[Xcelerate]

Ragusea’s video about how searing in extra virgin olive oil is perfectly fine (and in fact healthier than more neutral oils due to the monounsatured fats) was eye-opening. My dad always liked to sear in olive oil and said he didn’t believe the claims that it would impart a burnt taste to the food (but it indeed gives the crust a non-neutral flavor if that’s what you’re going for).

Personally, I never thought soaking dried beans overnight made sense. I eventually found a blog post where a chef did a blind taste test of soaking overnight vs directly boiling dried beans and found that they taste better without the soaking (but take longer to cook). Ever since then I have made what I think results in the tastiest hummus by skipping the soaking, skipping the baking soda (which imparts a weird aftertaste), and just straight boiling dried Umbrian chickpeas, followed by passing the final product through a #60 lab-grade sieve. Saves time, is much smoother, and tastes better than any recipe I’ve found online.

The only item that I am surprised about on the list is the chefs’ collective opinion on reverse searing. Personally I’ve found it works better than almost anything else if you’re not looking for a technique that imparts additional flavor (e.g., grilling over binchotan is my ultimate favorite approach for many types of meat but that is due to the unique smoky flavor rather than grilling per se). Reverse searing tough cuts for 6-7 hours at a very low PID-controlled temperature even seems to work much better than braising for flavor. I would like to see some blind taste tests for claims about methods that work better than the reverse sear.

[Ar-Curunir]

If you salt your water before soaking, then your beans will be seasoned internally. In Indian cooking we additionally throw whole spices in (cardamom, star anise, pepper, etc).

[et-al]

Soaking overnight is one of those hands-off, no-brainer preps that no one probably questioned if they could shorten the time until crock pots became commonplace.

I'm also shocked at the reverse-sear detractors. Personally I've been doing it for years because "searing in the juices" never made sense, and cooking on plenty of mediocre apartment stoves, it's been a foolproof way to assure that the outside of the steak is nice and dry without overcooking the inside. I've tried other methods that didn't require specialized equipment, and the reverse-sear has been the most reliable.

[bch]

I'm a 4h salted water soaker now - i think i saw the 4h (versus 8h/overnight) on a bean forum that may have been run as net news originally. I find 4h to be a reasonably small amount of time to work with, and I use a pressure cooker to do the cooking; I can have the idea to have beans for dinner as late as ~noon, and that's workable.

[jghn]

Rancho Gordo splits the difference on soaking with their beans, saying that soaking for a few hours will help speed up and even out cooking. But also that it's unnecessary. They do also suggest cooking in the soaking liquid, which I suspect is the cause of the taste difference in taste tests like you cite.

[ehsankia]

For steak, my first thought was that the objectively best way to cook steak is sous-vide + quick sear. I realize not everyone has sous-vide, but that produces the best results where the entire steak is cooked to the exact perfect doneness, and the top layer has the seared flavor.

[giraffe_lady]

I'd rather have a better sear than an exactly perfect temp gradient though, and sous vide offers the opposite tradeoff so I don't prefer it. Also I think this throws a wrench into the idea that you can define what an "objectively best" thing is here.

EDIT: Also please ffs no one give me cooking advice, I know how to get a good sear.

[ehsankia]

I wasn't giving you advice, and I still maintain that it is the superior method.

You can sear however and as much as you want to. The point is that your searing isn't limited and compromised for the inside of the steak. You're doing the inside and the outside in two separate steps, and you can get the perfect cooking you want on both, instead of trying to balance things.

That's also how the reverse sear method works, but sous-vide is more reliable and low effort. You can actually leave it in the water bath for longer without worrying about over cooking. There's a reason most restaurants use the sous-vide method, they leave it in there and quickly sear to perfection when the order comes in.

There is no science to backup the fact that a "temperature gradient" is better. Medium-rare steak is objectively better than well done steak, and a "gradient" is basically part of your steak being "well-done" for the sake of the inside not being "rare".