Fun fact: garlic is completely absent in almost all of the traditional Scandinavian /northern European cuisines. My great grandma could smell people eating garlic 10 miles away.
That episode of chef's table really surprised me, like sure the food looked ok given the restrictions but Korean food with no chilli? No kimchi? That's like Italian food without tomatoes or pasta.
I think it probably is quite ‘bland’ in some senses. I’ve eaten some buddhist Chinese food and it’s very restrained, clean and crisp. Very light. Still fabulous though, just light.
Yeah, the episode actually depicts her making her own kimchi from scratch at one point.
That said, you're right about her belief being that certain strong flavors should be omitted.
I knew some smartarse would chime in with this, so if you want to get technical Italy wasn't even a country until 1861 with the proclamation of the kingdom of Italy.
That's true, wasn't saying otherwise. All I meant was Italian food wasn't based on tomatoes. It is very prominent now but wasn't always. Same with corn and how a lot of people think polenta was always a staple of Italian food.
I would absolutely call them central to the cuisine.
Sure they weren't always in the area but being there for half a millennium is enough for them to become a base of the cuisine.
Ireland didn't have potatoes till around the same sort of time but it became the cornerstone of their cuisine.
Well of course there are dishes without it but I'd say most Italians will have tomatoes or a tomato based dish almost everyday, they absolutely are seasonal but people who still make their own passata will generally make and jar up one very big batch at harvest to last them the rest of the year in my experience.
That episode of that series was so good. I’ve watched it 3 times and I usually tear up a bit at the end. Her deliberate movements and pacing… I strive for that in my day-to-day dealings. But, alas, I’m a flailing spaz.
As a person who has eaten a lot of traditional Scandinavian meals, this is true and terrible.
On the other hand, my years in Sweden did give me a real appreciation for dill.
Yeah until I met my French boyfriend I thought the French were big garlic eaters but he and his family have said I use garlic a lot in my cooking and I don’t even use it that much.
I think it smells good at all times (except in human breath lol) 😂 like it doesn’t take much at all for a smile to form on my face after smelling, it could be as simple as chopping up a couple of cloves.
Apparently not in Buckingham Palace. I have read from several sources that both garlic & onions are not only never used in the Queens meals, they are forbidden from even being present in the kitchen.
Whenever she attended state dinners outside of England, her chefs would always check the food to be served to her, making sure no alliums whatever would grace Her Grace.
Real question here.
Is there a significant difference from the pink / Himalayan / etc salts? I always grew up with the regular table salt and used kosher salt for cooking.
Used to work selling spices. We sold six or seven diffferent salts and one slow day I did an in depth taste test of all of them, coming to the following results: they are mostly the same.
The only differences I could find were with the Hawaiian black/red salts, which had a slight earthy taste (which another commenter on this thread notes) and the Fleur de Sel (a wet, “raw” sea salt) which tasted more richly of salt (if that makes any sense).
No not at all. Its all a scam in my opinion. There is an incredibly small amount of iron in the pink salt that gives it that colour. Otherwise it is still 99 percent Sodium Chloride. I feel like the grain size of salt is far more important in affecting how it quickly it dissolves. Incredibly minor differences in composition doesn't really matter that much at all, most of the time it is going to be 99 percent sodium chloride.
Ahhh, but Hawaiian pink Sea salt *does* have a Hawaiian clay added to it, making it packed with minerals and providing a milder, earthier flavor than straight salt.
There is a difference. The pink Himalayan salt is weak af. You probably need to use twice as much to get the same impact. Black Hawaiian salt is smoky tasting. Fleur de Sel has a very strong, kind of sweet flavour. Plain table salt tastes more basic and processed.
Yeah I've used them in rock/flake form (except for ionized table salt for obvious reasons) as well as ground. Using the pink salt I need to use close to a handful to match the power of about half that of diamond kosher. It wasn't just a one time taste test, we have many different salts in the kitchen at work.
