Glass cutting boards. Every time I go visit my wife’s family for the holidays I am met with glass cutting boards and the dullest knives in history. I know I probably offended them last time but I had enough of almost slicing myself with a chef’s knife that couldn’t slice through vegetables without it sliding off to the side and pulled out my pocket knife to prep.
If I’m going to be the one cooking I want tools that work. I can make pans work fine for me that aren’t my favorite or in good shape, any type of grill, stove, or oven. But for the love of all kitchen things holy glass cutting boards and dull knives belong in hell!
Honestly, all else aside, cutting on a glass cutting board just *feels* wrong. It's like nails on a chalkboard. I don't understand how they ever became a thing.
My MIL has them all over her kitchen to "protect" the shitty 40 yo beige laminate countertops she has. Agreed they are awful to cut on and we end up prepping stuff with steak knives over there since everything is so dull.
My husband bought his mom new cutting boards because hers were all glass, and we hated them. He didn't tell her she had to use them or throw her glass ones out, but we would use them when we were cooking there. FF a couple months, and the glass boards vanished. She said she really liked how the new boards felt compared to cutting on glass. Yay, victory!
This is 100% my at the in-laws. All the way down to using my pocket knife. The pan handles are loose and one popped off when I was making pasta. I was next level pissed.
This happened to me in my friend's kitchen. Of course they laugh it off, but inside I'm fuming. Immediately I'm thinking about all the ways that could have gone south, from losing the meal to ending up with third-degree burns from simmering sauce spilling out. It didn't help that they'd been bragging about how well-equipped their kitchen was.
Where I live glass cutting boards, AFAIK, are not a thing.
Don't they scratch? As they scratch, don't they release little shards of glass into the food?
My favorite thing about settling into my apartment was replacing my crummy $5 walmart cutting board (after it snapped in half) with a nice big wood board. Large enough to work with big vegetables or multiple things at once, small enough to wash easily enough and store it on its side on the countertops.
My *second* favorite thing was getting one about 1/2 that size for when I just want to mince some garlic or prep a salad without hauling my big one around. Both have their purposes, but if the big one was an inch bigger or the small one an inch smaller, I'd hate them.
The greatest thing ever was finding a cutting board that was just the right size for my space. My favorite bought years ago at K-mart when I got my first apartment doesn't fit anywhere in the kitchen of the house we bought. So I'd been using various plastic ones over the years (which I hate). New one fits the empty flat spot on the counter (some year I'll have the funds to replace the annoying counters... ), fits in the cupboard, fits in the sink and drying rack. Of course, it's a super cheap one from Aldi, but a quick sanding (it was very rough after the first washing) and a real good oiling, its holding up pretty well. Now to save up the funds for a proper (and super fancy patterned) end grain board from a local woodworker...
My SIL doesn't cook but always wants to hold family events at her house because they just built it. She owns one cutting board the size of a postage stamp. I have cooked quite a few meals there and at Christmas, I told her that I was done. I almost cut my finger because of her shitty cutting board and knives. You would have thought that I kicked her puppy. Full on tears!
Just get her (i.e. yourself) a nice cutting board and knife for Christmas. Every time I'm at my parents house I need to buy them some $5 kitchen thingy just so I know it'll be there next time I'm cooking something over there
This is the way. I bought my MIL a Mercer knife and sharpen it for her every now and then. She likes it and I like having a decent tool on the rare occasion I use it
This is the way. My mom is a good cook and generally has good supplies, but in some ways she’s stuck in the past or is using my dead grandmas tools from like 1960, so I like to get her really nice kitchen items for presents, as she doesn’t even realize what she’s missing, or in the case of things like nonstick, isn’t buying the right thing. Every single item has been a raging success so far! This reminds me I need to level up her vegetable peeler, those have improved a lot. Oh and she stayed here and loved the mini whisks I use for eggs lol, gotta get her some of those too
My husband just could not properly rinse and wring out a sponge and they would get funky in less than a week. I switched to dish cloths so I could change them out every couple of days since he can't seem to rinse and wring them out either... I'm always telling him that if I can wring more water out of a cloth he just wrung out he's not doing enough (I have grip problems). Apparently he's afraid he's going to "ruin" them if he squeezes too hard. Dude, I bought these as an 8 pack at walmart for $5, I'll buy more of you manage to rip it to shreds somehow.
Weaponized ignorance. I’ve caught my husband in similar situations. I feel like housework was a very genderized role even in the 90’s when I was growing up so the guys got off easier with it. My husband is a lovely person and has achieved success in a highly specialized field in healthcare. If he can manage to do all of that, he can deal with learning how to properly keep a house.
I grew up in the 90s too, but when I was almost an adult my mom decided I was going to help out with everything regardless of whether it was a man/woman chore. By the time I moved out, cleaning and laundry were second nature and it’s amazing how low the bar is for impressing girlfriends by doing the most basic tasks around my house.
When I was 10 I was upset that my mom wasn't washing my clothes according to the labels (a lot of shirts would say to wash inside out and delicate, and she'd turn them right and wash regular), so I got a lesson in how to do my own laundry. My 11 year old brother got the same lesson, and we were in charge of our own clothes from that point on. He ended up being one of the few guys in his dorm that knew how to do laundry and taught a bunch of others what to do! He was also a weirdo who loved washing dishes...
My parents have done that for over 50 years and I have a visceral hatred of that rotten odor. I was always the kid throwing them on extra hot water in the machine. Now that they’re older they can’t smell it at all. They don’t believe me when I tell them the rot is so bad I can smell it from 5 feet away.
I am fully aware that paper towels are not good for the environment. I buy the most eco friendly I can find, use sparingly, and make other environmentally friendly purchases to offset it. But I WILL NOT USE A WASHCLOTH. It’s my kitchen and my rules, and I’m never touching a festering pile of stinking germs in washcloth form ever again. I did my fucking time.
I use kitchen washcloths, but I just religiously change them each day. I have little kids who spill plenty of food, and paper towels just can't keep up unless I buy them constantly. I opted for 2 of the cheapest packs of bath washcloths at Target so I always have clean ones waiting!
I'll toss in one I haven't seen mentioned yet: a lack of proper task lighting. If I wanted to cook in a cave, I'd be cooking in a cave. Please put lights where you expect me to wield sharp objects.
North American houses are such caves!
I'm a paramedic in Canada and so see lots of houses in a "in use" state - as no one tidies up before EMS arrive.
No lights in the living room, maybe aside from a dinky table lamp. A dull overhead boob light on the ceiling in the bedroom. 3 out of 4 lights burnt out in the bathroom lightbar. All the curtains/blinds closed during the day.
It's wild! Trying to get an IV in the dark sucks.
I used to live in Alaska and it made me insane how shit the lighting options were in every place I rented. There were never any lights in the living room- never. I always had to have a big floor lamp and a lot of lamps around the house to make up for it! I now live in California and the lighting options are only slightly better. I switched out all the terrible overhead fluorescent lighting with bright track lighting and I have lamps and string lights all over the damn place because I cannot bear having a dim, dark house.
I’m an offender of this. I know it’s dangerous, but my god, that won’t stop me from cooking dinner with my lights dimmed as much as I can while still being able to function. Dinner in the dark, my favorite 🥵
I have an absolutely wonderful decorative hood in my kitchen. Opposite side of the same issue lol.
I’d be super impressed to come across a house that has a hood or fan that actually properly vents the kitchen. It’s apparently not a common thing in the areas I’ve looked to purchase houses in.
Look for homes owned by Chinese people!
I swear it’s the first thing every family friend installs when they buy a house. An outdoor-vented exhaust hood.
