Learning to be a chef is a complex task.

Not only do you have a lot to learn, in both a theoretical and practical sense, you have to have a certain innate skillset too.

The ability to taste food and know when it’s just right can be taught, but your senses also need to be on point.

That’s a gift that the student in this story had – and he wasn’t being given credit for it.

Read on to find out how he made sure that wouldn’t be the case going forward.

Malicious Compliance at culinary school

About twenty years ago, I was going to college for culinary arts. The chef instructor in charge that day assigned me the job of boiling potatoes for mashing.

Now how I was taught growing up, and how this school taught you to boil potatoes includes salting the boiling water. When doing this you have to add a lot more salt then most people who’ve never done it before would guess.

They were trying to teach how to do this by feel, without needing a recipe.

But he found it difficult to get students to understand just how much they needed to add, so he decided that to combat this he would really stress that whatever amount you think is enough, add that plus a fair amount more – a saying that I had actually heard before I ever went to school.

Let’s see how this trainee chef responded to those instructions.

Now I’ve been making mashed potatoes, from scratch, most of my life. My family uses this method, so I’m very familiar with it. I know how much salt to add.

I explained this, very good naturedly, trying to joke about how a lot of people who aren’t familiar with the method  don’t, and how frustrating that must be for him.

But he didn’t believe me, and kept insisting that I “add more than I think I should put in.”

No matter what I said about it or what assurances I gave, he didn’t seem to think I could possibly know what I was doing. I even suggested that if I was wrong it could be fixed, but no – he insisted I put more in than I thought I should.

So he decided to do exactly as he was told.

I don’t know if I was just in a bit of a bad mood that day, or he just said that “add what you think, than more” line one too many times. But I did exactly what he said – I put in what I knew was the right amount of salt, then added more.

The result was the most insanely salty potatoes I’ve ever tried. No matter what we did we couldn’t fix them either.

This was a LARGE batch of potatoes, we had to use one of the huge standing mixers in the bakery area to mash/mix it. The only thing that could have helped would be to make a ton more potatoes and mix them in, and that wasn’t really an option.

After that he seemed a lot more prepared to take me at my word about such things.

Sure, the instructor might be used to students who think they know how much salt to use.

He might also be used to students telling him that they’re sure they’re right.

But he really should have listened to this guy, or at least given him the benefit of the doubt and let him be wrong. Making mistakes is how you learn, after all.

Let’s see what folks on Reddit made of this.

This person thought that this method of teaching sucked.

While this expert explained that the teacher wasn’t doing a good job at all.

Meanwhile, this Redditor explained just how subjective saltiness could be.

It’s no wonder this culinary student was feeling patronised by their instructor.

Their method of getting their own back surely taught the instructor a lesson.

Sometimes, we need to make mistakes to learn.

And the instructor definitely made a mistake here.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a rude cusfacetomer who got exactly what they wanted in their pizza.