Crime: Overcooked pasta
There are instructions on the package. They are not complicated, if you are a literate person. Honestly, you can just set a timer and walk away if you want to. Salt the water and set the timer, that’s all you have to do. I mean, stir occasionally, but only very occasionally. If I wanted flavorless mush of an indeterminate origin, I’d be in a Dickens novel right now.
If found guilty of overcooking your pasta, you face 50 lashes with a cat o’ nine tails. Furthermore, you’ll be forced to listen to “Whipping Post” by The Allman Brothers on repeat for the duration of your flaying. Tied to the whippin’ post…Good Lord, feels like I’m dyin’…
Crime: Undercooked pasta
Instructions. On. Every. Package. Of. Pasta. Sold. In. The. United. States. As punishment for this crime, you’ll be burned at the stake. Because this is heresy. Like Joan of Arc, you’ll be tied to a pillar, with bunches of kindling nestled beneath your feet, which will catch fire before blistering your skin. You’ll probably die of carbon monoxide asphyxiation before your body is completely engulfed in flames. I’ll light the match.
Crime: Serving cheese and seafood together
There’s a reason people do this. No one really knows what it is, but it is an ancient one, and therefore good.
You face a lifetime of exile in Sicily, where weeping grandmothers will throw stones at you, in between sobs and gestures of disbelief and betrayal. The grandmothers will never rest; and when they die, there will be others to take their place. They will be dressed in their deepest mourning attire, complete with black lace mantillas. They will curse you unto Hell for as long as you draw breath.
Crime: Deflated soufflé
Even children have moral compasses. Even children know good from evil. Even children know not to open the oven door until the exact moment the soufflé is to be extracted and consumed. For your flagrantly amoral behavior, your flouting of all that is righteous and tender on this Earth, you shall be sentenced to torture on the rack. With your arms and legs attached to either end of the device, you’ll be stretched very gradually and very gently. It might even feel pleasant, at first. Eventually, though, your joints will become dislocated, and your cartilage, ligaments, and muscles will extend to the point of breaking. It is nothing like the taffy-pulling machine used to restore a shrunken Mike Teevee in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It is, I assure you, very real indeed.
Crime: Broken vinaigrette
For the crime of serving a broken vinaigrette on the salad accompanying your failed soufflé you will have your hands removed without the benefit of anesthesia or antibiotics. They’ll just be whacked off with your own meat cleaver, blood sloshing all over your beautiful new Boos block, seeping into the nicks, absorbing into the glossy maple. You’ll never have the chance to hold a whisk, much less emulsify, ever again.
Crime: Cloudy soup stock
This is criminal negligence. If you had been watching your stock at all, it never would have come to a boil and become a cloudy, gelatinous mess. But you had something better to do—your taxes, perhaps? Maybe the baby’s diaper needed changing? No matter; there does not exist a good enough excuse for this kind of pathetic neglect.
For this vile crime, you’ll be forced to spend three months in the stocks. You’ll be both immobilized and humiliated, held captive in the town square (yes, The Hague has a town square) and your family required to watch as you soil yourself and wither from exposure. If the weather doesn’t kill you, the disease or the humiliation certainly will.
Crime: Cooking with unclarified butter
The recipe said clarified butter, didn’t it? It’s a simple step that produces superior results. You thought no one would notice. You thought you could cover it up. You thought wrong, asshole. For the crime of serving unclarified butter with your snow crab legs, you’ll be drawn and quartered. You’ll be disemboweled while still alive, your putrid entrails spilling onto the new spring grass, forever marring the delicate snowdrops that dot the picturesque meadows of The Hague. In your agony, your arms and legs shall be tied to four shining and patient chestnut mares, and I personally will fire the warning shot to send them running to the farthest corners of the Earth, each with a wicked limb in tow.
Crime: Burnt garlic
You could have just started over. Taken a breath, cleaned your pan, and chopped another clove for your disaster of a stir-fry. I believe in second chances. But you, apparently, do not. Instead, you just went ahead and used the burnt garlic. For this, you’ll meet our friend the Brazen Bull, an ancient and rather whimsical way to go. It’s just what it sounds like: a hollow bronze bull, with a door in the side, just for you. You’ll be locked inside the bull (we call him Ferdinand) and our charming executioners will light a fire beneath him. You don’t seem to understand this, but metal is an excellent conductor of heat; you’ll be perfectly roasted in short order. Bonus: Ferdinand is constructed so that your death-screams are transformed into a mournful lowing, emanating plaintively from his open mouth!