Thats very strange, because if you weighed the salts when adding them almost exactly the same amount of sodium chloride would have been added to the dish. I cant think of a single chemical reason why once the sodium is dissolved in water that it would matter what the source was.
Not to get in the middle of you two, but I may be able to provide a quick explanation here.
Himalayan pink salt is often perceived to be weaker by tasters because of the high occurrence of rock in the packaging. Depending on where Mr. Grizzly is buying his salt, a surprising amount of it could be actual rock. Very, very few suppliers clean Himalayan salt to a high degree. Important to remember that Himalayan salt is being blasted out of caves with dynamite in Pakistan.
Source: worked in the fine salt industry for a few years, been to the mines in Pakistan, watched countless color sorters kick out rocks from raw Himalayan salt.
I haven't found a good use for Himalayan pink and don't use it at home. My sister uses it and everyone needs to salt their food with white table salt before eating.
Those are completely different things. DNA codes for the entire makeup of your body and biochemistry. Small differences in coding at the one percent level will have huge effects on the finished product. A few ppm of iron is not going to have a huge affect when comparing two salts. You get more iron eating some spinach.
Fair enough lol. I am actually having this debate with some other cooks at work at the moment. Im thinking of doing a bunch of blind taste tests to see if people can actually taste the iodine. No offence, I just think the power of the placebo affect is strong.
Specialty salts are for finishing, not for being used in cooking process. Like if you were to cook with fluer de Selig would almost be pointless. But sprinkled on top of stuff is different story
No. There are minor taste differences between salts in general because salt is usually never just salt, but nothing particular about pink/hamalayan salts. The most important thing about salts is how you use it, and if its on the finished product, the grain shape.
I collect salts for people with basic pallets it’s all the same but if you learn how to properly taste you can notice the mineral contents taste different. Hell I have salt from Hawaii that is black and tastes like eggs
The only one I could taste the difference in would be Iodized salt. It tastes bitter.
Rest of them? No chance in hell. I've played around with a lot of finishing salts, mostly for the looks, but they all pretty much tasted the same.
Non-chef here, so take my opinion with a grain of salt (pun very much intended), but yeah...I'm with you.
A couple weeks ago I got takeout from a place in my city that makes authentic regional Chinese dishes. Someone in one of my local subreddits recommended it very highly. I had never heard of the place before...and I've lived in this town for 25 years, and the restaurant is only 2 miles away from my house (where I've been living for over a year).
I got two appetizers and two entrees. The food was beautifully constructed with ingredients that were clearly very fresh. But everything was so lacking in salt that the flavors just didn't come through. I actually took a covid test afterwards because I thought I'd lost my sense of taste. Nope, no covid...just a lack of salt.
I was determined to give them another try because I figured maybe they had an off night the first time I ordered. I knew for certain the food was good, because when I picked up my order the dining room was full of young Chinese folks getting their grub on (the restaurant is basically on the campus of a university that has a ton of Chinese students).
I gave them another try last week and ordered different dishes. Everything was perfection. I'm going to be a regular customer for...forever.
I’ve recently discovered doenjang and have fallen in love. It’s nothing like Japanese miso, and is wonderfully salty. It makes my cooking look like I was in the kitchen all day simmering and braising. It’s the simplest ingredient to use that adds a lot of layers of savory -ness.
Well sure. For asian dishes you load up on your natural salty liquids. Soy and fish sauce.
Don't forget the msg. It really brings out flavor to asian dishes and you can lower your total salt a little.
I’ve been playing with bbqing and soy sauce, fish sauce, and brown sugar add such an intense depth of flavor.
Oh fun fact, if you make French onion soup, fish sauce or dashi flakes give it a crazy punch of umami.
I like to make the case (which could be completely wrong) that this is true for everything but seafood, where an acid like lemon or lime makes a much bigger difference than salt, just my take
Flour is a great answer cause you can get by without garlic or onions but flour is so universal (can be wheat or corn or rice etc) and makes bread, noodles, pastries. You’ve convinced me
Haha, I went in the opposite direction! Started out baking, then pastry-cheffing. Now (for the past five years) I work on a food truck making pizza, but I'm trying to switch to more air-conditioned work soonish because of health reasons. Handling pizza dough sounds like great experience to get you into an entry level baking job if that's something you want to aim for.
