The endless cooking advice in magazines and hacks found online can be overwhelming to even the most seasoned home cooks. But should you really be adding oil to your pasta water or using mayo instead of butter on your grilled cheese sandwiches? We debunk the most popular cooking hacks, tips and tricks that don't actually work.
Click or scroll through our gallery to discover the food hacks you need to ignore, counting down to the most useless of all.
We’ve based our ranking on how common each tip is, and on the opinions and first-hand knowledge of our team. The list is unavoidably subjective.
We’re all for recycling and repurposing things, but we're not sure this is the right way of going about it. We've all the videos on YouTube of people using an empty plastic bottle and its suction power to separate egg yolks from egg whites. However, it's quite fiddly and often results in a split yolk. It's much easier to save on the washing up and use your hands or the egg shells to separate egg whites from yolks.
Mise en place means 'everything in its place', and it's useful if you're working in a commercial kitchen. But home cooks who've been encouraged to prep ahead and put all their ingredients in little bowls before they even start cooking are probably not going to see the benefit. If you prep as you go, it'll not only decrease the amount of time you spend cooking, but it'll also reduce the amount of washing up at the end of it all.
https://www.allrecipes.com/what-is-mise-en-place-7480601
https://tasty.co/article/rossyoder/cooking-advice-people-ignorehttps://tasty.co/article/rossyoder/cooking-advice-people-ignore
Brown butter – butter that's heated thoroughly until it turns brown – has a nutty flavour that cooks have gone mad for. But while there's a time and a place for brown butter, the tendency to insist on putting brown butter in everything is just, well, wrong. We'd argue that brown butter's fine for adding a touch of sweetness to savoury dishes, but that cookies and cakes are perfect just as they are. That's to say nothing of how easy it is to go from brown butter to burnt butter.
https://tasty.co/article/rossyoder/overhyped-cooking-advice-people-ignore
https://www.deliciousmagazine.co.uk/what-is-brown-butter-and-why-should-you-be-making-it/
Blame Gordon Ramsay. In a 2011 YouTube video that's been watched more than 7 million times, Ramsay cooks the most amazing-looking scrambled eggs – but he seasons them during the cooking process. These days, people insist that seasoning eggs while they're still frying will only result in strangely tough but slimy eggs. It's best to leave the salt until after they're cooked.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yv64abAJvEA
https://tasty.co/article/rossyoder/cooking-advice-people-ignore
It's actually the white membrane of chilli peppers that makes them hot. The seeds only seem like the hottest part of the chilli due to their proximity to the membrane, but the seeds have little to no capsaicin (the component that gives peppers their heat). We believe they're hot when the membrane is cut and the capsaicin escapes with the juice and comes into contact with the seeds.
It's been suggested that adding salt to a pot of water on the hob will make it boil faster. Unfortunately, though, it doesn’t quite work like that. For the amount of salt you're adding to water for cooking, it's not going to make any difference – and might even make it take longer to boil. According to Lesley-Ann Giddings, an associate professor of chemistry at Smith College in Massachusetts, you'd need a smaller amount of water that is 20% salt to make it boil faster...and that is a lot of salt!
https://www.livescience.com/56214-does-salt-make-water-boil-faster.html
https://www.smith.edu/people/lesley-ann-giddings
The U.S. Department of Agriculture recommends that you pop store-bought bread in the fridge to keep it fresh for up to 14 days. However, this is only because refrigeration slows the growth of mould – it makes no mention of the taste or texture of the bread. Starch will recrystallize in the fridge, causing the bread to dry out and become stale. You're better off storing it at room temperature and eating it within four days.
https://www.marthastewart.com/8262899/should-you-refrigerate-bread
This hack shows how you can peel a potato without using a peeler. You score the skin all the way around, blanch it in boiling water, shock it in ice-cold water and then remove the skin with your fingers. It works fine, but it's hardly a hack to recommend. After all, it takes a lot longer and requires much more equipment than simply using a peeler. And besides, potatoes taste just as good, if not better, with the skin on, so why go through all the effort?
