How to Obey a Chef and Still Win (by Being Very, Very Salty)

When your culinary instructor issues a rule—“don’t add salt”—and you treat it like a legal brief, you get the kind of petty precision Reddit lives for: malicious compliance at 10 paces and a half‑teaspoon of theatricality.

Consider a tiny model. The chef wants discipline: uniform technique, taste‑training, and control over a brigade. The student wants to hand in something edible and not fail. Constraint: an explicit ban on adding salt. Options: (A) follow the spirit and leave the dish bland, (B) follow the letter and put salt somewhere technically allowed. Predictable equilibrium: the student invents “literalist seasoning” — salted butter, salted water, or a sly pinch at plating — which satisfies the rule and the tongue. As one commenter reasonably asks, “In what universe is it difficult to add salt to mashed potatoes?” (Answer: the one where you’re trying to avoid getting yelled at for seasoning.)

A mock memo, for future reference: “Policy 101 — If instructed ‘no added salt,’ students shall apply sodium via permitted vectors (butter, stock, or passive salting of accompaniments) so long as the phrase ‘added salt’ remains semantically intact.” The chef, per the thread, is probably still salty about it. (Pun intended; a favorable outcome for the student, mildly irritating precedent for authority.)

So what happened? A small, efficient tradeoff: the student preserved their grade while exposing a tension between literal obedience and managerial intent. It’s a neat lesson in incentives — and also a good excuse to eat better mashed potatoes, which, in culinary school or court, is one of life’s few uncontroversial victories.