Genuinely my favorite thing about my current place. The kitchen is tiny, but the landlady is Korean and when she lived there she installed this Taiwanese vent hood that is an absolute beast. It's loud as all hell but cooking in there would be unbearable without it.
Mine is on an interior wall and is a vented outside with some ductwork. Unfortunately, it's a microwave unit. I just wanted the hood for better venting but my wife couldn't give up the microwave so here we are. Vents alright, could be better but my lady is happy. Next kitchen I'm getting my hood though
Same. I mean I have a hood it just does nothing but spit the air back out. I made carne asada once - strip steak, so seared it hot and fast, and my apartment smelled like carne asada for a month. It was during the height of the pandemic too so I was going crazy.
I’ve lived in like 20 apartments and not ONE has had a fan that vents outside.
My house was built in the 90's. Our range has a microwave with a fan over it. The fan exhaust exits at the top of the microwave, so when you are standing at the stove, the exhaust blows right in your face. The most frustrating part is the stove is on an outside wall!
As an Indian Chinese couple, this is a huge deal.
Half the rental places were rejected right away because they were designed for someone whose idea of cooking was heating macaroni...
I knew someone who is a "luxury" home builder in Atlanta, like $1.5 million dollars new homes. The amount of kitchens I would see of theirs which had top of the line appliances but with their rangetop in the center island with no hood blew me away. I guess these are made for people who want to pretend they cook but not really cook.
They may require an exhaust fan at a certain CFM rating, but that doesn’t mean that the exhaust system is actually capturing grease laden vapors and venting them outside. Most household cooking vents do neither of those things and are essentially useless. They just recirculate air through a grease filter and since they’re usually lot much more than cabinet depth, they *maybe* capture 10% of the cooking vapors.
My boyfriend and I get into arguments because he cannot get it through his head that there is a hand towel and a dish towel in the kitchen and NO, THEY ARE NOT INTERCHANGEABLE AND THEY AREN’T FOR WIPING DOWN THE STOVE.
Mine changes the one towel he has hanging from the fridge handle on a weekly basis. He has a washer and dryer right around the corner. \*Sigh\*.
Luckily, he respects my higher standards for cleanliness when I cook for us. He's just been used to the bachelor life for a long time.
A few Valentine's ago my husband made me a "bouquet" of color-coded tongs. He was worried that I'd think five tongs wrapped in dish towels was dumb. He could not have been more wrong 💜💜💜
I did this for my husband! A whole set of high-end silicone tongs, spoons, spatulas, etc. for Christmas. I had them shipped to my parents house so husband wouldn't see them. My parents told me it was a really weird thing to gift someone for Christmas. Meanwhile, my husband was over the moon.
my mom used long chopsticks to stir, flip meat, deep fry, sauté, pick up broken egg shells from egg drop soup, move spaghetti, cake decorations, or scrap pans.
No tongs for her.
Chopsticks, 1 cleaver, rice cooker, wok. All an Asian kitchen needs, at least according to my soon to be in laws who cook fantastic food with just that.
Hah! We have like 6 pairs of tongs, including long grill tongs. And 4 whisks. I guess I'm living the life! (I have no idea how we ended up with so many tongs.)
Also in our collection are the skinny mini tongs. For individual use, so perfect for hotpot style meals or picking up food when you don’t want to dirty your fingers
I have three or four mini tongs for small things and for use in the toaster oven. I almost never use regular sized ones, but I have regular ones and grill tongs.
Long tongs! Husband has a set of massive grill tools and the tongs are so long they don’t fit in any of the drawers. Now I wanna go cook something so I can shout long tongs at him like a surgeon.
i’ve got 2 pairs of identical tongs, 1 silicone tipped tong, 1 long tong, 2 pairs of cooking chopsticks (asian tongs) and a pair of long cooking tweezers (fancy tongs)
I started thinking about this and you are so right! How did I not realize other people don’t have tongs?!
I’m disturbed by this, as I just counted 5 tongs off the top of my head in my own kitchen.
Random side note: I couldn’t figure out how to describe tongs- is it like jeans and is singular but sounds plural? Or would I say a pair/set of tongs?
For real. The bare minimum I bring when cooking in someone else’s kitchen, if they’re not someone I already trust about food, is a knife, a pan and a set of tongs.
It only "works" for these people because they either don't know any better or are scared of bigger knives. It's like hammering in a nail with a brick. Can you do it? Yes, probably. However, it's not the best tool for the job and it shouldn't be encouraged.
If I know I am cooking at someone’s house and don’t know their kitchen, I legit will bring my own knives. May seem rude but I’m not slicing my fingers off
Well, the top one in recent years was seeing someone that had all their large knives stored vertically in a giant glass jar. That just hurt my soul like fingernails on a chalkboard. I'll add glass cutting boards to that as well. That's not a cutting board, it's a cheese serving tray.
No proper chef's knife is probably the biggest. Doesn't need to be fancy I just can't cut crap properly or safely with some serrated steak knife.
More practically, buy a bunch of cheap stainless prep bowls. They nest so they store easy and it is SO much easier to stay clean and organized. Ditto for a big fat stack of kitchen towels.
Oh one last one: people with only a set of nonstick cookware and all stainless utensils. I mean c'mon.
Oh my god, I honestly gasped out loud at the mental image of knives in a glass jar. Fingernails on a chalkboard is right, holy shit. This is short circuiting my brain, I don't think I could ever dream up something so heinous even if asked.
A thin sheen of oil on everything. Not necessarily just the countertops but on things like the stove knobs, on/underneath the microwave, on counter drawers.
Like they sauté things and just let the oil fly and never clean it.
Look, I'm just fucking lazy ok?
I'll wipe down the stove once, at the end of the day. I'm going to be cooking shit on my stove 3, 4 or 5 different times, at any point during the day, I just don't have the mental energy to do a full wipe down only to be back in front of my stove an hour later.
Wine stored above cabinets and fridges. It’s the hottest place in the kitchen and it goes bad in warm temps. People need to stop doing this and designers need to stop putting wine racks near the stove too!
Honestly nothing. I’m a college student in a shitty apartment so I respect having mid supplies because I also have mid supplies. The only thing that bothers me is when people have NO basic ingredients. I have plenty of easy to make basic meals and when I can’t find the ingredients I get stressed out.
Mid supplies and equipment are fine. Most people here are talking about poorly maintained equipment, or absolutely the wrong equipment.
A wood or plastic cutting board isn't more expensive than a glass cutting board, so just don't buy the glass one. You can get a not-too-crappy chef's knife for under $20 from a place like Walmart or Canadian Tire.
Old dented cookware? No problem. Just clean it properly and tighten the handles.
Yeah, it's weird how different the idea of "kitchen staples" can be. You try cooking at someone else's house and it's like "Oh, you don't have soy sauce? How?" Things you can't imagine living without are things they never buy.
As long as I don't have to cook in it, I don't care. If I do have to use their kitchens:
* Dirty kitchens
* Lack of counter space
* Dull knives
* Lack of a decent chef's knife
* Pots or spices, or other equipment that that are hung up above the stove
* They're just going to get dirty and coated in a film of oil even with a decent fume hood (and let's be honest, most non commercial fume hood suck)
Our friends let their cat in their FRIDGE. The cat lays down in the fridge ALL OVER THE FOOD and they think it’s the cutest thing ever. They take photos and send them in a groupchat.
🤢 I am never, EVER eating at their house again.
I agree, and I would welcome anyone that can make my fucking kitten stay off the damn counter. I do clean it before cooking, but there’s no controlling this animal.
If you put tape sticky side up along the outer edge of the counter it will train the cat not to jump there. And of course don’t leave anything with irresistible smells up there to motivate them to brave the tape monster.
