It’s absolutely overkill for many applications, with its integrated fuse, and that’s why I love it. It is indeed objectively best.

Of course it is. I am aware of the publication The Old Farmer’s Almanac. However, since I can’t check (and really have no interest to) I have to assume whatever page this links to is just some random Facebook account.

It’s mostly to ensure that the potatoes are slowly heated amd therefore evenly cooked.

If we look here, which cites a likely source as being The Farmer’s Almanac, they mention even heating, as well as the cell walls hardening by starting the vegetable in cold water. (I assume the FA is just some Facebook account, but I don’t have an account and have blocked all FB related domains, so I can’t chase the actual source that led to the propagation of this knowledge / image down any further).

However, I found the same information about cell walls in a book about cooking knowledge by Arthur Le Caisne, with the added bit that the hardening of the cell walls happens due to proteins. However, the conclusion there is to not start out carrots in cold water, since they’ll get hard and stay hard after cooking then.

Both agree on the potatoes, though.

Thanks, miss me with that stuff.

I don’t understand how assaulting someone with a mix of chemicals that have long been proven to often carry serious health risks (e. g. https://www.bcpp.org/resource/right-to-know-exposing-toxic-fragrance-chemicals-report/ ) has become socially acceptable when it’s not only a serious health risk, people are allergic to it and it’s the equivalent of holding a Bluetooth speaker to someone’s face and blasting a song at full volume.