This reddit has a lot of good and kind advice. It also has a ton of unhelpful, disparaging comments and a lot of sarcasm & snarkiness.

The reddit is titled cookingforbeginners. Which rather gives away what it is supposed to be about.

If you aren't a beginner, then presumably you're here to help beginners.

If you've been cooking a long time, or grew up watching someone in your family cooking you may not realize how much you picked up that to you is common sense but don't realize other people don't know. Or you may simply have forgotten how much you didn't know when you first started.

Comments like 'Google it' are unhelpful at best, idiotic at worst. They likely did Google it, and found what they thought would be a good reddit to talk about it.

So be cool.

Plenty of reddit for chefs if you find speaking to beginners tiresome.

The idiot in the conversation might not be who you think it is.

Hi all!

I am so sorry if this is a stupid question lol I tried looking it up but I saw different responses.

I have the instant pot with the slow cook function. Can I use it to cook recipes that are made for the crockpot? Or would I not have the same results? Does anybody use their instant pot for slow cooking and it works just fine?

Thanks in advance!!

I have a stainless steel pot with a glass lid and I want to cook a recipe that I found but the recipe says to put the pot in the oven. The video they use a cast iron pot but I don’t have one of those. How do I know if my pot is oven safe

Hi everyone,

I've made several olive loaf cakes, but every single time I end up with a brown layer all around the outside of the cake. I can't figure out why it's happening.

I've tried different loaf pans, baking at 200°C, 180°C, with and without the fan, but I always get the same result. Does anyone have an idea what might be causing this? Thanks in advance!

I (F 29) am a small business owner, and I’ve spent the last three years getting this thing off the ground. Things are finally looking stable so I decided to solve a problem that has caused me a lot of embarrassment my whole life… namely that I don’t know anything about cooking!

Ordering in is really cheap where I live and I’ve been depending on that to help me save time while I worked to keep my business afloat. I have always absolutely hated the entire process of cooking meals, from buying the ingredients to chopping them up to keeping watch over them on the stove. I find the whole ordeal stressful, and I end up spending twice the recommended time only to get a subpar meal at the end. But I’ve always felt a bit embarrassed that I wasn’t good or even average at cooking, since it’s such a basic life skill.

I’m sick of being bad at cooking so I decided to bite the bullet and sign up for an intensive cooking class. It will be 3 hours a day for a little over 6 weeks! I finally have the time and money so I just want to make this problem of being unable to cook go away. I am so excited to learn things like knife skills, ingredient prep, etc. I have been half heartedly trying to teach myself to cook with YouTube videos for the past 10 years and I know there are cheaper ways to do this, but I don’t care. I’d rather spend some money now than spend the next decade or heaven forbid the rest of my life unable to prepare myself or my friends a decent meal.

I can’t wait!!! etc. I hope that by the end of this I will be an around-average cook, if not a good one!

Has anyone else done something like this? What was the process like? What was the result?

Since I moved into my apartment in Maryland last year, I've been cooking a lot more than I used to, having my own kitchen (and one that's actually pretty spacious) has made me enjoy cooking and baking way more and I've been wanting to get a stand mixer ever since. The problem is I have no idea which one to buy. There are so many options and some of them are way more expensive than I expected. Between rent, utilities, health insurance, groceries and existing, I don't really want to spend a fortune. I'm looking for something that'll handle everyday baking and cooking bread dough, cookies, cakes, pizza dough, mashed potatoes things like that.

Hello! Tomorrow I work 6-2:30 and have about an hour where I can prepare a meal before being busy from 4-8pm. So I need something where I can pretty much just let it do it's thing. Not exactly sure this is long enough for a crock pot meal, but I'm open! Avoid Italian because that's tonight's dinner.

I know it's really stupid but im scared of cooking uhm anyway need to heat up pasta rn and it was frozen with a bit of tomato sauce baked into it already like it's leftovers and idk the process...

Do i first hear up the pan then put butter in?

How do i know the pan is hot enough?

How do i know the pasta is done?

What to mix it with fork or spatula? I dont wanna scratch it but spatula doesnt seem helpful with pasta...

Should i add garlic powder or salt pepper or oregano or something?

I know its really basic and im really dumb for not being able to do basic cooking just really scared...its induction btw so no actual fire luckily...

Anyone that can guide me rn?

We've only ever been told that things 'may reduce the risk of cancer and disease' or that things 'may increase the risk of cancer and disease'.

All we hear is 'coffee may reduce the risk of alzheimers, bacon may increase the risk of cancer'. Its all hypothetical what we've been led to believe based on a number of tests on lab rats and such, where's the facts?.

