Cooking in the kitchen can be fun, but it also takes time, meaning you have less time for other tasks around your house. While you can enjoy the end results, getting to that point means getting everything together, following the recipe, and then cleaning up after you are done. This also leaves you less time to relax, especially when dealing with more difficult kitchen tasks.
In addition to requiring you to take the time out to cook, often times you realize you don’t have all of the ingredients for the delicious dishes you want to make. Luckily, easy kitchen hacks are available that allow you to quickly make substitutions on the fly for some of the items you need.
With a variety of cool hacks, including how to boil water faster, cook bacon using a waffle iron, or how to make buttermilk using regular milk and vinegar, you can save time when cooking and cleaning up. These kitchen hacks can help you prepare food dishes in the kitchen quickly, even if you lack important ingredients, as well as help you save time when performing other simple kitchen tasks.
1) Use Breadcrumbs to Keep Cake From Sticking
When making a cake, sprinkle fine breadcrumbs into the bottom of the baking dish for easy cake removal after baking. When finished, the cake should easily slide out of the pan. Breadcrumbs are a great alternative to flour, which many cooks use, and taste a lot better too.
For no-mess pancakes, mix the ingredients in a large plastic bag. Next, cut off one of the bottom corners and use the bag like a pastry bag by squirting the desired amount of pancake mix onto the cooking surface. Voila! No-mess cooking.
3) Turn Regular Sugar Into Confectioner’s Sugar
If you find yourself low or out of confectioner’s sugar, you do have some options. If you have regular sugar, place it in a blender, blending the sugar until it is of a proper powdered consistency for your needs. If you have any powdered sugar left over, store it for later use.
4) How to Make Perfectly Cooked Cheesecake
It is sometimes hard to get your cheesecake just right. One way to ensure that your cheesecake gets baked all the way through is to measure the internal temperature with a cooking thermometer. Once the outside gets up to 150 degrees Fahrenheit, you can turn the oven off. The heat generated by the outside should be enough to cook the center to the consistency you want.
5) How to Boil Water Faster
You can do a simple task, such as boiling water, much faster by taking a few simple steps. The first thing you can do is to make sure to only boil as much water as you need, since more water means it takes longer to come to a boil. In addition, cover up the water using the lid of the pot you are boiling the water in. The lid helps trap in the heat, which makes the water boil faster.
6) The Best Way to Get the Juice Out of a Piece of Citrus Fruit
If you find that you need to squeeze a piece of citrus fruit for its juice, warm it up beforehand. By placing it in the microwave for 5 to 10 seconds before squeezing, you can get way more juice out of the fruit.
7) Keep Your Cookie Dough in the Freezer
Not only does it keep cookie dough fresher to keep it in the freezer between bouts of making cookies, it also makes the dough easy to work with. Wrap the dough in plastic or place it in a bowl covered with plastic when storing. In addition, you can go ahead and roll the dough into the perfect cookie size before freezing to make it easier to use later on.
The easiest way to keep brown sugar soft is to place a marshmallow, or two, in with the brown sugar. At the same time, keep the brown sugar in an airtight container to keep the moisture in the sugar from leaking out. This can lead to the hardening of your brown sugar.
9) How to Get a Perfect Cut With Your Brownies
An easy way to get the perfect cut the next time you make brownies is to place the knife under hot water before using it. Dry off the knife, and then cut the brownies. The residual heat should make a perfect slice every time. Make sure to repeat the process for each cut.
10) How to Roll Pie Dough
Before rolling pie dough the next time you decide to bake a pie, cool down the countertop first. This should make it easier to remove the dough from the countertop once you roll it out. To do this, fill up gallon-sized Ziploc bags with ice and a little bit of water. Lay the bags flat on the countertop where you plan on rolling out the pie dough.
11) How to Cook Bacon Using a Waffle Iron
For the perfect crispy bacon, place a few half strips onto a waffle iron, set on medium heat, and cook for two minutes and 30 seconds before moving the bacon around. Cook the bacon for an additional two minutes and 30 seconds before removing.
12) Easy-to-Make Buttermilk
If you ever find yourself in need of buttermilk for a recipe, save yourself a trip to the store and make your own. To do so, mix 1 tablespoon of vinegar in a cup of milk, and allow it to sit for five to 10 minutes. You can also use lemon juice if you do not have vinegar.
