25 home cooking secrets the Betty Crocker Deep State doesn't want you to know about

This week we have a cover story teasing out such undervalued cooking lessons and techniques like "don't place your laptop on a very hot stove burner" and "tomatillos and Brussels sprouts are two different things."

But I have so much more wisdom to offer. With eight years of cooking under my belt, I'm as qualified as any other masterchef to inform you that you've been doing everything all wrong. Whether you're a newbie who still mostly only cooks Top Ramen or whether you're a culinary superstar who's graduated to cooking Maruchan Ramen, these cooking tips are guaranteed to help you score in at least the top three on Top Chef.

That's right. That means you too, Chad.

1. Watch cooking shows to give you inspiration for great dishes, like Top Chef, Breaking Bad and NBC’s hit TV series Hannibal.

2. Recipes almost always have one impossible ingredient like “eye of newt,” “ground unicorn feather” or “fruit from tree of knowledge of good and evil (to taste)." Fortunately, you can usually find a more accessible replacement ingredient that works just as well, like “table salt” or “tap water.”

3. Your dietician mother may tell you that you can make a recipe healthier by cutting the amount of oil and butter in half. Don't listen to her. She doesn't want you to be happy. She's never wanted you to be happy.

4. "Spice up" your cooking by adding spices.

5. Read the entire recipe before starting to cook. Until you read that cooking blogger's 2,500-word intro discussing how her great-grandmother learned to hand-roll pasta from a waifish peasant boy while summering in Castiglioncello del Trinoro, you can't truly hope to successfully cook her "Kraft-style Mac n' Cheese" recipe 

6. When reading online recipes, you can learn a lot by reading the comments, especially the super racist ones. 

7. The secret to making any vegetable edible is to waterboard it in so much butter it forgets who it is.

8. You know your salmon is done when it turns to you and screams “JUST KILL ME ALREADY, YOU COWARD.”

9.  Calories consumed while cooking don't legally count.

10. Cook like Guy Fieri by wearing a bitchin' pair of shades indoors.

11. One of the most important and overlooked parts of a great dish is presentation. Keep your bullet-points short and punchy and use clipart and fun transitions to keep your dinner audience engaged.

12. Save enough cash for avocados by not wasting money on purchasing homes. 

13. While icing a cake, fill one icing tube up with frosting for the top layer of the cake, and then fill up another to empty it directly into your mouth, you disgusting, self-loathing slob.

14. Sprinkle walnuts or almonds on cakes and pastries to prevent your little sister* from eating those pieces, leaving more for you.

(*Your sister may vary.)

15. If you like to grill your steak "well done," save time by just directly eating a charcoal briquette. 

16. To get yourself a perfect burger, buy your meat directly from a local farm, grind it yourself, add breadcrumbs and a little bit of diced bacon, form it into patties with a dimple in the middle and then put them in a Ziplock bag in the fridge while you go to Red Robin and order a Banzai Burger.

17. Grow your own “herbs.” It’s legal now in Oregon.

18. Invest in a good kitchen knife. Only an ancient obsidian blood-blade anointed with the light of Ah-Travak can pierce the dire carapace of the Split-Horned Gut Ravager of the Void Fissure in order to make that perfect piccata.

19. Learning how to hold a knife correctly can save time and prevent injuries. You should be holding the dull “handle” end and not the pointy-blade end.

20. When you're going to be searing steak, disconnect your smoke detector. You have life insurance. Your family will be provided for.

21. Generously salt your pasta water. Not only will it make the pasta taste better, it will kill any slugs that have managed to slip in.

22. Nothing brings out the flavor of a great red wine like a dash of iocane powder.

23. Have a habit of crying while chopping onions? Next time you’re dicing, don’t do it while listening to Harry Chapin's “Cat's in the Cradle."

24. One secret to defrosting? Mix de powdered sugar with de butter and den add de milk.

25. When handling red hot chili peppers, make sure not to rub your eyes. Don't rub your eyes. Don't rub your eyes. They're starting to itch, but you can't touch them. Oh, man, wouldn't it feel amazing to rub your eyes right about now? You've never wanted anything more in your life. It's all you can think about. You cannot remember a time when your eye did not itch. If only you could just—

There. Now your eye is burning and you may have done permanent damage, but wooheee rubbing your eye felt great. Worth it.