Why cook hard if you can cook smart, ya know?
There is absolutely no reason to toil over pots and pans all because you crave mac and cheese. Yes, mac and cheese can also be hard to pull off for some.
But hey, thanks to the internet, you don’t have to worry about that any more because folks in this and this Reddit thread have it all figured out, so open up your mind and scroll down!
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Vanilla and garlic are measured with your heart, not a spoon
Also onions. And mushrooms. And pepper. Vinegar. Cooking wine/ sherry. Sesame oil. Sesame seeds. Most herbs (love it? Lay it on. Hate it? Sub it or skip it, the dish won't die unless it's something specific like 'Specifically made dish with a specific amount of specifically parsely - fresh, not dried!').
If you can't put your finger on what's missing from a dish no matter how many seasonings you add, it's probably acid. Add the tiniest splash of apple cider vinegar or lemon juice. You will not regret it!
Also, salt is the most important thing for seasoning food. Salt alone is better than 100 spices and no salt.
Amen to this. I was told years ago to stop using salt and to use herbs and spices instead. I have gone back to using salt - my life is too short to put up with unseasoned, unsalted food. I want to enjoy what I eat!
If a meat recipe calls for water don't use water, use the same amount of unsalted stock of the meat you're cooking. Chicken Curry, use chicken stock, Beef stew, beef stock. Adds a lot more flavour to these dishes
Getting and using a stick blender. I thought they were gimmicks until I got one (nearly 20 years ago). I've reached for that thing at least 20 times for every time I even thought about getting the full-sized blender out.
I love mine! I use it all of the time. It's one of my best investments!
Butter. A lot of butter. It's the difference between the food you have at home, and the same dish you have at the restaurant that magically tastes way better. I've seen whole sticks of butter disappear into sauces at restaurants.
I think it was Julia Child who said that when a French chef says 1 tbsp of butter in a recipe, they really mean 2 or 3. (Unless you're baking.)
Let’s preface everything that I say here today with OP’s simple, yet effective words (oh, yeah, Bored Panda got in touch with the person who asked the question that started it all in one of the above-mentioned Reddit threads): “it’s not as hard as you might think.”
Yes, cooking is nothing difficult if you know how. And getting to know how is also not that hard. The internet is full of chefs, cooks, culinary connoisseurs, and other c-words (no, not that one) who can teach you a thing or two. If it’s a comedic approach you’re looking for, you have My Drunk Kitchen. If you want serious dishes, but want to remain funny about it, you have Uncle Roger. If you want angry cooking, bam, Gordon Ramsey. The list goes on and on.
Spend a little time once a week doing prep work such as chopping onions, carrots, celery, whatever, then store these ingredients in separate containers in the fridge. Cook and chop up a couple of chicken breasts while you're at it. Mustering up the energy to cook is so much easier when the ingredients just need to be thrown together.
If you are really new to cooking here are some red meat tips to remember: meat continues to cook when you remove it from the oven. Since most people like their beef a little pink remember to take it out before it hits the temp you want. Also, let it stand, don't cut it up right away, you will lose juices. Invest in decent quality sharp knives, you are far more likely to cut yourself using dull ones.
It's not said here, but you should let pretty much any meat rest for 5 minutes (longer for very dense cuts of meat like roasts) after cooking is 'complete'. Chicken too. Not only will it 'coast' to the temp it should be at, but if you've got a perfect sear on the outside, cutting into it too soon will ruin the care you put into it, the juices will all leak out instead of osmosing into the meat, it will be dry, people will mock you on social media, and you will be a pariah.
Big cutting board
First: THIS. Second, the one in the picture is way too small. Whatever size you do wind up with, as a PSA: If your cutting board is any kind of wood, take the time (could take weeks, I could tell you a long boring story about restoring a cutting board) to season the board with mineral oil. DO NOT EVER PUT IT THROUGH THE DISHWASER (I will again reference my cutting board restoration ordeal). Hand wash it, put it wherever it will dry fastest, and in fact, try not to overdo it on the soap when you wash it. Also never let any part of it just be sitting in water for more than, like, 10 minutes.
Cook your rice in broth instead of plain water. Total game changer.
Sliced peppers and onions can go straight into the freezer fresh and come straight out and into the hot pan, no need for thawing.
Basically, if you're interested in cooking, take a slow stroll through the frozen vegetables section. The benefits are twofold: You might find a good, cheap, long-lasting frozen option, OR you might become aware of the possibilities of what you can freeze. In Bec's example, I've frozen onion a lot. But I always use any fresh pepper I buy, and if I don't need enough in a recipe for a whole pepper, I'll buy frozen to begin with. I'm not a Michelin star chef for goodness sake, and haven't noticed a difference in dish quality.
