Redditors Are Revealing All The Cooking 'Rules' They Ignore

Could it be that we are living in a golden age for cooking? Never before have we been able to access so many recipes, kitchen hacks, and other culinary advice at the click of a mouse or a remote. The problem is, you know what they say about all that glitters and you may not know if an online recipe will actually work. There's quite a lot of fool's gold amongst these nuggets of wisdom.

Perhaps most annoying of all is any culinary advice that's presented as a "rule:" always do such-and-such, never do this other thing. While there are some rules that are necessary for safety, like don't eat chicken that smells funny and don't let small children handle sharp knives, others seem to veer off in the opposite direction entirely. Some so-called rules, like only using Irish butter, might be a little too extravagant or expensive for the average household to follow. A recent Reddit thread posed the question "What is one cooking 'rule' that you choose to always ignore?" It sparked quite a lively conversation as true confessions poured in from unrepentant kitchen renegades.

One rule that many Redditors break has to do with always sifting your flour. For the most part, people seem to feel flour sifting is rather outdated. As one commenter pointed out, "Flour used to have a lot more bugs in it than it does now," while another added, "And pebbles and sometimes metal. Basically anything that's on the mill floor." While some acknowledged that sifting makes for better texture with finicky baking projects like macarons, others noted that for most purposes a quick whisk or stir of the flour will usually suffice. Pastry chef Gesine Bullock-Prado agrees that sifting is not strictly necessary, per Food Network.

Other rules Redditors don't agree with included not rinsing mushrooms, as one person asked, "How else am I supposed to get the dirt off?" Users didn't want to replace their spices every 6 months and called it expensive, wasteful, and unnecessary. A Redditor explained that they didn't use unsalted butter for baking and said, "I'm not buying 2 different kinds of butter." Another user objected to the standard of never cooking barefoot and asked, "who wears shoes in their house??" The main rule that nearly everyone seems to break, however, is the one about following recipes exactly. After all, just because a recipe developer calls for a tablespoon of cinnamon in their blueberry pie, that doesn't mean it's integral to the dish. Instead, it may just be a matter of personal taste.