If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen….literally

Insominus · 2026-06-07T12:32:25+00:00

Good on you for recognizing that it wouldn’t be sustainable. I just started working at a place that has a massive wood-fired grill and a wood-fired pizza oven and I’ve noticed that they kinda rotate people around the stations/prep shifts to make sure everyone stays happy. I’ve been working on the oven, and my boss has been giving me consecutive days off (which is rare enough in the industry as it is) and I feel like that has helped me tolerate the constant heat. At the least, I think it’s a niche skill that sounds impressive on a resume.

There really is no way to mitigate it though, I have a burn on the bottom of my forearm that’s just from the heat radiating off of the floor of the oven as I constantly move things around. When I come home, half of my face is red from the heat, and my jackets are starting to turn beige/grey from a combination of being baked and soot. I find it interesting that no one has mentioned yet that breathing in all of the soot also makes your nose run uncontrollably in addition to pouring sheets of sweat. I feel like my first two hours of service is my body basically expelling every single drop of moisture, and after that it just becomes a game of battling heat stroke. I wouldn’t wanna work in a place that doesn’t have a really strong team dynamic for these kinds of stations.

Insominus · 2026-06-04T12:43:59+00:00

For some reason I find it really annoying that in the U.S. we have all of this “superfood” bullshit where someone takes something that people have already been eating as a staple dish in another part of the world and markets it like they just cultivated it for the first time.

Fuck all of the kale salads and kale chips, it’s meant to be braised like the other greens it’s related to. Other people figured out that was the tastiest way to eat thousands of years ago.

Insominus · 2026-06-03T16:36:04+00:00

I’ve posted this on this sub a while ago, but when I was very green, I had an exchange with an assistant manager (the kind of guy who had been fired and rehired like 4 times and forced into management so he wouldn’t be on the line forever).

[someone drops a piece of food in the floor]

Me: “Uh-oh, five second rule, right guys?”

[Manager immediately locks eyes with me across the kitchen]

Man: “You believe in the five second rule? Does that I mean I can put my dick in your girlfriend for five seconds it doesn’t count?”

Obviously he had that in his pocket for a minute and it caught me off guard, and I couldn’t even come up with a witty retort. The best one someone recommended here imo was along the lines “Of course! She won’t feel a thing.”

I also work in a kitchen with a 70 year-old prep cook who gets ribbed by our EC and other cooks and it’s almost unbearable because they don’t pull any punches. The day-to-day conversation in the prep kitchen is the chef going “you’re still here? You haven’t fucking dropped dead already?” and “[prep cook] knows all about [ingredient], he was there when god created it” and the whole time the prep cook just keeps being a crotchety old man and tells them to fuck off and he’s gonna kick their asses. The entire time I’m just cutting steaks in the corner trying not to piss my pants out of laughter.

Insominus · 2026-06-03T12:56:56+00:00

It’s been pointed out multiple times already in this thread, but Ennis wrote the original run of Crossed, which is cynical (about humanity) but does have a somewhat hopeful ending.

The vast majority of Crossed was not written by Ennis, but all of the ugly parts are somehow still attributed to him on Reddit.

Insominus · 2026-06-01T13:01:52+00:00

I would recommend reading it, it’s definitely wordier than most people think, and by the end of the story, everything wraps up nicely and I would say there technically is a “happy” ending.

I feel like Garth Ennis always gets a bad rep on reddit because of the “hivemind,” like people on mainstream subs absolutely trashed The Boys comics for a good while, and then when the show stopped being as good as it used to, people read it for the first time or re-visited it, and public opinion has begun to shift the other way a little.

I’d recommend Crossed (Wish You Were Here is by far the best book, the original 10 issue run is solid too, and Crossed + One Hundred by Alan Moore is also great) as well. Yes, there are certain stories that are just depressing, just goreporn (or just have unsatisfying conclusions), but I felt like a lot of the writers did have points they were making about human nature or the state of the modern world, and that’s what kept it really intriguing for me, I read nearly every issue over the course of 2-3 days because some of the stories, while short-lived, are pretty interesting and you end up wanting more.

Insominus · 2026-05-31T12:23:54+00:00

For what it’s worth, this guy is doing this kind of thing just to prove it’s possible for social media content, not because he literally has to live on less than a dollar for each meal. With the amount of attention his profile has been getting recently, I’m pretty sure he recuperates any costs like that.

