Food Hacks
The New Yorker had an article listing the worst food hacks of 2017. I didn’t know the vast majority of them:
Is your pot always boiling over? Place a wooden spoon across the top. Smelly sponge? Microwave it. Need to bring a stick of cold butter to room temperature quickly? Place it in a plastic bag and then go at it with a hammer. Need to ripen bananas in a jiffy? Pop them in the oven.
What else do I not know?
How does someone discover these kitchen hacks? Like what possessed someone to stick their bananas in an oven? A wooden spoon across the top of a pot; fine. It’s a convenient resting spot, and the person may notice that it stops the water from boiling over. But bananas in an oven?
That article led me into the strange world of kitchen hacks. Google it. There are over 4 million hits. There is a whole world of cooking tricks I never knew about. Overnight veggie stock? Steamed eggs? Mind blown.
What is your best kitchen hack?
P.S. My only one comes from Rick Bayless when we were talking at a BlogHer conference. I told him that I didn’t like dressings with raw garlic because I hated to have the taste of raw garlic in my mouth afterward. He told me to dry roast the garlic before using. Just pop the cloves — skin and all — in a dry pan over medium heat. When the skin is black, let it cool and peel. Use it and you have a mellow roasted garlic with no aftertaste.
11 comments
I soften butter by microwaving a glass of water, emptying it and turning it upside down over the butter stick. Usually only takes a minute.
I speed up ripening bananas by sticking them in a paper bag (traps the ethylene).
Have tried the vinegar in milk to make substitute buttermilk, which didn’t work well.
Routinely microwave the sponge. Also freeze lemon peels in ice cubes. That combined with some vinegar goes directly down the drain to clean the garbage disposal while it runs
Hmmm – might try the egg steaming thing. My husband is constantly complaining about the difficulty of peeling hard-boiled eggs.
I never think about my hacks – I just do things and don’t figure out they’re hacks until I see someone else doing it. Or I watch someone doing something and think that’s a great idea! Like slicing one side off of a mushroom to get a flat surface before slicing the rest.
I will say that the best thing I’ve ever bought was a flexible (Silicone) measuring cup. I love it for liquids or semi-liquids or semi-solids (like peanut butter or sour cream). So much easier to scrape things out of there!
See – there you go! I’m always throwing some citrus peels in the disposal so it smells better, but it would never occur to me to call it a hack!
I don’t use sponges anymore. I use kitchen cloths. Literally throw them in the washer when they are dirty or it’s been a few days. I have six so when I throw one in the washer I just grab another.
Frozen cookie dough. I have a recipe for 5 dozen chocolate chip cookies. I suck at math so I just made the whole recipe. Scooped out the cookies with a cookie scooper. Made 2 dozen right away, froze the rest of the dough balls. Comes in handy when someone says: I need to bring in a class treat tomorrow.
Well, those were the worst not best hacks so no wonder you hadn’t heard of them.
Recent study showed microwaving the sponge doesn’t do much, yuck. Replacing is key.
I didn’t read the article but it appears people don’t have a grasp on thermodynamics. A wooden spoon won’t stop water from boiling and hitting a stick of butter or margarine won’t change its temp unless you’re hitting it with something hot…
I’m like A., I’m sure I HAVE hacks, but I don’t think of them as such. They’re just things I do. 🙂
One thing I know is that baking soda & vinegar (together & apart) have tons of uses. I use vinegar in my laundry rinse cycle to help cut the soap & leave clothes smelling fresh. (That one comes from my mother.) To keep my drains clear & odor-free, I dump baking soda down the drain, follow it up with some vinegar & immediately put in the stopper. After a few minutes, flush with hot water.
I’ve also used baking soda followed by vinegar to clean dingy floor tile grout before we put our house up for sale… I poured a thin line of soda onto the grout, followed by a spritz of vinegar (from a spray bottle). I’d let it fizz for a minute & then scrub with a small brush. And then wipe up the excess soda & then mop the floors as usual. It was quite a chore, but the before/after improvement was quite noticeable.
Oooh, I’m totally stealing some of these. I did know about the wooden spoon thing, it’s amazing how well that works (not sure why it’s on the worst list?). I guess one I have is that when I have a recipe that calls for honey and oil, I put the oil in the tablespoon/measuring cup first because it lubricates it and then the honey doesn’t stick. (Works for salad dressings, and this tasty cider-roasted carrots & parsnips recipe I have, as well as marinades for meats.) I want to try the grout-refresher Loribeth said! Sounds amazing! Baking soda is a wonder thing. Gets rid of stains in your tea/coffee mugs, too, and scrubs out hard to remove cooking gunk from pans and baking dishes.
A few months ago my husband read somewhere- and told me about this one- putting parchment paper in the slower cooker. It doesn’t work for saucy things, but for some things it’s a great alternative to the slow cooker liners (plastic) and easy clean up. I use that one weekly when I cook food for our pup.
I’m going to have to try the Rick Bayless one.
I soften butter with 5 seconds in the microwave. And maybe 5 seconds more.
Oooh, I’m loving the comments! Like the others, a lot of what I do are tricks, and I would never have thought they were hacks.
I used to microwave the sponge (or more accurately, my MIL’s sponge as I don’t use one), till I heard recently that it doesn’t kill the worst germs but simply clears their opposition allowing them to multiply more rapidly.
One thing I discovered somewhere on the internet was, when whipping cream, to first cut a paper plate half-way to the centre, and place my electric beater in the middle. The paper plate stops the cream splattering all over the place.
I had a lot of lemons this year, and squeezed the juice into ice-cube trays, and so always have lemon juice available.
And I also ripen tomatoes in a paper bag.
Like so many others, I don’t know I have food “hacks” so must as there are just things that I do. My 13 year old is big on telling me about the latest “life hacks” as she calls them.
I regularly pour bleach in my sink and on my sponge to kill germs, as opposed to the microwave trick.
When I need peeled apples, I use an apple core first to hollow them out, and then I can easily hold the apple with my thumb in the hole to peel them with a peeler.
I’m sure I have a ton more, but I can’t honk of them right now.