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!
Keep large hamburger patties from getting too thick.
Love a large burger? Ever wonder why the half-pounder you get at your favorite restaurant is nice and thin, but whenever you try making yours at home, it comes out super thick? Thick hamburgers are a pain for a couple of reasons. Firstly, they take forever to cook. Secondly, they are harder to eat. Turns out there is a simple one-step fix to both problems. Just poke a small hole through the center of your hamburger patties before you cook them. The burgers will cook faster, and you can also be assured they will cook clean through. The hole closes up during the cooking process and you cant even see it at the end. Your burgers dont get too thick, and theyre easier to eat.
DIY Instructions and Project Credit Instructables
Try a hard-boiled scrambled egg.
Looking for a new way to try an egg? Maybe youre one of those people who dont like eating the yolks on their own, but you can eat them if theyre fully integrated (like with a scrambled egg), and you wish you had a way to enjoy a hard-boiled egg. There is a way to do it.
Get a long-sleeved shirt. Insert a raw egg in its shell into one of the sleeves. Tie off the shirt sleeve at both ends directly on either side of the egg, holding it in place. Now, wind the shirt sleeve around, rotating the egg rapidly. This will thoroughly mix the egg yolk with the whites so that both are seamlessly integrated. Remove the egg from the sleeve after you have done this about a dozen times, and hard boil it. The result will be a hard-boiled egg with the yolk completely integrated into the white.
DIY Instructions and Project Credit Diyncrafts
Freeze leftover vegetable juice and broth.
One thing that professional restaurant workers learn quickly on the job is the importance of not wasting food. How many times do you dice up tomatoes and pour the excess juice down the drain? Heres a handy trickfreeze it instead. Get an ice cube tray and pour in excess juice from fruits and vegetables. You can also freeze leftover broth this way instead of letting it go to waste. When you need some extra fruit or vegetable juice or broth for a soup or stew, you will have it handy! Never forget that there is almost nothing that you cant freeze. Have leftover vegetable bits? Even parts like onion stem ends and carrot tops are useful. They are great for flavoring soups.
Shop at restaurant supply stores.
If you are cooking at home you may think that restaurants supply stores are just for professional chefs, but there is nothing stopping you from buying their wares. They dont just sell highly specialized cooking suppliesthey sell lots of ordinary things too like pots, pans, tongs, utensils, and more. You will be surprised how much money you can save shopping from these stores, and you will get much higher quality stuff for your kitchen!
Easy pancake art.
Want to know how to make the coolest-ever birthday breakfast for your kids? Effortless pancake art. You know those dispenser tubes for cake icing? Keep one of those and clean it out. A dispensing bottle for ketchup or something else would work too. You just want something that lets you control the release of the pancake batter. Fill it up with the batter and drizzle it onto the pan in the shape you are going for. Its as easy as icing a cake. The result? Instant pancake art that looks totally professional! Didnt use all your pancake mix? Safe the leftovers in the bottle; just put it in the fridge, and use it tomorrow. What a great way to save time and enjoy a delicious, creative breakfast twice.
Make incredible cheese bread.
Cheese bread is awesome, but dont you hate how the cheese is usually just drizzled on top, and when you get past that part, theres no cheese, just bread? If so, youll love this super simple recipe that takes minutes to complete and evenly distributes that gooey cheesy goodness!
Get a loaf of bread and a knife. Make a series of long parallel cuts that go almost clean through, but not quite. You want your bread to stay in a loaf. Next, make a lot of perpendicular cuts to those so you have a cross-hatch pattern. Again, cut deep, but not to the bottom. Now you can grab some slices of cheese and stuff them through the cuts, filling up the crosshatch. Bake or microwave, and the cheese will melt. Top it off with whatever you want, and enjoy!
How to tell if an avocado is too ripe.
While you are shopping for avocados, how do you know whether an avocado is too ripe or just right? If you sneakily pop off the stem, you can look at the color underneath. An avocado that is too ripe will be brown under the stem, and will be useless to just about everyone. An avocado that is just right will be green underneath the stem. Be sure you are looking at relatively dark avocados to begin with (the lighter green ones are under-ripe). This can help prevent you from wasting money at the grocery store.
Idea Source Nwedible
Naturally flavored water
Dont like the taste of pure water? No need to feel ashameda lot of people dont. You shouldnt let that stop you from staying hydrated, though, especially during the hot summer months. That doesnt mean you have to go out and buy flavored water drinks from the store that are loaded with sugar and weird additives youve never heard of! There is a healthier, more delicious way to enjoy water!
You can make flavored water really easily! Just get your favorite fresh fruit and put it in a jar with ice and water. The fruit flavor will diffuse into the water. You can also stir in herbs for extra flavor. Its like fruit juice, but less expensive, with all the hydrating goodness of water and less sugar. You can eat the fruit when youre done too. Have fun coming up with recipes for flavored waterits like mixing sangria (minus the alcohol of course). There are endless flavor possibilities.
DIY Instructions and Project Credit Theyummylife
Cook a pancake in a rice cooker.
Love pancakes but hate standing over the stove minding them? Pancakes are delicious, but they are time consuming to prepare the traditional way. If you have a rice cooker though, you can skip all that fussing over the stove. Yepa rice cooker is a multipurpose device. You can pour pancake batter inside and watch in amazement as one giant pancake rises inside.
Use power tools in the kitchen!
If you like to Do It Yourself in the garage as well as the kitchen, youre going to love this one. Dutch Chef Jasper van Ramshorst went viral online when he needed to peel dozens of apples in under a minute to accommodate an epic order of tarte tatin. Turns out his solution was even more epic. He grabbed a peel and a power drill and went at it. And yesits every bit as easy as he made it look!
Check if eggs are fresh or rotten.
There are times you dont feel like you can rely on the use by date for eggs. If you are in doubt, one easy way to check whether an egg is fresh or not is to put it in a large bowl of water. If it sinks and rests on its side at the bottom of the bowl, you can rest assured the egg is fresh and safe to eat. If it is on the bottom but upright, it is on its last legs. Eat it ASAP, and consider hard boiling it just to be on the safe side. If it floats, get rid of it, its done.
