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22 Pretty Simple Yet Game-Changing Kitchen ‘Hacks’, As Shared By Chefs In This Online Community
Article created by: Saulė Tolstych
If you believe the famous words of Hippocrates, "we are what we eat" (and we have absolutely no reason not to believe the founder of ancient medicine), then culinary lifehacks are the most important for humanity, because they directly affect us.
Many thousands of years ago, a person first tried the heat treatment of food, and since then the entire history of cooking has been nothing more than a chain of hacks and ideas of varying degrees of usefulness and sophistication. Today, handwritten collections of recipes are a thing of the past, but it is small kitchen tips that, by and large, give cooking a unique personality. So here's another collection of such tips from netizens around the world.
More info: Reddit
- Read More: 30 Pretty Simple Yet Game-Changing Kitchen ‘Hacks’, As Shared By Chefs In This Online Community
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#1
Wash dishes as you go. Your dish needs to sautee for 5 minutes? That's time to wash a few dishes, throw away trash, or put away ingredients. Nobody wants to clean the kitchen after eating a filling meal, so just do it as you cook.
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#2
When I'm doing prep I like to have a 'trash bowl' in easy reach on the counter. For peel, skin, bones etc.
Saves constantly shuttling to the bin
#3
A falling knife has no handle. Don't try to catch it - just get out of the way.
#5
My uncle, who is a chef, once told me that if you keep having to add salt, try adding some citric acid instead. Honestly, it changed my life.
#7
Learned this from Gordon Ramsay. Always keep a towel hanging out of your pocket. Getting dirty is inevitable, so having quick access is really useful.
#8
Crack your eggs on a flat surface instead of a rim of a pan or bowl. 99% of the time, you just get two clean halves instead of tiny chipped eggshells. Also, just use the eggshell to fish any shell bits out if you mess up.
#10
Here's one of my favorite tips I learned.
Learn to cook one meal great, so that you can do it without looking at a recipe and can pull it off flawlessly every time.
That's your go to meal.
Mine is pan seared salmon home made rice pilaf and a baby spinach salad with just olive oil, salt, pepper, fresh lemon juice and feta cheese mixed in.
If you're a single guy and can cook a girl dinner, you're light years ahead of most guys since many can't even boil water now a days.
#13
There is a concept called Mise en Place. Essentially it means get everything ready before you start. Instead of scrambling to measure out four different seasonings or get olive oil out of your pantry while something is burning on the stove, get everything out and measured beforehand.
Also, get a kitchen scale and start following baking recipes that are written by weight. A recipe with weights usually mean its from a serious baker and not some mommy/daddy blogger. Weights are better because my cup of flour will be different than yours but 100 g is always 100 g
Edit: by “my cup being different from your cup” I am not referring to the physical cup. I am referring to the resulting quantity of the ingredient. Is it packed tightly or loosely? Is it heaping slightly or is it under filled. Scoop a cup of sugar and tap it a few times. It’ll settle a little bit and you’ll be able to fit more in the cup.
#16
Cook with someone you love. I've spent some of the best afternoons of my life in the kitchen with my wife.
#18
I lived with a top tier chef for about a year. The single most important thing I learned from him was to keep asking yourself *why*. Why have you got the heat that level? Why are you putting in that particular spice at this stage? Why are you adding these things together? What is actually going to happen? There were a lot of times when he'd walk into the kitchen and I'd be doing something simple and he'd just say "why are you cutting the vegetables like that?" or "why are you adding the feta to the salad now, what is that going to do to the vegetables?"
It sounds simple, but all I was doing beforehand was going by an "I reckon these things would taste good" kind of angle without critically thinking about the logic of each action. With the vegetable example, I hadn't really thought about the difference in how quickly garlic would cook if I was adding it as a mince paste vs if I was adding it in chunks - too often I'd burn the garlic without even knowing it. I hadn't thought about how feta is really salty and salt draws out moisture almost instantly and can cause lettuce to wilt and go soggy. That kind of thing really really matters.
So basically the tip I learned was to keep questioning everything you're doing and break it down logically, like you would if you were building a shelf.
#19
when making ribs make sure that the skin on the back has been REMOVED.
Toast your burger buns
heat up syrup in the microwave
let your meat settle for a little bit before eating it, the juices come back together.
#21
Lots of good tips in the comments, as usual with this question.
I'll add this: place a damp towel between your cutting board and counter top to prevent the board from slipping. If you'd prefer not to use anything with water, get some of that non-slip shelf liner stuff and cut it to size.
#22
Dry your meat.
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