Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

hahahaha - I'm the same as brooke29 - the weird things I hear about food are mainly from my in-laws! I definitely don't get into it with them anymore either and just let them think what they think (since, regardless of what I say, they'll continue to just think what they think anyway!).

I feel you, Cassaendra, just for me its weird misconceptions and sometimes incredibly ethnocentric and ignorant comments about Chinese food...

I can't count how many times I've had to suppress the urge to tell someone that no, General Tso's is not real Chinese food.

I do remember explaining to a very irate woman why she couldn't get bananas at the Union Square Greenmarket. She didn't get it.

A friend told me yesterday that she won't eat anything with "lard" in it. Her list included banana bread, biscuits, and anything with Crisco/shortening. After that I told her that crisco is vegetable-based, and explained where lard comes from, and that most baked goods contain it. Turns out, she's been eating shortening for years without realizing it.
@savta--so right about Vidalias. I have extended family that grows them. To compare Georgia Vidalias to Mexico (or anywhere else's) "vidalia"-type onions is like selling Boon's Farm as Dom.

My parents believe loads of strange food myths, but I never correct them. The one that gets on my nerves the most is their solid belief that washing button mushrooms quickly under water will make them "water logged." It's such a silly myth, but they are set in their ways and there's no use in trying to convince them otherwise.

For me, the most common misconception is that pork needs to be well done. Yes, there are cuts of pork that benefit from a long wet braise like shoulder, or ribs that cook for a long time slowly in the oven with a little moisture, then get finished on the grill. But loin? WHAT is heroic about cooking pork loin to death?

Today's pork is so lean - too lean, some claim, that it's almost devoid of flavor and certainly of fat. People have this picture in their heads of the farms of the 50's where pigs ate germ-riddled garbage from the house (and worse), so trichinosis was a huge threat. The fact is today, pigs eat better than we do. They get fed (many times organic) grains and corn and there is no need to cook pork loin to within an inch of its life!

I can't help but roll my eyes when someone orders pork chops well done. Sometimes I do more than roll my eyes. My BF's dad ordered pork loin well done at dinner the first time I met the parents. Needless to say, I bit my tongue and just wrote off his dining experience that night. Predictably, when I asked how he liked his pork, he said, "It's dry."

I took a chance and advised him, "Next time you order pork loin, please... order it medium. It will be cooked but it will not be devoid of juice and feel like sawdust in your throat." He looked wary. "Try it once," I said. "If you're unhappy with it, you never have to do it again. But just try it once."

Truth be told, we haven't had many meals out together and for all I know, he continued to order his pork well done and suffer in silence - but I'm hoping not. The dad loves my cooking and I'm hoping he trusts me enough to try ordering pork loin medium. Just once.

@Lemons - After a mention or two about it, I generally accept that the person wants shoe leather on a plate and move on with my life. I do have a motto though, "He who orders beef or pork well-done gets exactly what he deserves!!" :D

Oh, yes... good one @chiff! That pork thing drives me crazy. I've actually seen people do the same thing with a fine, lean cut of beef, like tenderloin. "I don't know why everyone loves this place so much. My steak's really tough and tastes like liver." "You might want to try ordering it done to no more than medium. That's the most a lean, tender cut like that can take." "Ew. No way. I can't eat bloody meat." {rolling eyes}

Even when trichinae infestation was prevalent, it was never necessary to cook it to well-done, since trichinae are killed at just under 140 degrees, and pork is considered medium at 155-160 degrees. Virtually all dangerous critters are destroyed by the time you hit 160 degrees.

Growing up, I always thought I disliked pork unless it was braised or smothered in gravy. Many memories of very well-done unadorned pan-seared pork chops. The first time I ate pork cooked to medium, I was a little freaked out by the pinkness. But since I had, by then, read that this was proper and safe cooking, I went for it... Wow! Like a different (very delicious) animal all together! One of my favorite meats now!

One of my favorites has always been: Potatoes are so fattening. Umm, not really. It's what you do to them. If you add butter, milk, cheese, bacon etc, yeah, then they become fattening, very tasty, but fattening!

@PumpkinBear: AB did a whole "Good Eats" episode on mushrooms and included a segment on rinsing, soaking, scrubbing mushrooms to see how much water they gained. Maybe you could have the folks watch that for fun. :-)

i'm tired of the "gin is bruised" if a martini is not prepared properly. someone needs to explain to me how in the hell you can bruise a liquid.

Every now and then, someone will come up with a "fact" preceeded by, "They say that..." and if I'm in a particular mood, I'll politely ask who "they" are. It usually gets people to stop and think about whether what they're stating as an obvious fact actually has anything backing it up.

Okay, even though the thread is old, since it's a "Food Myths" discussion I just have to say, I'd never want to be a pig. Bad enough to get castratrated and have the tail and ears docked without anesthesia so my mates I'd be packed in with won't chew them off for nothing better to do, but a pig's sense of smell is so great they can detect a truffle 6 feet down yet we grow them pinned in places that are so filthy and disgusting they have to have antibiotics, fungicides and pesticides to survive and that's only if the fans don't stop.

Trichinosis is nothing in comparison.

I've continually hit my head against the wall with my parents. When I was in grad school and couldn't afford anything more than the true open- all- hours- dive, I took my parents; and, my mother ordered her favorite...porkchops. Then proceeded to quiz the waitress..."Are they juicy...are you sure". Mom...they are only $4.75...how juicy do you really think they are going to be no matter how much you pressure the wait staff! Mom, I don't think their "chef" is known for creating mouthwatering fare!

As well, my parents insist they love hamburgers but HATE steak. Try as I might to explain that hamburger can essentially be ground up steak they insist they cannot stand the taste of steak. Of course, this all stems from their perpetual and self imposed financial constraints...to say they dislike a food negates having to consider paying more for a delicious meal. So, the worst is trying to get my parents to just consider a moderately priced entree just to try something as I'm sure they would enjoy it once tasted. As you can imagine, their thriftiness extends to keeping even the smallest smidgeon of left over from homecooked meals until it has been reduced to nothing no matter how old....a dicey proposition indeed! End result is their own personally held belief that anything that does not get eaten is wasteful and since their are straving children somewhere else in the world.... But they seem impervious to understanding that there really is a expiration date on leftovers.

@trixie, judging from your description of your parents, their avowed dislike of steak sounds completely logical to me, since it's very likely that "steak" to them is likely to be something along the lines of overdone round steak.