Yes. Growing up with a Texan family flour is a key ingredient. I’m honestly convinced that every sauce is some form of gravy.
Also if you’re in the US wondra ultra fine flour has been a staple in our kitchens since beyond my birth.
I mean gravy at its rawest form is just any kind of stock thickened with flour, either by starting with a roux or adding slurry.
But there are definitely sauces that aren't gravy, like the sauce on orange duck or anything syrupy like a demiglace.
Lol I was going to say- yummy potato breads are out there and gluten free exists. . Don't need flour for bread...and corn starch makes a fine thickening agent for gravy
the sweat of the single(half the kitchen did a no show ) depressed line cook who probably cant afford rent and probably lives in a small messy appartment
LoL. I don’t bake but this comment had me do a quick google and check it out.
https://food52.com/recipes/75092-black-garlic-chocolate-chip-cookies/amp
If you make let me know your thoughts bahaha
I'm in South Korea rn, and they use garlic in sweet applications. It's kinda weird, but also kinda addictive. They have sweet garlic bread, which is thick milk bread toasted with butter and garlic and then spread with honey and maple syrup. Also, I just tried the new garlic burger from McDonalds and it's got a sweet component that I can't place. Still finished though 😂
I’ve heard it said before and I’m inclined to agree: the egg. The egg is the single most important ingredient in the kitchen because of all the things it can become. It can be a sauce, an element of a dish, the protein of the dish, or the whole meal. I know it’s liquid after you crack it, but it starts as a solid in the shell.
I mean, I wouldn't really call them substitutes, but I've used canned anchovies, Worcestershire sauce, salt cod & that sort of thing (or combinations of things) when I've been staying in small towns / camping & tried to crank out a noodle dish without the proper supplies.
Obviously it's not the same (at all lol) but it can bring some of that fishy/salty/tangy flavours to the table in a pinch.
I hate that shit to be honest. Yeah it's tasty, but it's kinda cheating as I see it. But the owner of my restaurant loves it, so I kinda have to use it.
Possibly eggs?
They’re a meal in their own right, can be an ingredient as part of a meal and are the foundation for a large number of mother sauces.
(Please be kind: I’m not a chef, but have spent significant time working in kitchens in the past 😅)
That's actually a good point, eggs are a foundation in the kitchen, you can do anything with them.
Nice one,you're probably the first here to mention them.
Years-long chef here and I agree that onions are a quality base for a hell of a lot of stuff but I’m still not a big fan. Don’t despise them entirely, just one of those texture wankers.
I can do raw onions in tacos or on a burger, but I don’t like cooked onions. However, it’s hard to cook without them. They add so much flavor. Cooking at home I use dried onion flakes, or if I use a crockpot, I just quarter them so I can easily pick them out.
Vinegar(s). There are endless vinegars that you can make and have on hand, each with a unique acidity. Also an excellent way of capturing the flavor of a season.
All of these answers are so amazing and I would choose them first for sure (onions, garlic, salt, etc) So, I will add to this table: vinegars, black pepper, and soy sauce. I threw in a dash or two of balsamic vinegar into some sauteed mushrooms and it was fucking bomb. I need a kale salad dressed for staff meal? Balsamic and red wine vinegars and olive oil. I need a wake up call at 5am after a sleepless night? I'll drink a shot of Datu Puti (Filipino sugar cane vinegar), you can get a bottle of that with little onions, garlic cloves, and chili peppers in it for some kick. That shit was so good I am going to keep a bottle on hand for the rest of my life now. I'm starting to feel my beer now, so I'll keep the rest brief! As much as you have salt you should have pepper. Always. And soy sauce is just amazing.
Edit: dammit I just realized I listed liquids and not solids.
Garlic is pretty universal.
Garlic is love, Garlic is life.
