The Bad Cooking Habits That You Need to Stop Already, According to Reddit

It took a Serious Eats post on their editors’ kitchen pet peeves to teach me that something I did in the kitchen might be bothersome to other people: leaving the foil or plastic seals partially attached to yogurt and sour cream tubs under the lid. Oops! So, obviously, when I heard that Reddit was posting a public version on the same question, I dug in excitedly to learn what other bad habits I might have in my cooking routine. 

Many, many dads and grandmothers get thrown under the bus as people complain about both general and specific things people do in the kitchen. Big things like always cooking everything with the burner set to high (and overcooking everything in general), crowding pans, under-seasoning, and putting food into cold pans make up the bulk of the complaints.

There are also a lot of cleaning ones — not cleaning as they go, leaving knives in the sink (or dishwasher), and cross-contamination issues. Perhaps the biggest overarching problem involves the mixing of prep tasks and cooking tools: the use of metal on nonstick surfaces, which scratches the pan and negates the nonstick properties.

But the real fun in threads like this comes in the specific things that have clearly been bugging the poster for ages and they are so glad to finally have an outlet to share their frustration — things that are less relatable, less a habit that others should avoid, and more just a person’s weird quirk that you have to wonder how it started: substituting French onion soup mix for chopped onion, putting beans (or ketchup?) in Bolognese sauce, air-frying a steak, and adding “vile canned corn to everything” — which apparently includes brownies. Even as a fairly laid-back kitchen person, I’d love to at least hear more about the reasoning on that last one.

If you’re looking for more deliciously bad habits, we’ve previously collected design pet peeves, grocery store ones, and recipe annoyances!