A professional chef debunks cooking myths, from keeping pits in avocados to avoid browning to using milk to make scrambled eggs fluffier

• Food Insider asked a food expert to debunk 13 of the most common myths about cooking.
• Catherine DeOrio explains that milk doesn't make scrambled eggs fluffier and adding vinegar to cooking water doesn't make hard boiled eggs easier to peel.
• She also debunks the idea that storing bread in the fridge prevents staleness when it actually makes bread go stale quicker.
• Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

Following is a transcript of the video.

Catherine DeOrio: "Adding oil to pasta water prevents the noodles from sticking." This is definitely not true.

Hi, I'm Catherine DeOrio. I'm a formally trained chef; I trained here in Chicago at Kendall College. Worked at various restaurants, staging in Chicago, and I am here to debunk the most common myths about cooking. We're doing this via Skype, because, like many of you, I am stuck in my house as well, and I know all of you will want some tips on how to cook while you're indoors and trying to find things to do. "Only flip your steak once during cooking." This is absolutely not true. A lot of people say that because where all your flavor comes is from the browning, so people feel that if you're flipping your steak, you're not gonna get a proper brown and then all of that flavor. But the most important thing for a good steak is actually the temperature of your pan. You make sure you get it really hot, and you can actually flip it multiple times. So, if you flip it about every 30 seconds, it's going to not cool down on the top, so it will continue to cook, you'll flip it, it will cook, and then it's almost like being cooked simultaneously on both sides, so you're actually gonna get a faster cooking time on it, and it will consistently cook from edge to edge of the steak.

"Adding vinegar to your cooking water makes your hard-boiled eggs easier to peel." That's not exactly true. It's kind of a placebo effect. So, a few things. The age of your egg is gonna affect how easy it is to peel. So, an older egg is more alkaline. That's gonna make it a little easier to peel after it's boiled. The next thing is, it's really important, is to stop that cooking right away and submerge it in an ice bath. So, nothing fancy, just a bowl of water with a bunch of ice in it, nice and cold, submerge it in it, let the cooking stop, and then pull them out. The other way you could get the shell to not stick is by steaming them. So, what happens when you steam the egg is the proteins from your egg whites are gonna separate from the membrane from the shell. It's gonna give you a little bit of space, therefore making it easy to peel when you're done.

"Wear goggles, chew gum, etc.," all of the myths you've heard to avoid your eyes from getting watery when you're cutting onions. Um, no. So, I guess you could wear goggles, aside from making you look very strange, but the reason our eyes water when we cut an onion is there is an enzymatic reaction, and the gases come up from the onion, and that's actually what gets into our eyes. It causes them to burn, and it causes them to water. So, interestingly, that gas comes out because it's a defense mechanism for the onion so little critters underground, as it's growing, don't eat it. The best way to really mitigate the gases coming out is to use a really sharp knife. So, if you use a dull knife, you're crushing the membrane of the onion, and it's gonna cause more gas to release. If you cut it really, just with a really sharp knife and you slice through it, it's going to damage less of the membranes, and so less gas is gonna come up, so it's gonna be a little easier. Also, cut the root last. A lot of gas is kind of concentrated in that area, so kind of that little hairy part at the end, so to speak, always cut that off last.

"Whipped cream flattens when you stop whipping it." So, that's not true. It's not the whipping that will keep the air in your cream, which makes it fluffy, it's actually your temperature. So, again, temperature is really important. If it gets warm, that's when your whipped cream starts to flatten. So the tip is, before you whip it, don't only chill your cream, which, obviously you wanna get that as cold as possible, but I like to put my bowl and my whisk or whisk attachment in the freezer, get it really cold, so when you whip it then it stays cold, it won't flatten during the whipping process, and then when you're done, you can store it in the fridge. If you're going to go to a party, let's just say you make a cake, and you frost it with a cream and there's a whipped cream element to it, you could stick it in the freezer for about 30 minutes. It will make it a little more stable if you're, for instance, taking it to a picnic or somewhere where you're gonna be outside, it's gonna be a little warm. That will help to keep the whipped cream nice and airy and fluffy.

"Adding oil to pasta water prevents the noodles from sticking." This is definitely not true. As an Italian, this is just the one thing that just really irks me. So, if you put oil on your noodles, it's actually gonna make the surface of the noodles impenetrable to your sauce. So, the thing that's gonna give your noodles flavor is not gonna be able to get in and actually flavor them or stick to your noodles. So, that's kind of not what you want, right? Pasta is, even, like, in Italy, the shapes of the pasta are designed to hold certain kinds of sauces a certain way. So the last thing you want is, you know, these slick noodles where all of your sauce is coming out. So the best way to get noodles to stop from sticking is, again, add your pasta to boiling water, make sure it's a full, rolling boil, and then stir it every once in a while. Make sure that you're continually stirring that pasta as it's cooking. This is gonna keep it from sticking together during the cooking process.

