Make your life in the kitchen easier with these clever hacks that will show you faster, easier ways to cook and prepare ingredients.
1. Make your own vinaigrette.
Do this instead of buying it bottled — it’s healthier AND tastier (and very easy to make!)
2. Missing an ingredient? Use these substitutions.
3. A simple trick to finding out how well your meat is done.
If you need help on how to cook it right too, check this out.
4. How to spice things up like a pro.
5. Know the right seasonal fruit and veg to use.
6. Confused about Metric conversions? Use this.
7. The different stages of boiling eggs.
8. Use these volumetric conversions and never bother with the maths again.
9. For cooking with and maintaining a cast iron skillet.
Cast iron skillets are great because they stay very hot and cook your food evenly. Learn everything you need to know about using a cast iron skillet here.
10. Are you using your kitchen appliance right? Use this to check.
11. How to marinate meat to make it tender and delicious.
12. Use the right oil with this handy guide.
13. If you ever cook something too spicy, keep calm, and use the guide below.
14. Become an expert in meat and make your butcher proud.
This is particularly useful as your trips to the butcher will be pretty straightforward since you’ll know exactly what you need.
15. Become a blademaster… for culinary purposes.
16. Know when to use the right onion.
Onions are not all made equal. The above graphic will show you which onions work best for the different dish types.
17. Going vegan? This will help.
You can substitute eggs for a wide variety of foods. You just have to experiement and see what works best. Use this for more.
18. Hosting a party? This will help you get the quantities right.
19. How to cook your grains perfectly.
20. How to make a sourdough starter.
21. Your very own veggie cooking cheat sheet.
22. Learn how to fillet your own fish.
23. Love pasta? Then you’re going to love this.
Learn how to make cookies the way you’ve always wanted to make them.
25. How to grill anything.
26. Tip for checking avocado ripeness
Check how ripe an avocado is by popping off the stem and inspect the color underneath. If it’s yellow or green, you’re good to go. If it’s brown, the avocado is too ripe. (If it doesn’t come off easily, it’s not ripe enough.)
27. Use a pizza cutter to chop herbs quicker.
28. How to make crystal-clear ice cubes.
Boil the water, let it cool. Repeat. Double boiling eliminates dissolved air and minerals in the water, which are responsible for making ice look cloudy. Once you get rid of those through double boiling, you’ve got clear ice!
29. Cut perfect potato wedges using an apple cutter.
Expedite your potato-wedge-cutting by assigning an apple cutter to do the job. Suits the task perfectly.
30. Crack eggs on a flat surface for less mess.
Cracking eggs on a flat surface instead of on the edge of a bowl will make for a cleaner break.
31. Broken eggshell separation trick.
Fish out broken eggshells out of egg whites by wetting your fingers first. You’ll be able to pick them out with ease.
32. Egg doneness timings.
Now you know exactly how long to boil your eggs to get that soft goodness.
33. Boiling pot wooden spoon trick.
If you have goldfish memory and the water keeps boiling over while you’re cooking pasta, simply lay a wooden spoon on the pot.
34. Egg peeling trick.
Another clever trick is putting ½ teaspoon of baking soda into the boiling water. The finished egg will peel perfectly.
35. How to peel mangoes like a pro.
36. Strawberry stem separation hack.
The cleanest, most elegant way to shuck a strawberry requires the use of a straw.
37. Make your bananas last longer.
If you wrap the tops of bananas in cling wrap, they will last three to five days longer.
38. Clever way to reduce coffee bitterness.
As weird as it sounds, sprinkling a little salt and/or cinnamon into your ground coffee before brewing will improve your coffee experience. Salt helps cut the bitter flavor of the coffee, and adding cinnamon will change your life completely.
39. Easiest way to remove avocado pit.
The easiest way to get that stubborn pit out when preparing an avocado is super simple – just whack it with a knife.
40. Cutting an avocado perfectly.
And after that’s done, go ahead and slice it up in the shell, then use a spoon to scoop out your perfectly cut pieces.
41. Easy way to cut cherry tomatoes and grapes.
Cut cherry tomatoes and grapes in half by gently pressing them between two plates and slicing between the plates.
42. Simple way to check egg freshness.
To check how fresh an egg is, drop it in some water. The egg on the left is very fresh, the one in the middle is about a week old, and the one on the right is nearly three weeks old.