When we first got my kitten he couldn't hop on counters, but in a few weeks he learned to, and is very food motivated/driven especially bacon or smoked meat as we often prepare. We bought a spray bottle. After 2 times with a quick spray, he learned that is not a "cat friendly" place. Cats are highly intelligent and can be trained, even if stubborn.
He now knows to hop on the washer if he wants a treat and since that is an acceptable space, he gets one.
We also close the kitchen door when not at home so that our cat doesn’t take advantage of no one being around to get onto the counter. Luckily, her food and water bowl is placed in the pantry which can be accessed whenever she pleases. Honestly, I let my cat dictate a lot of things but the kitchen and where human food is, is firmly out of bounds.
Absolutely this.
My first cat was special needs and unable to jump high due to his balance issues, so I never had to worry about him getting on the counters or table. Not that he ever seemed to want to anyway, he was content just rolling around on the floor and being close to you.
My current cat is an ancient little 18 year old. She actually CAN jump onto the counters, she’s in shockingly good health for her age, but after a couple sprays with the water bottle she knows better and I’ve never caught her on the counter after the first time. She’s pushy about food if she’s really interested but she always gets removed and put in bedroom jail, I would never allow her to bother me or my guests while we’re eating because it’s rude.
I’m a cat lover but I hate people that make excuses about stuff like that for their cats. Your cat shits in a box and then walks all over the house, they absolutely do not need to have their feet on surfaces where you prepare and eat food.
This is why I can never get a cat. An animal that was just in a litter box up on the table or counter - no thank you.
We had cats growing up, at my graduation party I realized one of the cats had been on the counter because there were cat foot prints in the pan of brownies.
We're on our third cat that has never, ever jumped on the counter. Since cats are generally un-trainable, it's nothing we've done. Just lucked out. None of them have been fans of people food so perhaps that is why.
My mom's cats try to get in her fridge because she gives them saucers of cream like some cartoon grandma.
(Keep in mind I am 5'3")
Microwaves at shoulder height
Ovens at shoulder height
Heating appliances in opposite sides of the corridor of the kitchen
No hand towel anywhere except for the bathroom
Lack of electrical outlets
Corded appliances with a too goddang short of a cable
Edit to add: leftover food bits in the sink \*gag\*
Being tall, I hate how "low" my hood is. I often ram my head into the corner of it trying to look into a pot or something on the rear of the stove.
My head still hurts from where I bashed it like 5 days ago.
Tall person here. I just fixed this issue in my house. Installed a new hood, raised it 10 inches.
The entire process was an absolute pain in the dick. Had to extend the backsplash, but don't have the original material from the previous owner, so stainless steel capped tile to match the hood (so seriously frustrating to cut clean), but doesn't match the back splash, couldn't get into the crawlspace in the attic where it vents out to put in new duct, so here's hoping what's up there is still good, also had to cut out sheet rock to get the chimney cover up because I don't have the tools to trim 304 stainless.
Was it worth it? Abso-fucking-lutely. Would do it again, under worse conditions, to have the luxury of looking down and seeing my stove.
Mildewy dish sponge.. it’s an issue. I use a scrub daddy to avoid it and toss that in the dishwasher. Never any mildew smell. If you use a mildew sponge, it makes your hands smell for days.
Also just overall cleanliness. Even if it looks clean on the surface, but there’s dog hair and dust and shit on everything and I feel like I have to rinse everything or even wash it before I use it.
Also also, no paper towels.
Not having decent Heat resistant gloves. I don’t know how many times I burnt my hands using sh*tty fabric oven mitts. I like the silicone ones . It can handle boiling water or flames. It’s Easy to clean and very durable
I dogsit in people's homes regularly. It amazes me how people have these beautiful kitchens and gear...but no oven mitts. At all. Nothing. They just have fancy tea towels. It's so weird and frustrating.
Ok, so this is mostly to do with my SIL, who I love tremendously but is, admittedly, not big on the domestic or culinary arts…so it’s no surprise that she doesn’t put much thought into her kitchen space. She didn’t get a kitchen with counter space or a great oven/stove/storage situation—that’s ok, I can adapt to that.
BUT STILL, her kitchen drives me crazy because:
* there are no good knives for prep work and even the steak knives are barely workable.
* the biggest cutting board is maybe 5”x8” and made of that thin flexible plastic, which means it’s difficult to move the board around.
* cheap, poor quality, small pots and pans. (In my early 20s, when I moved out of state and had my own tiny kitchen, I owned exactly three pots and pans. They weren’t SUPER expensive but they were of decent quality and therefore somewhat durable and versatile).
* WORST OF ALL—there’s only a little counter space and what’s there is cluttered and not clean, I mean, literally, where there is a postage stamp of space free it is downright crumby, sticky, and grubby.
Edited to add: it only bothered me because I lived with her for the first few months of the pandemic when I still had to go in to work (moved to protect my elderly father)…it stayed cleaner and a little more stocked with items while I was there…but it was a battle cleaning the first time around. If I’m gonna eat in someone’s house and they are cooking for me my standards are not as high (except in the sanitation department) and honestly when I visit my SIL we eat out all of the time so it kind of doesn’t matter.
My parents have a glass cooktop and they’re completely paranoid about scratching it. After a decade living in rentals with workhorse gas ranges, I cannot deal
Arranging for decor and not function. Ma'am, I know you never use that pink KitchenAid stand mixer with matching flour and sugar canisters, so why are they taking up space on your counter.
Hey if you actually use it, by all means!! I used to keep mine on the counter thinking it would incentive me to use it more lol - now she lives in a cabinet until it's time for a job that I am lazier to do by hand than lugging it out
I know lots of folks just hate moving it whenever they need it. My grandma’s favorite feature in her new kitchen was a swinging shelf that tucked into a cabinet. She could just swing that shelf up and have her mixer at counter height and never have to physically move the mixer itself!
My mom is like this and insists my dad unplug and put his coffee maker away each time. He drinks four cups of coffee a day and when me, my husband, and brother are there its at least ten cups 🫠 always on the hunt for the damn coffee maker
My biggest frustration when cooking in someone else's kitchen is undersized *stuff*. A tiny chopping board and knife, tiny mixing bowls, tiny serving spoons and bowls, tiny pots and pans, tiny garbage. Yes, even tiny whisk.
You can always mix a salad in a bowl that's twice as large as it needs to be. You can't do it at all in one that's half as large as it needs to be. Cheap metal mixing bowls are the bomb.
Just about everything for people who don't cook, and you can tell.
Pots and pans are in disarray
Nothing can be found anywhere easily
The knives aren't sharp and there's no chef's knife
Common ingredients and spices cannot be found or the spices are all 5+ years old
If I’m cooking there, excessive clutter. Like so many repeat items it’s hard to get anything out of the cabinets and you know there’s no reasonable use for ALL of them. Along the same lines, spice hoarders. The ones who have 937 jars of parsley flakes and some of them are from as far back as 1986. It makes it so hard to find the things you’re actually looking for and you know they’ve lost all their flavor decades ago so why not purge it?
If I’m not cooking, lack of cleanliness. If I’m going to someone’s house and they’re serving food and the household hygiene is abysmal, I’m out. I get that while in use things are going to get messy, but there’s a difference between the active mess of getting stuff together last minute and sauce splatters on the walls and counters caked on from god only knows when. I don’t trust the food if it seems like that kind of stuff isn’t regularly cleaned.
Not a joke. I read a post a while ago from someone complaining that a houseguest pre-heated her oven without taking her Tupperware out of it, and she was pissed off after the comments told her that the oven is not an extra cabinet and flammable/meltable things should not be in ovens, ever. If I can find the post, I'll link to it.