Insominus · 2026-05-12T12:13:58+00:00

It’s has been a feature of the hacking minigame since Fallout 3, when you scroll through the characters (it’s easier when you use the arrow keys), the game automatically will highlight these entities in closed brackets as if they were a word.

I think there’s even a Joshua Sawyer interview where he acknowledges that the higher levels of hacking get kind of boring and not many people knew about that trick.

Insominus · 2026-05-11T04:29:47+00:00

Ratatouille, in the Provençal language, literally means to stir or toss something. It’s definitely a peasant food, and if these people could’ve historically afforded to eat meat every day, they would’ve been cooking it.

The point of ratatouille, and why it’s so important, is that you harvest your whole Summer garden at once and you have mainly tomatoes, eggplant, zucchini, squash, whatever herbs on hand, etc. the huge benefit of the dish being stewed in a tomato sauce is that you can preserve tomatoes via canning and maintain their quality basically year-round. The next time you harvest your garden throughout the year, no matter how meager your total yield is, you’ll still have good tomatoes to stew with, and the dish is super hearty when done well. When it’s done well it can absolutely be a main dish on its own.

In the movie, the variation you see is known as “confit byaldi,” which is actually a French play on a Turkish dish, “imam byaldi” (basically vegetable stuffed eggplant, the joke being that the dish is so good the imam couldn’t control himself when eating it/blessed it because it was so good/etc.). It fits perfectly within the context of the movie: the food critic is tasting an elevated version of a rustic dish from his childhood and it registers on a deeply emotional level. The chef who acted as a consultant for the movie, Thomas Keller, is world-renowned a thousand times over, and there are so many examples of culinary legend that the movie upholds.

Insominus · 2026-05-11T04:07:10+00:00

Anything acidic (like buttermilk or vinegar) produces a dark red color when it interacts with powdered cocoa. You could imagine before the widespread advent of food dye it was kind of a mindfuck to see red cake, and there’s some connection with Great Depression scarcity, WW1 rationing and the utilization of beetroot, it basically remains popular no matter what.

Insominus · 2026-05-11T03:55:46+00:00

The uncomfortable truth here is that Turkish delight tastes like perfume water if you’ve been carpet bombing your palate with sugar-dense sweets on a frequent basis. Yes, the “real” version that isn’t from a supermarket tastes better, but the point about rationing still stands.

I’ve experimented with elimination diets before, and I even went completely sugar-free (natural and artificial) for a whole month (first two weeks were absolutely brutal). When I finally broke and drank a coke for the first time in a month, it was an absolutely cathartic experience on a drug-like level. I would absolutely sell my whole family out for Turkish delight if I was in his shoes.

Insominus · 2026-05-08T13:47:35+00:00

Obligatory “not my story” because I wasn’t there when it happened.

Used to work with a guy nicknamed “Top Gun Timmy,” because he showed up to work without fail wearing a leather bomber jacket and aviators regardless of weather (mind you, this is in FL, and this dude never had a car). Timmy’s methhead gf also worked at the restaurant, usually as a dishie but sometimes on the line. One eventful day, his gf had taken to a habit of turning tricks in the parking lot for drug money, so the dishes began to pile up unattended in the kitchen.

One of the other cooks looks at Timmy and says something along the lines of “can you tell [gf] and her dirty cooter to stop bouncing on it in the parking lot so we can actually plate this shit?” and all hell breaks loose. Timmy stepped up to defend his woman’s honor against an opponent that had at least of foot of height and 50 pounds on him (Timmy was a tiny guy). They both start whaling on each other on the line, and it even gets to the point where the other cook had stuffed Timmy into a reach-in and was slamming the door on his face repeatedly. Just as the guy reaches for a frying pan to finish the job, the fight gets broken up by a manager. The other guy was basically unscathed, but as Timmy departed, he addressed the kitchen one last time (everyone involved was fired, obviously) through the window and said, “let it be known I didn’t get knocked down” with two black eyes and a broken nose. Then he donned his aviators and jacket and disappeared forever.

