While questionable cooking choices won’t get you arrested, unless you veer into poisoning or arson, they will get you mercilessly mocked and shamed online. So it’s best to learn the dos and don’ts of the culinary arts.
An internet user wanted to know what others would classify as food crimes, and the answers were illuminating. And for those who get scared to take up home cooking after seeing this long list, we wanted to get some beginner tips from professionals. So we reached out to Bintu from Recipes From A Pantry and Monti Carlo from BudgetBytes to get some tips and tricks. So scroll down, take notes, and upvote the ‘crimes’ you agree with.
More info: Reddit
#1
Making a burger that is so fat I can’t fit my mouth around it. I want to be able to taste all of the toppings in each mouthful without ingredients falling out of the bun.
Image source: onehitwondur, Artem Podrez
#2
Using cauliflower as a ‘healthy’ ingredient replacement and saying it tastes the same. Cauliflower is a great vegetable. You can make rice out of it, you can use it to bulk up a curry, you can slice and roast or fry it. But it tastes like cauliflower. It’s never going to taste like potato or rice or meat. So let’s not pretend. You’re always going to be disappointed when it doesn’t taste as good.
Image source: fourbearants
#3
People who ‘don’t like leftovers’.
Image source: Yossarian287, masterwes0
#4
Throwing out foods that are cosmetically imperfect even though they’re perfectly fine to eat. I say this since my sister does it. If she finds a single wilted green in her tub of lettuce, she’ll throw the whole thing out.
Image source: YukiHase, TheInvertedFan
#5
Not breaking Kit Kat’s into their individual sticks before you eat them. A friend of mine once bit sideways into a Kit Kat and we were all horrified.
Image source: rubensinclair, Proper way to eat a kitkat
#6
I didn’t try it, so I might be unfair, but those 50s-70s cookbooks with jelloed everything, like big jelloed roasts and jelloed mayonnaise salads really freak me out. I don’t know if it actually tastes good, but it seems pretty heinous to me
Image source: yurachika, wikipedia.org
#7
My mother microwaves salad.
Not a meat or egg or other salad.
Salad made up of plants. In the microwave. For 60 seconds.
Image source: RydNightwish, Cats Coming
#8
My dad salts the s**t out of his food before trying it. My younger brother seems to have inherited this trait.
My aunt (my dads oldest sister) does this and also stirs a healthy spoonful of sugar into her glass of red wine.
Image source: TahiniInMyVeins, cottonbro studio
#9
I saw someone eat pineapples with Mayo once at school and it should be considered a war crime
Image source: ehwhoknowss, Kyle McDonald
#10
Any sort of flavored hummus or a dip called ‘hummus’ that doesn’t use chickpeas. The word hummus means chickpeas in Arabic, so if it doesn’t have chickpeas it’s not hummus. Call it any other dip, but don’t confuse it for hummus.
Image source: latiziamass
#11
Putting “caramelized onions” on the menu, and serving onions that have been blanched in sugar syrup.
Everyone knows the difference.
Image source: ultrasupergenius, radonchong
#12
Using Miracle Whip instead of mayonnaise or sour cream in a recipe like Deviled Eggs or potato salad. There is nothing that ruins a good plate of food like biting into that sweet, fake-tasting goop.
Image source: fatmanwithalittleboy
#13
There was an old recipe card… I dry heave to even think of it… Baked whole bananas, wrapped in ham, smothered with hollandaise.
Image source: gerardkimblefarthing
#14
This is my own food crime confession: I really love to eat lemons as you would eat an orange or a clementine — by peeling it and eating the whole thing. For some reason I love the sourness. Of all my strange food preferences, this one really causes witnesses to cringe.
Image source: discountFleshVessel
#15
My mom used to make this s**t called pear salad. It was canned pears topped with a huge pile of shredded cheddar cheese and either mayonnaise or sour cream. I’ve never tried it. It looks as unappetizing as physically possible to me. She loves it.
Also I once spent an hour making mushroom risotto and my roommate doused it in ranch. I’m still not over that.
#16
Baked meat with no seasoning. Dry, sandy, and disgusting.
Image source: Yoda2000675, Los Muertos Crew
#17
I had a gf that would eat butter from the stick. Like a candy bar.
Image source: jbpsign, Sigrid Sixl
#18
Adding certain powdered spices at the end of cooking, close to when you turn off the heat. Most spices must be added early in the cooking process to get them to bloom, get rid of the raw taste, and really blend with the other ingredients. This goes for powerful spices like cayenne, cumin, coriander powder, etc…
Image source: deleted, Marta Branco
#19
Boiling most vegetables. Steaming, roasting, grilling or even raw veggies are better than boiled vegetables.
Image source: pierremanslappy, mali maeder
#20
Not something I’ve seen, but my parents said when I was 4 I’d sneak into the doritos, lick all the powder off some chips, and put them back in the bag.
When my parents would try to eat some, they’d suddenly be horrified by grabbing a cold and soggy chip.
Image source: Forhaver, Neil Tackaberry
#21
My mother-in-law’s burrito recipe. Room temperature flour tortilla, boiled hot dog, canned black olives, and shredded carrots.
Image source: nobody_likes_beets
#22
When I was younger my older brother would eat mustard and nutella sandwiches.
Image source: Clatuu1337, ManufacturerNo1906
#23
Severely overcooking steak. I have a relative who likes his steak cooked extra well done. I don’t know how he even gets it down. Why bother getting nice steak if you’re going to over-cook it to death?!
Image source: TiltedNarwhal, lIlIlIlIlIlIIIIIlll
#24
I used to share a house with a guy, and every time a bottle or jar of sauce was only about a third full, he would fill it up with water and shake it ‘to get his money’s worth.’ That’s not saving money, it’s just making your condiments taste awful.
Image source: Daverotti
#25
My neighbor used to pull all the cheese off her pizza and cover it in ketchup
Image source: NastySassyStuff, FascistSqualodon
#26
I just had a coworker tell me he puts sugar in with his spaghetti nothing else
Image source: space_tripping_vato, Takanori Ishikawa
#27
Multiple open packages of the exact same food.
Image source: ConstableToad, mandingobigdick
#28
When people do not warm their flour tortillas.
Image source: ties__shoes, BrokeBankVegan
#29
Putting ice cubes in milk. My daughter does this and it drives me nuts. There’s nothing worse than watery milk.
Image source: Threeloudkids, Yulia Goncharuk
#30
I cannot stand the way my mother eats sandwiches. Take, for example, a roast beef sandwich. She takes it all apart and eats the roast beef and then the bread separately. It’s meant to be eaten all together…that’s what makes a sandwich taste good!
Image source: ApprehensiveCard6, Suzy Hazelwood
#31
My aunt stirs a spoonful of sugar into her glass of red wine. Now that is a new one for me, and it’s unforgivable. An ice cube in wine is pretty common, but sugar in your wine? Absolutely not.
Image source: HardwareLust, Elina Sazonova
#32
My brother was allergic to cow’s milk when we were younger. I have witnessed him pour orange juice into his cereal and eat it.
Image source: nakedreader_ga, [deleted]
#33
Grilling burgers and not putting the cheese on the burger while it’s on the grill or toasting the buns.
Image source: Kunkyskunts, Marcia Salido
#34
Italian: Undressed noodles with a pool of sauce on top.
(I don’t fuss that much with carbonara purism. I think non Italian redditors get more worked up about it than Italians TBH. Mostly I don’t know why people call something carbonara that’s not.)
Image source: joemondo, Daniel Lindstrom
#35
Chopped tomatoes in bechamel? That’s just Mormon queso.
Image source: Judas_Feast, French Cooking Academy
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