35+ Foods People Consistently Make Wrong, and How to Fix Them

You always expect something like rice to be easy to cook. After all, it’s a staple for more than 100 countries in the world. But it turns out that some people struggle with even this essential ingredient!

Thankfully, this is one of those wrongly cooked foods that one can quickly learn how to cook correctly. Or if you don’t think you can do it, do what this person did and buy a rice cooker. You’ll get perfectly cooked rice all the time!

This meal might be nice and hearty, but it takes work. Pot roast is a little complicated as it is, and many cooks need help putting a good one on the dining table. One of the biggest pot roast peeves is the toughness.

Since it uses the beef’s tough cut, tenderness can make or break your dish. So know how long to slow-cook this meal to get the best out of it. But be sure to put mashed potatoes on the side, so at least something on the plate is chewable!

Everybody has a different idea of what a good mashed potato should taste like, but bland is not an adjective that anybody would want to use. The trick to a good mashed potato lies in something that has nothing to do with your cooking skills –  it’s the kind of potato you use!

Russet potatoes are excellent for preparing this dish, and even Yukon golds are good. Pick these up at the farmers market next time before you start prepping your Thanksgiving meals.

Undercooked is inedible, overcooked has no fat – for some, chicken breasts are one of the most complicated dishes requiring minute precision. Thankfully, there are many ways to get this protein source right!

Using a digital thermometer, aka sous vide, is one of the techniques to get it correct. Investing in a one-time gadget is much better than eating your food wrong every day.

Cookies are utter deliciousness, with recipes ranging from 3 to 13 ingredients. However, just because cookies are such a popularly made dish (even by kids), it doesn’t make them easy to prepare.

Correct compositions and instructions can make or break your cookies, literally! Cookie making is more about the technique and the proportions you use, so stay caught up on your flavors and recipes. Learning to make the necessary cookie is the first step in perfecting the art of this childhood treat.

A basic carbonara sauce recipe uses barely five ingredients, but still, many need to learn the correct method for preparing this Italian sauce. Yes, you might love yours any which way, wrong or right, but it always helps to improve and learn the right recipe.

As this person generously explains, a good carbonara sauce can be prepared using two bowls instead of one. Washing an extra dish is a small price to pay for the sake of your taste buds!

Meatloaf has gained a reputation for being bland food that makes you question people who make it again and again. But this dish has the potential to be juicy and flavourful.

It could be the fault of the meatloaf you had as a child that turned you away from this potentially-delicious dish. Add mashed potatoes and green peas, and you have the perfect meal ready to go!

Risotto! Just the thought of it is enough to make many people salivate. But risotto can be a big hit or a miss; there’s no in-between.

A good risotto requires cooked rice that makes your dish neither too crunchy nor too soggy. If you love your vegetarian risotto, adding diced brie instead of butter can make it creamy. So, for your next dinner date, this may be the perfect dish to make.

Browning your meat is an essential step to getting a mouth-watering taste. But just like the hare in the famous fable, shortcuts will not help you win this race!

Pink doesn’t mean that it’s done all the way through. More patience can get you double the flavor, making eating double the fun!

Baking is about ensuring that your ingredients are in the correct proportions and order. So if you’re looking for fluffy, perfect cakes and not sad, flat tops, try to be a scientist and not a magician.

Your chocolates and strawberries will come much later, but the initial baking has to be correct for your cake to rise properly and be sufficiently gooey.

Ladies and gentlemen, there’s a new temperature to make pork at! For many, this can change the game of cooking this meat entirely. No more getting sick of undercooked pork or overcooked pork!

Perfectly tender and cooked pork is genuinely mouth-watering. Add some fried apples or glazed onions on the side to make your meal all the better, and dial up the taste to 1,000.

The bane of everybody’s childhood meals, and some adults too! Broccoli is a vegetable you only appreciate as you grow older, but plain steamed broccoli isn’t everyone’s favorite. Only some attempts that you make at cooking this vegetable will be successful.

The most straightforward and easiest broccoli recipe is sautéing it in simple garlic, butter, and salt. Broccoli has just been the filler for many other dishes, but now the world realizes it can be a star!

There’s barely anything as delicious as a New York bagel slathered in cream cheese, all fresh and ready. But if you, sadly, can’t get to the Big Apple for a taste of it, then you can make it at home!

However, getting the perfect recipe for this takes work. Like most baking, even NY bagels have a particular set of rules. The most important thing? Using malt flavor/syrup as the primary flavor.

Cheap, readily available, and easy to make – grits are genuinely the meal of the everyday man, especially in the south. But when it comes to making delicious grits, the proper steps have to be followed.

To make the right grits, cook them on a slow and low flame. Salt and butter are the only additions you need to this dish. For appropriate thickness, keep stirring and adding water. This dish is simple, sweet, and amazing to eat!

Meat, vegetables, rice – three essential food groups meeting together to make this delicious dish. But the jambalaya served outside its native place differs vastly from its authentic form.

There are two ways to make jambalaya: Cajun and Creole. The Cajun way calls for the dish to be brown, while the Creole way makes for a red Jambalaya, all thanks to the tomatoes added to the dish.