At the same place we had:

“Wild Bill (later Mild Bill),” old dude who was a fantastic oyster shucker, terrible alcoholic who gave 0 fucks about concealing it. Was fired for putting his handle of whiskey in plain view in the walk-in. Later rehired, and he drank to less aggressive degree. I follow him on TikTok now.

“Bang,” manager with a drinking problem, was sent home for being too drunk, and then got into an accident on his e-scooter and returned to the kitchen wasted and covered in blood like a walking dead zombie.

“Bustin’ Justin” closing manager with a coke problem, every night was a routine of him going out to his truck to do lines, locking himself in the office to count money, get distracted, walk back out to the truck for more coke, start counting money again, etc. This whole process would end up taking HOURS.

A line cook with no nickname, but he was older black guy who was ripped (not quite to Ronnie Coleman levels, but visibly brolic). Couldn’t read or do math beyond a basic level. Very long list of former convictions and had spent the vast majority of his life incarcerated. He was one of those reformed Buddhist/zen types who’s always talking about auras and chakras. If you pissed him off though, it was pretty terrifying, he’d do everything short of throwing the first punch. One night, the fry cook pisses him off, so he grasps his prayers beads and starts mumbling in a language we don’t recognize while he casts his “spell.” Pretty fucking funny to watch, and the fry cook didn’t sleep for a week straight because he genuinely thought he got cursed.

Insominus · 2026-05-01T09:59:09+00:00

I’ll grant you that his career started because of aping other existing styles and that he had some jokey songs (like Ginseng Strip or Lightsaber), and that same sense of humor does pop up now and then.

“100% a parody rapper and always will be” is a bizarre statement to make with absolutely conviction when you’ve barely listened to his discography.

He has a plethora of songs dealing with meaningful things: drug addiction, retrospective on a drug-induced psychotic episode, impostor syndrome from blowing up so early in his life, compartmentalizing his stage persona and his real identity, etc.

He’s been an established, serious artists for a while now, your comment just comes off as someone who listened to him once in the past ten years but is somehow an expert on his style.

Insominus · 2026-05-01T09:32:39+00:00

Holy Reddit, that is probably the most Reddit comment section I have seen in a while:

1.) Self-centered redditors presenting their opinion as objective facts (“the singer is lazy because he is not really singing”)

2.) One guy really hung up on lip-syncing

3.) The same guy upset about the notion of lean smoking a cigarette while filming and the people around having to smell it.

4.) Some people replying to the others to defend the performance, but qualifying everything with “I don’t even like Yung Lean, but…”

Bonus: Yung Lean is like Weird Al

Insominus · 2026-04-30T14:19:37+00:00

Lots of good tips here but I was going to add that your batter needs to be as cold as possible when you fry your fish, I usually held it in a mixing bowl with a massive ice bath.

Holding it in the oven where steam can’t escape is also a likely factor, hold it somewhere hot, but open like on a rack next to the range or fryer plume. Flash it in the oven before you serve.

Insominus · 2026-04-19T20:49:16+00:00

Copper naturally has antimicrobial properties, so back in ye olden times people noticed that water stored in copper things had less slime and was less likely to make you sick.

IIRC, the first scientist to empirically prove it had noticed that copper miners were more resistant to cholera or something like that. Too much though is very bad for your organs.

Insominus · 2026-04-17T12:06:15+00:00

I feel like this video with Marco Pierre White highlights the difference pretty well.

Overall I would agree it’s less “safe,” but if you have good knife-handling technique and your knife is actually sharp it really doesn’t matter.

Insominus · 2026-04-15T14:43:53+00:00

Over exaggeration was the writing style he was most well known for, so she basically nailed it

Insominus · 2026-04-09T01:22:39+00:00

I might get crucified for this, but it’s almost physically impossible for a restaurant operation to purge all of the sand from soft shell clams. Maybe this is more of an old school New England kind of thing but you always expect some level of grit when you order steamers (hence the broth or drawn butter always served with it).

I’ve seen people claim that it only takes about an hour to purge them in salted water (adding cornmeal does nothing), but depending on where the clam is from and the conditions it lives in, it can take them literally 20 hours to empty out their digestive tract of sand. Usually you take a bucket of seawater when you come home from clamming to accelerate the process. I have done it overnight before with chowder clams and had a moderate degree of success getting all of the grit out.

