Hey, #cooking friends.
My wife has a habit that has never made sense to me: when she starts cooking on the stove, she often adds the first-step ingredients (like garlic, onion, etc.) to the cold pan with the oil, then heats them up together. This is in contrast to my approach, which is to heat the pan and oil and then add ingredients.
This goes against all my "this is how Cooking is done" senses, but I've realized I don't have a solid, fact-based argument as to why one should heat the oil first. I could probably sputter something about absorbing oil and cooking at a consistent temperature, but it's not exactly a very honed argument.
Is there such a reason?
