Published on Bob’s Hide Out
The kitchen is truly the heart of the home. In the kitchen, food is prepared, families gather and bonds are forged. The kitchen can be a true delight for any person, whether they have inborn cooking skills or none at all — or it can be a scary place that reminds people of how much they have left to learn. The thing is, no one is born with a chef’s knife in their hand! Cooking skills are earned and tested through endless research, trial and error… but you don’t have to go through years of culinary school to look like you know what you’re doing. Here are 40 tips and tricks that’ll help you cook delicious food that will impress others, and quickly!
Know How To Properly Clean Your Wooden Cutting Board
No matter how beautiful your wooden cutting board is when you buy it, it will eventually accrue many scratches and stains from everyday use. Some of these butcher blocks can be pretty pricey, so it’s important that you take care of it properly! Of course, never cut raw meat on a wooden board because the porous material can harbor dangerous bacteria. Never use chemicals on your cutting board — instead, sprinkle sea salt over the board’s surface and rub it with a halved lemon to disinfect and clean! Finally, when your board is looking dull and dry, rub it with mineral oil (never vegetable oil). If you do this, you’ll have a long and happy relationship with your cutting board.
Season Your Cast Iron Investment
Sometimes people purchase a cast iron skillet without knowing the time (and money!) investment that is required… but if you treat it right, you’ll have it for life! The best thing about cast iron is that is cooks tastier food with every use! When you first purchase your skillet, as well as periodically throughout your ownership of it, you’ll want to ‘season’ it. That’s right, you can season more than just food! When your cast iron item is completely dry, rub it down with vegetable oil all over its surface. Stick the whole thing in the oven at 375 degrees Fahrenheit, let it cool in the oven, and then you’re ready to go!
Freeze Your Extra Fresh Herbs
Always have access to fresh herbs and save money at the same time! Whether you grow your herbs yourself or buy them at your local grocery store, there’s no point to waste those beautiful, fresh ingredients simply because you have too much. Since fresh herbs are delicate and have a tendency to go bad quickly, use this trick… wash and freeze your excess herbs in an ice cube tray! This way, you’ll be able to pop out a cube whenever you think your meal could use a dash of parsley, but you don’t want to have to dash out to the store.
Ripen Your Avocados With The Microwave
If you buy an avocado once, you’ll quickly learn that there are two states in which grocery store avocados exist: not ripe and overly ripe, but never perfectly ripe! Generally, cooks prefer to buy their avocados when they are hard and shiny green, so that they can ripen in the kitchen and be used when they are perfect. If you don’t have the time to wait (sometimes it can take days), just stick the avocado in the microwave for a couple of seconds. The heat will speed up the softening process, making this green treat far more manageable.
No Onion, No Cry
Are you sad, or is it just a bowl of onions? The fact that onions can make you cry is used as a trope in comics and movies quite often, and not without reason. It’s nearly impossible to cut onions without shedding a tear or two! This is produced by a reaction with the onion’s chemicals in your nose. Since taste and smell are two of the most closely linked senses, chewing a piece of gum should override your teary reaction. Some people believe holding a slice of bread in your mouth will protect your from the vapors, but simply light a candle if nothing else works.
Save Your Teeth — No More Cherry Pits!
There’s nothing better than a sweet, juicy red cherry… but the stony pits can make them too much of a hassle, sometimes. It doesn’t matter if you’re eating the cherries fresh or preparing them to cook with, cherry pits are annoying. The good news is that removing them is a relatively easy task! Push a straw through the cherry, so that the pit comes out on the opposite side. It’s fast, easy, and you won’t chip your sweet tooth!
Deseed Your Squash Or Pumpkin With Ease
If you celebrate Halloween by creating a Jack-o-Lantern, you must already be familiar with the grit, the grim and the effort associated with cleaning it out. It’s sticky and slimy, and if you’re using your hands, it can get under your fingernails and potentially stain your clothes! Though getting dirty is often fun, if it’s not the desired effect you can use an ice cream scoop instead. The scoop is tough enough to scrape the sides of the pumpkin with minimal effort. This works for all squashes, of all sizes!
Want another kitchen hack for pumpkin seeds? Throw them in the oven with a little salt and olive oil, and you’ve got yourself a downright delicious snack.
DIY Powdered And Brown Sugar
No one wants to buy a big bag of powdered sugar only to sprinkle a tablespoon over the top of your dessert! If you are actively combatting waste in your life, then listen up. You don’t have to have several bags of sugar on hand at all times — you can take matters into your own hands with a simple bag of crystallized, white sugar. Pulverize the sugar in a grinder to turn it into a fine powder, or add molasses to create brown sugar! You’ll have whatever kind of sugar you need for any recipe, without spending a bunch of money and then having to store the excess.
