Hacks, Tips, and "Takes" on Food & Cooking

Topo Chico is too carbonated the bubbles are  so strong that a cold freshly opened bottle hurts to drink that's a good thing because if  I'm ever making a cocktail the over carbonated water will make for a final beverage that's just  as bubbly as a normal Soda instead of semi-flat meaningless little takes like this one are a  great use case for Twitter especially if you love getting into online fights with strangers  but YouTube and Instagram are my only active social platforms so here's a big c

ollection of  tips hacks and factoids that will help you grow as a cook but don't deserve their own video if  you have old sheet pans that snap out of shape in the oven with a big bang know that this is a  result of Rapid temperature change to stop that from happening leave the pan in the oven while it  preheats it'll get hot more slowly and as an added benefit the food that you add to the hot metal  will start cooking more quickly if you ever go to a restaurant and see an ingredient on the menu

  that you don't recognize take the opportunity to Google it and learn you'll discover are so  many ways to make normal Foods sound fancier did I just mix mayo and mustard together for  a two ingredient sandwich condiment of course not this is homemade Dijonnaise the stove might  be the heart of the kitchen but the sink is its liver the unsung hero of keeping things clean and  running sustainably if you can commit to starting and ending every day with an empty sink you might  have better luck mi

nimizing dishwashing dread and thus cooking more often buy a cookbook centered  around a famous restaurant and it'll probably be formatted pretty similarly to this one with  a glossary of Basic Foods in one section and then several dozen ways to turn those items into  Exquisite dishes in the other this is a really productive way of cooking creatively at home  do you have a personal Larder of curated items prepared what are the things that you always have  on hand cooked rice in the freezer fresh

herbs from the garden a melange of tinned Seafoods the  foods that you always have ready play a big role in your personal style of cooking three things  that I always Chuck into the freezer as soon as I get home from grocery shopping are bread butter  and nuts bread stays fresh for a very long time in the freezer and since I always Toast My Bread  before enjoying it it doesn't add a meaningful amount of time to its prep butter comes in packs  of four so I can leave three in the freezer and keep

one in the fridge and like butter nuts are  so rich in fat that they can start to taste rancid over time Cold Storage solves that problem there  will always be people who insist that cooking at home is more expensive than eating at restaurants  because it's true at least in the beginning if you're just starting out you have to buy  hundreds of dollars in cookware tools utilities and ingredients but it's still kind of a childish  conclusion to come to learning how to front load effort is one of

the major definitive life skills  required for Success whether that's saving for retirement passing a marshmallow test or learning  how to feed yourself whenever you ask someone how to build a basic home bar they'll say get a  whiskey get a vodka get a tequila what nobody ever seems to say is to get a couple of liqueurs  Amaretto if you like almonds Cointreau if you like orange Chambord if you like blackberries there's  such a wide world of sweet spiced complex liqueurs out there and they all ha

ve the capacity to turn  into fancy low ABV cocktails with just one mixer try Amaretto in Coke Chambord and Champagne Mr  black with heavy cream some of them are a lot more versatile than others I've found 100 different  uses for likely Tres but this butterscotch liqueur just seems to languish in the pantry hello Darla  some things benefit from being cooked twice in two different methods reversed seared steak is an  obvious one but more and more of them are catching on roasted potatoes that cook

twice bacon in a  shallow pool that slowly evaporates a sudden Trend in mushroom cookery that takes place in water  first sweet potatoes take forever to cook but if you front load that cook by steaming them first  maybe even days before you want to eat them you can Brown them in a pan far more quickly and due  to the amylase naturally found in sweet potatoes they'll taste sweeter is that the Aurora Borealis  located entirely within my kitchen no it's steamed yams people saw that I sometimes hav

e homemade  vanilla extract and asked if I'd make a video on it but here's the thing making your own vanilla  extract usually isn't worth it you still have to buy a couple vanilla beans which are wildly  expensive so you don't save any money and the companies that make vanilla extract buy so many  beans that they probably get first pick of the best pods unless you happen upon some free vanilla  beans or creative ideas for custom infusions you're probably better off buying a big bulk  bottle by a

boutique brand when a YouTuber says I eat this dish five times a week understand that  it's probably true not necessarily just because of how good the dish is but because we just spent the  past month testing the recipe and cooking a dozen different iterations of it anytime you cook make  sure the handles of any pan are turned away from any walkable path this cuts down on the chances  of you or anyone else accidentally knocking a sizzling pan of hot oil onto their tootsies when  people decide t

o try growing their own food there are two major mistakes that I see way too often  one is that they don't fill the pot all the way up with soil good potting soil is expensive but your  plants need lots of room for roots to grow plus that fresh soil settles down by several inches  once you start watering it so fill the pots all the way to the top right when you start the other  mistake is that they overcrowd the pot with plants thinking it's a good idea to put 10 tomatoes in  one five gallon buc

ket it's fine to sprinkle too many sea in at first but you got to thin them out  or else nothing's going to grow properly refer to a square foot gardening chart to see how many  of any certain plants can fit in a given space don't let the shame surrounding lower quality  ingredients prevent you from taking shortcuts not every meal needs to be a five-star dish it's our  responsibility as cooking Educators to explain why certain ingredients like pre-shredded bag cheese  are much lower in quality b