Crime: Flaccid, undercooked chicken skin
See here: the entire reason that a fowl even has skin is so that we can fry it in its own fat and then try to hide our deep and scarlet shame as we gorge ourselves on its flesh. And therefore, in cooking your chicken improperly, you have not only committed a grave culinary error, but you have denied the bird its truest nature, its only purpose. You have made its life meaningless and its death senseless. In return, you’ll be sequestered in a soundproof cell with our foremost expert on dental torture, Orin Scrivello, DDS. He’ll remove each and every one of your teeth with great relish, leaving you a gummy, grinning horror to your fellow humans. Let’s see you try and chew soggy chicken skin now, you monster.
Crime: Gluey, dense mashed potatoes
Ahhh, mashed potatoes. They’re inextricably bound in our hearts and minds to Thanksgiving, that most American (and, well, also Canadian) of meals. Thus, as you see, mashed potatoes are America. And further, you can see that by defiling the very mortar that holds the great United States together, you have committed the highest form of treason. Your punishment is named after history’s most famous turncoat, Judas Iscariot. The Judas chair is covered in thousands of sharp iron spikes, and traitors like yourself are fastened into the chair with iron restraints so you can’t escape the persistent poking of needly nubbins all over your backside. And for a little extra fun, the Judas Chair comes with optional heated seats (but not the kind in your Volvo.) It’s the opposite of relaxing!
Crime: Tomatoes in the refrigerator
Death by guillotine. If you can’t appreciate the sharp, sun-warmed scent of a ripe tomato, nor the gentle snap of its taut skin as you bite in, or the tart yield of its rich flesh; if you wish to dull its vibrant pulse which is life and meaning itself, you do not deserve to live.
Tags: crime, Ellen Ioanes, food, true crime
What I’m getting from this is that I am the worst person ever to live because I have DONE NEARLY ALL OF THESE at some point
I had crab pate and brie in pitta bread for lunch. i am clearly doomed.
I was thinking “who serves seafood with cheese anyway?” and then I thought CRAB DIP and now I am hungry even though I just had lunch. Also someone recently sent me this recipe and it looks GOOD.
http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2013/04/skille…
I love seafood and cheese. Tuna melt sandwiches, seafood pizza… And I’m definitely making that recipe!
Has there ever been a seafood-and-pasta dish that did not benefit from at least a handful of parm sprinkled on at the end? I will testify to having done this with even a scampi
Also, those Sicilian grandmothers didn’t really mean it, because they would totally like the way I flavor my cabbage-and-blue-cheese pasta with a dozen anchovies melted into the olive oil first. Anchovies basically exist to flavor pasta dishes – that’s why they melt when you cook them in butter or olive oil (they really do!).
Anchovies don’t *really* count as seafood. They are just salty little life-enhancing flavourbombs.
Oh boy, a now-defunct favorite restaurant used to serve an enormous grilled crabmeat & havarti sandwich that was the best, even though the sourdough bread was so saturated with butter that it left a little oily puddle on the plate, and the sandwich was best eaten with a fork, slowly, with tiny moans of delight. Even I, a champion trencherman especially in my youth, couldn’t eat a whole one and the accompanying sweet potato fries without feeling a little oogy, so my mother and I would each get a salad and split the sandwich. I miss those lunches.
… well, I guess I’m buying crabmeat and havarti next time I go to the store.
The Oceanaire in DC has an INCREDIBLE lunch item that is basically just bread, lump crabmeat, and I think Swiss cheese. IT IS DELIGHTFUL. And no, I cannot eat it in one sitting.
So, takeout it is, then.
I burn the garlic in my stir-fries one hundred percent of the time. I make stir-fry a lot and I don’t even know how you could not burn garlic at that heat.
You’ve got to add the garlic while the oil is still cold, slowly sauteeing it, and then add the other vegetables quickly. If you’re going to be stir-frying at high-heat for a good long while, you might wish to remove the garlic once it is golden brown and add it again at the very end.
Source: I burnt garlic for way too long before my dad taught me the cold oil trick.
Intriguing. Where do the onion and ginger enter this equation?
I usually add the onions and ginger jussst before the garlic is perfectly golden brown. I find that adding those causes the heat to drop enough that the garlic doesn’t burn.
This is exactly right. Carry on
Oh nooo now I’ve got Whipping Post stuck in my head! I haven’t even overcooked any pasta lately! Whyyyyyyyy
are you sure about that
I object to the implication that the Allman Brothers are a punishment.
