The Best Food Hacks to Make Life in Your Kitchen Easier
Cooking can be a wonderful experience, and billions of people find a great deal of joy in preparing a meal for themselves or others.
Whether you like to bake decadent cookies and cakes, or you enjoy putting together a four-course meal before a dinner party for friends, cooking is a great way to relieve some stress, express your creativity, and share your gift with others. However, it can also be time-consuming and stressful, even if it’s something that you enjoy.
Fortunately, there are some easy cooking hacks that you can implement that will both elevate your cooking game and help you enjoy your hobby even more.
Whether you consider yourself a culinary expert or you just know how to make a few basic recipes, these food hacks can help you save some time when you’re prepping food.
Freeze Your Herbs in Olive Oil
Using fresh herbs is a great way to give your food a fresh, gourmet flavor. However, some people don’t enjoy using fresh herbs because of how quickly they spoil.
Unless you’re ready to plant an herb garden somewhere around your home, using fresh herbs that go back shortly after you start using them is not only frustrating, but it can also get expensive. Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be that way.
Start by finely chopping up your herbs, regardless of what it is. This method can help you save your rosemary, thyme, basil, and virtually anything else.
Take a freezer tray that you would usually use for ice cubes and fill each compartment about halfway up with your chopped herbs. Then, fill each compartment the rest of the way up with olive oil.
Slide your trays into the freezer and leave them there until the olive oil freezes solid. Then, simply put the cubes in a freezer bag to make storage even easier. If you don’t want to go that route, you can leave them in the freezer trays.
Now, you’ll have olive oil that’s infused with fresh herbs that won’t go bad. You can use your cubes for sauteing your vegetables, making marinades, and virtually anything else.
Keeping Your Lettuce Crisp
Have you ever gone to a salad bar at a restaurant and noticed that the lettuce looks brown and wilted?
There are few things that can make your food look less appealing than when it starts changing colors and textures. Lettuce is one of the worst vegetables for this, but it’s not a problem that you have to keep dealing with.
In the same way that people steer clear of fresh herbs because of how quickly they spoil, lots of people are hesitant to buy lettuce because it goes bad before they can eat an entire head.
Fortunately, the way that you store your lettuce can make a huge difference in how long it lasts. All you have to do is wash your lettuce like you usually would before using it.
With the leaves peeled away from the head, start putting your lettuce in an airtight container after it dries off. While you’re never going to get lettuce completely dry, you don’t want to store it while it’s still soaked.
Put a paper towel in the bottom of your container, and then add layers of paper towels as you stack your lettuce in the container. Make sure that you’re using thicker paper towels or double-layering them since they’re going to soak up all the moisture. This will help you make a single head of lettuce last much longer than it typically would.
Speed Up the Ripening of Your Bananas
There are some people who like to eat bananas before they get fully ripe, but most people choose to wait. Unfortunately, that waiting can be frustrating, and even problematic if you’re planning to use your bananas in a recipe.
Ripening your bananas is as easy as putting them in a bag. No, really, all you have to do is put your bananas in a brown paper bag and place the bag on your kitchen counter.
Bananas ripen by emitting ethylene gas, and enclosing them in a paper bag traps the gas with the bananas and speeds up the ripening process. If you really want to kick things into a higher gear, add a single apple to the bag.
Apples release the same type of gas, and they do it faster than bananas, so you’ll be able to get those bananas nice and ripe in no time.
Peel Your Garlic Faster
Fresh garlic is a great source of flavor, but peeling it and chopping it can be a bit of a hassle. No matter what brand of garlic powder or garlic salt you use, there aren’t any real substitutes for a clove of garlic.
Fortunately, you don’t have to waste a lot of time in the kitchen trying to peel away the outer layers of your garlic.
Start by breaking the garlic bulb into individual cloves. Put your clove on a cutting board and place the flat side of a chef’s knife on the garlic.
Make sure not to touch the blade with your bare hand, but press down on the flat side that’s facing up until you hear and feel a slight crunch. This loosens the skin and makes it simple to just pull it away.
If you don’t want to use this method because you’re using multiple cloves of garlic, there’s another option. Just place all of your clogs in a metal bowl and cover it with a second metal bowl. Shake your bowls vigorously and the skins will simply peel off as they rattle around.
Reheating Pizza
OK, so this may not necessarily count as a kitchen hack, but it’s definitely a good life hack. Leftover pizza is a staple in millions of homes, and some people insist that they like cold pizza just as much as a fresh, cheesy pizza right out of the box.
Unfortunately, heating a piece of pizza in the microwave can leave you with a soggy mess that doesn’t taste anything like it did when you ate it for dinner.
While some people put their pizza on a baking sheet and put it in the oven for a few minutes, there’s a faster way to reheat your pizza and you don’t have to deal with soggy crust.
Just put some water in a microwave-safe cup and set it next to your pizza in the microwave. The water will create steam which keeps the crust from getting too chewy while making sure that the toppings don’t dry out. Leave your pizza in for 30 to 60 seconds, and enjoy your perfectly reheated pizza.
Keep Your Brown Sugar Soft
Brown sugar gets too hard to use pretty easily, which either leaves you wasting your unused brown sugar or making a mess as you try to chisel some brown sugar off of a hardened clump. This is one of the easiest food hacks to implement, which is great news for bakers.
Start by putting your brown sugar in a sealable container instead of leaving it in the bag or box that you buy it in. With your sugar in the container, add a single piece of fresh bread, and seal the lid tightly.
Within 24 to 48 hours, the brown sugar should absorb most of the moisture from the bread, which keeps it as moist and crumbly as it was when you opened it.
If you need some brown sugar in a pinch and haven’t put bread in a container with it, you can use the microwave. Simply wrap a clump of your brown sugar in a damp paper towel and microwave it for about 20 seconds. The steam will soften the brown sugar and restore its natural texture.
Try These Best Food Hacks
These kitchen hacks can help you elevate your cooking game while also saving time while you’re in the kitchen.
No matter how much you love to cook, you want to find ways to do it better and make the process easier. These food hacks are a great place to start. Enjoy!