At HuffPost UK, we’re pretty used to a counterintuitive cooking hack. First, it turned out that you’re not meant to boil spuds for mash in water; then, came the news (via Mary Berry) that your cottage pie recipe needs some sugar.
But even those culinary complications couldn’t have prepped us for the fact @beahaving shared on her TikTok recently; when, say, a bag of oven chips asks you to “turn halfway” through cooking, you might not have to flip the individual chips (or kievs, or hash browns, or whatever it is) over.
In a video showing her turning the chips over by hand (I’d use a spatula, but still), the creator captioned her post, “This is the first time I considered that this isn’t what the bag means by turn halfway through cooking.”
Well what in the name of McCain does it mean, then?
I’m with you ― as were lots of commenters.
“What are we supposed to do I’m so lost,” one commenter said.
“So... what does it mean,” said another.
Well, apparently the instructions actually refer to rotating the pan rather than the items themselves.
As in... turn THE PAN halfway through cooking (it’s a completely new world to me).
That’s because some parts of your oven are hotter than others, and that may be from top to bottom, left to right, or both.
“Rotation [of the pan] is done to avoid one part of your batch drying out or getting too brown and burnt [due to uneven oven temps],” Cookist says.
“With rotation, every part of the batch gets equal amounts of heat and will be uniformly baked.”
What does anything mean?!
I know! Again,TikTok commenters are with us.
“OK but why would it say ‘flip’ instead of ‘rotate pan,’” one (wise! honest!) app user commented.
“I don’t do anything on the bag I just put it on the oven really high and leave it until I sense it might be ready,” perhaps the most relatable comment reads.
Another person shared that they “only [learned] this when I worked at a bakery and had to rotate the pans halfway through for even heating. It all made sense then.”
What a world...