Cooking tips/tricks you have discovered on your own

Last night I made some baked fish fillets with herbs/olive oil/white wine, and some sauteed collard greens (which I usually steam first to soften) with garlic, and somehow I had multiple breakthroughs --

1) Make a kind of paste out of the fresh herbs, olive oil, salt, pepper and some of the white wine and spread it over the fish. This has the dual benefit of infusing everything with flavor and protecting the herbs from browning or drying out, plus it makes it easier to make sure the fish gets the ingredients evenly.

2) After briefly sauteeing the garlic, push it all to one side of the pan and put the greens in the other side, then immediately "fold" the garlic over and into the greens, and turn enough that no garlic is sitting on the bottom -- this solved a problem I had often had with garlic burning on the bottom of the pan while I was adding ingredients for sauteeing. (assume it would work with other sauteeing as well).

Rinsing basmati rice before cooking it (so that it will be fluffy and not sticky) is completely unnecessary.

Meaning it's ineffectual?

In my experience, it's unnecessary. I had always rinsed the hell out of it because a couple of articles recommended it before the first time I made it, and the rice always came out fluffy, so I thought it was because I was careful about rinsing it. Last year, I made a batch specifically to turn it into rice pudding, and I left it unrinsed because I wanted all the starch for creaminess. It turned out just as fluffy. I've done it unrinsed every time since then, and it always comes out fluffy and perfect.

4) Washing greens in salted water makes more dirt release than washing them in unsalted water.

Oh, that's pretty good. I usually fill a large bowl with water, submerge greens, remove, dump water, repeat until there isn't sand in the bottom. Effective but a pain and uses a lot of water.