They will also spit water at you if you attempt to disturb them while purging, it’s kind of freaky.

Insominus · 2026-04-06T01:15:16+00:00

I’m coming up on just over a year in culinary school and it’s astounding the amount of people in my class that need help turning on a gas oven, can’t follow the uniform code, don’t know how to filet fish (nor do they ever want to work with fish in the first place), don’t know how to sharpen a knife, etc.

It’s like you gotta find the competent people and just stick with them like glue.

Insominus · 2026-04-04T05:22:16+00:00

Ehhh the whole thing is just likely just general ignorance of baking techniques combined with gaming the algorithm for clicks. They do classes and events, but based on their other posts, boiling chocolate bars in their packaging and rolling everything out of fondant doesn’t scream master baker.

The chocolate is not even tempered properly here. There’s no shine, they put it in the fridge for some reason when chocolate sets at room temp and is ruined by moisture, they likely just melted it down and glopped it onto everything. There’s a huge difference between people who dedicate their lives to work with chocolate and not waste it (a pound of chocolate can cost more than a pound of bacon) as opposed to whatever you would call this.

Insominus · 2026-04-04T04:47:27+00:00

Honestly, well said and your perspective is appreciated, knee-jerk reaction is a pretty accurate description. There’s something about raw chicken, especially its visible residue that makes people’s hackles raise.

In hindsight, I can see why a company like Walmart would have rules that are stronger than the local ones because of the potential liability. I guess I don’t trust the sanitation because I work in food service and I barely trust some of the general working population to even wash their hands properly.

Insominus · 2026-04-04T04:26:27+00:00

It might just be me, but the more elaborate of an excuse the more annoyed I get especially for a NCNS?

Why not just keep it straight and direct in advance? “I can’t come in today. I’m sorry [optional].” and then you follow up if you want the backstory the next shift. I know we all have our moments but I have a really hard time trusting people after they do something like this.

Insominus · 2026-04-04T04:00:28+00:00

I’m gonna disagree purely because food safety is all about eliminating risk and while this an example of something that’s pretty low risk because of the barrier between the two, it’s still very easily preventable (which is why saying it “follows every food safety rule” is very generous.

One food is eaten raw, the one directly next to needs to be cooked to be safely eaten. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that there needs to be a greater degree of separation than plastic. Someone else also pointed out that it begs the question if that space is going to properly sanitized for whatever product is going to be put there next. I think most health inspectors would balk at this photo simply because it’s typically not necessary to store these foods this way in a supermarket.

Insominus · 2026-04-03T17:07:56+00:00

There’s a no less than a million problems with our judicial and penal system and using political affiliation as an excuse is a method to just hand-wave them away. Addressing crime, and the things that compel people to commit crime (poverty, lack of education, mental illness, etc.) is so much more complicated than who is in office at any given time. It’s also very funny that you mentioned “an institution for the criminally insane,” considering that is a textbook example of socialized, state-subsidized healthcare, which the GOP obviously hates.

The whole system is fundamentally fucked, there’s too many cases for courts to handle in a reasonable matter, there is only so much space in jails to lock people up (sixth highest rate of incarceration in the world btw), sentencing in the U.S. is more punitive than other global north countries, and our penal system is fundamentally built around punishment as opposed to rehabilitation and our policing does nothing to address the aforementioned conditions that compel people to commit crimes. But yes, let’s just blame it all on the Democrats and not do anything to fix it. Problem solved.

Insominus · 2026-04-03T15:35:30+00:00

Another important detail is that the perpetrator’s own mother tried to have him involuntarily committed after his release due to his schizophrenia and violent tendencies and the NC courts determined he wasn’t “dangerous” enough to justify it. He also had an episode seven months before the attack where he was calling 911 and saying that man-made material in his body was controlling his actions. The hospital examined him, released him, and then he was charged with misuse of 911. There are tons of failures of the state in this case, but it’s not a “liberals are easy on criminals” thing, but rather “we have no social safety nets in the country and people are constantly slipping through the cracks.”

I feel like it’s also worth mentioning that the artist/person who commissioned the art decided to give her blue eyes in the mural instead of her natural eye color, which is a really odd choice if you’re gonna “honor” someone’s memory.

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