Are you a home chef? Do you look forward to the time you spend in the kitchen, whipping up your newest concoction? Whether youre a veteran or a novice, whether youre the next at-home Rachel Ray or you cant tell a teaspoon from a tablespoon, everyone can use some handy tricks to make cooking easier.
Have you ever wondered why a recipe that says it takes an hour to make online ends up taking you an hour and a half in your own kitchen? Oftentimes its because the person who wrote that recipe knew some handy tips and tricks that you didnt. If you are ready to take your cooking skills to the next level, read on. We will teach you 45 amazingly simple and genius kitchen hacks that will transform the way you cook forever!
Make a perfect egg burger.
If you enjoy a burger with an egg on top, the only thing better is a burger with an egg inside. It keeps everything neat and takes time and hassle out of your cooking. How do you do it? Get your burger patty ready, and then set a glass on top of it, face-down. Use the glass to stamp a hole out of the middle of the patty. Put that meat aside. Now, put the burger patty with the hole in it in your frying pan. Start cooking the burger, and then pour an egg into the middle. Watch in wonder as both the burger and egg cook simultaneously, with the egg perfectly contained in the center. You can use the leftover bits of meat from the centers of your patties to make another burger. Scoop your egg-burger off the frying pan, top it with whatever you want, and serve.
Squeeze lemon juice with tongs.
When you are trying to make lemonade, what do you do if you dont have a lemon juicer? Or what if you just dont feel like cleaning the extra dishes? Heres one easy alternative: use tongs! With a pair of tongs, you can easily squeeze all the juice out of your lemons, straight into the pitcher. It doesnt get simpler or faster than that, and theres less cleanup involved.
Wolfram Alpha is really useful for cooking.
Wolfram Alpha automatically makes most people think of highly technical applications, but it turns out its more than a little handy in the kitchen. Looking for a quick way to compute how many calories are in a recipe? Just enter in the ingredients in this format:
(Ingredient 1) (Amount) + (Ingredient 2) (Amount) + ….. (Ingredient X) (Amount) nutrition
… and Wolfram Alpha will give you a nice little nutritional label just like you would find at the store, complete with calories, fats, cholesterol, protein, vitamins, and everything else. It will also give you handy little options you can quickly and easily adjust, like whether something is cooked or not or cooked a certain way. There are also other apps like MyFitnessPal or Lose It! which provide similar information.
Turn any cake mix into cookie dough.
Love a particular cake mix but wish you could enjoy cookies that taste about the same? Its actually incredibly easy to turn cake mix into cookie dough; it is just a difference in consistency. Most of the ingredients that go into cake mix and cookie dough are about the same. It turns out all you have to do is add 2 eggs and half a cup of oil. Instant cookie dough!
Cook an egg in a mug.
You get up in the morning for work and look at the clock and realize youve woken up fifteen minutes late. You only have a few minutes to get out the door and on the bus. But you really, really feel like an egg! You dont have time to stand over the stovetop cooking though, and you really dont have time to deal with the dishes afterwards. What do you do?
Put the egg in a mug. Well be honestthis doesnt make the most amazingly delicious eggs in the world (microwaves can be finicky and it can be tough to get the timing exactly right), but in a pinch its still pretty satisfying. You can make scrambled eggs, poached eggs, and even omelettes in a mug!
For a scrambled egg, coat the inside of an 8 ounce mug with cooking spray. Crack two eggs inside, add in salt and pepper to taste, and stir it up with a fork. Put it in the microwave for 45 seconds, flip over the contents, and microwave for another 45 seconds. Take it out and itll be done.
Want to poach an egg in the microwave? Pour half a cup of water into your mug and crack a single egg. Push it under the water and cover the mug with a saucer. Microwave for about a minute on high. Your egg should be done.
You can make omelettes much the same way you make a basic scrambled egg in a cup. Just add whatever you want and microwave for about 75 seconds. How awesome is that? Instant eggs with no mess, no dishes, and no time wasted! Perfect for those rushed mornings when you need some protein to get you on your way. Also great for the office or the dorm room when you dont have a stove handy at all.
Make your bad wines taste good.
Ever end up with a bottle of wine that is just meh, but you dont want to waste it? There are a number of options for improving the taste (assuming you dont just use it to cook, which is a perfectly good option!). You can try chilling the bottle, or you can mix it with fruits and herbs to get sangria (people have been using that trick for centuries). If its a red wine, you can try eating mushrooms. For scientifically inexplicable reasons, this seems to improve the flavor. Spicy food is also great for suppressing unpleasant flavors in wines.