It could be for two reasons you hate aubergines (eggplants) and can’t stand them in your food. Either you don’t like the vegetable, or you’ve been making them wrong all along!

Another great way to make aubergines is to deep-fry them, stuff them between two slices of bread, make a delicious sandwich, and scarf it down. Keep the heat steady while frying, so the vegetable is evenly cooked inside and out.

A good cappuccino, like a painting, can genuinely make you feel things. The first sip of a good cup of coffee can make your day a whole lot better. But only some people hit the right spot when making the perfect cappuccino.

Even many cafés face the problem of making good coffee. But with so many coffee connoisseurs sitting at home these days, it’s getting more accessible for people to spot the good from the bad.

The trick to an excellent fried plantain is to fry them enough to ensure they don’t break when they come out of the pot. Secondly, your smashing of the plantains will also determine your result.

What you want is to have slices that are thick enough on the insides that they can beautifully compliment the crispy exteriors. Cooking them on moderate heat also helps get the sugar caramelized.

Scrambled eggs are the perfect breakfast for mornings after indulging in too many adult beverages. But getting the consistency and the taste right takes practice and the correct technique.

Scrambled eggs may be an easy-to-make breakfast, but patience is the key to being the king or queen of scrambled eggs. All your dates will indeed be thankful if you master this fantastic recipe!

Steaks are a complicated and debatable dish, with everybody in charge of the grill having a different opinion. Medium, rare, or well-done, grilling steaks is more about your technique than the grill you use.

Being a fidgety griller might not help your case when you’re waiting for your steaks to be done. Get somebody to converse with while you’re waiting for them to be done to pass the time and stop you from flipping the steaks too much.

Mushrooms are dynamic – they can be steamed, grilled, sautéed, and used with almost anything. Flavoring and seasoning for these fungi are also quite varied, from a simple salt and butter combo to a more robust and flavorful style.

Getting all the water out of the mushrooms makes them tastier to eat. It also allows the mushrooms to absorb the seasoning flavors much better. It’s the perfect side for all your dishes and meals!

For all those struggling to make this deliciously easy breakfast, the problem is in your batter. Hold the blueberries and strawberries, and concentrate on ensuring that your batter has a perfect consistency.

Ensure you don’t whip your batter so much that it turns from a thick syrup to a watery mess. For fewer lumps, use a sieve while adding your dry ingredients. This will ensure you don’t have to whip too much to remove the clumps.

Brussels sprouts have a bad reputation overall and, let’s be frank, are hated quite a lot. It turns out they’re disliked for a good reason!

Traditionally, American and British people have gone for boiling their Brussels sprouts, leading to their universal hate. This makes them into a mushy, soft mess. Opting for little chili flakes, garlic, and olive oil can make them your favorite dish!

A good tortilla shell is a base for a delicious taco or fajita. A too-hard shell can bring the entire experience down. Learning that you can heat store-bought tortillas was a changing point for this person.

Also, ensure that you use fresh and crispy lettuce for your taco stuffing, as it’ll beautifully balance out your softened shell. Now, all that’s left to do is assemble and dig in!

For all those burger lovers who love to fire up a grill, here’s how you can have crispy, juicy patties every time. The trick is to flatten the patties sparingly while they’re on the grill.

Don’t turn your patties into mush with the force of your spatula. The way you roll and shape them is good enough. A delicious burger calls for a patty full of flavor and life!

You can prepare aioli sauce at home once and use it for an entire week. But the problem with this sauce is that even though it’s made with three ingredients, it could be more laborious.

Using a blender will not only make your consistency better but also cut down your time and effort considerably. For storage, pour your sauce into a tight-lid jar and keep it in the fridge.

You might try to fry potatoes at home, hoping for some restaurant-style crispness, but it turns out that achieving it isn’t easy! Thankfully, there’s a trick to achieving perfect fried potatoes every time.

It might take a little extra time to prepare as opposed to what you’re used to, but the difference in the taste will be worth it. The next time you feed your guests your new potatoes, they’ll be full of good reviews of your delicious food!

You won’t take something away from all the movies you see, but sometimes you learn things that stay with you all your life. For this user, it was the correct way of making poached eggs and toast, which they learned from a film.

Soggy toast can ruin a good meal, and making it crispy doesn’t cut it. Even though this trick will help your toast stay crispier initially, it’s still best to eat your eggs and toast when it’s fresh out of the kitchen!

This Chinese dish is delicious; it’s easy and versatile – so many things are perfect about fried rice. The trick to making fried rice how it’s supposed to be is using rice prepped at least a day before.

Unlike all the other dishes, fried rice requires your main ingredient, rice, to be leftover. So next time, whenever you’re trying to puzzle out what to do with your leftover rice, toss it in a pan and make fried rice!

We all know prepping your pasta requires boiling it in water with a pinch of salt. But the actual trick lies in finishing the process in the sauce itself.

When your sauce is about to be done, toss in your pasta noodles with it to get the flavors in. Adding thoroughly cooked pasta to the sauce will make it way too soft and spongy for consumption.

