After 20 years of just eyeballing the salt, I finally measured it for my gravy yesterday

I always thought measuring was for baking not for savory stuff, but my gravy actually came out perfect for the first time ever and now I'm wondering what else I've been messing up, anyone else have a cooking habit they were skeptical of that totally changed their game?

3 comments

3 Comments

smith.anna26d ago

My mom never measured anything and her food was always hit or miss. It took me trying to replicate her meatloaf five times before I realized she was just guessing and that was the problem. Turns out a lot of stuff we think is intuition is really just people running on luck and habit. Same thing with knowing how long to toast bread without looking - I bet half my burnt toast was just me being too confident.

hannahsingh26d ago

Wait, you made it 20 years just eyeballing salt? That's impressive honestly. I lost count of how many soups I ruined because I thought "a little more salt" was helping when it was really just turning everything into brine. Measuring spoons feel like cheating sometimes but they really do take the guesswork out of things. I started timing my rice after years of crunchy or mushy rice and it was such a relief to stop having to poke at it and cross my fingers.

joel_hall1725d ago

Funny how something that simple can feel like a cheat code after years of guessing. I had the same thing with a meat thermometer, always thought I knew when a chicken was done by feel but it turns out I was just overcooking everything into dry leather. Measuring salt and temp takes all the stress out, pretty freeing actually.