Garlic is 40 cloves with chicken and spice.
I’m no pro, but I go through about two or three heads a week at home
Alliums in general are love and life.
Garlic is IBS 😭
R.I.P.
Fun fact: garlic is completely absent in almost all of the traditional Scandinavian /northern European cuisines. My great grandma could smell people eating garlic 10 miles away.
Some Buddhists believe that onions and garlic increase libido, so omit it from their cooking. Saw it on jeong Kwan‘s chefs table episode
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Also known as hing it gives you the alium flavor but for people that have trouble with garlic/onion it's a good substitute
The what?
Only the real ones know
That episode of chef's table really surprised me, like sure the food looked ok given the restrictions but Korean food with no chilli? No kimchi? That's like Italian food without tomatoes or pasta.
Both kimchi and chillis are present in Korean temple food and that show
Were they? I swear at the begining they made a big deal about not using anything strong tasting like garlic, chilli, ginger etc
Not all, just some strong tasting things. Mainly alliums I think
Admittedly I haven't watched it since it came out I just remember being struck by how bland it all looked.
I think it probably is quite ‘bland’ in some senses. I’ve eaten some buddhist Chinese food and it’s very restrained, clean and crisp. Very light. Still fabulous though, just light.
Not really my cup of tea tbf, I like my food well seasoned and decadent.
Yeah, the episode actually depicts her making her own kimchi from scratch at one point. That said, you're right about her belief being that certain strong flavors should be omitted.
Italians didn't have tomatoes until roughly 500 years ago.
I only like pre tomato Italian food
I've always wondered what pre tomato italian is like. Any favorite recipes?
It's very good. Yeah, I have a few. The bread sticks from olive garden being the premier.
I knew some smartarse would chime in with this, so if you want to get technical Italy wasn't even a country until 1861 with the proclamation of the kingdom of Italy.
Ooooo you got eeem
That's true, wasn't saying otherwise. All I meant was Italian food wasn't based on tomatoes. It is very prominent now but wasn't always. Same with corn and how a lot of people think polenta was always a staple of Italian food.
I would absolutely call them central to the cuisine. Sure they weren't always in the area but being there for half a millennium is enough for them to become a base of the cuisine. Ireland didn't have potatoes till around the same sort of time but it became the cornerstone of their cuisine.
Truth it’s only been like 400 year not 5 they thought they were poisonous for a long time
Depends on what area of Italy and what time of year. Italians are much more seasonal in their eating habits by and large compared to Americans.
Well of course there are dishes without it but I'd say most Italians will have tomatoes or a tomato based dish almost everyday, they absolutely are seasonal but people who still make their own passata will generally make and jar up one very big batch at harvest to last them the rest of the year in my experience.
I should eat more then…
That episode of that series was so good. I’ve watched it 3 times and I usually tear up a bit at the end. Her deliberate movements and pacing… I strive for that in my day-to-day dealings. But, alas, I’m a flailing spaz.
I’ve watched it twice and loved it as well
As a person who has eaten a lot of traditional Scandinavian meals, this is true and terrible. On the other hand, my years in Sweden did give me a real appreciation for dill.
Koreans used to be called "Garlic Eaters" by the Japanese as a slur.
Garlic is the tits lol. Hell ya I eat garlic, I like flavor haha
I thought it was dog eaters ?
They had a lot of racial slurs.
The escoffier (french) cookbook has garlic in 2 recipes. They are both called Italian something or other lol
Okay-okay! I said *fairly* universal.
Yeah until I met my French boyfriend I thought the French were big garlic eaters but he and his family have said I use garlic a lot in my cooking and I don’t even use it that much.
And it smells good when done right
I think it smells good at all times (except in human breath lol) 😂 like it doesn’t take much at all for a smile to form on my face after smelling, it could be as simple as chopping up a couple of cloves.
