Eat Drink Play:
Twenty pro kitchen tips and tricks to make cooking simpler and faster.
During these pandemic times, when kitchen time has ratcheted up to three squares a day, day after day, there’s no such thing as too many tips and tricks to make life easier. We want all the clever hacks, from shortcuts and timesavers to kitchen tools put to unintended use. (Handheld mixer, may you shred our chicken for a lifetime!) So we’ve compiled 20 of our favorite ways to make cooking simpler, faster or more successful. Some of these hacks hail from chef and cookbook author interviews over the years, while others are smart workarounds we’ve come to rely on in our own kitchens.
1 Creamy soups, no cream
You don’t need dairy anything to create a creamy soup. Cook your veggies — asparagus, carrots, whatever you like — until tender. Let cool for a few minutes, then add the hot vegetables to a blender with chicken or vegetable stock, in batches, if necessary. Hold the blender lid down tight, using a dish towel to protect your palm, then blend the soup for two to three minutes — set a timer, so you know enough time has elapsed — to aerate the soup and make it creamy and silky.
2 Ginger-turmeric tea bag … broth
Homemade broth might sound hard, but you can use herbal ginger-turmeric tea bags to make a restorative vegetable soup broth in no time. Yes, tea bags! (Rishi and Trader Joe’s are good options.) Bring three cups water to a boil in a small saucepan over high heat. Turn off the heat and add four tea bags, ½ cup coconut milk and three tablespoons of fresh lime juice. Cover and steep five minutes.
Discard the tea bags; stir in ¾ teaspoon salt and ½ teaspoon fish sauce. Bring back to a simmer and add any veggies you like. Chef and recipe developer Justin Chapple, author of “Mad Genius Tips: Over 90 Expert Hacks + 100 Delicious Recipes,” who is responsible for this hack, suggests cooked orzo, chickpeas, sliced shallots and cilantro sprigs.
3 Easy-grating ginger
Toss your leftover fresh ginger root in a zip-top bag and stash it in the freezer. Next time you need ginger, grab a coarse grater — a Microplane is our grater of our choice — to grate the frozen ginger into a snowy pile of ready-to-use deliciousness. (No need to peel it first. The whole thing’s edible.)
4 Frozen coffee cubes
We’ve never understood why anyone would freeze leftover wine in ice cube trays, although that may be because we’re unfamiliar with the concept of “leftover wine.” But freezing cold coffee in ice cube trays? Now that’s genius. Next time you’re in the mood for iced coffee, your “ice” won’t dilute your java.
5 Hot pepper savior
Here’s an easy trick that works better than milk: After cutting any hot pepper — jalapeños, serranos, or, shudder, a ghost pepper — rub vegetable oil on your fingers, then wash with soap. The capsaicin, a spicy chemical in chile peppers, binds with the oil and is washed away by the soap in a one-two punch. Trust us. You’ll thank us later when you accidentally rub your eyes or nose. Or worse, attempt to put in contact lenses.
6 Easy steak fries
Finally, a purpose for that apple slicer beyond once-ayear pie. You can use it to prep restaurant-worthy potato wedges in minutes. Cut one end of the potato or sweet potato so it’s flat, then push your apple slicer through. You should get perfectly pointy wedges every time. Sprinkle on seasonings and bake away.
7 Limp celery fix
Tired celery got you down? Perk it up by trimming the top and bottom of the celery, then drop the stalk(s) into a jar of cold water in the fridge to re-crisp. Storing celery like this straight from the grocery store will help it last longer, too. The ice water trick also works on limp lettuce and spinach. (And if you do it with scallions, the ends curl up decoratively, making those green onions a beautiful buffet platter garnish for the parties you’re not having. Someday …)
8 Soften butter faster
Forgot to take the butter out of the fridge to bake cookies? Not to worry. You can bring that stick of butter to room temperature faster by cutting it into small cubes and letting them sit on the counter for 20 minutes. The smaller pieces will soften up faster than a whole stick.
9 Chilly cookie dough
Chilling cookie dough or pastry before baking is a mustdo. Yes, it means delaying that chocolate-chip or pie gratification a few hours, but the fridge time amps up flavor and helps cookies and crimped crusts hold their shape when they hit the hot oven. That said, rolling out ice-cold dough is a pain, as any home baker can attest. Don’t do it in that order, says baking maven Dorie Greenspan: Roll it, then chill it.
“Yes, dough needs to be chilled, but it doesn’t care when it gets chilled,” she says. “So make the dough and roll it out immediately, when it’s easy. Roll it between parchment paper and you’ll never have to add flour to the dough. Your counter will be clean. I know! I know! It’s truly a game changer.”