The generally accepted wisdom is that you can add a neutral-tasting oil to butter in a frying pan to raise the smoke point and stop it from burning. But when Serious Eats put this to the test, it found that butter and oil don't actually mix and any combination of the two doesn't raise the smoke point any higher. Unfortunately, the only way to stop butter from burning is to simply keep an eye on it.
https://tasty.co/article/rossyoder/cooking-advice-people-ignore
https://www.seriouseats.com/does-mixing-oil-and-butter-really-alter-the-smoke-point
Unless you’ve got an industrial-grade mill, it’s highly unlikely you’ll be able to produce fine icing sugar from a bag of granulated sugar. Some food writers suggest using a spice grinder or a pestle and mortar, but it will take a long time and still won't be as good as store-bought icing sugar. Given the time and effort involved, it's probably better to pop to the shops.
There's all sorts of advice out there about how to make peeling hard-boiled eggs easier. One widely believed claim is that adding baking soda or white or apple cider vinegar to the water you're cooking the eggs in will make the job much simpler. But when Allrecipes tested out these methods, it found that none of the techniques worked as well as popping the eggs in a small jar with some water and giving them a good shake.
https://www.allrecipes.com/article/easy-peel-hard-boiled-eggs/
Chefs argue for only using unsalted butter in baking because it allows you to have greater control of the balance of flavours during mixing. They would tell you that opting for salted butter would necessitate tweaking the amount of other ingredients to make the bake taste right. But let's face it, home cooking is different from professional cooking and if using salted butter means you have one less thing to think about later, then we're all for it. It's not like your loved ones will notice the difference!
https://tasty.co/article/rossyoder/cooking-advice-people-ignore
https://www.foodandwine.com/salted-vs-unsalted-butter-8713508
Cutting potato wedges with an apple corer seems like a great idea in theory – but not so much in practice. Firstly, the flesh of an apple is much softer than the flesh of a potato so you need an incredibly sharp apple corer. Secondly, if the apple corer is sharp enough to go through a potato, it will be sharp enough to slice through your fingers. So maybe just stick to using a kitchen knife.
A hack is supposed to make your life easier and help you do things more efficiently, but using tongs to squeeze a lemon won't achieve either of these things. If using your hands to squeeze a lemon is the problem, a juicer is better and quicker. What may also be helpful is microwaving the citrus on high for around 20 seconds – it'll soften the lemon and make it easier to squeeze.
Spruce Eats tried out every hack for peeling garlic skin and discovered that, yes, some of them do actually work. The main issues with the shake-garlic-in-a-jar method are that it takes a lot of effort, it doesn't work every time and it leaves your jar smelling like garlic. The best way to peel the cloves is to smash them with the back of a knife or to pop the whole garlic bulb in the microwave for 20 seconds before peeling off the cloves.
https://www.thespruceeats.com/fixing-oversalted-food-does-the-potato-trick-really-work-4142283
It's widely suggested that if you've over-seasoned your broth, adding a whole, peeled potato will soak up all the excess salt and save you from culinary catastrophe. But in reality, it doesn't work in the way people think. Potatoes do absorb water, so they could potentially absorb some salty water out of a broth – but there are easier ways to fix the problem. Next time, just drain some of the broth away and then add more water. Save the potato for another day.
https://www.thespruceeats.com/fixing-oversalted-food-does-the-potato-trick-really-work-4142283
We’ve all shed a few tears while chopping onions, but there's not much you can do to stop it. A specific chemical irritant found in the juice of the onions stimulates the eyes’ lachrymal glands so no amount of rinsing will remedy that. Try using a really sharp knife to minimize the amount of juice squeezed out of the onion when it's cut. Or better yet, wear a pair of swimming goggles.