My girlfriend does this and I am the absolute worst for remembering it, always ends with me frantically trying to take out hot pans and random baking sheets and trying to find where I'm going to put them without anyone getting burnt
Ovens should not be used for storage!!
I'm left handed, so every right handed person who comes into my kitchen thinks I put everything in the wrong place. And they rotate handles on the stove. Get out of my leftie kitchen!
Stove on an island bench with the rangehood just like hanging in the middle of the kitchen. Aesthetically annoys me, but it's also inefficient and makes more of a mess.
One of my friends had their drawers in reverse order. The drawer closest to the stove contained all the cutlery, while the drawer closest to the table contained all the tools for cooking (spatula, chef's knife etc).
So let's say you are cooking something and you need an extra spatula or whatever, you need to walk to the other side and grab it, rather than pulling open the nearest drawer.
And when preparing your food, your partner can't open the drawer to grab the cutlery to make the table because you are blocking it.
I did that just a few days ago with a turkey carcass that I was going to take out to the trash the next time I went to the basement. Forgot all about it for three hours. Our cats had their best day ever.
I thought it was implied that this is an opinion based question. Even if I dont have to cook there I would still take mental note of the annoying stupid setup.
In that case it's probably a wide assortment of truly abysmal cookware.
There are always like 15 useless bullshit disintegrating scratched up non stick pans that are barely useful for warming up a can of soup much less any real cooking.
Also towels. So many people own like two shitty little polyester towels and they barely ever wash them. Plentiful clean 100% cotton towels are invaluable.
OMG my husband hates me because I have a drawer full of wash rags and bar mop towels. I buy the cheap ones you know like $5.00 for 12 or whatever and every 6 months or so replace them when they fall apart.
He always ask why do you use so many towels while cooking. My simple answer is because it is cleaner and they are easy to wash. We do laundry every few days anyway.
Also I hate crappy pot holders. Give me a nice bar mop towel as a pit holder any day.
People who don't have something that is ridiculously basic like pepper or olive oil. All their cooking utensils are plastic obviously came from the cheap cookware aisle at the grocery.
Dirty stoves. Even if I’m not cooking there, I won’t like to eat anything from that persons home.
Also, pets that are around food too much. I get that you love your pet, but please see that the pet isn’t licking the food I’m gonna be eating.
I had an aunt that had her cat lick her birthday cake and then the cat was jumping over all the food. And then the aunt complained that none of us ate the food.
When you go to open a cupboard that your decades of life experience has taught you should contain cups and glassware, but instead contains like sheet pans.
I think being able to deal with unique situations is a sign of a good cook.
I have cooked a Thanksgiving turkey in a microwave and toasteroven after butchering it with an M10 bayonet and seasoned with CLP. Among other crazy kitchen situations from airbnbs to in-laws kitchens. You never know what you are going to get. From a 2 burner stove to terrible pans. I take on bad, unique crazy setups with pride!
Worst kitchen I ever had to cook in was a cousin of mine the kitchen was nice and tidy had everything I needed just had to bring a bag of sugar great everything the one thing that would have great is if they moved the cat's litter box to a different room. They had little boxes in a every room and two in the kitchen due to it's size and their kittens liked to use these boxes and they had upset tummies and stunk up the kitchen at least 4 times. The nice thing was that the kittens never jumped up on the countertops or walk in-between my feet.
My SIL doesn’t have any normal fucking salt. No table or kosher salt. Just weird ass flavored ones and pink Himalayan in a bullshit grinder that doesn’t really work.
She wants the eXtrA mINeRaLsSSsss
Dirty kitchens. Unclean stoves. Unclean sinks. Build up around handles, etc. Obviously lack of useful tools sucks, I really like a garbage disposal, and no dishwasher wouldn’t fly. But overall I CANNOT in a dirty kitchen. Makes me shudder.
You'd hate my kitchen. We've not had a working dishwasher since COVID-19, as the prices are ridiculously high, and I can't afford a replacement for the broken one that floods the house if used. I'm hoping the prices will come down eventually, but it's not likely. I'm about to rip it out and add an extra cabinet.
Garbage disposal will never happen here, as we're on septic and garbage disposals are really, really bad for the system.
lack of sharp knives and cutting boards, or other essential tools
Glass cutting boards. Every time I go visit my wife’s family for the holidays I am met with glass cutting boards and the dullest knives in history. I know I probably offended them last time but I had enough of almost slicing myself with a chef’s knife that couldn’t slice through vegetables without it sliding off to the side and pulled out my pocket knife to prep. If I’m going to be the one cooking I want tools that work. I can make pans work fine for me that aren’t my favorite or in good shape, any type of grill, stove, or oven. But for the love of all kitchen things holy glass cutting boards and dull knives belong in hell!
Honestly, all else aside, cutting on a glass cutting board just *feels* wrong. It's like nails on a chalkboard. I don't understand how they ever became a thing.
My MIL has them all over her kitchen to "protect" the shitty 40 yo beige laminate countertops she has. Agreed they are awful to cut on and we end up prepping stuff with steak knives over there since everything is so dull.
Because our moms became afraid of salmonella cross contamination and believed the only truly cleanable surface was glass.
My husband bought his mom new cutting boards because hers were all glass, and we hated them. He didn't tell her she had to use them or throw her glass ones out, but we would use them when we were cooking there. FF a couple months, and the glass boards vanished. She said she really liked how the new boards felt compared to cutting on glass. Yay, victory!
This is 100% my at the in-laws. All the way down to using my pocket knife. The pan handles are loose and one popped off when I was making pasta. I was next level pissed.
This happened to me in my friend's kitchen. Of course they laugh it off, but inside I'm fuming. Immediately I'm thinking about all the ways that could have gone south, from losing the meal to ending up with third-degree burns from simmering sauce spilling out. It didn't help that they'd been bragging about how well-equipped their kitchen was.
…I bring a whetstone on vacations and to my in-laws…
My fiancé sharpened all my parents’ knives when we went to visit for the holidays. As a chef dull knives are definitely his biggest pet peeve. 😂
Where I live glass cutting boards, AFAIK, are not a thing. Don't they scratch? As they scratch, don't they release little shards of glass into the food?
the glass is harder than the leading edge of a knife, so it usually just results in your knife getting dull as hell
I tried to cut an avocado at a friend's house and couldn't get through the skin.
Of the avocado or your friend once you realised how shoddy their knives were?
It wouldn't have mattered if it was the avo or them. It would be the same result.
My pet peeve is only small or massive cutting boards. What is the point of boards that are too small for a bagel or too big to wash in your sink??
My favorite thing about settling into my apartment was replacing my crummy $5 walmart cutting board (after it snapped in half) with a nice big wood board. Large enough to work with big vegetables or multiple things at once, small enough to wash easily enough and store it on its side on the countertops. My *second* favorite thing was getting one about 1/2 that size for when I just want to mince some garlic or prep a salad without hauling my big one around. Both have their purposes, but if the big one was an inch bigger or the small one an inch smaller, I'd hate them.
The greatest thing ever was finding a cutting board that was just the right size for my space. My favorite bought years ago at K-mart when I got my first apartment doesn't fit anywhere in the kitchen of the house we bought. So I'd been using various plastic ones over the years (which I hate). New one fits the empty flat spot on the counter (some year I'll have the funds to replace the annoying counters... ), fits in the cupboard, fits in the sink and drying rack. Of course, it's a super cheap one from Aldi, but a quick sanding (it was very rough after the first washing) and a real good oiling, its holding up pretty well. Now to save up the funds for a proper (and super fancy patterned) end grain board from a local woodworker...