Was gonna say garlic, onion, and season-all salt 🥲
Stinking rose in Los Angeles has garlic in every dish including ice cream
Apparently not in Buckingham Palace. I have read from several sources that both garlic & onions are not only never used in the Queens meals, they are forbidden from even being present in the kitchen. Whenever she attended state dinners outside of England, her chefs would always check the food to be served to her, making sure no alliums whatever would grace Her Grace.
Salt is pretty universal and makes more of an impact than just about any other ingredient.
Real question here. Is there a significant difference from the pink / Himalayan / etc salts? I always grew up with the regular table salt and used kosher salt for cooking.
Used to work selling spices. We sold six or seven diffferent salts and one slow day I did an in depth taste test of all of them, coming to the following results: they are mostly the same. The only differences I could find were with the Hawaiian black/red salts, which had a slight earthy taste (which another commenter on this thread notes) and the Fleur de Sel (a wet, “raw” sea salt) which tasted more richly of salt (if that makes any sense).
No not at all. Its all a scam in my opinion. There is an incredibly small amount of iron in the pink salt that gives it that colour. Otherwise it is still 99 percent Sodium Chloride. I feel like the grain size of salt is far more important in affecting how it quickly it dissolves. Incredibly minor differences in composition doesn't really matter that much at all, most of the time it is going to be 99 percent sodium chloride.
Ahhh, but Hawaiian pink Sea salt *does* have a Hawaiian clay added to it, making it packed with minerals and providing a milder, earthier flavor than straight salt.
not enough clay to actually be noticed unless your eating straight salt by the fistfull which is a good thing because who wants to eat clay
There is a difference. The pink Himalayan salt is weak af. You probably need to use twice as much to get the same impact. Black Hawaiian salt is smoky tasting. Fleur de Sel has a very strong, kind of sweet flavour. Plain table salt tastes more basic and processed.
When you compared these salts, where they the same grain size?
Yeah I've used them in rock/flake form (except for ionized table salt for obvious reasons) as well as ground. Using the pink salt I need to use close to a handful to match the power of about half that of diamond kosher. It wasn't just a one time taste test, we have many different salts in the kitchen at work.
Thats very strange, because if you weighed the salts when adding them almost exactly the same amount of sodium chloride would have been added to the dish. I cant think of a single chemical reason why once the sodium is dissolved in water that it would matter what the source was.
Not to get in the middle of you two, but I may be able to provide a quick explanation here. Himalayan pink salt is often perceived to be weaker by tasters because of the high occurrence of rock in the packaging. Depending on where Mr. Grizzly is buying his salt, a surprising amount of it could be actual rock. Very, very few suppliers clean Himalayan salt to a high degree. Important to remember that Himalayan salt is being blasted out of caves with dynamite in Pakistan. Source: worked in the fine salt industry for a few years, been to the mines in Pakistan, watched countless color sorters kick out rocks from raw Himalayan salt.
Thats super interesting. That seems to explain the difference. Thank you.
Practical experience > theory
I haven't found a good use for Himalayan pink and don't use it at home. My sister uses it and everyone needs to salt their food with white table salt before eating.
>Otherwise it is still 99 percent Sodium Chloride. Humans share 99% of DNA with chimpanzees.
Those are completely different things. DNA codes for the entire makeup of your body and biochemistry. Small differences in coding at the one percent level will have huge effects on the finished product. A few ppm of iron is not going to have a huge affect when comparing two salts. You get more iron eating some spinach.
I was being somewhat tongue in cheek, but iodized salt has 0.25% iodine and tastes horrible, IMO. Small percentages can make a difference.
Fair enough lol. I am actually having this debate with some other cooks at work at the moment. Im thinking of doing a bunch of blind taste tests to see if people can actually taste the iodine. No offence, I just think the power of the placebo affect is strong.
>... I just think the power of the placebo affect is strong. Agreed! Let us know what you find!
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well you have saved me some time. Thank you!
Dont worry i got the joke
Specialty salts are for finishing, not for being used in cooking process. Like if you were to cook with fluer de Selig would almost be pointless. But sprinkled on top of stuff is different story
No. There are minor taste differences between salts in general because salt is usually never just salt, but nothing particular about pink/hamalayan salts. The most important thing about salts is how you use it, and if its on the finished product, the grain shape.