Using chopsticks to make hasselback potatoes is a great idea in theory. But a couple of things might make the hack more trouble than it's worth. First, unless the potato is evenly thick all the way through, some cuts will still slice straight through and both ends will just get chopped off. Second, it's hard to keep the potato and the chopsticks from moving around, meaning that your cuts won't be even. You’re perhaps better off cutting slowly and carefully with a sharp knife.
This is a popular hack because it kind of works – for a very little while. The idea is that the bubbles in the boiling water burst when one of them touches the cooler wooden spoon. But while wooden spoons are more heat resistant than metal ones, even they won't stay cool forever. So this hack may stop whatever you’re boiling going over for a split second, which might be enough time for you to take the pot off the heat, but it won’t stop it from eventually spilling over. You'll still have to watch that pot!
Got some cold butter you’ve forgotten to bring up to room temperature before baking? This popular hack says you should heat a mug, glass or small bowl in the microwave, then use it to cover the butter. Supposedly, the butter will soften after a few minutes. In reality, the inside of the butter block will still be fridge-cold while the corners will have melted completely. You’ll get better results using a box grater to grate the butter.
Alton Brown has convinced the world that you can make thin, crêpe-like omelettes in a sandwich or panini press. In theory, you can – if you're very careful and you make sure the press is super-hot when you pour eggs onto it. In reality, though, most people end up with a messy kitchen counter, a sandwich press in need of a serious deep clean and no omelette. Just stick to a frying pan.
'Sauté the onions for three minutes, then add the garlic for another two...' We've read this – or something like it – in so many recipes that it's practically gospel at this point. But let's face it, no onions are cooked and translucent in just three minutes and garlic is going to burn if it's cooked for any longer than 30 seconds. So put that advice in the bin and start using your instincts. Onions take as long as ten minutes to sauté and garlic can be added much, much later.
It's become trendy these days to use mayonnaise instead of butter on top of a grilled cheese sandwich. Supposedly, it makes for a better crunch and is much easier to prepare. But while all that might be true, many people suggest that it doesn't actually make for a better-tasting sandwich. And what's the point of a food hack that makes your guilty pleasures taste worse?
https://www.boredpanda.com/useless-food-hack-reddit/
https://www.delish.com/kitchen-tools/kitchen-secrets/a60482567/grilled-cheese-mayo-vs-butter/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Cooking/comments/8o0kwl/do_you_prefer_mayo_or_butter_when_making_grilled/
Some people swear by rinsing their pasta after cooking to make sure it doesn't stick together. But in reality, rinsing pasta washes off the starch that's needed to encourage your sauce to thicken and cling to the pasta once it's all tossed in the pan. If you need a hack to prevent pasta from clumping, cook it in a big enough pot, stir it regularly and only boil it until al dente.
Sure, countless videos on TikTok prove that you can cook grilled cheese sandwiches or cheese on toast in a toaster – but that doesn't mean you should. If you don't believe us, take it from the London Fire Brigade. In February 2023, 25 firefighters spent roughly 40 minutes putting out a blaze caused by someone trying the hack in student accommodation in south-east London. "Only use electrical products for their designated use," a London Fire Brigade spokesperson warned afterwards.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/toaster-grilled-cheese-fire-avery-hill-jamie-oliver-b1060242.html
Julia Child was a fan of washing raw chicken before using it, and the practice has been adopted across the world. But washing chicken is actually dangerous and nobody should be doing it at home. Water doesn't wash off any bacteria, so washing chicken in your kitchen sink only spreads the bacteria further and causes cross-contamination. The meat will be made safe for consumption when it cooks.
Pasta noodles will sometimes stick together due to their starchiness. Gordon Ramsay was a big proponent of adding oil to pasta's cooking water to help remedy this. But oil never fully mixes with water, so it'll only work for the bits of pasta floating at the top. It also means that any sauce will slide right off the pasta when you mix it in.
Now discover the common food mistakes that could poison you
Last updated by Luke Paton.