Reddit user r/Degofreak turned to the r/Cooking community with curious intentions, asking folks to share their cooking hacks after having learned about the frozen ginger root trick. If you’re not aware, ginger root is hard and you might think it would be easy to grate it, but that’s not the case. You see, the stringy fiber kinda sorta makes the grater skip a beat when grating, and so it’s often more mashed than it is grated.
What OP learned and suggested was to freeze it. Not only does it mean you make it last longer and have it on hand whenever, but frozen ginger is also easier to grate, with the result being “the most pillowy ginger shreds that melt into the food.” And so this led to OP’s question “what trick did you learn that changed everything?”
I keep frozen ginger, but never thought about grating it. Cool tip, OP.
Heavier seasoning and learning (or looking up) good seasoning blends. Also making my own salad dressing (so much better!)
I've started making my own Caesar dressing and the different from store bought is night and day
For me it was making the same dish over and over until you perfect it. You’ll understand how the seasonings, temperatures, sauces, and meats will change as you make mistakes and do things slightly different. After like 5x making a dish you’ll feel like you can do it in your sleep.
After you learn like 10 dishes like that you can just whip up meals based on the ingredients you have in your kitchen.
I’m also single so I don’t have anyone to complain about repeat meals.
I hate jarred garlic but every dish can always use more garlic, so I go through a lot. I buy the big bag of whole peeled garlic from Sam's club and chop it all up in my food processor to a fine mince. Then I put it in a freezer ziploc bag and spread it in a thin layer and press the air out, then just break off chunks when I need fresh garlic. Started this when a friend and I were doing a lot of batch cooking large portions and we needed over 40 cloves of garlic for various recipes one session.
Also take several knobs of ginger and do the same, but almost puree it. I don't even bother to peel it. So convenient.
I dispute this. I used to be kind of a home-cook-food-purist even when it came to garlic. I admit I haven't tried frozen garlic, but buying fresh was basically a gamble every time. I'd get a bulb that looked pristine from the outside, inside there were several cloves that were garbage. I decided to try jarred (in water) garlic. Now I'm at the point where I'm going through two 32 oz jars (yes, I'm in the US) jars a year. I haven't noticed any difference in taste or quality, and it lets be really dig in there for those huge 'Big spoon out of the silverware drawer' spoonfuls of garlic I love to use.
Almost always put protein in an already hot pan rather than a cold one.
Depends on the protein, for example duck breast should start in a cold pan
Degofreak told Bored Panda that they adore cooking, and by proxy, hearing other people’s tricks is just fascinating to them. “I am the main cook for my family. I really enjoy the prep and then, of course, the eating.”
Once their question took off—garnering nearly 7,000 upvotes and over 2,200 comments—OP couldn’t stop reading through all of the suggestions. They explained that there were a lot of great hacks that are actual time savers when it comes to cooking.
OP noted that the community is full of people who love to cook, with varying degrees of skill level, and so sharing these tricks by means of AskReddit types of posts just adds to the helping atmosphere of the community.
1. I now freeze my left over tomato paste. I can cut off the amount I need for a recipe and throw it back in the freezer.
2. If you store asparagus in a mason jar of water, standing up with the heads out of the water, it can stay fresh for weeks.
Knife skills in general, but learning how to chop onions properly was a game-changer.
Salt the everloving S**T out of your pasta water.
Garlic burns quickly and tastes gross like that, put the fresh garlic in towards the end.
A pat of butter in almost anything makes it better. It is the secret to silky sauces.
If you are frying potatoes, soak them first in water so some of the starch comes out. Makes them less mushy or something.
Garlic only burns quickly if you put it into the pan without anything else to help it - it has a very low moisture content, so it burns on its own, but if you put it in at the same time as your onions, it'll be fine, as the onions will release their moisture. I normally recommend putting in garlic once the onions are soft (or caramelized, if that's what you're looking for), and giving it a quick, 1-2 minute sautée until it turns fragrant. Then you can continue adding whatever you want, the garlic won't burn.
This is something I tried on a whim, but it turned out so well I think it's going to become my new go-to method of making tomato sauce.
(For context, I make _large_ batches of tomato sauce at a time so that I can just portion out what I need later.)
My normal recipe calls for three 28-oz cans of crushed tomatoes. What I did this time was cook down two of them until the flavor was rich and the sauce was super thick, then add the last can and leave it on the heat just long enough to ensure it was all heated through. Combines that developed tomato flavor with the brighter freshness of uncooked.