"You can season food at any time during the cooking process." No, no, no, no, no. [laughs] Season as you go. So, if you just season at the end, all you're gonna have is kind of a superficial seasoning. There's gonna be, the top layer of your food is gonna have some flavor to it, but it's not gonna have actually penetrated your food and give you that kind of consistent flavor throughout and that depth and complexity, which is what you really love. And so that's why a lot of times you'll make something at home and you'll just kind of at the end be like, oh, season to taste, and just throw some salt and pepper on it, maybe some herbs, and you're like, "Why didn't this turn out the way it tastes at a restaurant? It's a simple dish." But it's because you are constantly seasoning as you go.

"Milk makes fluffier scrambled eggs." No, no, no. So, scrambled eggs, it's about temperature. It's about, think slow and low. So you want low, medium heat, and you wanna just cook those eggs slow, and just once they start to coagulate, take a spatula and move it around so you'll keep getting those curds. If you add milk to it, that milk is gonna separate out from the eggs as it's cooking, and you're gonna probably get rubbery, colorless, a diluted flavor on your actual eggs. So, slow and low. Also, before, kind of almost right before your eggs seem totally cooked, so they're not runny anymore but they seem a little wet, take them off. There is gonna be some carryover cooking, and they're gonna cook a little bit more in that pan as you're transferring them to your serving dish.

"Sticking a potato in an overly salty dish will absorb the salt and make it less salty." No. Again, no. So, yes, will putting a raw potato into an overly salted soup absorb some of that salt? Yes, but it's also gonna absorb a disproportionate amount of the liquid, so you don't want to do that. The first thing you should try before anything is try to balance out the flavors. So if it's saltier, maybe just a hit of acid, so a little dash of sherry vinegar or a little bit of a squeeze of lemon might balance it out, a hit of sugar. So, just kind of think. What makes something, a dish, taste good is that balance, that sweet and salty and spicy. So just see what it might need. Try that first. If it doesn't work, move on.

So, "storing bread in the fridge prevents staleness." Actually, storing bread in the fridge will make your bread go stale quicker. So, it's gonna pull some of that moisture out. But there are ways that you can keep your bread for a bit longer. So, one, you can freeze it. Wrap it in plastic and then freeze it and then defrost it at room temperature, and your bread will pretty much stay close to what it was when you bought it. Now, if the bread's already gone stale, is there anything you can do? So, yes, there's a few things. If it's already gone stale, one, just heating the bread a little bit will actually soften it up. Also, you can put that bread in the fridge. Now, when you take it out of the fridge, it's not that it's gonna be back to its original state, but it will just keep it edible for a little bit longer. It will keep it from going bad or going moldy.

"Keeping a pit in your avocado keeps the avocado from browning." Again, no, this is not accurate. It will keep the avocado underneath the pit from browning. So, the browning process happens, it's an enzymatic reaction that causes the flesh of the fruit to brown. The best way for a full avocado is to either swipe some lemon juice on it or some type of acidulated water. Acidulated water is basically just water that has some acid in it. You could also do a swipe of olive oil. That will keep it for a little while, 'cause again that's gonna create a seal on the top.

"Cooking with frozen vegetables doesn't provide the same nutrients and flavor as fresh vegetables." Absolutely wrong. In fact, in some cases you'll find that it is better to buy frozen vegetables. Companies out there that obviously this is what they specialize in. So, Birds Eye, for instance, makes a variety of frozen vegetables, and they flash-freeze them so they're basically frozen instantaneously, right after they're picked, so that is going to keep all of the nutrients intact, their flavor, and this is at their peak ripeness, so this is, like, the best time you can get it. The other thing is, vegetables do start to degrade in their nutrient content over time. Right, that's, nobody's gonna argue with that. So there is quite a time, often, between when it's picked and then when it's actually shipped and then when it's shelved into your grocery store. So you do have to remember, even a thing that seems fresh has had a bit of a life before it got to you.

"Fresh tomatoes are better than canned tomatoes to cook with." One of my things that I always have in my pantry are canned tomatoes, and the reason being is, so, OK, I love fresh tomatoes. It's, you know, late summer, and you get that beautiful garden tomato, and you can literally eat it like an apple, right? That season is about this long. Hunt's tomato takes the tomatoes, they can them at peak ripeness, so it's at tomato season, when they are their most flavorful, and then they, well, you basically make them shelf stable. So when I open that can, they actually are from exactly the season when you would want to eat a tomato, so they're gonna be kind of the sweetest, have the most complex flavor. So, everyone always wants to think fresh is always better. Fresh is great. Fresh is great specifically and better for some things. Canned is way better to have in your pantry so that you can cook and have very consistent good flavor and your nutrients throughout the year.

"Microwaving robs food of its nutrients." This is actually not true. What will cause food to lose some of its nutritional content is actually just heat application, so whether that comes from microwaving, sautéing, baking, roasting, any boiling. Actually, if you cook with the microwave, in some instances, it will actually provide and keep more of your nutrients intact. Now, the reason being, there's a few things in cooking that will cause your nutritional content to break down. It's a very short exposure to heat in general. So it's actually, in many ways, can be argued as a healthier way to keep your nutritional content, your vegetable, to cook your vegetables and to keep the nutritional content intact.

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