ut if pre-shredded nondescript Mexican fiesta blend is what it takes  to get you cooking it's still better than ordering takeout this is one of those things that I will  always promptly replace if it ever breaks life is better with a soap foamer you just add regular  soap and water to the Basin and it spits out a foamy mixture that lathers and rinses off far more  easily it dilutes my soap which means I can buy the more expensive fancy brands that smell great  and cost more and since it has a bi

g wide head I can slam it five times with a wrist or an elbow  if my digits are chickeny from handling raw meat another product I can't get enough of spoon rests  you don't realize how great these are until you notice how often you're otherwise tempted to rest  a utensil on a hot pan or Teeter it in precarious positions don't get these big decorative ones  they take up to too much space and don't add any functionality even this enormous spatula is fine  on a small spoon rest because everything f

lows down to the point of contact smaller spoon rests  are easier to clean easier to stack in a cabinet five at a time like little plates I love having a  ton of these things because I can recklessly dirty one or two of them every single day and then run  them in the dishwasher no problem most of these I've made myself but this one specifically can  be purchased on my site dinnerwithbarcley.com they are made by hand and they've got this little  cutout right here that makes sure any utensil sits

properly on its face try to find out which things  are better off store-bought versus homemade and understand that your conclusion will not be the  same as others for most of America store-bought salsa is deplorable sickening awful stuff but  here in the desert Southwest there's enough of a market for our grocery stores to carry freshly  made perishable salsa that's perfectly serviceable our grocery store Sushi is nothing to write home  about but to act as if that's a universal truth is Hawaii E

rasure there's this pervasive idea in  the people who are bad at cooking community that restaurant food is only good because there's  extra salt or double the fat or MSG in a dish this is rooted in obvious truth I'd rather eat a  breaded salted deep fried chicken breast than an under seasoned baked one but to act like that's  the big secret is to reveal yourself as a cooklet the simplest Counterpoint it's possible to make  food too salty or too greasy Checkmate commentors if this is a real opini

on that you earnestly hold  I encourage you to let go of it because it leads to the sort of defeatist conclusion that food  cooked at home just isn't as good when my in-laws make burgers at home they use very little salt and  they bake them in the oven as you can imagine they don't come out very good Eric I know that you're  watching this I'm sorry that your wife leaked this information I bring this up because the burgers  would taste better if they were properly seasoned and cooked on a grill a

conclusion that comes  from proper training not from copium huffing sentiments like well my homemade burgers aren't  exactly as good as the Gastropub nearby but that's just because I don't use all that yucky oil and  salt talking about nutrition on YouTube is almost as self-destructive as posting to Twitter so I  don't want to get into it but let's collectively agree that the secret to good cooking is loads of  salt and fat is an embarrassing take from people who don't know any better one time

I saw a tick  tock of a guy shaving frozen strawberries with a microplane and topping it with sweetened condensed  milk black sesame and chopped peanuts it looks tasty but there's no way I was gonna hand grate  all of those strawberries turns out it's another use case for my beloved ice shaver look how fast  I can do this they go from hole in the freezer to shaved in a serving Bowl in a matter of seconds  the peanuts and dairy take this from a basic granita to a PB J adjacent Indulgence and I al

ways  have fruit in my freezer so I'm happy to have something like this in my back pocket maybe next  time I'll do a peach version with some pie spices and walnut granola on top sort of like a peach  crumble do you remember when people might Marvel at a dark orange egg yolk from a backyard chicken  before commercial egg companies altered their chickens diets to evolve with consumer preferences  know that shortcuts for identifying high quality ingredients exists within this Perpetual cat  and mou

se game with food corporations never too far behind consumer heuristics if you've got  a dishwasher try gel instead of PODS that way you can fill up the pre-wash cup here you could  just keep using pods and drop another one in the pre-wash area but that gets pretty pricey  pretty quickly this notion does have a whole video dedicated to it it was made by technology  connections and it got millions of views along with so many comments that it necessitated a 40  minute long follow-up squeeze bottle

s get a lot of love but I never hear spray bottles getting  any praise fill one of these up with water and you've always got a way to add an even Mist to  something good for hitting a bowl of day old rice before microwaving it or spraying a store-bought  corn tortilla before making it pliable on the stovetop if this looks too industrial for you  misto makes a fancier pump action spray bottle that can handle any liquid even oil meaning you  don't have to pay extra for disposable bottles of spray

oils that are laced with propellants if  you have a food processor at home that came with a bunch of attachments that you never use check  to see if there's one for grating cheese I hate using a box grater but now I get excited to turn  a pound of mozzarella into chunky shreds that's all because my food processor can do it with  almost zero effort also mine has variable speeds so grating semi-soft cheeses at the lowest power  setting is insanely satisfying I don't know how to describe it or if t

his is just freak Behavior  but give it a try if you ever get the opportunity try to recognize when a dish is supposed to be a  celebration of its ingredients people understand that a 50 steak should taste like beef or that  a Primo cut of raw fatty tuna doesn't need a ton of enhancement but that seems to be less obvious  when it comes to fruits and vegetables for some reason what's the secret to the best tasting  salsa starting with the best tasting read in season Tomatoes cooking is a lot like

fashion  in the sense that some things are trendy While others are Timeless nobody's talking about dalgona  coffee anymore we don't know how long the smashed croissant Trend will last but a properly cooked  egg much like a good pair of jeans will never go out of style okay snap back to reality your short  form long form hybrid content is coming to an end to think people wonder how YouTubers will evolve  in The Tick Tock era stay tuned for next week's post where I jingle keys at the camera for 1

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