My 15 Favorite Kitchen Tricks to Save Time & Money
Inside: Here’s a roundup of my favorite kitchen hacks and tricks. I hope you find these useful too!
When you spend a lot of time in the kitchen prepping food (and cleaning up, then prepping again, sigh), a handful of shortcuts can save you time, mess, and hassle.
Here’s a roundup of 15 of my personal favorites.
1. Chocolate Milk Ice Cubes
Add chocolatey goodness to smoothies, iced coffee, hot coffee, or even chocolate milk. Pour chocolate milk into a food-grade ice cube tray, freeze, then pop out the cubes and place in a freezer bag until you need them.
2. Pre-Chopped Onion
My kids don’t like big chunks of onion in their food, so I use my mini-chopper to create very finely diced onions–almost an onion “paste”. I process several onions at once, then transfer the diced onion to freezer bags, and press flat. When I have a recipe that calls for sautéing chopped onion, I just grab a bag, break off a chunk of frozen onion, and throw it into the pan.
3. Speedy Dough Rise
Having trouble getting dough to rise? Place a glass measuring cup of water in your microwave and heat it on HIGH for several minutes until it boils. Turn off the microwave, place your covered bowl of dough inside the microwave (keep the hot water in too), and shut the door. The warm, steamy air will allow your dough to rise faster.
4. Smoothie-Ready Dates
Dates are an easy way to sweeten a smoothie, but they can be hard to pulverize in a standard blender. I got this trick from a reader: Soak the dates in a dish of milk kept in the refrigerator, which softens them up so they blend quickly and smoothly. Try this in my recipe for a Peanut Butter Breakfast Shake.
5. Quick Kale De-Stem
To quickly pull the leaves away from the tough center stem, hold the kale leaf in one hand and slide your other hand along the stem. Then make this easy Sweet Tart Kale Salad.
6. Sweet-Tart Apple Slices
Slice an apple, pour the juice from one lemon and one orange (or OJ if that’s what you have) over the slices and refrigerate. Pull out slices to pack in lunch boxes (they won’t brown) or eat them straight from the juice. Many people already do this with lemon, but the orange adds sweetness and balances out the sour of the lemon.
7. Bacon Without The Mess
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Line a rimmed baking sheet with foil and place bacon slices on foil, bringing the foil edges up and over the edge of the pan. Bake for about 15 minutes or until desired doneness.
8. Grab & Go Smoothie Packets
To streamline the morning routine, package up ready-to-go smoothie packets for the freezer full of fruit, greens, and extras like flaxseed. In the morning, just pull out a packet, dump it in the blender, and add cold water or milk. This is an especially handy way to preserve greens that are getting past their prime.
9. Lasagna Shortcut
I hate the extra time-sucking step of pre-boiling lasagna noodles. Instead of buying the special no-boil noodles, use regular lasagna noodles and simply skip the step of pre-boiling them. The key is using a healthy amount of sauce (in addition to sauce between the layers, be sure the entire surface is covered as well), and bake the lasagna tightly covered with foil.
11. Sparkling Stainless Steel
Wipe down the doors with a damp cloth first to remove any dirt. Then put a small amount of olive oil on a dry, soft cloth and rub along the grain. This photo was taken the first time I tried it, and the refrigerator hadn’t looked that good since the day it was delivered.
12. Healthy Swap for Egg, Butter, or Oil
You can swap ground flaxseed for an egg or some of the oil or butter in recipes for quick breads, muffins, pancakes, and waffles. Combine 3 tablespoons ground flaxseed with 1 tablespoon of water for each egg. Swap 3 tablespoons of ground flaxseed for one tablespoon of oil or butter.
13. Neater Breading
A pie plate is the perfect size and shape for mixing up some breading, then dredging your meat and poultry in it. It’s big enough to accommodate chicken breasts or pork chops, but unlike a regular plate, it keeps everything contained inside so there are fewer scattered crumbs.
14. Fruit Flies Be Gone!
If you’re plagued by fruit flies every spring, fill a small glass with an inch of cider vinegar, add a drop or two of dishwashing liquid such as (to break the surface tension and make the flies sink faster), and set it on your counter.
15. Kitchen Twine Swap
Making a roast chicken but don’t have kitchen twine to tie the legs? Use unwaxed, unflavored dental floss instead.
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