Damn, stop being such a doodie.
*gets some ice for that burn*
Burnt garlic is woooorst and furthermore reeks. Turn the heat down!!
That said, apparently I maybe have been doing stock wrong I’M SORRY I DIDN’T KNOOOOOOOOW I’ll never let it boil again……
Jolie told me we should boil it and then let it simmer? And I refuse to believe she would lie to me so I’m going to keep boiling and simmering my stock.
Bring it just to a boil and then turn down the hat and let it simmer. Skim the top, or you’ll get the dreaded cloudy stock
Ok, but how do you skim off the scummy stuff effectively? Because I either spoon off a ton of delicious stock with the scum, or gingerly get off some of the scum but leave some behind…. I need stock help!
I use a fine mesh sieve with a handle to skim. That being said, I think having clear stock is overrated, and only needed for presentation.
I was following her directions! I thought it was fine! Also why do we dread the cloudyness anyway? I mostly just use it to make lentil soups, no one ever knows.
If you thought the Sultan of Brunei was bad, try being a chef in this Dominion….
I give you all: crab dip waffle fries from Camden Yards.
I will fight every Sicilian granny in here.
I need these in my life immediately.
They are amazing. Sometimes, some philistine mutters about how there’s not enough crab in it or that the vendors get a little stingy about the amount of dip they put on. YOU ARE STILL EATING WAFFLE FRIES COVERED IN GOOEY OLD BAY-FLAVORED CHEESE WITH BITS OF CRAB. What is wrong with people??
Yay Baltimore!
Served with a crab pretzel (enormous soft pretzel covered with crab dip and melted cheese).
COME AT ME, BRO.
Sometimes crab fries/pretzels are the only thing that soothe the pain of being a fan of a team owned by Peter Angelos.
It’s true. Buck helps a lot but lots of crab fries/pretzels + beer is neccessary to make it through a season.
I hear you… 🙁
Burnt garlic is woooorst and furthermore reeks. Turn the heat down!!
oh my god i could never love someone who put tomatoes in the refrigerator
Okay, but it’s actually really hard to cook gluten free pasta. There’s this mystical 10 second period where it’s perfect, and if you miss it, it’s all over. Also, some types require vigilant stirring, and others need to be left alone so the outside doesn’t slough off and make the water cloudy and grainy.
I thought I’d saved the cooking directions off a box of rice linguini (I had to put the linguini in a mouseproof container) but instead I apparently only saved the recipe on the other side of the box, which just said “Cook pasta according to box directions.”
Huh. I haven’t had much trouble, but I tend to err on the side of underdone.
My vinaigrette never breaks because it never comes together in the first place. I dress my salad with a splash of olive oil and then a splash of vinegar. They haven’t come for my hands yet but I stand prepared. I expect them at any mo
If you add a teeny bit of dijon mustard, greek yogurt or sour cream to your vinaigrette it won’t break.
I do this too, so I am watching my back. Also I didn’t know this was what “breaking a viniagrette” meant until just now, I thought it was breaking the glass bottle?
Can I request a reprieve if my souffle falls because of an earthquake?*
*Actual thing that actually happened to me the first time I ever tried to make a souffle.
No. Acts of god and nature are not excused. Why was your oven not earthquake-proofed?
My only defense is that I was in college, and I imagine that earthquake-proofed ovens are expensive. Also, what college student in her right mind tries to make a souffle? To the rack it is.
I didn’t even know you could break a vinaigrette. “Any vinaigrette that isn’t so elaborate as to deny the saliency of oil and vinegar appearing in separate, but intermixed beads on the plate is a broken vinaigrette.” http://www.russcooks.com/vinaigrettes.html
On basically every Chinese buffet where I live there is some kind of cheese and artificial crab bake…thing. I do not know what exactly is in it, or why it exists, or what it is called, or what hell hole its creator crawled out of at the dawn of time. But it’s always there. Waiting.
That sounds like some odd evolution of Crab Rangoon filling. Crab Rangoons are delicious and I will not hear a word said against them.
All hail Crab Rangoon! Even the crappiest varieties are still pretty damn good.
Crab rangoon, I can get behind! The exception to the rule!
This thing is…some other thing. Some kind of hot seafood and cheese and mayo casserole thing.
Hot … mayo. No.
Death by some hideous method to those who smash hamburgers down so all the juice comes out.