When Your Ice Cream Is Just Too Frozen
How many spoons have been lost to ice cream that’s overly frozen? Far too many! Before you chisel away at that frozen block of ice, dip your spoon or scoop in warm/hot water. The metal of the spoon will become hot, slicing through the frozen treat with ease. This works great for a single serving, but if you are planning to carve up more than one dish, an alternative is to put the top back on the tub of ice cream and run the entire thing under warm water, rotating it around so that it receives the heat on all sides. The defrosting effect will be quickened, and you’ll have dessert in no time.
Save Burned Food In A Pinch
If you notice that your food is on the verge of burning, it’s likely too late for taking the pan off heat to have much of an effect. A nice trick to salvage your meal from turning black and crispy is to throw some ice in the pan. The cold properties of the ice immediate cook down the pan and the water adds a little buffer between the food and the pan. Don’t worry, the water will eventually evaporate away! If you’re cooking with oil, beware: oil and water don’t mix well, especially when hot. Avoid this ice trick if you are actively greasing your pan with oil.
Eggs Whites Without The Contraption
There’s a fancy tool out there called an egg white separator that you might want to purchase if you eat egg whites often. but if you only need egg whites on occasion for a recipe or a particularly healthful breakfast, there are easy methods to separate your egg that will keep your kitchen drawers uncluttered. Place a spatula or slotted spoon over a glass and crack the egg on top of it, and the whites will slide into the glass below, leaving you to toss the yolk or save it for later. It’s possible to do this with the egg shells itself once the egg is cracked, but you risk getting a little shell in your whites.
Organize Your Fridge Like A Pro
Everyone dreams of an organized fridge, but very few actually achieve it! A disorganized fridge can be a money drain, because you’ll often inadvertently shove viable food to the back and forget about it — that is, until the next time you clean out your fridge or when it spoils. You can buy fridge organizers, like the ones pictured above, to sort all of your perishable food and keep it easily accessible. Buying more kitchen supplies might seem like an anti-hack, but in this case, you’re better off for it!
Do More Than Just Drink Your Tea!
Tea is so much more than a pick-me-up during the day, or a soothing beverage at night. You can use it in your cuisine too! A few fun ideas are to infused your butter with tea, or bake it into fresh cookies, where it’ll add a subtle earthy, interesting flavor to anything it touches. One of the most popular methods of cooking with tea is to add it to the water that cooks pasta or rice. Jasmine rice with black tea is a particularly delicious addition to any dinner!
Eggshells Don’t Have To Ruin An Omelette
There’s a trick to removing pieces of eggshell, whenever they fall into a dish without invitation. Don’t risk burning yourself by using your finger! Instead, use the bigger pieces of eggshell itself to scoop the smaller piece out of your meal. The two pieces will be attracted to one another, making it easier for you to remove the pesky invader.
Lost Your Lid?
For every size of pot and pan, there’s a lid to match! But — what to do when you can’t find the right sized lid for the pot you’re using? Using a lid that’s too big isn’t just an annoyance, it can be a safety issue because the steam will condense on the lid and drip off the sides, causing steam and potential burns. Use another frying pan, either right-side-up or upside down, on top of the pan you’re using for a makeshift lid. Now, go do the dishes!
Coffee Foam Love, Without The Coffee Shop Price
If you think of the coffee you make at home versus the coffee you buy at a coffee shop, there are more than a few differences. The aroma, the people, the lovely mugs… and the foam! Well, there’s no need to haul yourself to your local coffee haunt in order to soothe your need for sweet, airy foam. To replicate this at home (and impress all of your friends), pump milk or cream through a french press or whisk it by hand in order to produce the desired foam. The best part is, you get to decide how much foam is in your cup!
Pizza Cutter vs A Knife
A pizza cutter is a kitchen utensil that people often buy automatically and always have in their drawers. However, the simple pizza cutter is a largely underutilized tool! It has many different purposes, over and beyond cutting pizza into slices. If chopping with a knife isn’t for you, use your pizza cutter to easily roll across anything you might need to cut — quesadillas, lettuce, herbs, you name it! It takes the danger out of using a knife, if you keep your fingers out of the way, and requires less technique.
Wood + Water = No More Worries!
Have you ever heard of the wooden spoon trick? If not, your life is about to change! Water boiling out of the pot is one of the earliest issues that a novice chef might encounter, and it can happen in the blink of an eye. If you place a wooden spoon over the mouth of the pot, like the picture shows, the water won’t boil over. It’s like magic! Think — no more burned stovetop and concerning sizzling noises when you run to the bathroom for a mere second!
Expensive Wine, On A Budget
This is actually two tips in one! With any wine, no matter the price, you should take the time to aerate it with oxygen and let it rest — this is especially important with expensive wines, as you want the vintage to taste its best. There are many tools out there to aerate or decant your wine, but for those cheaper bottles that need an instant boost, pour it into your blender and give it a spin for a couple of seconds. The difference, as you will see, is immediate.
