27 Appalling Crimes Against Food That People Were Forced To Witness With Their Own Human Eyes
Have you ever seen someone do something so strange, gross, or just plain dangerous while preparing a meal that you vowed never to eat their food again? Recently, u/arthur-reborn asked cooks on Reddit to share the kitchen habits that make their eye twitch, and people shared some seriously revolting cooking quirks. Here are some of the top replies:
1."Had a friend drop his phone in the toilet. He put it in rice to dry, but then he didn’t want to waste the rice, so he cooked it. No one else ate that rice. All our eyes were twitching…"
2."My husband's methods make my eye twitch. He will make things and consistently not read the basic directions of making said item. This results in very dry things, very runny items, overcooked, undercooked, etc. But then, and this is really where the eye twitching comes in, he will meticulously measure out 1 tsp of garlic powder or sugar in a recipe, and I am just...dumbfounded."
3."I worked with a woman who, after rubbing down chicken quarters with marinade, licked her finger."
4."I worked with a woman who routinely gave me microwave recipes. These were straight up entire dinners with raw meat. Her family’s favorite dish was chicken with mushroom sauce. This entailed putting a WHOLE 5-POUND CHICKEN into the microwave for 50 minutes. They have three microwaves in their house to cook side dishes at the same time. Apparently, her mother back in the day (when microwaves were first released? I don't know) took a microwave class that marketed microwaves as the only kitchen appliance you need. She says she doesn’t really like to cook, so almost all of her meals are microwaved. Very on brand, I met this women while waiting for my food to microwave in the office break room."
5."This isn’t really 'cooking' per se, more like serving food, but when I’m at my mother-in-law’s house and she’s preparing multiple dishes, she will prepare the salad first and 'keep it cool' by throwing a bunch of ice cubes in with the lettuce leaves. It drives me absolutely crazy because you could just MAKE THE SALAD LAST, DONNA, and then we wouldn’t have to deal with weird, watery lettuce on our plates."
6."Growing up, my mom liked doing dishes in the dark. There were always dishes and silverware in the cupboard that still had food on them."
7."Putting ketchup on tacos."
8."My friend was having a BBQ and making grilled chicken. They marinated the chicken in Italian dressing which is all well and good. Proceeds to grill the chicken. Then...uses the same Italian marinade that the chicken was marinating in as a dipping sauce. My god."
9."Any single YouTube or Instagram video where someone makes a beautiful BBQ brisket or meat, and after it’s finished, they cut it in half and squeeze the everloving fuck out of it to show that it's juicy. That’s destroying the juiciness of the thing you just spent 14 hours making. Makes me want to scream."
10."My Mother uses the smoke alarm to know when her eggs are done. I just can't. She loves them burnt."
11."My best friend stirs with her chopping knife."
12."Boiling hamburger patties before frying them. My roommate prepares patties like I would make brats. Steam in water until nearly done and then let the water cook off and brown the brats or, in his case, the patties. The patties are dry as dust and too salty. Yuck!"
13."Watching people boil vegetables to death with zero added flavor. That was life growing up in the UK, and it took me years to really start to appreciate veg."
14."Watched my next door neighbor grilling burgers one day. Grill full of meat, and she's squirting lighter fluid on the coals to get the fire blazing again."
15."I used to date someone, and neither he nor his mother would wash the bottoms of their plates, and they were always greasy or had old food on them. They ALSO reused water bottles without washing them, and would even refill them with new water even if they weren’t entirely empty yet, so sometimes, the water would taste weird or have visible backwash in it. The mouthpiece of the bottles sometimes smelled like pizza. It was gross."
16."Not washing produce. I've seen grocery store employees pick up bunches of green onions off the floor and put them back on the display. I've also seen friends take a bunch of green onions out of the fridge, still with the label/rubber band on it, and start chopping it up for garnish. I'm also shocked at how many people don't wash berries and grapes before popping them in their mouths."
17."My mother-in-law scrapes the uneaten rice off people's plates into a bowl where she mixes it into the next batch of rice she makes (and serves to others besides herself). I about gagged when I saw her doing that, and I've never eaten at her house since then."
18."My in-laws throw unwrapped raw meat into an unwashed sink full of water to thaw. They also rinse ground beef with cold water in a strainer after it’s browned. They leave meat out to 'thaw' on the counter for, like, 20 hours. They leave perishable foods in the garage when they run out of fridge space because it’s 'insulated.' My partner and I have had to stop eating their food because we get food poisoning, like, 60% of the time we eat there."
19."For me, it's usually knife skills. I can't watch people cut while holding a knife wrong. Yet I still see boomers every day cutting with their fingertips completely exposed and the strangest grip, chopping like it's no big deal."
20."I found out that my aunt used to KEEP the flour she would bread her chicken in and used it over and over. I found it in a cabinet after she died, labeled 'chicken flour,' and it was past putrid at that point. My mom KNEW she did this, and we still ate her fried chicken weekly when I was a kid. What the actual fuck?!?"
21."I grew up with a friend whose mom wouldn’t strain the water off the pasta for mac and cheese, so it ended up being watery cheese soup with noodles."
22."Saw a customer at my restaurant eating a dressed salad with his bare hands the other day. A much longer time ago, a customer ate their shrimps, tails and all."
23."Asking for advice on how to make things, not following said advice, and then asking how to fix the ensuing mess. My dad called me asking how to make a basic white sauce. I walked him through making a roux then gradually adding the milk. He video called me half an hour later to show me the equal parts margarine, flour, and milk he’d put in a pan all at the same time to 'save time' and asked me what he should do next."
24."My sister refuses to use a chef's knife or cutting board. She uses a steak knife to cut chicken on a plate instead."
25."My in-laws just don't season their food at all when cooking. Afterwards, they douse it with salt, but they just don't use any at all when cooking. It's a habit I've been slowly breaking my partner of over time."