Same to those who use Crisco in cookies
A THOUSAND DEATHS TO CRISCO-COOKIEMAKERS.
Urrg, these two crimes inspire six times the rage that the whole list above did. Probably because I don’t have to witness my friends overcooking the pasta but I have eaten SO MANY dried-out over-cooked grilled burgers… and argued with the friend who actually PREFERS crisco cookies LIKE SOME KIND OF MONSTER OF WRONGNESS.
(As a more positive thought, I did successfully convert the friends who were using silicone baking mats for chocolate chip cookies to the virtues of superior spreading on a bare metal pan.)
My mom uses half Crisco and half butter in pie crusts, but then I went to college and got used to all-butter crusts because I couldn’t be bothered to buy Crisco for the occasional pie, and now I can never go back. The Crisco makes it taste weird. (I don’t think the baked crust tastes any different, but what’s the point of making pie if you can’t eat the raw scraps?)
PIE CRUST IS DIFFERENT. (That said, I am an all-butter-all-the-way-pie-crust kind of girl, so I will defend it to the death, but I know that pie crust recipes are ancient and sacred.)
Hahah yeah, using half Crisco is definitely not the *secret* to our family recipe, I would never put that on the internet 😉 I think my grandma actually preferred all-butter, so I’m just getting back to my roots.
I was raised to use more Crisco than butter in pie crust, and I still prefer crusts made that way to all-butter crusts. The Crisco makes it tender and the butter makes it flaky, and the combination is what gives you that delicious and wonderful pie crust that everyone marvels over. But now I try to use the expensive non-Crisco shortening that doesn’t kill you quite as fast.
YES. YES. KEEP THEM COMING AND KEEP THEM BRUTAL.
Agh who uses Crisco in cookies the world is full of horrors
But… burnt garlic is delicious!
Come on, stock that becomes gelatin when it cools is the best stock. I’m always so proud when it does that!
How can it not? Bones are what they get gelatin from
I’ve definitely made some chicken stock that never got very thick.
I thought that stock was SUPPOSED to get gelatinized.
It is, isn’t it? At least, it is in my world. I thought that was the whole point.
Yeah! Something something ‘mouthfeel’ something fancy cooking words.
Yeah. I don’t understand gelatinous being a complaint. Cloudy, sure, whatever. Not gelatinous.
Apparently when spaghetti was new and exotic in the U.K. (. . . the twenties, I guess? don’t look at me, history is hard), cookbooks would instruct the home cook to boil spaghetti for thirty minutes to make sure it was fully cooked.
The only suitable punishment for this crime against the palates of an entire nation is to force the offenders to eat their own flaccid pasta FOR ALL ETERNITY.
D:
Later than the 20’s. They had a bbc April fools in the 50’s that convinced a lot of people that spaghetti grew on trees. I’ve got a 70’s cookbook that refers to pizza as “Italian tomato pie”.
We live in a glorious modern age, but in deference to my ancestors, I still keep tomatoes in the fridge.
My mother is terrible about overcooking pasta for the sole reason that she doesn’t set a timer. At all. There’s one right there on the oven! If that one’s occupied, there’s one on the microwave! You can’t just wander away and go ‘eh, it’ll be done in a few minutes’ if you aren’t going to set a timer!
We’ve had some arguments over mushy egg noodles more than once. Such a tragedy, mushy noodles.
I never set a timer, but I’m always standing there cooking something else and keeping an eye on it. When do you cook noodles that isn’t simultaneous with the process of cooking whatever it is that will go on top?
When you’ve already finished cooking everything else, mostly. I don’t know why the noodles don’t seem to get popped on the stove while everything else is on (because my mother is perfectly capable of multitasking in the kitchen and usually does for everything but noodles), but they just don’t.
Noodles take less time to prepare than whatever it is you’re putting on the noodles, just stand there and watch the noodles cook while you make dinner why are you wandering off
My Italian Grandma who is a fantastic cook (and baker…she does it all) makes tilapia with broccoli in cheese sauce and it’s delicious! I would never break that cardinal rule, but she gets away with it. We also drink RED WINE with it… oh the humanity!
Tilapia isn’t fish, it’s technically of the same genus as a dirty old beer can living in a drainage culvert, and thus cannot be insulted by cheese or any other wonder of culinary sleight-of-hand you use to make it be food.
There’s plenty of good ways to serve tilapia, they never have anything to do with the redeeming qualities of tilapia itself. It is the stone of your stone soup, IRL Soylent Yellow.