Sharpen Your Knives With Ceramic
A knife sharpener is a useful tool because a sharp blade is sometimes the difference between a joyful cooking experience and a frustrating one. However, you don’t need a dedicated sharpener to complete this task! A ceramic bowl or mug works just fine. Simply turn it upside down so that the raw ceramic bottom edge is shown, and drag the side of the blade along the length of it several times. Then, flip the knife and do the other side — it’ll be like brand new! However, this may leave marks on your ceramic, but since it’s on the bottom, it’s not very noticeable.
Lemon Prevents Fruit Turning Brown
If you pack your own lunches, then you know: cut fruit doesn’t stay fresh for long. It’s such a bummer to work long hours, only to open your lunch to mushy and stale fruit! Prevent any more food-related disappointment with fresh lemon. Squirt lemon over your peeled or cut fruit, such as apples, and they’ll stay as fresh all day as they were when you first cut them! Plus, you’ll get the addition of the lemon’s bright, citrusy flavor. That’s a win-win if I’ve ever heard one!
Don’t Use Your Butter As A Block
Stick butter is convenient for measuring and baking, but when it comes to spreading it on bread or other foods, it leaves a lot to be desired. From tearing your bread to melting unevenly, the frustrations can be endless. The solution to this is simple — grate or peel your butter! It adds an extra step to the process, but not a big one. Use these smaller pieces of butter in whatever way you want, sans any butter-related fury!
Cool Down Your Wine Without Waiting
The next time you have a little extra wine in your bottle, but you don’t want to finish it that night or any time soon, consider freezing it! You can pour the excess wine in an ice cube tray and stash it in the freezer so that the next time you need a glass, you can pop a few wine cubes in there and cool down your treat without watering it down with ice cubes. Plus, you won’t have a hangover from the night before!
Never Peel Potatoes Again
There’s a reason that peeling potatoes is the job that, in the movies, is always given to servant! It’s a job that no one willingly wants to do — but if you don’t have a servant to take this job off your hands, don’t fret. Boil the potatoes as you normally would, with the skins still on. Prepare a large bowl with cold water and ice, leaving enough room for the additional volume of the potatoes. When they are finished cooking, plunge the potatoes directly from the hot water into the cold water, give it a little scrub with your hands and the skins should fall right off!
Save Your Clothes From Oil Stains
Aprons exist for a reason… but they don’t always match the aesthetic you’re going for! Since oil cracks and pops with heat and moisture, cooking runs a real risk of ruining your clothes with oil stains. If you get oil on your clothes and don’t clean it immediately, it can become permanent, so act fast! The good news is that you can solve this problem with things you already have in your kitchen. First, dab the oil stain with a paper towel to take care of any excess oil. Then, pour baking soda on the stain and rub it in. The powder will absorb the oil, so you can throw it in the washing machine and have a like-new shirt!
Make Tomatoes Last Twice As Long
Canned tomatoes just don’t have the same taste that fresh tomatoes do — but if you’re like us, you have a tendency to buy fresh tomatoes in bulk and incidentally let the extras go to waste! There’s a few tricks you can use to make tomatoes last longer: first, store them on the counter rather than the fridge (the cold tends to ruin a tomato’s texture, too) and keep them upside down, which prevents moisture from leaving the tomato and air from entering the tomato. Now you’ll have tasty, fresh tomatoes ready for whenever you have the need!
Paper Bags Make Fruit Ripen Faster
It all depends on the day the produce truck arrives at the store, but if you happen to do your grocery shopping on the same day that it arrives, you might be buying some unripe fruit! No one wants to eat a green banana, or even worse, wait for it to ripen! To make any fruit ripen faster, including bananas, use a paper bag. By putting the fruit in a paper bag, you are trapping the gasses that a fruit normally released into the air, causing it to ripen faster. Alternatively, there are “green bags” that you can buy which keep these gasses away from the fruit, preventing them from ripen too fast. It’s your choice!
Make Your Own Low-Fat Broth
If you’re making your own broth from meat or bones at home, congratulations! That’s an advance cooking maneuver that you should be proud of. If you want to one-up yourself by making your homemade broth low-fat, don’t worry, it’s easy. Use an ice cube to condense all of the fat that’s floating near the top, then use a spoon (or skimmer) to remove it and dispose of it properly. It’s better than letting it go to your arteries — but some might argue a better hack would be just to buy low-fat broth at the store!
Need To Grate Soft Cheese?
Soft cheese, hard cheese, sweet cheese, savory cheese — we just can’t get enough! However, some cheeses are easier to handle than others. Besides yielding too easily to a knife when cut, soft cheese might even melt in your hand! To fix this (and you might know where we’re going with this…) stick it in the freezer. The cheese will solidify and become easier for you to cook with. The freezer, ice cubes and cold elements are all very useful tools when it comes to cooking in the kitchen.