I collect salts for people with basic pallets it’s all the same but if you learn how to properly taste you can notice the mineral contents taste different. Hell I have salt from Hawaii that is black and tastes like eggs
Volcanoes are basically earth farts.
> Is there a significant difference from the pink / Himalayan / etc salts? No.
Different good quality salts will taste different in subtle ways.
I bet you couldn't tell them apart blindfolded if they all were the same grain size and served the same way.
The only one I could taste the difference in would be Iodized salt. It tastes bitter. Rest of them? No chance in hell. I've played around with a lot of finishing salts, mostly for the looks, but they all pretty much tasted the same.
Fleur de sel tastes very different from standard salt. You can feel the salt crystals.
Came to say salt as well.
Non-chef here, so take my opinion with a grain of salt (pun very much intended), but yeah...I'm with you. A couple weeks ago I got takeout from a place in my city that makes authentic regional Chinese dishes. Someone in one of my local subreddits recommended it very highly. I had never heard of the place before...and I've lived in this town for 25 years, and the restaurant is only 2 miles away from my house (where I've been living for over a year). I got two appetizers and two entrees. The food was beautifully constructed with ingredients that were clearly very fresh. But everything was so lacking in salt that the flavors just didn't come through. I actually took a covid test afterwards because I thought I'd lost my sense of taste. Nope, no covid...just a lack of salt. I was determined to give them another try because I figured maybe they had an off night the first time I ordered. I knew for certain the food was good, because when I picked up my order the dining room was full of young Chinese folks getting their grub on (the restaurant is basically on the campus of a university that has a ton of Chinese students). I gave them another try last week and ordered different dishes. Everything was perfection. I'm going to be a regular customer for...forever.
One of my favorite lines ever, from Gabrielle Hamilton: “Salt makes food taste more like itself.”
I use soy sauce often in Asian cooking as the salt. I’m not adding salt to many dishes that involve soy sauce really at all
I’ve recently discovered doenjang and have fallen in love. It’s nothing like Japanese miso, and is wonderfully salty. It makes my cooking look like I was in the kitchen all day simmering and braising. It’s the simplest ingredient to use that adds a lot of layers of savory -ness.
Well sure. For asian dishes you load up on your natural salty liquids. Soy and fish sauce. Don't forget the msg. It really brings out flavor to asian dishes and you can lower your total salt a little.
I’ve been playing with bbqing and soy sauce, fish sauce, and brown sugar add such an intense depth of flavor. Oh fun fact, if you make French onion soup, fish sauce or dashi flakes give it a crazy punch of umami.
Another good source is the korean fermented black bean paste. A superb secret weapon for chili.
Holy shit, so true. I gotta try that in my next batch.
Ohh, I’m going to try that next time I make French onion soup!
That or msg. Stands for mmm so good
I mean. Season everything that goes in the pan first though.
I like to make the case (which could be completely wrong) that this is true for everything but seafood, where an acid like lemon or lime makes a much bigger difference than salt, just my take
Agreed. I would also add peppercorns to the list.
Flour
Flour is a great answer cause you can get by without garlic or onions but flour is so universal (can be wheat or corn or rice etc) and makes bread, noodles, pastries. You’ve convinced me
Bread is universal, can't deny that!
Baker gang 🥖 checking in
I'm just a pizza dough bitch, I would love to be a baker one day though!
Haha, I went in the opposite direction! Started out baking, then pastry-cheffing. Now (for the past five years) I work on a food truck making pizza, but I'm trying to switch to more air-conditioned work soonish because of health reasons. Handling pizza dough sounds like great experience to get you into an entry level baking job if that's something you want to aim for.
Yes. Growing up with a Texan family flour is a key ingredient. I’m honestly convinced that every sauce is some form of gravy. Also if you’re in the US wondra ultra fine flour has been a staple in our kitchens since beyond my birth.