13) Keep Your Mixing Bowl Steady
Keeping your mixing bowl steady when combining ingredients is easy with this simple trick. Roll a damp dish towel into a long tube, and place it on your counter in a circle. Then, place the bowl on the towel and mix the ingredients using a mixer.
14) Make Stale Bread Soft Again
To make stale bread, such as baguettes and whole loves, soft again, hold the bread under some running water until the crust is good and wet. Next, place the bread in the oven set at 325 degrees for six to seven minutes. The steam from the water should rehydrate the bread making the interior soft once more.
15) Store Cake in the Microwave
Your microwave is the perfect place to store cake leftovers at room temperature. The microwave is free of dust, sealed, and keeps your cake fresher for far longer that leaving it sitting on the counter. You can also keep bread, tortilla chips, and other items in the microwave for maximum freshness.
16) How to Bake a Perfectly Level Cake
To avoid the necessity of leveling out the layers of a cake you are baking, soak tea towels in water and wring them out. Wrap the wet tea rags around the outside of your baking pans. The moisture should keep the temperature of your cake more even, allowing the layers to rise more evenly.
17) Ripen Avocados Faster
If you buy your avocados from the store and find that they are not ripe enough for use when you need them, use this simple hack. Place the avocados in a paper bag, and seal it to speed up ripening. You can even add in an apple or banana to make the ripening process go even faster.
If you ever find yourself needing brown sugar, you can use this simple hack to make your own. To make your own brown sugar, mix regular granulated sugar with molasses. To get the consistency you want, mix 1 cup of granulated sugar to every 1-1/2 tablespoons of molasses or 1 cup of sugar to a 1/4 cup of molasses for dark brown sugar.
19) How to Apply Salt to Cookies
If you have a cookie recipe that requires sea salt, place the salt on the bottom of the cookies for the best taste. In addition, placing the salt on the bottom of the cookies keeps the salt from bouncing off of the dough and all over the place.
20) Using Dental Floss in the Kitchen
Keep a small box of unwaxed, unflavored dental floss handy in the kitchen for a variety of cooking hacks. Not only does dental floss allow you to easily cut cakes and soft cheese, you can use it to stress meat and easily lift cookies from a baking sheet.
21) How to Easily Remove Skins From Hazelnuts
To easily remove the skins from hazelnuts, first heat them up in the oven. Next, toll the nuts between the folds of a kitchen towel to remove most of the skins. Remove any remaining skin on the nuts by hand.
22) Best Way to Prepare Eggs
For a fluffier egg texture when cooking, raise the temperature of your eggs first. The easiest way to do this is to leave them in a bowl on the counter at least 30 minutes beforehand. In addition to being fluffier, room-temperature eggs makes your batter more even.
23) Grill Fish Atop Citrus Fruit
To prevent fish fillets from becoming a stuck-on, burnt mess, cook them atop sliced citrus fruit. Simply slice the fruit of your choice into equal slices, and then place the fillets atop the fruit on the cooking surface. Not only does this keep your fish from sticking, it adds a little flavor.
24) How to Remove the Burnt Part of a Cake
To easily remove the burnt part of a cake, use a vegetable peeler to shave the burnt portion off. This allows you to save as much of the good part of the cake as you can. You can also use this with muffins. Some cooks even use a file to file away burnt areas on their baked goods.
25) The Benefits of Using Unsalted Butter
For better baked goods, make sure to use unsalted butter in your recipe. Salted butter often changes the chemistry of your baked goods and can interfere with the overall flavor. Plus, many recipes already include salt, so using salted butter adds salt you don’t really need.
26) Use a Spoon to Easily Peel Ginger
An easy way to peel ginger is by using a spoon. To peel ginger using a spoon, lightly scrape the tip of the spoon across the surface of the ginger. As you scrape the coarse brown skin away, you should see white flesh underneath.
27) How to Stabilize Whipped Cream
A cake with whipped cream frosting is delicious, though the whipped cream can deflate or become weepy. To help your whipped cream maintain its shape for longer, add marshmallow fluff. The fluff helps the whipped cream hold its shape.
