I always added the oil first when making pasta sauce until my roommate stopped me mid-pour last night

She said the oil just coats the garlic and keeps it from releasing flavor into the pan, which explains why my sauces always tasted flat even with fresh ingredients anyone else cook with this wrong order their whole life too?

2 comments

2 Comments

leobrown9d ago

My buddy Dave had the exact same thing happen to him last year. He was making garlic shrimp and his girlfriend walked in and asked why he was sealing the flavor in jail before releasing it. He said her comment totally blew his mind because he'd been cooking for like 10 years thinking the oil was his best friend. Now he swears by a splash of water or chicken stock first to get the garlic going before adding any fat. He still uses plenty of oil later on, just not at the very beginning anymore.

allen.amy9d ago

That phrase "sealing the flavor in jail before releasing it" really hit me because it's such a perfect way to describe how we do things backwards in so many areas of life. I think this is part of a bigger pattern where we grab for the most obvious solution first without understanding the actual mechanics. Like how people throw salt on everything without tasting first, or how we add more heat when something isn't cooking instead of just giving it more time. The oil thing is the same deal, we see oil as this universal flavor carrier so we dump it in first, but it's actually blocking the whole process. It makes me wonder how many other cooking rules I've been doing wrong just because I never stopped to ask why.

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