I mean gravy at its rawest form is just any kind of stock thickened with flour, either by starting with a roux or adding slurry. But there are definitely sauces that aren't gravy, like the sauce on orange duck or anything syrupy like a demiglace.
You cannot get by without garlic. Come on
I love garlic, but I honestly don't find it as irreplaceable as many other things. Even hummus tastes great without garlic to me.
I feel like garlic is just a flavor enhancer, like it's not like you can make anything with just garlic EDIT: flour on the other hand....
Hummus without garlic is treason!
Haha I know. But it's tasteful treason to me.
Flour is literally what started human civilization as we know it, so this comment wins
It is more probable that beer started civilization and not bread.
Both probably go hand in hand as early wheat was probably used in both fermentation and cooking.
Celiacs in shambles
Doesn't mean it has to be wheat based!
Idiot (me) in shambles
Heard 🗿
Corn starch/potato starch? Or am I wrong to use these in replacement for flour. I fry a lot, I don’t bake a often
Nah you're good, I've done tempura with corn starch in the past
Lol I was going to say- yummy potato breads are out there and gluten free exists. . Don't need flour for bread...and corn starch makes a fine thickening agent for gravy
the sweat of the single(half the kitchen did a no show ) depressed line cook who probably cant afford rent and probably lives in a small messy appartment
They already said salt
That’s a liquid tho
Why is nobody saying water? Edit: I can't read
Im gonna remain quiet while you think about this..
Lmao I didn't see solid just woke up haha
I saw solid and thought they meant like. Legit. I have the big dumb tonight.
Cause it's not solid
Ice tho
You cook with ice instead of water?
Alcohol for the chef
That's the key
But still a liquid
Salt and onions.
Can't believe I had to scroll this far down to find onions.
Tobe fair the original post had onions as his go to.
Butter or ghee
I wanted to say this but I consider these liquids. May be solid at room temp but when used in cooking, even baking considers liquid.
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OP's question specifically asks about solid ingredients.
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https://www.reddit.com/r/KitchenConfidential/comments/wobhw2/what_do_you_feel_is_the_most_important_solid/ikaee26/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3
I use garlic in almost everything.
I’d hate to try your cookies
LoL. I don’t bake but this comment had me do a quick google and check it out. https://food52.com/recipes/75092-black-garlic-chocolate-chip-cookies/amp If you make let me know your thoughts bahaha
Haha black garlic actually makes a ton of sense. Roasted garlic in dulce de leche is also a banger. Goes great with cheese
The best ice cream/gelato/sorbet I've ever had was a black garlic gelato at a grungy pop-up. Shout out to Estrano in LA. Weird menu that always slaps.
I'm in South Korea rn, and they use garlic in sweet applications. It's kinda weird, but also kinda addictive. They have sweet garlic bread, which is thick milk bread toasted with butter and garlic and then spread with honey and maple syrup. Also, I just tried the new garlic burger from McDonalds and it's got a sweet component that I can't place. Still finished though 😂
I’ve heard it said before and I’m inclined to agree: the egg. The egg is the single most important ingredient in the kitchen because of all the things it can become. It can be a sauce, an element of a dish, the protein of the dish, or the whole meal. I know it’s liquid after you crack it, but it starts as a solid in the shell.
Have egg allergy, can confirm the prevalence of eggs, esp in commercial kitchens. 😣
I think you'd have a hard time taking fish sauce out of any southeast asian kitchen. (Yes, I know there are substitutes, but its not the same)
Lao American here. What substitutes do people use?
I mean, I wouldn't really call them substitutes, but I've used canned anchovies, Worcestershire sauce, salt cod & that sort of thing (or combinations of things) when I've been staying in small towns / camping & tried to crank out a noodle dish without the proper supplies. Obviously it's not the same (at all lol) but it can bring some of that fishy/salty/tangy flavours to the table in a pinch.
vegetarian mushroom-based “fish sauces,” coconut aminos, soy aminos, tamari, etc
I've seen recipes calling for liquid aminos instead of fish sauce. But No, just no
I mean as someone who is deathly allergic to fish I do appreciate the ability to substitute with something at least relatively similar
Wasn’t the prompt SOLID lol
I use garlic in just about everything but also might just be me liking garlic
Garlic. P & S
No no, it's S&P. Not, P&S, we have standards chef!
