One of the best parts of writing about food (just like cooking food) is the absolute freedom of it all. What I mean by that is, even when a recipe or an experienced culinary expert tells you there is a “right way” to do something, that isn’t necessarily true.
Sure, you could follow a recipe to the letter and it would probably turn out fantastic because it’s been tested and perfected. But maybe you prefer your cookies a little under-baked (sorry, Paul Hollywood), or maybe you think extra dry overcooked eggs taste better than the fluffy and creamy method Gordon Ramsay touts. A recent BuzzFeed post details the way that a home cook’s personal preferences will always outweigh the “right” way to do things.
From undercooked pancakes to burnt grilled cheese sandwiches, a commonality many of us share when it comes to our distinctly “wrong” cooking methods is that we grew up thinking it was just fine until someone told us otherwise.
I recognized myself in one of the items on BuzzFeed’s list: I always made spaghetti noodles separately from the sauce before adding big scoops of the sauce on top of the pasta. I did this for a number of reasons. I didn’t actually like red pasta sauce for a long time; my mom would make the noodles separately so I could enjoy plain buttered noodles. Then, as I got older and decided I’d try to start liking tomato sauce, I liked having control over how much red sauce I added to the noodles on my own plate.
Besides, cartoon depictions of spaghetti show the plain noodles with red sauce on top, and even the pasta emoji shows the dish looking like that. How wrong could it possibly be to enjoy it this way?
This must be how the other people on the BuzzFeed list feel about their decision to over-bake their biscuits, skip vanilla measurements, or drain the broth from their bowl of ramen. We all have our things. So, what do you cook so wrong that it’s actually right?