Homemade Buttermilk
Recipes that call for buttermilk can create many problems. If you don’t live in a city with many grocery store options, it might be hard to find — and even if you do find it, who needs an entire quart of sour milk? Don’t even worry about it, because buttermilk is easy to make at home. Measure out the amount of milk you need into a bowl, then squeeze lemon into it and mix away! The acid from the lemon will turn your regular milk into the buttermilk you need for baking or cooking.
Stubborn Jars, Beware!
If your cooking experience has ever been stymied by a jar that you can’t open, you know how important it is to have tips and tricks for this situation. If you can’t retrieve the ingredient, then it has the potential to ruin a recipe! The issue generally comes from one of two issues (and no, your strength isn’t a factor): your grip, and the suction inside the jar. To improve your grip, put a rubber band around the edge of the cap to create some traction. To release some of the suction inside the jar, you can wedge a spoon or dull butter knife under the edge of the lid and use it as a lever. You might even hear a pop, which means that your jar will now be significantly easier for you to open.
Non-Stick Measuring Cups
Not everything that you have to measure out will be easy like flour or sugar. Measuring cups or tea/tablespoons of sticky substances, such as honey or syrup, can become a messy situation — and you might add less to your recipe than you intended, due to it sticking to the inside of the measuring cup. Take an extra 10 seconds to grease the cup or spoon with butter/oil and your life will be much easier.
Perfect Pancakes Via Squeeze Bottle
Let’s face it: whoever made the decision that pancake batter was going to be doled out using a ladle was not necessarily a problem solver. It’s easy to spill, drips everywhere, and creates pancakes in some truly odd shapes! There’s a much better way to do this, and it involves squeeze bottles. Pour the batter into the bottle for no mess pancakes, perfectly round every time! You can even make some pretty pancake art with this tool. No need to buy a new one — a clean ketchup bottle works just fine.
No More Kernels In Your Popcorn
Making popcorn used to be such a gamble. Would you wind up with a bag full of half-popped kernels, a black burnt mess, or perfect fluffy popcorn? Reduce the risk of either less-tasteful outcome with this: prepare your popcorn with individual kernels (not in a bag). To ensure that they all pop fully, wash the kernels off with water and then douse them in oil. Not only will all of them pop, but they will light and deliciously buttered!
Steam Basket For Perfect Eggs
If you’re a lover of hardboiled eggs, but hate the effort that’s required to peel them, then listen up. Boiling your eggs is not the only way to cook them — try steaming instead! You’ll have to buy a steam basket, but you’ll get perfectly reelable eggs as a result. Additionally, you can use this basket for veggies and meats, or anything else you’d like to steam.
Organize Your Lids To Find Them Faster
Typically, the lids to various pots and pans are thrown haphazardly in a random kitchen drawer. After all, it doesn’t make storage sense to keep it with top of it’s matching pot… and is there even a way to organize these oddly shaped things, anyways? The answer is yes! There are stand-up organizers available online, like the one pictured, that can be hidden in a cabinet. To save even more space, look for one that can hang over a cabinet door.
Meatloaf That Doesn’t Load Around
Everyone loves meatloaf, but not everyone loves the amount of time that’s required to bake one. As you know, the larger the food item, the longer it takes heat to penetrate to the center — so the hack to this issue is to cook smaller meatloaves! Instead of making one loaf, use a muffin tin to make mini-meatloaves. You’ll be impressed with how fast they cook, and as an added bonus, it helps with portion control!
Serrated Knives Make Quick Work Of Produce
There’s no reason for serrated knives to be confined to breads and meats, especially when they are so useful where fruit and vegetables are concerned! There’s nothing like a sharp chef or paring knife, but if you don’t have one available, don’t shy away from the serrated option. It might not be the prettiest result, but it sure tastes the same! This works especially well on slippery or crushable items, such as tomatoes.
Cook The Perfect Fillet Of Fish
Fried fish is a wonderfully delicious dish, but preparing it yourself can sometimes result in the fillet sticking to the bottom of the pan and burning, ruining any crispy crunch that you’ve worked so diligently to procure — or, on the opposite end of things, it can become a greasy mess! For fish that is cooked perfect, try lining the bottom of your pan or baking dish with aluminum foil. Season the fish and bake in the oven to help it retain its moisture without the use of copious amounts of butter.
Wine Opener In A Pinch
We’ve all been in a situation where we needed to open a bottle of wine, but lacked the wine opener! There are many dangerous ways to complete this mission, but for a safer option, grab a lighter and hold the flame to the neck of the bottle (close to the bottom of the cork). This creates air pressure that will push the cork right out! This can happen fast, so think like champagne, and aim away it away from other people.