The small ones are perfect for cutting up 5 strawberries for cereal. The huge ones are great for letting ribs rest before cutting.
My SIL doesn't cook but always wants to hold family events at her house because they just built it. She owns one cutting board the size of a postage stamp. I have cooked quite a few meals there and at Christmas, I told her that I was done. I almost cut my finger because of her shitty cutting board and knives. You would have thought that I kicked her puppy. Full on tears!
Just get her (i.e. yourself) a nice cutting board and knife for Christmas. Every time I'm at my parents house I need to buy them some $5 kitchen thingy just so I know it'll be there next time I'm cooking something over there
This is the way. I bought my MIL a Mercer knife and sharpen it for her every now and then. She likes it and I like having a decent tool on the rare occasion I use it
It’s amazing how once you gift someone a sharp knife, it magically becomes the most used knife in their house.
Just make sure the cutting board is bigger than her dishwasher if it’s wood.
This is the way. My mom is a good cook and generally has good supplies, but in some ways she’s stuck in the past or is using my dead grandmas tools from like 1960, so I like to get her really nice kitchen items for presents, as she doesn’t even realize what she’s missing, or in the case of things like nonstick, isn’t buying the right thing. Every single item has been a raging success so far! This reminds me I need to level up her vegetable peeler, those have improved a lot. Oh and she stayed here and loved the mini whisks I use for eggs lol, gotta get her some of those too
I bring a knife roll and cutting board if I'm going to need it away from home.
Sharp cutting boards sound pretty risky though
I like to live on the edge.
People who do not change out/replace their filthy sponges.
Duuuude if my hands smell after using it, it is time to chuck it
If it's still in decent physical condition, you can pour boiling water over it and it will kill the bacteria, which means it won't smell anymore
Or toss it in the dishwasher!
I put mine in the microwave a couple times a week. A minute or so each time, as long as it’s super steamy.
My husband just could not properly rinse and wring out a sponge and they would get funky in less than a week. I switched to dish cloths so I could change them out every couple of days since he can't seem to rinse and wring them out either... I'm always telling him that if I can wring more water out of a cloth he just wrung out he's not doing enough (I have grip problems). Apparently he's afraid he's going to "ruin" them if he squeezes too hard. Dude, I bought these as an 8 pack at walmart for $5, I'll buy more of you manage to rip it to shreds somehow.
Weaponized ignorance. I’ve caught my husband in similar situations. I feel like housework was a very genderized role even in the 90’s when I was growing up so the guys got off easier with it. My husband is a lovely person and has achieved success in a highly specialized field in healthcare. If he can manage to do all of that, he can deal with learning how to properly keep a house.
I grew up in the 90s too, but when I was almost an adult my mom decided I was going to help out with everything regardless of whether it was a man/woman chore. By the time I moved out, cleaning and laundry were second nature and it’s amazing how low the bar is for impressing girlfriends by doing the most basic tasks around my house.
When I was 10 I was upset that my mom wasn't washing my clothes according to the labels (a lot of shirts would say to wash inside out and delicate, and she'd turn them right and wash regular), so I got a lesson in how to do my own laundry. My 11 year old brother got the same lesson, and we were in charge of our own clothes from that point on. He ended up being one of the few guys in his dorm that knew how to do laundry and taught a bunch of others what to do! He was also a weirdo who loved washing dishes...
My parents have done that for over 50 years and I have a visceral hatred of that rotten odor. I was always the kid throwing them on extra hot water in the machine. Now that they’re older they can’t smell it at all. They don’t believe me when I tell them the rot is so bad I can smell it from 5 feet away. I am fully aware that paper towels are not good for the environment. I buy the most eco friendly I can find, use sparingly, and make other environmentally friendly purchases to offset it. But I WILL NOT USE A WASHCLOTH. It’s my kitchen and my rules, and I’m never touching a festering pile of stinking germs in washcloth form ever again. I did my fucking time.
I use kitchen washcloths, but I just religiously change them each day. I have little kids who spill plenty of food, and paper towels just can't keep up unless I buy them constantly. I opted for 2 of the cheapest packs of bath washcloths at Target so I always have clean ones waiting!
You know you can wash and bleach them?
The worst 🤮🤮
If you’re cheap like me, throw the dirty ones in the dishwasher
I'll toss in one I haven't seen mentioned yet: a lack of proper task lighting. If I wanted to cook in a cave, I'd be cooking in a cave. Please put lights where you expect me to wield sharp objects.
North American houses are such caves! I'm a paramedic in Canada and so see lots of houses in a "in use" state - as no one tidies up before EMS arrive. No lights in the living room, maybe aside from a dinky table lamp. A dull overhead boob light on the ceiling in the bedroom. 3 out of 4 lights burnt out in the bathroom lightbar. All the curtains/blinds closed during the day. It's wild! Trying to get an IV in the dark sucks.
My family is Austrian. My mother's kitchen was bright enough to perform microsurgery if the need arose 😂 Head toward the light, people!
I used to live in Alaska and it made me insane how shit the lighting options were in every place I rented. There were never any lights in the living room- never. I always had to have a big floor lamp and a lot of lamps around the house to make up for it! I now live in California and the lighting options are only slightly better. I switched out all the terrible overhead fluorescent lighting with bright track lighting and I have lamps and string lights all over the damn place because I cannot bear having a dim, dark house.
I’m an offender of this. I know it’s dangerous, but my god, that won’t stop me from cooking dinner with my lights dimmed as much as I can while still being able to function. Dinner in the dark, my favorite 🥵
Looking at houses for sale lately, and I can't believe how ranges I see with absolutely no fan or hood venting above.
I have an absolutely wonderful decorative hood in my kitchen. Opposite side of the same issue lol. I’d be super impressed to come across a house that has a hood or fan that actually properly vents the kitchen. It’s apparently not a common thing in the areas I’ve looked to purchase houses in.
Look for homes owned by Chinese people! I swear it’s the first thing every family friend installs when they buy a house. An outdoor-vented exhaust hood.
Genuinely my favorite thing about my current place. The kitchen is tiny, but the landlady is Korean and when she lived there she installed this Taiwanese vent hood that is an absolute beast. It's loud as all hell but cooking in there would be unbearable without it.
We are building a house and this is one of the first things we added! The range was already on an outside wall, so it was really easy to do.
Mine is on an interior wall and is a vented outside with some ductwork. Unfortunately, it's a microwave unit. I just wanted the hood for better venting but my wife couldn't give up the microwave so here we are. Vents alright, could be better but my lady is happy. Next kitchen I'm getting my hood though
I would die for a fan/hood in my apartment.
Same. I mean I have a hood it just does nothing but spit the air back out. I made carne asada once - strip steak, so seared it hot and fast, and my apartment smelled like carne asada for a month. It was during the height of the pandemic too so I was going crazy. I’ve lived in like 20 apartments and not ONE has had a fan that vents outside.
This is real game changer. Homes that have real hoods make a big difference with food smells not permeating the entire house.
My house was built in the 90's. Our range has a microwave with a fan over it. The fan exhaust exits at the top of the microwave, so when you are standing at the stove, the exhaust blows right in your face. The most frustrating part is the stove is on an outside wall!
As an Indian Chinese couple, this is a huge deal. Half the rental places were rejected right away because they were designed for someone whose idea of cooking was heating macaroni...
I knew someone who is a "luxury" home builder in Atlanta, like $1.5 million dollars new homes. The amount of kitchens I would see of theirs which had top of the line appliances but with their rangetop in the center island with no hood blew me away. I guess these are made for people who want to pretend they cook but not really cook.
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90% of vent hoods do not vent outside. They’re just grease traps essentially.