For snacking on veggies instead of spending all that time chopping, getting a Mandolin slicer and cutting up cucumber, bell peppers, carrots etc is so much easier and they look great too.
Also, baking bacon on foil in the oven instead of standing stove side the entire time.
Among the myriad of responses in the threads, folks saw more than just food things. But there were plenty of those too.
Top comments include mentions of the necessity to keep the kitchen clean as you go, as putting effort into cleaning as you prepare foods (washing knives, cleaning the counter top, that sort of thing) often leaves you with very little cleanup to deal with in the first place.
But the majority was still food-related, with the most epic comment being this one, where Reddit user r/Berkamin listed (listceptioned?) quite a number of hacks, including that boxed olive oil is a better value, boiling mushrooms in a bit of water before pan-frying improves both their texture and flavor, scalding chicken skin with boiling water helps it get crispy, and loads of other great tips.
Keeping a lemon in fridge, adds freshness to many things. A little acid into soups, gravy, on veggies...
I guess this counts: when I need minced garlic, I just smash the garlic with the flat of my knife and then give it a quick rocking cut for a few seconds. That's almost always good enough- I'm not spending minutes mincing garlic.
Either that, or I'll microplane it
I spend even less time. Minced garlic (in water) in a jar has no appreciable difference and I don't have to use a stainless steel utensil as though it were a piece of soap to make sure my hands don't smell like garlic for a week. I might say differently if I were a Michelin chef, but I'm just cooking at home here.
Don’t add food to the pan until it’s the right temperature and hot. But cook bacon from a cold pan.
Pizza dough – Measure by weight and let the refrigerator do its magic for 2-3 days to build a proper flavor profile.
Best part of that ginger trick: you don't even have to peel it if you're going to grate it with a microplane (yeah, it's super easy to peel with a spoon, but not peeling it at all is still even better)
Realising I can make hollandaise sauce without having to use a bain-marie was a wonderful discovery for me.
Just slowly whisk in 50g of melted butter to one egg yolk, then add lemon juice and season. The consistency’s ever so slightly different, but I wouldn’t say it’s a bad difference.
I've done both and prefer the double boiler, just for the finished texture... but if there's a lot going on, the immersion blender will be coming out, because using it and melted butter is a huge time saver!
Not quite a trick but learning how to use salt properly has made the biggest difference in my cooking. I don’t know who said it originally (it could have been the author but idk) but I read in Anne Burrell s cookbook “taste your food. If it needs something, it’s probably salt.” And keeping that mindset has really helped my cooking without a recipe.
Putting a damp paper towel underneath the cutting board so it doesn't slide around while chopping!!
It may seem silly but using a whisk to make a rue
Why wouldn't you use one? It's the best tool for the job, and one reason I have a silicone whisk!
Homemade bone broth takes time but isn't hard and is a game changer.
Learn to make demi glace. It's easy and delicious.
Towel under thr cutting board.
How to prep an onion (or any vegetable) to be cut makes you look like a bad a*s.
What seasons go with each other.
Red wine with beef and pork. White wine with chicken and pork.
Let your meat rest after cooking.
Let your meat reach room temperature before cooking.
Sharpen knives.
Wash knives by hand.
Buy fresh and local if you can because less preservatives.
Only buy for the next day or two if you can. A 15 minute shopping trip 3 times a week is better then throwing out food that went bad.
Freeze Sliced watermelon for refreshing snacks.
Want to learn how to make a different countries food? Check Instagram reels. People love showing off how they made a homemade dish.
Clean as you cook.
Put away and wash dirty dishes before starting to cook.
Cast iron is amazing.
Treat your cast iron properly but it isn't the Bible. You can be loose with it.
If it's mouth watering delicious, it's probably unhealthy.
Red wine goes with chicken too. Coq au Vin is mostly made with red wine.
Note: this post originally had 44 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
Why is this almost identical list being posted yet again? https://www.boredpanda.com/cooking-hacks-and-tricks-that-changed-everything/
I've noticed they cycle through the same subjects a lot, but this is almost identical to their last one just a week ago. Bored Panda's getting lazy!
Load More Replies...
There's videos on YouTube by "cooking at Pam's place" (all one word) she give great cooking tips 😊
Why is this almost identical list being posted yet again? https://www.boredpanda.com/cooking-hacks-and-tricks-that-changed-everything/
I've noticed they cycle through the same subjects a lot, but this is almost identical to their last one just a week ago. Bored Panda's getting lazy!
Load More Replies... There's videos on YouTube by "cooking at Pam's place" (all one word) she give great cooking tips 😊
