Everyone has culinary preferences. That's what makes us human, after all. But sometimes those preferences are so bizarre, they might as well be called crimes against food. So Redditor u/u/No_Analysis8135 asked, "What is the most heinous food crime?" Here's what people said.
1."My mother microwaves salad, and I'm not talking chicken salad or egg salad. I'm talking vegetables. A full salad made of plants goes in the microwave for 60 seconds."
2."Serving undressed noodles with a pool of sauce on top. As an Italian, this kills me. For the love of God, add the pasta back into the sauce before serving."
3."When I was a kid, I'd sneak into the bag of Dorito's, lick all the powder off some of the chips and then put them back in the bag. When my parents would try to eat some they'd suddenly be horrified by the random cold and soggy chips."
4."I had a girlfriend who would eat butter straight from the stick. Seriously. As if it were a candy bar."
5."My aunt stirs a spoonful of sugar into her glass of red wine. Now that is a new one for me, and it's unforgivable. An ice cube in wine is pretty common, but sugar in your wine? Absolutely not."
6."My mom regularly microwaves fish...usually salmon. She doesn’t even season it or anything, just takes a piece of raw salmon, puts it on a plate covered in plastic wrap over it, and microwaves it for eight minutes. She claims she loves it 🙃. It's appalling."
7."People who use no seasoning at all while cooking, not even a pinch of salt. My parents did this when I was growing up so for the first 12 years of my life I just assumed that the only place you could get food that tasted good was at restaurants."
8."A student I went to school with ate pineapples with mayo. IMO, that should be considered a serious crime."
9."Boiling vegetables to mush. Steaming, roasting, grilling or even just serving raw veggies are better options than boiling those delicious vegetables until soft, mushy, and tasteless."
10."I cannot stand the way my mother eats sandwiches. Take, for example, a roast beef sandwich. She takes it all apart and eats the roast beef and then the bread separately. It's meant to be eaten all together...that's what makes a sandwich taste good!"
11."Salting the life out of your food before you have even tried it. It's OK if you want to make your food saltier, but at least taste it first. My dad does this, and my younger brother seems to have inherited the trait. It drives me nuts."
12."I can't stand when someone has multiple packages of the exact same food open simultaneously. Please finish one and then move onto the next."
13."My roommate eats peanut butter and mayo sandwiches, which seems like a food crime to me. Fortunately, I’ve never had to experience seeing her make or eat one."
14."Adding certain powdered spices at the end of cooking, close to when you turn off the heat. Most spices must be added early in the cooking process to [sic] them to bloom, get rid of the raw taste, and really blend with the other ingredients. This goes for powerful spices like cayenne, cumin, coriander powder, etc..."
15."Using excessive, improper toppings on pizza. Forget about pineapple — that's nothing. My wife puts mayo, egg, corn, potato and French fries on pizza like it's normal."
16."When people do not warm their flour or corn tortillas and serve them straight out of the package. These people should go straight to jail."
17."Biting into a Kit Kat whole rather than separating it into two individual sticks. A friend of mine once bit sideways into a Kit Kat bar and I was horrified."
18."Severely overcooking steak. I have a relative who likes his steak cooked extra well done. I don’t know how he even gets it down. Why bother getting nice steak if you're going to over-cook it to death?!"
19."Grilling burgers and not putting the cheese on the burger while it's on the grill still cooking. Also people who don't toast the burger buns."
20."Putting ice cubes in milk. My daughter does this and it drives me nuts. There's nothing worse than watery milk."
21."Using a food processor for a recipe that clearly states to grind herbs together with a mortar and pestle until it becomes a paste. It takes a good amount of time, but this is the cooking method for a reason. Tossing the ingredients into a food processor or blender just isn't the same. I am Cambodian, and this is a true offense in our home when cooking."
22."I have a neighbor who used to pull the cheese off her pizza and cover it in ketchup. I'd call that behavior a crime. It physically hurts me when I see people covering an entire pizza slice in ketchup."
23."My brother was allergic to dairy when we were younger. Instead of using milk, I have on several occassions witnessed him pour orange juice into his cereal and eat it."
24."Using cauliflower as a 'healthy' ingredient replacement and saying it tastes the same. Cauliflower is a great vegetable. You can make rice out of it, you can use it to bulk up a curry, you can slice and roast or fry it. But it tastes like cauliflower. It's never going to taste like potato or rice or meat. So let's not pretend. You're always going to be disappointed when it doesn't taste as good."
25."Making a burger that is so fat I can't fit my mouth around it. I want to be able to taste all of the toppings in each mouthful without ingredients falling out of the bun."
26."Any sort of flavored hummus or a dip called ‘hummus’ that doesn’t use chickpeas. The word hummus means chickpeas in Arabic, so if it doesn’t have chickpeas it's not hummus. Call it any other dip, but don't confuse it for hummus."
27."Using Miracle Whip instead of mayonnaise or sour cream in a recipe like Deviled Eggs or potato salad. There is nothing that ruins a good plate of food like biting into that sweet, fake-tasting goop."
28."This is my own food crime confession: I really love to eat lemons as you would eat an orange or a clementine — by peeling it and eating the whole thing. For some reason I love the sourness. Of all my strange food preferences, this one really causes witnesses to cringe."
29."My mother-in-law's burrito recipe should be an actual crime. It's a room temperature flour tortilla, boiled hot dog, canned black olives, and shredded carrots."
30."I used to share a house with a guy, and every time a bottle or jar of sauce was only about a third full, he would fill it up with water and shake it 'to get his money's worth.' That's not saving money, it's just making your condiments taste awful."
31."My roommate puts apple sauce on anything from tacos or fish to spaghetti or burgers. He will literally dunk any food into a bowl of applesauce. It's absolutely horrifying."
32."Adding cucumber to any hot dish. I know a woman who puts it into everything from Green chili to chicken soup. Cucumber is a great side dish, but don't cook it in your hot foods."
Have you witnessed (or even been a perpetrator of) something that can only be considered a crime against food? Spill the beans in the comments below.