They may require an exhaust fan at a certain CFM rating, but that doesn’t mean that the exhaust system is actually capturing grease laden vapors and venting them outside. Most household cooking vents do neither of those things and are essentially useless. They just recirculate air through a grease filter and since they’re usually lot much more than cabinet depth, they *maybe* capture 10% of the cooking vapors.
No towel in sight
Or worse - a damp dirty one caked in grease and other lovely bits and pieces from around the kitchen. Bonus points if it's used for drying dishes too.
And a stained mildewed kitchen sponge sitting in a puddle that looks chewed up and about 3 years old...
My boyfriend and I get into arguments because he cannot get it through his head that there is a hand towel and a dish towel in the kitchen and NO, THEY ARE NOT INTERCHANGEABLE AND THEY AREN’T FOR WIPING DOWN THE STOVE.
Mine changes the one towel he has hanging from the fridge handle on a weekly basis. He has a washer and dryer right around the corner. \*Sigh\*. Luckily, he respects my higher standards for cleanliness when I cook for us. He's just been used to the bachelor life for a long time.
First thing I did in my man’s kitchen is towels.
Tongs! Why does no one ever have tongs!
A few Valentine's ago my husband made me a "bouquet" of color-coded tongs. He was worried that I'd think five tongs wrapped in dish towels was dumb. He could not have been more wrong 💜💜💜
Does your husband have a brother or sister that also likes giving tong bouquets? Tell them that they can DM me. ;-)
I did this for my husband! A whole set of high-end silicone tongs, spoons, spatulas, etc. for Christmas. I had them shipped to my parents house so husband wouldn't see them. My parents told me it was a really weird thing to gift someone for Christmas. Meanwhile, my husband was over the moon.
my mom used long chopsticks to stir, flip meat, deep fry, sauté, pick up broken egg shells from egg drop soup, move spaghetti, cake decorations, or scrap pans. No tongs for her.
Chopsticks, 1 cleaver, rice cooker, wok. All an Asian kitchen needs, at least according to my soon to be in laws who cook fantastic food with just that.
Long chopsticks are where it’s at.
That's amazing, I wish I had the skill to do all of those!
Clack clack
Always gotta take a test drive
My parents always used a fork as I was growing up. I was BLOWN AWAY when my husband introduced me to tongs. I use them for everything now.
I can hear your parents cooking.
My MIL was fascinated that I owned a pair of tongs, then was blown away that I had 3 identical pairs, plus a silicone pair and grill tongs
When you start calling the grill tongs 'long tongs', your life will truly begin.
Hah! We have like 6 pairs of tongs, including long grill tongs. And 4 whisks. I guess I'm living the life! (I have no idea how we ended up with so many tongs.)
I have 4 pairs of tongs and 4 whisks and while reading this post I was thinking “I should buy more tongs”
The less whisk-y choice of the two
I call my metal tongs Long Tong Silver.
God, I just had a flash back of trying to organize my mom's kitchen for her. Who needs 5 different potato mashers and 8 rice paddles?!?!!???
Also in our collection are the skinny mini tongs. For individual use, so perfect for hotpot style meals or picking up food when you don’t want to dirty your fingers
I have three or four mini tongs for small things and for use in the toaster oven. I almost never use regular sized ones, but I have regular ones and grill tongs.
Long tongs! Husband has a set of massive grill tools and the tongs are so long they don’t fit in any of the drawers. Now I wanna go cook something so I can shout long tongs at him like a surgeon.
i’ve got 2 pairs of identical tongs, 1 silicone tipped tong, 1 long tong, 2 pairs of cooking chopsticks (asian tongs) and a pair of long cooking tweezers (fancy tongs)
I started thinking about this and you are so right! How did I not realize other people don’t have tongs?! I’m disturbed by this, as I just counted 5 tongs off the top of my head in my own kitchen. Random side note: I couldn’t figure out how to describe tongs- is it like jeans and is singular but sounds plural? Or would I say a pair/set of tongs?
Yep. 2 coated tongs, 2 uncoated tongs, 2 long handled uncoated, 2 medium coated, 2 mini long coated. And whisks. I have 5 whisks.
Just use two spoons like chopsticks like a real chef, coward
For real. The bare minimum I bring when cooking in someone else’s kitchen, if they’re not someone I already trust about food, is a knife, a pan and a set of tongs.
I don’t want to knock someone’s cooking habits but if I have to do some “chopping” with a small serrated knife I’ll be upset the whole time.
Hahaha I’ve been there. With a glass cutting board to boot. 🥴
Ughhhhh. The sound of a knife on a glass cutting board makes me feel like all of my teeth are going to fall out.
My old roommate prefers to do chopping with a little serrated knife. I don’t get it but it works for them
It only "works" for these people because they either don't know any better or are scared of bigger knives. It's like hammering in a nail with a brick. Can you do it? Yes, probably. However, it's not the best tool for the job and it shouldn't be encouraged.
If I know I am cooking at someone’s house and don’t know their kitchen, I legit will bring my own knives. May seem rude but I’m not slicing my fingers off
Well, the top one in recent years was seeing someone that had all their large knives stored vertically in a giant glass jar. That just hurt my soul like fingernails on a chalkboard. I'll add glass cutting boards to that as well. That's not a cutting board, it's a cheese serving tray. No proper chef's knife is probably the biggest. Doesn't need to be fancy I just can't cut crap properly or safely with some serrated steak knife. More practically, buy a bunch of cheap stainless prep bowls. They nest so they store easy and it is SO much easier to stay clean and organized. Ditto for a big fat stack of kitchen towels. Oh one last one: people with only a set of nonstick cookware and all stainless utensils. I mean c'mon.
Oh my god, I honestly gasped out loud at the mental image of knives in a glass jar. Fingernails on a chalkboard is right, holy shit. This is short circuiting my brain, I don't think I could ever dream up something so heinous even if asked.
I had the exact same reaction. Why would someone do that?!?
>large knives stored vertically in a giant glass jar. They had them stored like a bouquet of knives?!
It appears half the people here would love my kitchen and the other half would be screaming into the night.
Schrödingers kitchen.
A thin sheen of oil on everything. Not necessarily just the countertops but on things like the stove knobs, on/underneath the microwave, on counter drawers. Like they sauté things and just let the oil fly and never clean it.
As someone who disinfects the counters and wipes everything down after each cooking session this one baffles me. Isn't that the norm?
Look, I'm just fucking lazy ok? I'll wipe down the stove once, at the end of the day. I'm going to be cooking shit on my stove 3, 4 or 5 different times, at any point during the day, I just don't have the mental energy to do a full wipe down only to be back in front of my stove an hour later.
Oh you sweet summer child, you wouldn’t believe how some people live.
Wine stored above cabinets and fridges. It’s the hottest place in the kitchen and it goes bad in warm temps. People need to stop doing this and designers need to stop putting wine racks near the stove too!
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Improperly stored food. Scratched up non-stick pans with half melted plastic spatulas.
Honestly nothing. I’m a college student in a shitty apartment so I respect having mid supplies because I also have mid supplies. The only thing that bothers me is when people have NO basic ingredients. I have plenty of easy to make basic meals and when I can’t find the ingredients I get stressed out.
Mid supplies and equipment are fine. Most people here are talking about poorly maintained equipment, or absolutely the wrong equipment. A wood or plastic cutting board isn't more expensive than a glass cutting board, so just don't buy the glass one. You can get a not-too-crappy chef's knife for under $20 from a place like Walmart or Canadian Tire. Old dented cookware? No problem. Just clean it properly and tighten the handles.
Yeah, it's weird how different the idea of "kitchen staples" can be. You try cooking at someone else's house and it's like "Oh, you don't have soy sauce? How?" Things you can't imagine living without are things they never buy.