10 Sticky no more
When measuring honey or other sticky ingredients, lightly grease the cup or spoon prior to pouring in the honey. The light coating ensures the entire amount of honey slides right out without having to scrape it out with your finger or spatula. Bonus: Cleaning the spoon afterward will be a breeze.
11 Halved cherry tomatoes in a flash
We’ve all spent time chasing errant cherry tomatoes in our efforts to cut the little things in half one by one. This is better: Grab two lids from your stash of plastic takeout containers. Place one upside down on your work surface, so it forms a flat bowl. Fill it with a single layer of cherry tomatoes. Set the other lid on top to corral the tomatoes. Hold the top lid in place with one hand, while you slice through the tomatoes with the other, using a serrated or razor-sharp knife. Voila.
12 Pizza protection for leafy toppings
The best homemade pizzas are baked at the highest possible oven setting, preferably on a preheated pizza stone, but those temperatures can be tough on delicate toppings, like fresh basil. The solution, says prize-winning Bay Area pizzaiolo Tony Gemignani, is to tuck them under the cheese or add them toward the end of the baking time — or wait until after the pizza emerges from the oven. Those trendy pizzas topped with lightly dressed arugula? Definitely a post-roast flourish.
13 Jiffy thaw
Late afternoon and you forgot to thaw the chicken again? Place frozen meat on a baking sheet for quick thawing, says Livermore’s Michelle Smith, author of “The Whole Smiths Real Food Every Day” cookbook. The metal pan conducts heat in a way that expedites thawing. Times vary depending on amount of meat, of course, but expect times to be cut in half, she says.
14 Maximum juice
Does squeezing lemons hurt your hands, especially when it’s one of those hard, thick-skinned lemons? Try this expert tip the next time you need fresh citrus juice: Microwave a lemon or lime for 8 to 10 seconds. Then roll the lemon back and forth on the counter. When you squeeze, you’ll get more juice from the lemon with way less effort.
15 Pickle juice 2.0
Another good one from cookbook author Smith: Add sliced onions to a jar of leftover pickle or pepperoncini juice for a tangy topping to use on burgers, in salads, on tacos and just about anything else that needs zing. Just add the slices to the brine, make sure they’re covered in the liquid, then seal and let them marinate for five days in the refrigerator. They’ll keep for about two weeks stored in that airtight jar.
16 Rack mashed potatoes
Never peel potatoes to make mashed potatoes again. Instead, leave the skin on and bake them. When done, cut potatoes in half lengthwise. Put a clean baking rack with a crosshatch pattern over a large bowl and press the potato halves, skin side up, into the baking rack, allowing the rack to do the mashing for you. Thank you, Justin Chapple, culinary director of Food & Wine magazine.
17 Picture-perfect blueberry muffins
Homemade blueberry muffins rarely look like the ones in glossy cookbooks — and you can blame cookbook recipes for that. Nearly every muffin recipe calls for stirring the blueberries into the batter, an action that bursts the berries and turns the batter purple. Don’t stir the berries, says San Francisco chef Heidi Gibson, author of “Muffins and Biscuits” (Chronicle Books). Layer them directly in the muffin cups.
Scoop a little berry-less batter into each muffin cup, drop a few berries into each, add more batter, more berries, more batter, then bake. Voila: Instagram-ready muffins.
The same goes for blueberry pancakes: Don’t stir the berries in. Gently press them into the pancakes while they’re cooking on the griddle, then flip and finish cooking.
18 Salty stew or soup rescue
Over-salt your soup again? Depending on the type of soup, try squeezing in some lemon or other acid to balance the salt, or you can simply add apples. Yes, apples. Toss in a few wedges of raw apple — the variety doesn’t matter — and simmer for 10 minutes. Discard the wedges before slurping. Don’t have apples? Raw potato usually works, too.
19 Veggie scrap upcycling
Potato skins. Carrot peels. Onion heads and herb stems. Instead of composting them immediately — or yikes, throwing them away — keep them in a plastic bag in the fridge or freezer. When the bag is full, dump them into a pot with salt and water, maybe a few peppercorns, and make a veggie stock by simmering on low for an hour. Drain and use stock to cook quinoa, lentils and such.
20 Layer cake floss?
Another one from mad genius Justin Chapple: Use unflavored dental floss to cut showstopper-tobe cakes into layers for frosting. Use a ruler to measure the center of the cake. Insert six toothpicks at the midpoint evenly around the cake. Wrap a long strand of floss around the cake using the toothpicks as a guide. Cross the floss and pull the ends through the cake. Voila. Instagram-worthy.
Bonus
As for that shredded chicken: Place the still-warm cooked chicken in a mixing bowl, then use a hand mixer on low speed to shred the meat. Tacos, chicken salad, pulled-chicken sandwiches, here we come!