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    16 Secrets Professional Chefs Wish Everyone Understood

    No, nobody is messing around with your food.

    1. No actual chef has ever done anything unpleasant to your food, regardless of what your "friend of a friend" might have said.

    2. For home cooks, the easiest way to improve your cooking is a small number of high quality items.

    One good pan and one good knife will make way more difference than any complicated stuff that promises you all sorts of easy solutions.

    3. Learning how you actually like your meat cooked will make everyone's life much, much easier.

    4. Similarly, knowing what you actually ordered is important.

    5. Claiming you have an allergy because you don't like something is one of the most unpleasant things you can do in a restaurant.

    6. Particularly if you do something like this.

    7. The customer who arrives minutes before the kitchen closes is always, always annoying.

    8. Brunch is probably the worst meal of the week, for many reasons.

    9. Substitutions in themselves aren't a problem if they're logical and straightforward.

    10. But if you start swapping out half the dish, then really you should just be ordering something else.

    11. Especially if it's something fundamental to the dish.

    12. You shouldn't order anything well done.

    13. If you ask for sauce on the side, you shouldn't be allowed nice things.

    14. Listening to non-chefs talk about food and offer their thoughts will very rarely be enjoyable for a chef.

    15. The answer is "more salt". It's always more salt.

    16. At some point in their career, every professional chef has had an extended period of time where they've worked hours that break every actual and natural law.