Salt isn’t something to “move away from.” The human tongue tastes five basic flavors – sweet, sour, salty, bitter, umami. Plenty of things are sweet, all acids are sour, many oils and fats are bitter, and a lot of foods have umami. But only salt is salty.

Why is that relevant? I’ll tell you – if salt is something to “move away” from, something to avoid, then why did the human tongue evolve to have a sense dedicated to that alone?

I bet you avoid things like butter, too. Stop being trendy, take a culinary science course (trust me, it’ll turn around a LOT of your perceptions of health and flavor), and enjoy your foods properly seasoned, including salt.

But the rest is good

Dry falling on Dry – no real time limit – just brush off the fuzz.

Any combination of wet and dry – be very careful unless you know the stuff coming into contact with each other are okay for consumption.

I grew up with the ‘5-second rule’ and I’m still kickin’…even after a few 30-second delayed retrievals.

Mythbusters did a segment on the rule… check them out sometime. They found pretty much what we always knew.

Taking the conversation back a while, I’d like to make a point about Emeril. I think it was Mom that said she didn’t like him because he uses very similar seasonings. In his defense, because it’s one of the styles I’ve mastered, he does cajun cuisine nearly exclusively. Cajun cuisine uses very similar herbs in a lot of it’s dishes. I don’t see it so much as a drawback, but a style. Every cook has an herb they favor strongly, so it vaguely makes sense that even as a famous chef his herbs tend to follow a theme. I’m a NUT for sweet paprika. I use it on everything I can get away with it.

Great list, jfrater. I threw out my microwave a year ago and it’s improved my cooking on incredible levels, and removes the urge to eat microwave only foods. Hell, even frozen pizzas. I have a pizza stone so I fire up the oven and toss them on that. It’s just as fast but FAR tastier. There are thousands of tricks like that that take no more time than a quick nuke, but taste way better. I always say the key to good cooking is to know the difference between a shortcut and a bad habit. Microwaves are rarely the former and usually the latter. Especially as a parent, I swear by whole foods created from scratch. I know what’s in them, I know how healthy they are.

Some of the stuff that’s in frozen tv dinners I wouldn’t even feed my dog.

Top five food safety myths
Andrew Stephens corrects some common culinary misconceptions.

The three-second rule
If you drop food on the floor, pick it up within three seconds or so and it will be fine to eat. Wrong. Even a nanosecond is enough for food to have a brief and fruitful affair with bacteria.

Seafood is dodgy
In general, poor old prawns, scallops, fish and so on get a bad reputation just because they pong more than other uncooked meats. Seafood is no more likely to cause food poisoning than other meats.

It’s OK to leave cooked rice/pasta out of the fridge
Says who? When these foods (and other cooked items) enter the temperature “danger zone” of 5-60 degrees, Bacillus cereus can form heat-resistant spores and a heat-resistant toxin.

Dairy products cause phlegm
Dairy Australia and the National Asthma Council Australia say that this myth is not supported by scientific evidence, citing a comprehensive review in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition.

[I have choir colleagues who studiously avoid diary products before a concert.]

Mould on cheese and jam is not dangerous
It all depends on the type of mould, and the official line is that if it is not meant to be mouldy – [eg cheese] – then it shouldn’t be. Moulds can penetrate more deeply than the eye can see, so what looks like a small patch on your chunky raspberry jam or vintage tasty cheese might be a lot larger.

For the full article, see http://www.smh.com.au/news/health/top-five-food-safety-myths/2008/04/21/1208742837735.html