Confession Time: Our Worst Cooking Habits

Start prepping your Thanksgiving stuffing now (or, yesterday). Wrap your bananas in plastic wrap to slow down ripening. Always use a probe thermometer when cooking fish and meats.

All of these are suggestions we've made to you in very recent history.

And while these are all good ideas (and we still recommend you try them—really!), do we always follow our own advice?

The short answer: No.

It's confession time. Here are some of the cooking habits we just can't break (no matter how many times we've advised you against them):

• Putting cold water on the pan before it’s cooled
  
• Placing plastic items in the bottom level of the dishwasher
  
• Using the warming rack/broiler beneath the oven as a storage shelf
  
• Not thoroughly drying wooden cutting boards
  
• Leaving dirty dishes in the sink for two weeks
  
• Not covering food before heating it in the microwave (and not cleaning the microwave)
  
• Leaving the handles of pans cooking on the stove pointing outwards
  
• Not reading the recipe through before starting to cook
  
• Taking too long to do menial and unimportant tasks (like scraping every bit from the pot)
  
• NOT taking time to clean mid-cooking, which leaves the kitchen in shambles
  
• But also cleaning mid-cooking, which can be a distracting side-track
  
• Other cleaning compulsions, like cleaning the drain trap after each washed dish
  
• Walking back and forth across the kitchen approximately one million times instead of getting everything out at once
  
• Dirtying a million kitchen towels and every pot/pan/serving dish in the kitchen
  
• Not washing herbs and salad greens
  
• Putting things that shouldn't go in the dishwasher in the dishwasher because of fatigue and laziness (sorry, knives)
  

What are the kitchen and cooking habits you wish you could break? Or the habits you know or bad but you'd never change? Confess in the comments!