We love kitchen hacks, but only when they net results as good as the traditional method. Be it a surprising way to check steak for doneness without a thermometer or quickly blasting a whole chicken to crispy perfection in the air fryer, there are shortcuts well worth learning, while others simply don’t stack up.
So, when does a potentially clever hack or safe-bet kitchen tool spill over into a crutch?
Suppose you’re automatically reaching for the same tools, equipment or resources whenever you’re in the kitchen or grocery store, without considering whether there’s a better way to accomplish your desired outcome. In that case, you may have a kitchen crutch.
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As a culinary school grad and professional food writer, I’ve identified four of the biggest kitchen shortcuts that aren’t worth their salt.
Using a nonstick pan for everything
Professional chefs consider nonstick cookware a specialty tool, not one meant for regular use.
I admit that as a home cook, I reach for the Caraway or Calphalon much more often than I do my stainless steel or cast iron pans. I must ask myself, though, am I doing this because a nonstick pan is the best tool for the job? As a culinary school graduate, I’m forced to admit that we were only permitted nonstick pans while learning to be chefs when we practiced egg cookery.
So when you’re preparing scrambled eggs or an omelet or want to cook sunny-side up or over-easy without a puddle of oil, by all means, the nonstick is king. However, when caramelization is the goal, you may want to reconsider making the nonstick pan your default. Whether for a satisfying crust on a steak or a melted mass of caramelized onions, you may save a little time for clean up with a nonstick pan, but you’re not achieving comparable results.
Read more: 5 Worst Foods to Cook Using Teflon, According to an Instructor of Health-Centered Cooking
What to use instead
Carbon-steel cookware develops a nonstick patina when seasoned properly and, unlike Teflon pans, can actually sear a steak.
Your cast-iron pans and stainless steel skillets are ready and willing to do the heavy lifting for you. And they don’t ask much to perform to the best of their (and your) ability. Just ensure you’re pre-heating them, using sufficient cooking fat, allowing cooking time for items to properly caramelize before flipping or moving and using the appropriate utensils on their surfaces.
When it comes to cleanup, properly seasoned cast iron needs little more than warm water and coarse salt to become ready to go again, and stainless steel can be sparkling clean with a bit of baking soda and vinegar.
Cooking and reheating in the microwave
You’re probably using your microwave a little too often.
The microwave can also be a hackworthy instrument unto itself: Poached eggs and mug cakes come out brilliantly, with much less time (and swearing) than stovetop or oven methods. While the microwave may be a shortcut for reheating, there’s a better way and many other functions.
A stovetop or electric kettle is better at boiling water for coffee or tea. (And I swear the water stays hotter longer … but perhaps an actual test is in order.) There are several ways to defrost proteins from the freezer — ones that don’t result in uneven temperatures or premature cooking of the edges of the chicken parts or ribeyes destined for the grill or skillet.
Even when it comes to reheating, and perhaps especially then, you should seriously rethink the reflex that causes you to put something into the microwave. For one, it’s pretty much unanimous that this is a one-way ticket to ingesting excess microplastics.
What to use instead
Even a cheap air fryer reheats meat, vegetables and leftover pizza better than any microwave. Period.
You’ll always get a better outcome — and use less energy — with the air fryer, stovetop, oven or even toaster oven. And all of those are less likely to create the kind of explosions that eventually turn your microwave into an incubator of bacteria.
Here’s the best way to reheat every type of leftovers, without a microwave.
Using whatever blog recipe that pops up on Google
Don’t take quick-search recipes as gospel.
If you hit the “jump to recipe” button to seek inspiration, this one’s for you. (This one’s also for me, if I am honest.) The meteoric rise of the kitchen blog over the last couple of decades meant instantly finding a recipe for anything you could conceive of cooking, from simple sauces to lesser-known, highly technical, international dishes.
I’m not advocating for an encyclopedic set of cookbooks, but what cookbooks have over blogs is recipe-testing. Recipes appearing in cookbooks will have been tested repeatedly by more than just the author to ensure consistency and common sense. Cookbooks may also come with some backstory, but the amount of story doesn’t generally require you to flip multiple pages just to get to the recipe.
This isn’t to say that all blog recipes are untested, and there are solid recipe bloggers out there, but the internet doesn’t do the vetting for you. Just because something appears as the top result in a search doesn’t mean it’s the best or even a good option for whatever recipe you seek.
What to use instead
Don’t just hand tonight’s dinner over to the first recipe that pops up on Google.
My suggestion to curb your recipe blog habit may not be what you think. It’s not about finding the perfect recipe but trusting your instincts, a commonly overlooked aspect of cooking.
Every recipe I used in cooking school also ended with the following helpful suggestion: “taste, and adjust.” If it’s not a highly technical recipe, your senses and personal taste are better tools than you give them credit for. For example, if you’ve sought a recipe a few times for pesto, you can probably create something you like by just riffing on what you already know. (Herbs, acid, oil, cheese, nuts, salt. Pulse to combine.)
If you need a recipe and don’t have the perfect cookbook to consult, be sure you’re looking across the search results for those with the most positive reviews. A recipe rated 4.5 with 3,000 ratings and many user comments is arguably better and more useful than a recipe with one or two 5-star ratings.
Using precut fruits, veggies and cheese
Prepared produce is more expensive and vegetables start to lose moisture and flavor almost immediately after being cut.
I love a good meal kit — truly, I do. I have generally found that the precut ingredients in these kinds of delivery options are of decent quality, and sometimes, you can’t beat getting only the amount of that ingredient you need. But that same confidence and enthusiasm do not always extend to precut ingredients across the grocery spectrum, and surely doesn’t apply if I’m cooking from scratch.
Pre-shredded cheeses typically include preservatives or stabilizers that ensure the shreds don’t clump, and precut fruits and veggies start to denature immediately, becoming oxidized or dried out, or begin to leech their juices once they’ve been cut. Minced garlic from a jar just doesn’t have the same impact as a freshly grated or minced clove. (Though fresh garlic’s “paperwork” aspect is a hassle, so you have my blessing on already-peeled cloves.)
What’s more, precuts can be an absolute waste of money. They may save you a couple of minutes in the grand scheme of dinner, but the price of having someone else do the slicing is seriously inflated compared to what the base ingredient would cost if you bought it whole.
What to use instead
Basic prep for meat and produce doesn’t take long to master.
This one is easy: Use freshly chopped produce and shredded cheese whenever possible. Sure, it takes a few more minutes, but once you master basic kitchen skills, chopping, dicing and shredding becomes seriously relaxing — for me, at least. Plus, the money you’d save over a year by just chopping yourself would easily buy you a new chef’s knife or food processor.
