I rarely ever used graters before, but in the past month or so I've been on a spring roll rampage. You've gotta have some whiskered cucumbers and carrots, and a mixture of impatience and inadequate knife skills means using a grater. Previously I had a super cheap one from Daiso, but that one broke so I got a nice new one from Oxo. And even though it's technically a lot more featured than the Japanese dollar store version I was using before, it's actually way worse. Today I tried to do a technique I've heard of, shredding tofu, and even though I was using extra-firm it crumbled instead of shredded.

The big difference between the Daiso and Oxo graters is that the Daiso one had maybe 3-4 rows of "teeth" doing the grating and the Oxo one has something like 15-20 of them. That gives you a heck of a lot more friction and you need to put a lot more force to use it. This doesn't just mean that your delicate food will be destroyed, it also means you have to press so hard that you risk your hand slipping and getting shredded. It also means you can't try to get large shreds because it will gum the process up.

In contrast, the fewer holes in the Japanese one would take more passes to shred the same amount of food, but each pass is so much easier because you have the benefit of being able to build up speed and momentum as you shred. It feels like you're making slices instead of trying to force food through a mesh. The holes are also in the center of the grater so each shred is going to be the full length of the thing you're grating.

Why is it that every western grater is built like this? Don't people realize how bad it is?

Long story short, I’ve gotten very tired of buying junky pans that start getting rusty, etc. really quickly.

At the moment, I’m trying to find some good metal pans for baking things like brownies and focaccia, so probably 8x8 and/or 9x13.

Anyone have any good brand recommendations?

Hey everyone, I am attempting to go vegan.

I just wanted to do a "vegan weekend", but I’m about a month in, and I'm feeling like I can keep this up. I've tried in the past, but there are far more vegan options than there were several years ago. If you are a vegan, please let me know any tips, tricks, etc. that you wish you knew sooner. If you are on the fence or curious about it, ask questions! Post your favorite vegan recipes in the comments or any online resources you recommend on veganism. General veganism thread.

So I normally don't care that much about food. But I just got introduced to r/ididnthaveeggs which is a repository of insane and ridiculous recipe substitutions from the comments sections of recipes. Even with zero knowledge of cooking, I know swapping carrot for shredded kale in a carrot cake recipe will not turn out well.

So cooks and food-eaters of Tildes, what are the most insane and ridiculous substitutions you've encountered or heard of? Especially curious if you've had the (mis)fortune of getting to try the innovative recipe for yourself.

It's 5am. My family is asleep. I slide out of bed, creep down the stairs, and enter the kitchen. Through the window, faint light dapples the horizon, teasing a rising sun.

I turn on the stove. While it heats, I prepare my station. A knife. A bowl. An old plastic mixing fork.

I inspect the fork. It is old and worn and made of cheap plastic. I don't remember where it came from, perhaps a dollar store. It seemed like something we've always had, following us from home to home to home, always finding its own place to settle amidst our ever-changing lives.

I like this fork.

The dogs grow restless. They wonder if I have forgotten them. I have not. I fill their bowls with food and water. They thank me with wagging tails. I return to—Oh right, the cat. I haven't forgotten you either. Heh. Sorry about that. Here you go.

I return to the kitchen. I can smell hot metal. It's time.

Oil. Hashbrowns. Sizzle. Nice.

I lean my back against the counter and close my eyes. The oil crackles on the stovetop. The rest of the world is still. The day ahead will hold many moments for many people, but this one belongs to me.

I open my eyes. The sun is showing a bit more of itself now. It peeks through the window and spies on me. It wants to know how I make my eggs.

One egg. Crack. Two egg. Crack. Three egg. Crack. Into the bowl they go. A splash of milk. The mixing fork does its job. Around and around and around. Good job, fork.

I turn back to face the sun. Soon, the Earth will finish a single rotation and the sun will rise high into the sky. It has completed this ritual 1.6 trillion times. More times than every breath I will ever take.

I hear a creak from above. My family is awake. They come down the stairs. My wife smiles. My son smiles. I smile. Away they go. They have rituals of their own to attend to. The sun, the fork, and I will attend to ours.

I dump the eggs onto the hashbrowns. The mixing fork does its job yet again. Fried salami joins the fray. I top it all with melted cheese. Nice. I grab plates, utensils, napkins, and orange juice. The ritual is complete.

In the next room, my wife has finished feeding our son. I set her breakfast down. She thanks me. She doesn't know I'm the one thanking her.

I sit down beside her and grab a remote. I press shuffle. The music plays. David Bowie. Nice.