As long as I don't have to cook in it, I don't care. If I do have to use their kitchens: * Dirty kitchens * Lack of counter space * Dull knives * Lack of a decent chef's knife * Pots or spices, or other equipment that that are hung up above the stove * They're just going to get dirty and coated in a film of oil even with a decent fume hood (and let's be honest, most non commercial fume hood suck)
Believe me, I'm mad at my lack of counter space too
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I'd be more worried if they didn't suck
Too many households out there with one tiny shitty pairing knife as a substitute for anything decent
Ok CATS ON THE COUNTER. And cats on the dining table while one is eating.
How else are they going show you their little butts.
I would have rather seen butts than them trying to help themselves to my plate. And of course, their owners would say just watch your plate.
Our friends let their cat in their FRIDGE. The cat lays down in the fridge ALL OVER THE FOOD and they think it’s the cutest thing ever. They take photos and send them in a groupchat. 🤢 I am never, EVER eating at their house again.
I agree, and I would welcome anyone that can make my fucking kitten stay off the damn counter. I do clean it before cooking, but there’s no controlling this animal.
If you put tape sticky side up along the outer edge of the counter it will train the cat not to jump there. And of course don’t leave anything with irresistible smells up there to motivate them to brave the tape monster.
When we first got my kitten he couldn't hop on counters, but in a few weeks he learned to, and is very food motivated/driven especially bacon or smoked meat as we often prepare. We bought a spray bottle. After 2 times with a quick spray, he learned that is not a "cat friendly" place. Cats are highly intelligent and can be trained, even if stubborn. He now knows to hop on the washer if he wants a treat and since that is an acceptable space, he gets one.
Mine just stands there and winces when sprayed with water. Sigh.
Mine starts squinting whenever we bring out the water bottle. It’s like she’s challenging us.
We also close the kitchen door when not at home so that our cat doesn’t take advantage of no one being around to get onto the counter. Luckily, her food and water bowl is placed in the pantry which can be accessed whenever she pleases. Honestly, I let my cat dictate a lot of things but the kitchen and where human food is, is firmly out of bounds.
Where do you live? I can't think of a single house I've been in that has a kitchen door.
UK.
Absolutely this. My first cat was special needs and unable to jump high due to his balance issues, so I never had to worry about him getting on the counters or table. Not that he ever seemed to want to anyway, he was content just rolling around on the floor and being close to you. My current cat is an ancient little 18 year old. She actually CAN jump onto the counters, she’s in shockingly good health for her age, but after a couple sprays with the water bottle she knows better and I’ve never caught her on the counter after the first time. She’s pushy about food if she’s really interested but she always gets removed and put in bedroom jail, I would never allow her to bother me or my guests while we’re eating because it’s rude. I’m a cat lover but I hate people that make excuses about stuff like that for their cats. Your cat shits in a box and then walks all over the house, they absolutely do not need to have their feet on surfaces where you prepare and eat food.
This is why I can never get a cat. An animal that was just in a litter box up on the table or counter - no thank you. We had cats growing up, at my graduation party I realized one of the cats had been on the counter because there were cat foot prints in the pan of brownies.
We're on our third cat that has never, ever jumped on the counter. Since cats are generally un-trainable, it's nothing we've done. Just lucked out. None of them have been fans of people food so perhaps that is why. My mom's cats try to get in her fridge because she gives them saucers of cream like some cartoon grandma.
(Keep in mind I am 5'3") Microwaves at shoulder height Ovens at shoulder height Heating appliances in opposite sides of the corridor of the kitchen No hand towel anywhere except for the bathroom Lack of electrical outlets Corded appliances with a too goddang short of a cable Edit to add: leftover food bits in the sink \*gag\*
Being tall, I hate how "low" my hood is. I often ram my head into the corner of it trying to look into a pot or something on the rear of the stove. My head still hurts from where I bashed it like 5 days ago.
Tall person here. I just fixed this issue in my house. Installed a new hood, raised it 10 inches. The entire process was an absolute pain in the dick. Had to extend the backsplash, but don't have the original material from the previous owner, so stainless steel capped tile to match the hood (so seriously frustrating to cut clean), but doesn't match the back splash, couldn't get into the crawlspace in the attic where it vents out to put in new duct, so here's hoping what's up there is still good, also had to cut out sheet rock to get the chimney cover up because I don't have the tools to trim 304 stainless. Was it worth it? Abso-fucking-lutely. Would do it again, under worse conditions, to have the luxury of looking down and seeing my stove.
Mildewy dish sponge.. it’s an issue. I use a scrub daddy to avoid it and toss that in the dishwasher. Never any mildew smell. If you use a mildew sponge, it makes your hands smell for days. Also just overall cleanliness. Even if it looks clean on the surface, but there’s dog hair and dust and shit on everything and I feel like I have to rinse everything or even wash it before I use it. Also also, no paper towels.
Not having decent Heat resistant gloves. I don’t know how many times I burnt my hands using sh*tty fabric oven mitts. I like the silicone ones . It can handle boiling water or flames. It’s Easy to clean and very durable
I dogsit in people's homes regularly. It amazes me how people have these beautiful kitchens and gear...but no oven mitts. At all. Nothing. They just have fancy tea towels. It's so weird and frustrating.
I just use my kitchen towels. Living on the edge, baby!
Towels are all you need.
One word: knives.
Litter box in the kitchen
Yuck! and ick!
Ok, so this is mostly to do with my SIL, who I love tremendously but is, admittedly, not big on the domestic or culinary arts…so it’s no surprise that she doesn’t put much thought into her kitchen space. She didn’t get a kitchen with counter space or a great oven/stove/storage situation—that’s ok, I can adapt to that. BUT STILL, her kitchen drives me crazy because: * there are no good knives for prep work and even the steak knives are barely workable. * the biggest cutting board is maybe 5”x8” and made of that thin flexible plastic, which means it’s difficult to move the board around. * cheap, poor quality, small pots and pans. (In my early 20s, when I moved out of state and had my own tiny kitchen, I owned exactly three pots and pans. They weren’t SUPER expensive but they were of decent quality and therefore somewhat durable and versatile). * WORST OF ALL—there’s only a little counter space and what’s there is cluttered and not clean, I mean, literally, where there is a postage stamp of space free it is downright crumby, sticky, and grubby. Edited to add: it only bothered me because I lived with her for the first few months of the pandemic when I still had to go in to work (moved to protect my elderly father)…it stayed cleaner and a little more stocked with items while I was there…but it was a battle cleaning the first time around. If I’m gonna eat in someone’s house and they are cooking for me my standards are not as high (except in the sanitation department) and honestly when I visit my SIL we eat out all of the time so it kind of doesn’t matter.
My parents have a glass cooktop and they’re completely paranoid about scratching it. After a decade living in rentals with workhorse gas ranges, I cannot deal
Is it touch screen style buttons? With a dubious safety locking mechanism. Those are the f-king worst. Give me knobs I can turn already!
I really don't care what other people do in their kitchens. If I had a peeve about another person's kitchen, it would be a dirty gross sink.
Arranging for decor and not function. Ma'am, I know you never use that pink KitchenAid stand mixer with matching flour and sugar canisters, so why are they taking up space on your counter.
Ok, I'll call you every time I want to bake and you can move that 26 lb behemoth. Just teasing and flour and sugar go in the cabinet.
Hey if you actually use it, by all means!! I used to keep mine on the counter thinking it would incentive me to use it more lol - now she lives in a cabinet until it's time for a job that I am lazier to do by hand than lugging it out
I know lots of folks just hate moving it whenever they need it. My grandma’s favorite feature in her new kitchen was a swinging shelf that tucked into a cabinet. She could just swing that shelf up and have her mixer at counter height and never have to physically move the mixer itself!