A fantastic source of protein, healthy, and allowed in almost any diet – there’s barely any reason one would ever say ‘no’ to tofu. However, trying to eat your tofu plain and unseasoned is a big no-no.

For the sake of your taste buds, use your tofu the right way. Sautéing it as you do with your veggies, cottage cheese, and your potatoes can make you love the dish.

Scallops are easy to cook but a little tricky to get right! You can cook your basic scallops in just five minutes. However, knowing when to stop cooking them to avoid overcooking is the key to a good dish.

Scallops are mostly defined as tasting buttery and slightly sweet. The delicious taste is similar to other seafood, such as shrimp and lobster. The benefit of eating scallops also lies in their high level of protein.

Salads have been rising as one of the best meals to have. Gone are the days when salads meant boring, simple iceberg lettuce. Now, people love experimenting with a health kick, opting for various veggies, dressings, and other additions for their salad.

Finding one that suits your taste buds can be a game-changer for your meal plans. If you’re short on ideas, look up salads on TikTok, and you’ll have many sweet, salty, and spicy options.

If you’ve seen How I Met Your Mother, you know that eating bacon for the first time can be like feeling the sun on your face for the first time – truly life-changing.

There’s hardly anything that compares to the taste of well-cooked authentic bacon. Using a microwave allows you to get some delicious bacon every single time. So if you’re ever in a hurry and craving some greasy goodness, microwave away!

Fish is one of the healthiest things you can eat. It has many benefits and is highly recommended by doctors. However, cooking fish is delicate as it has little connective tissue and fat.

A great way to check the doneness of your fish is to insert a fork or knife into the thickest part of the fish. The next time you make fish, try this and see how your guests react to the final dish.

Like all Italian dishes, one of the binding and star factors of lasagna is the kind of cheese you use. The right cheese brings the dish together and adds that last oomph factor.

For lasagna, cheese is a star and becomes one of the many essential layers while assembling the meal. Ricotta is the optimum choice for lasagna and enhances the dish’s flavor.

If you love chicken, you know that marinating or seasoning your chicken before grilling or baking is necessary to ensure that the flavors seep deep into your dish.

Having your chicken marinated for anywhere from 2 to 24 hours is ideal for your chicken to be truly flavourful. But if you’re short on time, even a 20-minute marination can do the trick for smaller pieces of meat.

Like all fish, tuna also carries many benefits that are great for the body. Not only that, it’s one of the healthiest seafood varieties that you can eat. But you’re supposed to cook it only partway through.

Pan-searing your tuna is one of the safest ways to make it, and it allows you to leave the inside raw. Serve it with a side of veggies and rice for a wholesome, balanced meal!

Like other green veggies, you can prepare your asparagus in many ways, and every style will be fantastic to eat. But if your experience with asparagus has only been of the canned variety, you need to experience the adventure of eating fresh veggies.

The fibrous veggie makes for a great side dish for your meals. It’s healthy, and delicious, and works great paired with almost everything!

In the last couple of years, zucchini noodles have gained popularity for being a healthier option to add to your diet.

They’ve become a solid ingredient to anchor your salads, pasta, and noodle dishes. The versatile base can be eaten raw, mostly in salads with dressings.

You’ve probably encountered yams when sitting down for a Thanksgiving meal. But these sweet potatoes are better eaten when they’re not smothered in even more sweetness.

Like fried potatoes, yams are best consumed with salt, fresh garlic, and herbs. The seasoning makes a big difference when it comes to this side dish. For your next Thanksgiving meal, switch to this technique and watch your guests gobble this up quickly!

For every two homemakers on the internet giving you a hack to make your dishes faster, there’s one who loves to get to their end result in a much more complicated manner. One such dish that has fallen prey to this excess method of cooking is polenta.

You can make polenta on a stovetop, but you can also get the work done in half the time in an instant pot! There’s nothing wrong with wanting to hang out in the kitchen, but adding unnecessary steps to your process doesn’t need to be the reason.

People love to mess with traditional recipes for a newer experience. Adding a twist is all good and fresh, but sometimes these fusion foods take away from the experience of eating these dishes.

One such dish is the Cuban sandwich, which is beautiful in its simplicity but has undergone many improvement attempts by fancy restaurants. The sandwich is perfect for meat and sandwich lovers, with layers of ham, pork, and cheese all toasted in buttery goodness.

One of the most significant flaws of restaurants preparing Asian cuisine is substituting authentic sauces for ketchup. Pad thai is one of the victims of this gross exchange.

This usually happens with pad thai because tamarind, one of the main ingredients of the pad thai sauce, is less readily available in many countries and also a little pricey. On the other hand, ketchup is readily available and much cheaper.

Mac and cheese is the ultimate comfort food for most people. It’s cheesy, it’s delicious, and it’s easy to make. However, when you’re making your mac and cheese at home, there are some things that you should be careful about.

One of the best ways to add flavor and oomph to your dish is to use a variety of cheeses. After all, there’s a reason why the word ‘cheese’ is a part of the dish’s name!