Ingredients
Choosing, prepping, storing, substituting — starting with the ingredients this site's recipes use most.
- GarlicThe single most used ingredient on this site — 145 of 254 dishes. How you cut it and how hot you cook it change it into three different ingredients.
- OnionCooking time is the flavour. Three minutes of onion and forty minutes of onion are not the same ingredient.
- EggWhite sets at 62°C, yolk at 68°C. Those two numbers explain almost everything about cooking eggs.
- Soy sauceNot salty water but a fermented seasoning. Swapping the type changes the dish, and when you add it decides whether the aroma survives.
- Butter80% fat, 16% water, 4% milk solids. That ratio explains everything butter does — why it burns, why it makes layers, why it makes a sauce glossy.
- TomatoFresh and tinned tomatoes are for different jobs. And tomato paste is something you fry, not something you stir in.
- Spring onionThe white and the green are effectively two ingredients: one is an aromatic you fry in fat, the other is a garnish you add at the end.
- GingerGround ginger is not a substitute for fresh — it is a different ingredient, because the pungent compound itself changes with heat.
- Gochugaru (Korean chilli flakes)Gochugaru supplies colour and aroma as much as heat — and the wrong grind changes the dish.
- Olive oil"Never cook with extra virgin" is half wrong. It is fine at sautéing temperatures and wrong for deep frying.
- PotatoFloury and waxy potatoes are for opposite jobs: one is supposed to fall apart, the other is supposed to hold together.
- FlourBread, plain and cake flour differ in one number — protein — and that number sets the gluten, which sets how chewy the result is.