The Ingredient Aarón Sánchez Hates To Cook With

Celebrity chef and "Chopped" judge Aarón Sánchez is a culinary star who knows his way around the kitchen. He told Insider that he always relies on simple recipes when he's preparing yummy dishes for his family. One of his top dishes? Nachos with loads of cheese! The chef explained, "The cool thing about nachos is that you can be very creative with the combination of toppings and it's a great place to use things that you have leftover."

Also, as Sánchez noted, one of the best ways to ensure that a dish stands out is by using high-quality ingredients. And, like other cooks, he has both preferences for the ingredients he loves working with and a list of those he'd rather avoid. He told the Daily Beast, "I don't like green bell peppers, and I don't like little squash. They seem flavorless to me." Although Sánchez doesn't enjoy green bell peppers and squash, he absolutely detests one particular ingredient and avoids it as much as possible.

According to the Food Network, Aarón Sánchez stays far away from aged cheese of any kind and has his reasons for doing so. The chef said he dislikes "really old, fermented cheeses, like an aged goat or sheep cheese" because "it dominates and saturates your palate and it's hard to get past." He does have a point.

According to Food & Wine, goat cheese is a lot better when it's fresh, and when it's older, it tends to taste a lot different and well, "goatier." And aged cheese can be a pretty debatable topic in general. Here's an example: A Redditor accidentally ended up with stinky cheese and didn't know what to do with it. In response, another Reddit user said it can be fairly tricky to work with. "When you heat stinky cheese, it projects the smell. Quiche could work but it'll give your quiche the smell of whatever cheese you used," they explained. Another commentator had a good suggestion. They wrote, "If you want to tone down the flavor a lot and still use it, you could add it to a cream/wine sauce."