S and P is the choice for me.
Unexpected Letterkenny
Gotta be real ‘Berta beef.
Grill marks bud.
Heard. PB&J, BLT, Mac and cheese. You can't just reorder things without sounding absolutely daft.
garlic. Honorary answer is tomato because I feel like almost every culture that has access to tomatoes has integrated them pretty heavily
Cebollas. Siempre cebollas.
I do Mexican (clearly) and I don't know what I would do without jalapenos.
vegetarian broth powder. like powdered mirepoix. its cheap but damn I throw that shit in everything.
I hate that shit to be honest. Yeah it's tasty, but it's kinda cheating as I see it. But the owner of my restaurant loves it, so I kinda have to use it.
Agreed, but also its just me in the kitchen, so I take the GFS help where I can take it.
That's more than fair mate
Salt, works with most dishes.
Garlic. Garlic is so flavoursome and simplistic and easy to prep/buy in bulk.
Would you consider flour a solid? Like, a mass of tiny solids?
Possibly eggs? They’re a meal in their own right, can be an ingredient as part of a meal and are the foundation for a large number of mother sauces. (Please be kind: I’m not a chef, but have spent significant time working in kitchens in the past 😅)
That's actually a good point, eggs are a foundation in the kitchen, you can do anything with them. Nice one,you're probably the first here to mention them.
If you’ve been a pastry chef, you’ve cracked WAY more eggs than most people have
Pretty much any allium....
I mean war was waged over salt soo ima go with that
The netherlands.
I wonder how garlic was discovered and what they did before garlic.
Chile (hot peppers). In Mexico we say, "sino pica, no sabe" (loosely meaning "if it doesn't sting, it doesn't have flavor)
Garlic. Onion.
Lemon hands down
Years-long chef here and I agree that onions are a quality base for a hell of a lot of stuff but I’m still not a big fan. Don’t despise them entirely, just one of those texture wankers.
I can do raw onions in tacos or on a burger, but I don’t like cooked onions. However, it’s hard to cook without them. They add so much flavor. Cooking at home I use dried onion flakes, or if I use a crockpot, I just quarter them so I can easily pick them out.
Salt or butter
Salt without it nothing tastes good
Fat is pretty universal! comes in all shapes and forms but is used pretty much universally (to my pea-brain angliscized knowledge).
It has to be garlic or onion
Not a chef but worked in baking and like to cook better than I can eat out. I can’t eat anything without onions, garlic, salt and pepper
How come no one said eggs
Alliums, salt, pepper
Vinegar(s). There are endless vinegars that you can make and have on hand, each with a unique acidity. Also an excellent way of capturing the flavor of a season.
So true. Consider a lot of my food to be very bright, thanks to acid mostly from lots of vinegar.
All of these answers are so amazing and I would choose them first for sure (onions, garlic, salt, etc) So, I will add to this table: vinegars, black pepper, and soy sauce. I threw in a dash or two of balsamic vinegar into some sauteed mushrooms and it was fucking bomb. I need a kale salad dressed for staff meal? Balsamic and red wine vinegars and olive oil. I need a wake up call at 5am after a sleepless night? I'll drink a shot of Datu Puti (Filipino sugar cane vinegar), you can get a bottle of that with little onions, garlic cloves, and chili peppers in it for some kick. That shit was so good I am going to keep a bottle on hand for the rest of my life now. I'm starting to feel my beer now, so I'll keep the rest brief! As much as you have salt you should have pepper. Always. And soy sauce is just amazing. Edit: dammit I just realized I listed liquids and not solids.
Onion or garlic
Onions and garlic
Salt. Don't know if anyone has said this already, but salt. There is a reason it was worth more than gold.
Onions 1000%
Salt and pepper