Someone with the unhealthiest lifestyle could outlive someone with a healthy lifestyle. These findings contradict that, what we do know is that weight and mass is a significant risk for disease and illness. But it does seem a lot of these findings about what we consume is hypothetical rather than actual evidence.

Recently I had a pound of ground beef pork mix left to thaw in the open for around 7 hours as I had forgoten about it. It was frozen at the start. It had a little bit if a strange smell so I threw it out but I am worried about wasting good meat.

This was supposed to go on rice

I made some gound beef with

Ginger, garlic, sesame seed oil, brown sugar, soy sauce, red pepper flakes...

Im thinking use it on a flour tortilla and make a burrito.

Thinking of adding beans in the meat. Black seems like it would work well.

What toppings would go well on that?

Green onions

Any recipes for a vinegar/pickle juice based salad dressing, that is not oil based? I made my own refrigerator pickles and now I have a bunch of juice left over. I tried making a vinaigrette but it mostly just tastes like olive oil (ratio was 1/4 oil, 3/4 pickle brine)

Generally I prefer creamier sauces like thousand island, but I'm looking for something with no added sugar and (preferably but not required), low calorie. Any advice would be great!

Also I'm open to any other ideas on what to do with it, I have like four jars of the stuff lol

I'll cut to the chase im spoilt and lazy asf incredibly privileged and used to people doing everything for me. but i don't want to be anymore. im learning how to cook and i made a few things and they came out great!! however im a bit overwhelmed by the cleanup after.

how do yall do this forever? like you're back from college or your job and you're cooking a meal cleaning up doing your assignments meeting deadlines preparing for an exam how do you do these things with a busy schedule

i was cooking teiglach for the first time for a community potluck and while my back was turned, the honey syrup overflowed into the stove eye and well underneath. i even saw a spark of some kind. im going to get my complex's maintenance to come check it out, but i was wondering if the stove is ruined or if i could clean it? the syrup was sugar, water, honey, and ground ginger. thanks in advance.

What beef would you suggest for a beef ragu? Not a fan of chuck roast so I was looking for an alternative, a lot of recipes say flank but I hear that isn't meant for slow cook. Most recipes show just a couple hours in the crock pot but was hoping to find a chuck roast alternative. Thank you !

I cooked fried catfish for the first time yesterday. I did 350 f° 3 -4 minutes on each side in a pan. Im using Zatarain's crispy southern fish fry. I followed the box cooking instructions of covering the fish in the fish fry then cooking it.

when I removed it from the pan it almost fell apart from just doing that and when I ate it it was tough to dip it in anything as it just fell apart.

Any tips on how to keep it together better would be awesome as I'm gonna try again soon

Yes, the cut genuinely matters, but not equally for every dish. Some recipes are forgiving enough that a similar cut works fine. Others will completely fall apart if you get it wrong, and that's probably what's happening half the time.

Here's the one thing that actually makes it click: fat and connective tissue. Cuts with a lot of both need long, slow, wet heat to break down properly. Cuts with less need short, fast, dry heat. That's basically the whole system.

Tough cuts like chuck, brisket, or short ribs come from parts of the animal that do a lot of work. All that movement builds up connective tissue, which turns into gelatin when you braise or slow cook it for a few hours. That's what makes a good pot roast rich and pullapart tender. If you blast that same chuck with high heat like a steak, the collagen never breaks down and you're chewing through rubber.

Tender cuts like ribeye, tenderloin, or skirt steak come from muscles that don't work as hard. They don't have much connective tissue, so high heat for a short time works great. But low and slow destroys them because there's nothing to break down. They just dry out.

At the grocery store, price is actually a decent shortcut. Cheap cuts almost always need slow cooking. Expensive cuts almost always need fast, high heat. Not perfect, but it'll save you most of the time.

When you're substituting, try to swap within the same category. Chuck for brisket is fine. Sirloin for ribeye is fine. Chuck for sirloin is where things go sideways.

Do you stick it in and the first number that pops up is the temperature? Do you wait until the number stops climbing? Do you just wait a specific amount of seconds? No one seems to have solid information on this.

I made a batch of tzatziki sauce for the first time and have way more than I can eat before it will go bad. Is this a food that can be frozen and then thawed to use again? Thanks!

I just moved into my own place in Sydney and I’m starting completely from zero in the kitchen. Never really cooked much before so I need to get some basic pots, pans, and utensils that will actually last.

I’ve been looking online and found Victoria’s Basement, but I’m a bit lost on what I actually need as a beginner. Not sure if I should go for non-stick, stainless steel, or a mix, and how many pieces make sense when you’re just starting out.

Any recommendations for good starter cookware that won’t fall apart after a few months? Prefer stuff that’s easy to find in Australia.

My microwave is warm due to the light under the counter.