of the spoon help you preserve butter to get round the whole piece of bread. Just my two cents, this seemed like the appropriate place for it. I've converted most of the people I know since.

Merry Christmas and Regards,
Elijah23

originally posted by: acackohfcc
a reply to: searcherfortruth


keep the skins on the potatoes, that is where the vitamins are.

that's also where the pesticides are. I recommend cutting off at least 1/4" all around before cooking & eating

1/4" deep on potatoes? Im afraid it would only leave me with Walnut sized taters! I paid for those pesticides!

Bet OP uses screwdriver to hammer nails.

My dad hated potato peelers, he always said that the best part was right by the outside of the veggi. That was back in the early sixties. He died of brain cancer, probably because he was a farmer and sprayed DDT and other chemicals. It was one of the reasons DDT was banned, it gave lots of farmers glioma. But with these pesticides in the mix, the pesticide is actually strongest in the peel. Plus the vitamins in the peel are actually formed by soil bacteria, something most pesticides and herbicides actually kill.

Eat organic home grown food, rinse the carrot and eat the peel We have poisoned our land and our food.

WE can use any tool to do other things than it has been designed to do. Just use caution when using any tool. You can eat soup with a fork then drink the juice.

Cutting pieces on a cutting pieces on a cutting board isn't only for the sake of presentation. If you're doing it right it ensures an even cook and is much faster. There's a reason knife skills are some of first things taught in culinary school.

Spoons and A regular size spoon are not meant for just stirring....theyre actual a measuring device too....if it's a regular size spoon it holds 1 teaspoon of ingredient....like sugar , etc . So the regular size spoon was actually designed to be used to drop a teaspoon of sugar in your coffee and then stir....you can't do that with a Fork .....just saying .

a reply to: searcherfortruth

Sounds like you are fond of taking shortcuts and don't place much importance on the taste or nutritional value of what you cook, despite that being your premise for the methods you use. If the tone of your OP is meant to be as condescending as it reads, well, I find that to be more than a little incongruous.

If you mix veggies into your rice before boiling, for example, not only are you boiling whatever nutrients remain right out of the veggies, you're also introducing more water into the rice ratio, and turning it to soupy mush in the first place...then on top of that, you're putting oil into the rice as well. You're also cooking those poor veggies to death; you already cooked them once, right? Might as well throw them in the trash.

Peeling veggies in the first place is a waste too, from a nutritional standpoint. That's where the nutrients are. In fact, if you do anything other than steam most veggies you're simply eating fiber. Mixing everything together is wrong too. Not every item in a recipe cooks at the same rate. If you're doing a stir-fry for example, you want to start with the dense ingredients first and then add the others in accordingly, finishing up with things like scallions or bokchoy. That way, everything is cooked evenly and still has nutritional value.

It's great to have fiber in your diet, too, but the human digestive system eliminates fiber as waste...we cannot digest it. If you're leaving the thickest raw fiber on things like broccoli, you're actually inviting your body to eliminate more nutrients, and eating empty calories like that will fill you up so that you eat less of the nutrient-rich parts that made it into your dish.

These are only a few examples of why what you are advising is in direct contradiction with your stated purpose for doing it. Putting bell pepper seeds into food makes it bitter, stirring anything with a fork bruises and breaks apart the ingredients, ruining the texture...if you're splashing while stirring with a spoon, you are not stirring properly, and you're likely using a container that is too small as well. If you're putting entire whole peppers into your food, you are preventing the flavor from being released...there are so many of the things you are advising against that are specifically done to maximize both flavor and nutritional value...it's kind of astonishing to me, actually. As a time saver, some of these things might be OK in a pinch, but it really doesn't take much more time to do things the right way anyway...in fact some of your methods actually take longer than doing it the correct way.

One of the things you said is not only completely incorrect, it can also increase risk for people who have to follow strict caloric and nutrient intake plans, such as diabetics. First, you cannot "portion" things with any table utensils...that is not what they're designed for. Flatware "teaspoons" typically hold quite a bit more than an actual teaspoon, for example. Say a diabetic is allowed one teaspoon of peanut butter. If they use your method with a flatware spoon, they'd be serving themselves almost twice that amount...when you spread with a spoon, you're compressing the bread, and filling up the empty space with whatever you're spreading. You are spreading far more than you actually need on there.

If you prefer the bowl of a spoon for spreading, use a measuring spoon...that would be portioning. Or even better, use a spatula, which is designed to spread things evenly...if you spread cream cheese on a bagel or something with a spoon, it is not going to be uniform or evenly distributed. A fork could go either way, too much or not enough.

I can only assume that you are passionate about cooking, which is awesome. But you are actually the one doing it wrong. If you're looking for flavor and nutrients, you're cheating yourself out of both with these methods. When it comes to preparing food, "easier" rarely ever translates to "better".

I like chopsticks.
What about the chopsticks?

a reply to: Meldionne1

They're not reliable anymore. Most teaspoons in flatware sets hold nearly twice as much...particularly dry ingredients, because it cannot be leveled and still be a full teaspoon, and if it's not level it measures out to more than a "heaping" teaspoon in actual measure. With liquid, depending on the depth of the concavity and the diameter of the spoon, you could be getting too much or too little.

Antique silver sets actually do measure almost exactly, though. But flatware is all over the place in size, and utensil size has gotten a whole lot larger...funnily enough...as portion sizes have ballooned.

I used to use coffee cups as measuring cups, because they were a pretty standard size and held eight fluid ounces. I did this for years. Fast forward to a few weeks ago when I broke my liquid measure while cooking; I smirked smugly at fate, grabbed a small coffee cup from the cabinet and went on without a beat. And my dish sucked. Mushy, watery...awful. Which means it goes in the trash because I'm not about to serve that to anyone.

I bought another liquid measure and decided to see how much that coffee cup actually held. Almost 10oz. Whaaaaaaat?? But on the bottom of the coffee cup, it says "8 fld oz." So I measured other ones that said the same. Not one of them was eight ounces. However, one that read 6oz. actually turned out to be eight exactly, so I put that sucker aside in case of another crisis.

It's like all the old fashioned tricks and little helpers my grandmother used to rely on are becoming obsolete. Cooking seems to be so...clinical anymore. I don't know if that's the right word...maybe industrial? Most people I know absolutely hate to cook. I cook every single day; which they think is really weird.

a reply to: tigertatzen

an 8oz cup is 10 oz capacity so you can serve 8oz in it. They may have switched from labelling capacity to labeling service.

a reply to: searcherfortruth

Wow. The responses to this thread are ridiculous.