What are some things you can/should cheap out on?

Mr. Forager@lemmy.world to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 275 points –

I often hear, "You should never cheap out on a good office chair, shoes, underpants, backpack etc.." but what are some items that you would feel OK to cheap out on?

This can by anything from items such as: expensive clothing brands to general groceries.

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I once took a cooking class and the teacher was always "it's not necessary to invest in expensive oils, the cheapest oil will always do for cooking".

As long as the oil you are using has the right smoke point. Different oils can get to different temperatures and are used for different things.

Can you expand on that? Which to use when?

Olive oil is a low smoke point. It's good in a salad dressing but bad to cook something like steak and terrible for frying foods. It burns at a temperature lower than you'd sear meats at. Low smoke point oils tend to be richer and more delicate in flavors.

Canola is a mid-high smoke point oil, it's good for searing meats and frying foods.

Safflower and avocado are a high smoke point oil. You can cook at a much higher temperature without burning the oil.

If you can find a place to watch it, there are a couple episodes of Good Eats where Alton Brown goes over the different types of oils and their usage. I find his show to be great at learning the whys behind a lot of the cooking choices and techniques.

Ooo there's a great video on Minute Food about vanilla extract vs synthetic vanilla. It basically comes down to: if you cook the vanilla, synthetic will taste the exact same, if you never heat up the vanilla it might be worth getting the real stuff.

I assume the same is probably true of most oils, if you use EVOO for salad dressings it might be worth it, but if you're using it to saute you might as well use sunflower oil and save some money.

I don't think I've ever even seen synthetic vanilla outside of extremely specialised professional shops. (Europe). Vanilla seems to be insanely expensive in the US for some reason.

I see it already the time as vanillin sugar for baking instead of vanilla/vanilla sugar. Much cheaper. Every supermarket here has it.

I haven't thought of looking at sugar as I do my own vanilla sugar. I'll check it out next time.