♫ I heard the news today, oh boy
I got a suite and you got defeat
Ain't there a man who can say no more?
And, ain't there a woman I can sock on the jaw?
And, ain't there a child I can hold without judging?
Ain't there a pen that will write before they die?
Ain't you proud that you've still got faces?
Ain't there one damn song that can make me
Break down and cry? ♫

We eat our breakfast. The sun has risen. The world is awake.

Today will hold many moments. But this one is ours.

I’m looking to explore a bit so i’d love to hear your thoughts. These are the items that make my kitchen special. I mainly cook Asian style food (Chinese, Japanese), so my ingredients trend in that direction. This is a combination of ingredients, condiments, and even snacks that bring joy to me.

If there’s a particular special brand that you think is extra special, i’d love to hear it too!

• Mirin (in Toronto there is a small store that makes homemade mirin)
• Yuzu ponzu sauce (same supplier)
• Furikake / shichimi
• Korean seasoned salt
• Perilla Oil (an amazing nuttier substitute to sesame oil) - great on subtle dishes like zaru soba
• Szechuan peppercorns - amazing to put into the mortar with other aromatics
• Chinese cured pork belly - wow how immensely flavorful - I like the five spice one. Small cubes makes fried rice sing
• Oyster sauce (two ladies LKK not panda LKK)
• Nem Chua
• Good butter (Kerrygold or St Brigid)
• Sambal Oelek
• Pandan leaves and frozen chopped lemongrass
• Maldon salt
• Frozen cheap chocolate squares (Swiss Delice)
• Lao Gan Ma black bean chili crisp
• Salted yolk potato chips, Honey Butter chips
• Korean seaweed sheets for stock along with the little anchovies
• Frozen unshelled clam meat - just throw a handful into anything like pasta or stir fries. So cheap and so good!
• Chinese cooking wine
• Perilla leaves (gganib)
• when I can find them, Alphonso, Kesar, or Colombian Sugar Mangos
• Concord or Muscat grapes
• fatty Biltong (Florence meats is best)
• wavy soba (for some reason I like the mouth feel)
• frozen special handmade ramen
• Calabrian peppers
• Peperoncinos (I like the ones from Terroni)
• Peruvian sweety drop peppers
• Thai kefir leaves (frozen)
• Thai birdseye peppers
• Vietnamese veggies (rau ram) and Thai basil mmm
• fermented tofu bricks - kinda smelly but adds a slickness and sourness when stir frying Chinese veggies
• Korean coque d’asses (Japanese ones are a bit dry for me). Great frozen as well.
• mango gummy candy from cocoa land lot 100
• Chinese snow pear
• kewpie mayo (creepy baby)
• kozlik triple crunch mustard
• Vietnamese fried onions (need to figure out what brand is best)
• affordable soy sauce (made in Japan ones - yamasa or kikkoman)
• fermented black pepper (I like the Trader Joe’s ones - I put it into ramen broth)
• kecap manis (abc brand) for making Indonesian stuff
• Hungarian Hunters sausages - great snacks that last

Have a friend who has raved about using these for cooking meet during the work day and pan searing it for a quick easy and delicious meal. Plan on doing that with steaks/chicken, but wanted to see if anyone else on Tildes owns one and has any tips or favorite use cases to share.

I've been thinking about this over the past few weeks after chatting with some of my friends about this.

For some framing:
I grew up with my parents not encouraging me to learn to cook and my Mom actively refusing to have myself or my brother in the kitchen because we always "made a mess". Before I moved out to university I'd only ever cooked a couple of meals beyond warming things up or instant ramen + grilling meat. I also learned how to carve a turkey/bird because that would be expected of me at a family gathering later on. At university we had the mandatory freshman meal plan my first year and I lived in my fraternity for three years where we had a cook at our house when school was in session.

It wasn't until I moved in with my girlfriend, now wife, where I started cooking. Learning from either recipes, or watching my wife cook things and asking her how she prepared a dish so I could try to make it. Nowadays I like cooking breakfast foods especially on the weekend when I don't have to get my oldest off to school and have more time since my wife doesn't like to wake up early.

When chatting with my guy friends who are around my age (late 20s/early 30s) I've found a lot of them don't cook much or say they don't know how. Many of them eat out regularly/order delivery or buy instant meals.

Knowing my parents, if I had had a sister growing up she would have been encouraged to learn to cook unlike my brother and I. My wife and her siblings all learned through helping my mother in law prepare food in the kitchen.

This got me curious for a wider perspective on this from other men:

Do you "know" how to cook or are you comfortable cooking for yourself, for others?
Were you encouraged to learn how to cook growing up or did you learn as an adult?
Do you have any favorite or signature dishes you prepare?