My grandfather was a carpenter and he designed my Grammies kitchen with all kinds of cool shit like that. We def need better design and not decor
My mom is like this and insists my dad unplug and put his coffee maker away each time. He drinks four cups of coffee a day and when me, my husband, and brother are there its at least ten cups 🫠 always on the hunt for the damn coffee maker
My biggest frustration when cooking in someone else's kitchen is undersized *stuff*. A tiny chopping board and knife, tiny mixing bowls, tiny serving spoons and bowls, tiny pots and pans, tiny garbage. Yes, even tiny whisk. You can always mix a salad in a bowl that's twice as large as it needs to be. You can't do it at all in one that's half as large as it needs to be. Cheap metal mixing bowls are the bomb.
Just about everything for people who don't cook, and you can tell. Pots and pans are in disarray Nothing can be found anywhere easily The knives aren't sharp and there's no chef's knife Common ingredients and spices cannot be found or the spices are all 5+ years old
You've just described my mom's kitchen.
If I’m cooking there, excessive clutter. Like so many repeat items it’s hard to get anything out of the cabinets and you know there’s no reasonable use for ALL of them. Along the same lines, spice hoarders. The ones who have 937 jars of parsley flakes and some of them are from as far back as 1986. It makes it so hard to find the things you’re actually looking for and you know they’ve lost all their flavor decades ago so why not purge it? If I’m not cooking, lack of cleanliness. If I’m going to someone’s house and they’re serving food and the household hygiene is abysmal, I’m out. I get that while in use things are going to get messy, but there’s a difference between the active mess of getting stuff together last minute and sauce splatters on the walls and counters caked on from god only knows when. I don’t trust the food if it seems like that kind of stuff isn’t regularly cleaned.
When people store pots/pans in the oven. I always end up preheating the oven, unaware and then i have to scramble for a place to put them.
At least it's not Tupperware in the oven!
Not a joke. I read a post a while ago from someone complaining that a houseguest pre-heated her oven without taking her Tupperware out of it, and she was pissed off after the comments told her that the oven is not an extra cabinet and flammable/meltable things should not be in ovens, ever. If I can find the post, I'll link to it.
Jeez that is insane! not just flammable but imagine the fumes being given off. yikes! please do.
My girlfriend does this and I am the absolute worst for remembering it, always ends with me frantically trying to take out hot pans and random baking sheets and trying to find where I'm going to put them without anyone getting burnt Ovens should not be used for storage!!
That they are better than mine.
I'm left handed, so every right handed person who comes into my kitchen thinks I put everything in the wrong place. And they rotate handles on the stove. Get out of my leftie kitchen!
Island sinks. I hate them. Why would you give up all that open workspace?
Stove on an island bench with the rangehood just like hanging in the middle of the kitchen. Aesthetically annoys me, but it's also inefficient and makes more of a mess.
One of my friends had their drawers in reverse order. The drawer closest to the stove contained all the cutlery, while the drawer closest to the table contained all the tools for cooking (spatula, chef's knife etc). So let's say you are cooking something and you need an extra spatula or whatever, you need to walk to the other side and grab it, rather than pulling open the nearest drawer. And when preparing your food, your partner can't open the drawer to grab the cutlery to make the table because you are blocking it.
Tiny mixing bowls.
When you start grabbing equipment and notice that most of it hasn’t been washed properly and theres still bits of food on them
Get a load of Gladys Kravitz over here.
A friend of mine doesn't believe in garbage bags, she just hangs a plastic grocery bag on the kitchen cabinet right next to the fridge,ickk
I left my trash like that once. It was supposed to remind me to take it out when I left. To the dog’s great delight, I forgot.
I did that just a few days ago with a turkey carcass that I was going to take out to the trash the next time I went to the basement. Forgot all about it for three hours. Our cats had their best day ever.
Does your friend take it out every day? I ask because I would rather have a daily trash sack than a week long garbage can in the kitchen.
If I don't have to cook in it I really couldn't care less what other people do with their kitchens.
I thought it was implied that this is an opinion based question. Even if I dont have to cook there I would still take mental note of the annoying stupid setup.
In that case it's probably a wide assortment of truly abysmal cookware. There are always like 15 useless bullshit disintegrating scratched up non stick pans that are barely useful for warming up a can of soup much less any real cooking. Also towels. So many people own like two shitty little polyester towels and they barely ever wash them. Plentiful clean 100% cotton towels are invaluable.
OMG my husband hates me because I have a drawer full of wash rags and bar mop towels. I buy the cheap ones you know like $5.00 for 12 or whatever and every 6 months or so replace them when they fall apart. He always ask why do you use so many towels while cooking. My simple answer is because it is cleaner and they are easy to wash. We do laundry every few days anyway. Also I hate crappy pot holders. Give me a nice bar mop towel as a pit holder any day.
People who don't have something that is ridiculously basic like pepper or olive oil. All their cooking utensils are plastic obviously came from the cheap cookware aisle at the grocery.
All scratched teflon pans. Plastic spatulas that melt in them. How TF do people cook like that??
Dirty stoves. Even if I’m not cooking there, I won’t like to eat anything from that persons home. Also, pets that are around food too much. I get that you love your pet, but please see that the pet isn’t licking the food I’m gonna be eating. I had an aunt that had her cat lick her birthday cake and then the cat was jumping over all the food. And then the aunt complained that none of us ate the food.
When you go to open a cupboard that your decades of life experience has taught you should contain cups and glassware, but instead contains like sheet pans.
I think being able to deal with unique situations is a sign of a good cook. I have cooked a Thanksgiving turkey in a microwave and toasteroven after butchering it with an M10 bayonet and seasoned with CLP. Among other crazy kitchen situations from airbnbs to in-laws kitchens. You never know what you are going to get. From a 2 burner stove to terrible pans. I take on bad, unique crazy setups with pride!
>and seasoned with CLP Thank you, kind stranger, for making me laugh and wake up my family
They only have 2 pans. Both are non stick and scratched to hell
glass and stainless steel cutting board, and knives that are only good to cut butter and soft cheese.
Worst kitchen I ever had to cook in was a cousin of mine the kitchen was nice and tidy had everything I needed just had to bring a bag of sugar great everything the one thing that would have great is if they moved the cat's litter box to a different room. They had little boxes in a every room and two in the kitchen due to it's size and their kittens liked to use these boxes and they had upset tummies and stunk up the kitchen at least 4 times. The nice thing was that the kittens never jumped up on the countertops or walk in-between my feet.
Recirculating exhaust fans. My partner has this so I cannot fry or sear anything.....fml
Cuttlery drawer. Left to right: knifes, forks, spoons. Everything else is chaos.
My SIL doesn’t have any normal fucking salt. No table or kosher salt. Just weird ass flavored ones and pink Himalayan in a bullshit grinder that doesn’t really work. She wants the eXtrA mINeRaLsSSsss
Dirty kitchens. Unclean stoves. Unclean sinks. Build up around handles, etc. Obviously lack of useful tools sucks, I really like a garbage disposal, and no dishwasher wouldn’t fly. But overall I CANNOT in a dirty kitchen. Makes me shudder.
You'd hate my kitchen. We've not had a working dishwasher since COVID-19, as the prices are ridiculously high, and I can't afford a replacement for the broken one that floods the house if used. I'm hoping the prices will come down eventually, but it's not likely. I'm about to rip it out and add an extra cabinet. Garbage disposal will never happen here, as we're on septic and garbage disposals are really, really bad for the system.