I use salted butter for everything. Call me an iconoclast.
A) The instructions on the pasta boxes are almost never accurate!
B) SHRIMP ALFREDO YOUR ARGUMENT IS INVALID.
Hot damn I know what I want for dinner.
Alfredo is cream and butter though, not cheese (at least the way I make it). Maybe a little Parmesan to finish.
OG Alfredo is just butter and parm, no cream.
Ah, I use the Cook’s recipe (if we don’t Chris Kimball buries us in unmarked graves right?) which is just butter and cream (and a little nutmeg), I top off the pasta with some parm after.
People actually time their pasta? I just stand there eating semi-cooked pasta every couple minutes until it’s ready.
Actually. I mean, I’m usually making sauce or something at the same time, but I firmly believe timers are for baked goods only.
I was just trying to think of some other reason to turn on a timer and really could only think of the occasional frozen appetizer from Trader Joe’s. I generally don’t even bother with a timer for cookies, either, since I’m basically standing in the kitchen staring at the oven while trying to finish my beer so I can switch to milk.
YES this is also my method. My partner won’t even make pasta now if I’m home, because he says I have “certain opinions” on whether or not it’s done. You just taste it! That’s how you know! Of course, he’s a timer-user, so he probably can’t be trusted for anything.
What kind of cooking doesn’t involve standing there and eating the ingredients bit by bit as they cook to “make sure it’s coming out right”? Are we nothing now but anhedonic slaves to joyless, pitiless machines? Your clock cares nothing for you, and cannot be improved by adding salt.
I usually set a timer so I won’t forget to check it. Set timer for low end of estimated time, then check it when it goes off. I’ve gotten in debates with many boyfriends who have burnt food for this reason.
Although, I’ll add that I have a problem in my house with roommates on the third floor setting timers for the oven on the first floor and then not retrieving their food when said timer goes off. They think the oven turns off automatically when the timer goes off. No that’s me. I do that. After the timer goes off 20 times.
My boyfriend is deeply disapproving of my habit of putting tomatoes in the fridge. In my defence, I take them out well in advance of using them so they’re at room temperature when they get eaten.
NO! It still makes them go flossy and spongey and horrible. Cease and desist!
“Crime: Serving cheese and seafood together”
Lay a hand on my tuna melt and you lose the hand
Cheese and seafood together is not a crime, because lobster mac & cheese and shrimp quesadillas, thankyouverymuch.
But I’m with you on the pasta timing thing.
Cheese and seafood together is not a crime, because lobster mac & cheese and shrimp quesadillas, thankyouverymuch.
But I'm with you on the pasta timing thing.
Crab rangoon, I can get behind! The exception to the rule!
This thing is…some other thing. Some kind of hot seafood and cheese and mayo casserole thing.
Nooo, refrigerating them makes them more mushy. Their texture gets all effed up in the fridge.
Where my parents live (Ontario, very close to Manitoba) the butter is priced as such. Where I live now (Nova Scotia) unsalted butter is the same price as salted. But prices for all dairy are kinda weird here; there is no substantial difference between bagged, jugged, and cartoned milk.
oh apparently stock should not be cloudy my fault.
though when my gf recently brought this up and I was like THE INTERNET SAYS and went on a tirade about how broth and stock are not the same thing, brown stock is when you take the time to roast the bones before you simmer them for a million hours, who in the goddamned world has time for that after they already made you a roast chicken and then made stock from that chicken’s bones with which to later make you SOUP. STOP COMPLAINING.
in other news she generally has lots of opinions about how food is cooked, mostly when I am doing it, and I usually send her away by saying the comments section is closed, or that we are not cooking by consensus this evening.
she has lots of other charming qualities though. she makes excellent french onion soup.
The Toast is DEFINITELY the place to take out your frustration with trolls, which Jizzcliner is not. That's cute, though. Keep on being sarcastic for no good reason.
The key to a souffle is not to tell people what it is until it has happened. Then if it collapses completely, you call it fritatta, if you have a bit of lift you call it sformato and if it is lofty you call it souffle. There is no such thing as collapsed souffle, there is merely fritatta.
Where did I say he was a troll? And where am I being sarcastic after that comment? Why would he need to finish his sentence with sorry for being a doodie if it wasn't to be taken in a negative tone? I'm fine with it if that's his opinion, but he's stating it as fact,and it was incorrect, so it rubbed me the wrong way. Sorry.