Basic Cooking Tricks and Tips You Probably Didn’t Know about

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Cooking tricks and tips

For most people, cooking is a tedious task and cooking well seems undoable and intimidating. But that’s only unless you know some cooking tricks and tips that can turn you into a real cooking expert.

Some of these cooking tricks and tips may seem crazy at first but once you start using them, you won’t believe you never knew them before:

  1. First on our list of cooking tricks and tips is how to remove the smell of garlic from your hands after cooking. If you do add garlic to your dishes, you probably know that garlic adds its own unique flavor to your food. But how do you remove the smell from your hand after cooking (which is the more reason people don’t use it)?

Simply rub your fingers on stainless steel, like kitchen sink and the odor will come right off your hand.

  1. To keep your berries to stay fresh much longer, you need to mix 3 cups of water and 1 cup of apple cider vinegar and soak the berries in it for five minutes and dry them on a paper towel.
  1. If you like marshmallows then you should know how to keep them soft and tasty. All you need to do is to put them in a jar with brown sugar.
  1. Cooking fish on a grill can really be a big time challenge because it sticks to the grill and falls apart. To prevent this from happening, put the fish on slices of lemon, it will absorb the scent of the lemon and stay whole.
  1. If you need to grate something, then spray some oil on the grater. That’s the best way to make the food slide easier and doesn’t stick in those tiny holes.
  1. Do you know that soaking brown rice in water overnight makes it cook much faster the following day? You can always do this if you are short of time or you know you might wakeup late the next morning and don’t wanna spend too much time in the kitchen.
  1. When you cook pasta, finish it 1-2 minutes right in the pan with the sauce. That way the flavor of the sauce will infuses the pasta and it will be more delicious
  1. Hard boiled egg can be messy when peeling. In order to peel it smoothly, add a bit of vinegar when boiling them, that way the shell peel off more easily.
  1. If your brown sugar clumped into pieces, just put it in a jar and add a piece of soft white bread. In a few hours it will break down back into a sandy granules.
  1. Need some drops of lemon juice, but your fruit doesn’t wanna give no matter how hard you squeeze? Put it in a microwave for around 20 – 30 seconds to release the juices.
  1. You like kiwi? Well, the easiest way to peel a kiwi is to chop it off at both side, take a spoon, and push it in between the fruit and the skin to scoop out the flesh by turning the fruit until all the skin falls off the back of the spoon.
  1. The easiest way to peel a garlic is by crushing cloves lightly using the flat side of a knife and the heel of your hand.
  1. If you are looking for a way to save an avocado that has been cut in two from turning brown by putting a few drops of lemon juice on the pulp or by brushing the avocado half with a lil bit of edible oil.
  1. To save yourself time during cooking you can make cubes of edible plants by chopping them into pieces and park them into an ice cube tray, add some extra vegetable olive oil. This also helps in prolonging the use of these edible plants.
  1. To make your fresh herbs last longer, store them in the fridge with their stems in a glass of water, like a bouquet of flowers.
  1. If you need just a few drops of citrus juice for your dish, don’t cut it whole, just pierce the fruit with a skewer of a knife, then squeeze the fruit a bit to get the juice and put it away for the next use.
  1. Want your burger to cook evenly? Make a small indent in the center of it with your thumb when its on a grill or a pan.
  1. If you are running out of time but needed to defrost something you just got out of the fridge, put in under cold running water.
  1. In order to reduce the movement of your cutting board when cutting something, you should put a dish towel or damp paper towel to make it more stable.
  1. If you need to cut a ton of cherry tomatoes and need to do it faster, then place them between two plastic lid and slice them all at once.
  1. Want to whip cream but have no blender? You can simply shake the cream in a mason jar. But make sure you don’t forget to put the lid on.
  1. If you want to make a clean cut through any sticky dessert like a cheesecake, you need to keep a knife under really hot water for a minute, then dry it with a paper towel.
  1. If you want your pastry to get that shiny golden brown look, you should use a light coating made of egg yoak and a bit of heavy cream. Brush the egg wash over baked goods while they are baking.
  1. If you overcooked your chicken and it’s too dry, cut up the pieces, add some mayo, some spices and your favorite veggies. And you just made a delicious chicken salad.
  1. If the sauce you are cooking have gone lumpy , then pour it in a blender and blend for just a few seconds to get rid of those lumps
  1. Not sure when to flip your pancake? When you cook pancakes, you should watchout for bubbles to appear on them and once you see these bubbles around the edges, you should know its time to flip them.
  1. To make crispy fries crispier, slice the potato and simply soak them in water for about one hour to get rid of the starch and dry properly with paper towels and start cooking.
  1. To avoid tears coming out of your eyes when chopping an onion, just cut off the root before you slice it.
  1. To peel tomatoes effortlessly, you should cut an X at the top then seamer in a pot of hot water for about 15 – 30 seconds , cool them down and the skin will fall right off
  1. When you are about to cook something with chilly pepper coat your hands with vegetable oil to protect the skin and watch your hands with soap immediately after the cooking is done.
  1. To make perfect sunny side-up-eggs, crack them in a preheated pan coated with oil, then add a bit of warm water, and close the lid for 45 seconds.
  1. If you need to make a lot of mashed potatoes but don’t fell like peeling them, you can put raw unpeeled potatoes in boiling waters for about 15 minutes, when they are soft, get them out and placed them in cold water , after that the peel will come off easily.
  1. If you want to whip egg white faster and better, make sure they are cold and you add a bit of salt to them before you start the whipping process.
  1. The best way to use a knife when cooking is to chop with the real part of the blade in a rolling motion not the tip.
  1. Before putting a steak on the skillet, dry it off with a paper towel, ensuring it will caramelize, not steam.
  1. To make peeling of butternut squash easier, cook whole butternut squash in a microwave for up to 3 minutes. After that, the peeling will become a piece of cake.
  1. To make meat and poultry juicier, soak them in water with salt for an hour before cooking.
  1. The best trick for a mouth-watering vegetable cream soup is to fry all the vegetables separately with olive oil before blending them, the sugar in the vegetables will comonlise making your soup more flavourful.
  1. The heart of any dish is seasoning, don’t be scared to experiment in your seasoning and spices you havn’t tasted before, that’s the best way to transform any ordinary meal into something fancy. The

So what do you think? Do you know any other cooking tricks and tips? Let us know in the comment section below. We will be updating this cooking tricks and tips as we learn more.