28) How to Measure Sticky Ingredients
Measuring ingredients can be difficult, especially if they are sticky like honey, molasses, or syrup. To help with this, coat the measuring instrument with a small amount of olive oil. For better results, use a paper towel moistened with oil to wipe the measuring instrument down.
29) How to Chill Wine and Beer Faster
An easy way to chill a bottle of wine or beer fast is to wrap the bottle in a wet paper towel and place it in the freezer for 15 minutes. If you just need a single glass of chilled white wine, add frozen grapes or blueberries to chill the wine without diluting it.
30) DIY Mixer Splatter Guard
Use a paper plate to craft a DIY splatter guard for your hand mixer. Start by removing the beaters and sticking them through the center of a paper plate in the same area that they would be on the mixer. Insert the beaters back into the mixer.
To cleanly crack eggs for your recipe, you should crack the egg solidly on the edge of the bowl. More timid cracks can lead to a shattered shell and the likelihood that tiny pieces of shell get into your bowl. To remove any pieces of shell, scoop them out using the half egg shell.
32) Hard-Boiled Eggs in the Oven
To prepare hard-boiled eggs in the oven, place the eggs into the cavities of a muffin tin. Heat the eggs for 30 minutes at 350 degrees. After you take the eggs out of the oven, immediately submerge them in ice water for 10 minutes.
An even faster way to bring eggs to room temperature is to submerge them in a bowl of warm water a few minutes before using them in your recipe. This ensures that your batter is more even and that the eggs are fluffier when whipped.
While it might seem backwards, starting at the end of your recipe and working your way back ensures that you have all of the items you need when cooking. Only after you have everything ready, should you follow the recipe from the beginning.
35) Keep Your Greens Fresh
An easy way to keep your greens, such as salad, spinach, or arugula, from wilting is to place them in a plastic container lined with paper towels. The paper towels absorb any excess moisture away from the greens, keeping them fresher for longer.
36) How to Ripen Bananas Fast
If you need ripe bananas but only have green ones, use this simple hack to ripen them quickly and easily. Place the bananas on a baking sheet and roast them in the oven at 300 degrees until dark brown.
37) Use Lace to Decorate Cookies
For an easy way to decorate cookies, use lace to quickly and easily place designs on your baked goods. Place the lace over the top of the finished cookie and dust icing sugar over the top. The lace should imprint its pattern onto the cookie for beautiful results.
38) Easy Butter Warming Tip
If you need warm butter but only have cold butter, you can use this hack to quickly warm it. Fill a glass with boiling water, and allow to sit for a minute. Carefully pour out the water, and place the now-warm glass over the cold butter. Remove the glass once the butter begins to melt.
39) Use a Wine Bottle as a Rolling Pin
In a baking emergency, you can use a wine bottle (empty, partially filled, or full) as a makeshift rolling pin. Make sure to wash the outside of the bottle first before using it. This works great if you are somewhere that has no rolling pin, such as at a friend’s house.
40) How to Easily Peel Hard-Boiled Eggs
To easily peel a hard-boiled egg, place the egg in a small glass and fill it halfway with water. Next, shake the glass with your hand over the opening. Pour out the water, and remove the egg. The shell should easily slip off the egg.
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Cooking is tricky, requiring you to cook items using certain ingredients at the proper temperature for the required amount of time. Using these cooking hacks in the kitchen can save you time and help you make the recipes you want even if you do not have exactly the ingredients you need.
Cooking in the kitchen can be fun, but it also takes time, meaning you have less time for other tasks around your house. While you can enjoy the end results, getting to that point means getting everything together, following the recipe, and then cleaning up after you are done. This also leaves you less time to relax, especially when dealing with more difficult kitchen tasks.
In addition to requiring you to take the time out to cook, often times you realize you don’t have all of the ingredients for the delicious dishes you want to make. Luckily, easy kitchen hacks are available that allow you to quickly make substitutions on the fly for some of the items you need.
With a variety of cool hacks, including how to boil water faster, cook bacon using a waffle iron, or how to make buttermilk using regular milk and vinegar, you can save time when cooking and cleaning up. These kitchen hacks can help you prepare food dishes in the kitchen quickly, even if you lack important ingredients, as well as help you save time when performing other simple kitchen tasks.
