Nagi Maehashi, better known as RecipeTin Eats, has a bone to pick with celebrity chef Jamie Oliver over the right way to cook rice, and you're probably getting it wrong too.
"Jamie Oliver, you should be ashamed! Wrong rice to water ratio. It's one cup of rice to 1.5 cups of water, full stop, end of story," she tells 9Honey.
"If I see someone else doing one cup of rice to two cups of water again - it's like mushy rice central."
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That's right; according to Maehashi, even some of the most well-known celebrity chefs don't know how to cook rice correctly, so it's no surprise regular Aussies struggle.
Oliver has also been known to rinse his rice before cooking it and includes that step in some of his online recipes, but Maehashi says it's just not necessary.
"Do you need to wash your rice to get fluffy rice? The answer is no. You just need to get the water to rice ratio right," she says.
"If you wash your rice, you need to actually reduce the amount of water that you cook your rice in because the rice gets waterlogged with the excess water from washing it."
The only time she bothers to wash rice is if she buys it from a market and is worried about cleanliness.
Of course, Maehashi has plenty of kitchen tips that aren't related to rice as well. After all, she does run one of the most popular food sites in Australia, RecipeTin Eats.
The Northern Beaches local took time out at The Good Food & Wine Show in Sydney to share cooking tips with 9Honey Kitchen, including how to get the perfect sear on a steak.
"Number one thing is take it out of the fridge preferably about an hour before you're going to cook it, because it'll cook it through more evenly and it dries the skin out," she says.
"The last thing you want is a wet surface on a steak when you're trying to get a beautiful sear on it."
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If you're cooking a thick steak and want to get it perfect, the trick is to finish it off in the oven for a few minutes after cooking it in a pan on the stove.
"Don't try to cook a thick steak just on the stove because then you end up with a really thick band of overcooked, dry, horrible steak just before the inside gets cooked," Maehashi says.
But her best advice for newbie cooks and home chefs trying to improve their cooking is a bit more philosophical.
"People think too much about it and get overly stressed and set their expectations too high, so I always tell people just to relax and enjoy it," she says.
"The most important thing is just to look forward to the food that you're going to eat at the end, because if you keep your eye on the prize, you can't go wrong."
Sounds silly coming from one of the most successful Aussie cooks on the internet, but Maehashi is the first to admit she makes plenty of mistakes in the kitchen too.
It can take her tens of attempts to perfect a single recipe for her website and sometimes things still don't turn out exactly how she'd hoped.
"I make more mistakes in the kitchen than successes. It's the nature of the job, but it's OK to make mistakes because you always learn from them," she says.
"And I find that with a lot of savoury foods, even if it doesn't quite work out the way you planned, it's still edible and to most people it's still a really good dish."
She also opts to splurge on a few high-quality ingredients that make her dishes sing, like more expensive cuts of meat and pricier olive oil and vinegar.
Maehashi usually shops at Woolworths or Aldi and has no issue with cooking on a budget, but spending a little extra on select ingredients can really elevate your meals.
It can also actually make them easier to cook, especially when it comes to meat.
"Meat is always worth splurging on. I'm a huge advocate of eating less meat and better quality meat," she says.
"It's not just about the quality of life of the animal, but also the better the meat, the better it tastes, like it's just more tender, it's more juicy, it's got better for flavour."
High quality cuts of meat also tend to be more forgiving, Maehashi says, so if you slightly overcook a nice steak or roast beef it will still taste great. Not so for the budget versions.
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"A cheap, nasty one from a discount grocery store, you overcook that by two degrees and it's gone. Even if you cook it perfectly, it doesn't have the same flavour," she says.
Olive oil and vinegar are the other two ingredients she encourages Aussies to spend a little extra on, but not to cook with.
"Do you wonder why restaurants can get away with charging $20 for just a leafy salad and why it tastes so good? It's because they're using really good olive oil," she reveals.
Save your pricey olive oil and vinegar for salad dressings or dipping bread into and pick up some cheaper versions to cook with on a day-to-day basis like Maehashi does.
The one name-brand ingredient she does swear by is Vegemite, which she will eat on just about anything.
"Vegemite and avocado, it's so good. Vegemite and popcorn, that's another weird one. Vegemite and cottage cheese on toast… there's a common theme there," she laughs.
Vegemite may be her comfort food, but when she doesn't feel like cooking Maehashi always goes back to an old favourite; Chinese noodle soup.
"It's a really simple stock, which is basically chicken stock, star anise, smashed garlic, ginger if I've got it, soy sauce and a splash of sesame oil," she says.
"You just simmer that for five minutes while I'm chopping up some veggies and I throw in some homemade wontons from frozen."
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It's her favourite "standby meal", but if she's cooking to impress someone – like on a date – her go-to dish would have to be steak with bearnaise sauce.
Like most of the recipes on her site, Maehashi is all about simple food made well when she's cooking at home and knows that's what resonates with her everyday Aussie fans.
"I don't think that high-profile people would use my recipes. I'm a very normal home cook," she admits.
"Eastern suburbs isn't really my readership and celebrities wouldn't be my readership. Chefs wouldn't be my readership because I shop at Woolies and Aldi."
That said, we're hoping one famous chef stumbles upon her website or new book, RecipeTin Eats: Dinner, and learns the correct rice to water ratio soon.
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2023-06-23 06:23:28Z
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