One more amazing trick that works for wines with a sulfury odor or taste is to drop a penny inside. Those smells and tastes really are coming from sulfur compounds, and the copper from the penny can neutralize them. This makes the bad taste and smell go away. Isnt chemistry cool?
Mellow out your garlic and onions.
The sharp bite of garlic and onions is one thing that makes them delicious, and allows them to take so many bland recipes and give them a little something extra. There is such a thing as too much of a kick, though, and if your onions and garlic are too sharp, all they will do is burn your esophagus all the way down.
If your alliums are a little too sharp for your taste, all hope is not lost! To mellow garlic, either boil it in milk or water for about 5 minutes, or throw it in the microwave for about 2 minutes. Mellowing onions is a similar process. Just let them soak in water for about 10 minutes. Wish your onions were sweeter? Try sprinkling them with salt. This will also soften them up. Dipping them in vinegar is another option. Now you dont have to put up with sharp alliums and lament that you didnt get sweet onions. You can make your onions and garlic taste exactly the way you want them to!
Pit cherries the easy way.
Cherries are delicious, but who enjoys spitting out pits? Cherry pits are a pain, and if you try to extract them before you eat the cherry, what you usually end up with is a mess of cherry juice running down your hands. Cherry juice tends to stain something fierce too, so thats bad news if you are wearing light-colored clothing.
Heres a genius way to save yourself a lot of hassle! Get a soda bottle or a beer bottle, and set a cherry on top of it (with the bottle open). Grab a chopstick, and simply poke down through the top of the cherry and into the bottle. The chopstick will push the pit right out through the bottom of the cherry, and it will pop into the bottle! You can pit a ton of cherries this way really fast, and the bottle conveniently catches all the pits so you can dispose of them all at once with no mess.
Peel eggs effortlessly.
Hard boiled eggs are delicious, but how often do you find yourself avoiding making them simply because it is such a royal hassle to get the shells off? It turns out there are a number of easy ways to get eggshells off without all that trouble. Here are a few awesome egg-shelling techniques!
Roll the egg on the counter. Simply crack the shell, roll it around on the counter so that it forms lots of small cracks, submerge it in cold water, and pull off the shell.
Use a spoon. Crack the shell enough so that you can insert a spoon under it, then rotate the egg. The shell should come right off.
Shake your eggs. Remember that cool hack we taught you earlier for shelling a bunch of garlic cloves simultaneously? You can do it with eggs too, as demonstrated on a Japanese variety show. Just put them all in a plastic container with some water, cover it, and shake it vigorously. The eggshells should fall off.
Blow off the eggshells. This method demonstrated by Tim Ferriss is pretty amazing! Simply crack the top and bottom ends of an egg shell so that there is a hole on each end, and then blow through one of the holes. Be ready to catch the egg as the pressure forces it through the other end!
Flip your knife over to butter bread with ease.
This one is really earth-shaking if you havent figured it out! How many times have you found yourself trying to butter a piece of bread with a serrated knife that wasnt actually designed for use as a butter knife? Its really hard to spread butter with these knives because they are just too sharp, and they tend to cut the bread instead of spreading the butter.
What do you have to do to turn any knife into a butter knife? Just flip the blade over in your hand! That way when you butter, the dull side of the knife presses against the bread instead of the sharp serrated edge. Now you dont need to go hunting around in your drawer for the butter knife! You can use the first knife you find in your hand.
Another way to soften butter.
We already talked about heating up a cup and placing it over hard butter to soften it. Heres another cool trick that works just as well. Have three toothpicks handy? Spear your hard piece of butter to create a tripod that the butter can stand on (a tripod is a stable structure, which is why you are using three toothpicks). Put the tripod in your microwave with the butter on it on a plate. Turn on the microwave and watch the butter. When it gets sufficiently soft, the tripod will collapsebefore the butter starts to melt. Pull it out of the microwave, cause its done!
Idea Source Spalenkaletters
Is that baking soda or baking powder still good to use? Find out fast.
Getting ready to bake? Using old baking soda or baking powder that is no longer effective is a good way to ruin your recipe and waste a lot of time and ingredients. You dont have to guess though! You can easily test the effectiveness of your baking powder or soda before you start cooking.
To test baking powder, just mix a teaspoon into half a cup of hot water. Does it bubble? Awesome, your baking powder is good to use! If not, replace it before you get started. And what about baking soda? Mix a quarter of a teaspoon into 2 teaspoons of vinegar. Once again, you should immediately see bubbling. If you dont, the baking soda is no longer effective. Baking soda is rarely labeled with an expiration date, so this is super helpful to know!
