One of the best ways to learn how to cook is to help out your parents and relatives as a kid while they’re busy in the kitchen. That way, you quickly pick up some great techniques, sharpen your veggie chopping skills, and get used to being around all the clanking and clattering pots and pans. It’s great! On the flip side, you also pick up some of your parents’ cooking misconceptions, too.
Their mistakes become part of your knowledge base. And it sometimes takes years and years for you to realize that your parents might not have had everything figured out when it comes to food. Redditors opened up about some of the weirdest and funniest things their parents taught them about cooking that ended up being completely the wrong way to go about making food.
From completely overcooking pork and salmon into dry inedible meals to undercooking mushrooms and not using any salt and beyond, here are the biggest misconceptions that they shared. Scroll down, upvote the posts that you think everyone should read, and if you have any food lessons to share with the rest of our dear Pandas, you can tell us all about them in the comments.
Bored Panda got in touch with Jessica Leigh Clark-Bojin, a talented pie artist, food expert, and the author of ‘Pies Are Awesome,’ for a chat about where misconceptions about food come from and about food fads (like the dastardly sugar lobby vilifying fat in the 1960s).
“Culinary knowledge is usually passed down generationally. If that’s how your mum/dad/gran did it, that’s how you do it. There’s a lot of, ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ mentality around the dinner tables of the world,” she told us. Read on for our interview with Jessica!
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#21
I was allowed to eat eggs, sunny side up, omelette, whatever, only once or twice a week.
Supposedly unhealthy.
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108points
#22
My mom used to overcook pork chops all the time because she didn't believe it was safe to have any pinkness inside. I thought I didn't like pork chops very much because I thought it wasn't juicy enough until I finally had one that was cooked to medium doneness.
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104points
#23
Bacon. I assumed it was the solid food equivalent of coffee when I was a kid - smells amazing, tastes like bitter, burnt ashes. My parents err on the side of burnt, and sometimes they err hard. When I was 12 my buddy made us some for breakfast after a sleepover and pulled it off the heat almost still pink and my mind was blown.
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103points
#24
You can't drink milk while eating anything with lemon or it will *curdle in your stomach* and make you *severely* sick!
100points
#25
My mom is a great cook. People offer to buy her stuff all the time. And when my friends come over, they leave at least 5lbs heavier. HOWEVER, there is one thing that she does that hella bothers me- she leaves soups and stews on the stove top for a couple days. She boils it every day and claims it removes the bacteria. Luckily, no one has gotten food poisoning yet. It still freaks me out. And I’ll only eat it when it’s freshly made or from the fridge.
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98points
#26
When baking, stir everything clock wise or it will be bad.
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98points
#27
My parents always had their big meal in the evening. Only as an adult living in Germany did I learn that a big lunch and a light supper are much healthier (for me at least). Much better sleep for one thing.
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97points
#28
Eggs are bad for you.... That was before we heard about cholesterol. Then butter, here use this congealed artery spackle instead
Later they got into the whole low fat thing
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92points
#29
Spinach is desgusting. Its NOT. I eat it every day as an adult. But they ALWAYS bought Canned Spinach which is... not good. Really bad. Green, slightly grass tasting slime. Fresh Spinach? Crunchy! No Slime! Good. They came up poor and lived on an island so I don't think they quite understood that, one we had moved west, they now lived with 500 km of 1000 farms and didn't need to buy it in a can anymore...
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91points
