tips in the kitchen

Ok well I got me a few.

• Try to have a meal plan for at least half your week. If you schedule your selections, it is much less likely you will cave and simply spend money to go out to eat.
  
• Chop tomatoes, peppers, and other vegetables for your regular preparations at once. Even if you decide to do stir fry on the whim, you will not have to spend the five minutes or more chopping up various delights. I like to put chopped tomatoes and spinach (and sometimes peppers) into my beans when they cook. I also happen to like them in my eggs in the morning. It is just so much better at the moment to simply toss what is already ready to use than to start off chopping it up there. Fact is the more food you have ready to go, the more likely you will be to cook your favorite meal.
  
• If you eat cereal every morning, always put fresh berries (mixed or a specific fruit) into the mix. Even if you are eating Total, there is no substitute for your body for the energy and nutrients fresh fruit will give you.
  
• Steam vegetables in a normal pot with only a 1/2 cup - 2 cups of water (if you lack a timed steamer) with a vented lid. They will be perfectly done every time.
  

Now I happen to have 2 kids and an infant, so sometimes you cant make the same plates for everyone. Since most people individually portion their meat, I find it easy to select the right meat for the mood. Some nights one child wants pork chops while another wants chicken, or a beef patty/red meat cut vs. fish. As long as I portion only two per bag, one kid can have his entrée, and one of us parents will simply eat the other. Everyone wins!

For the baby, don't forget there is no harm pre-mixing a handful of bottles for the day if you bottle feed. We plan on trying our first endeavor at blending our own baby food this time around though, which we will portion from baby food jars we will save from the first week. I feel like this accomplishes two positive goals, I know exactly what we are feeding our baby, and reduced resource use and waste reduction. No need to spend gas and effort to recycle so many jars if we simply reuse the same ones. I figure we can make about five days worth of baby food in an hour or so.

For those like myself who enjoy living at what is considered late at night (midnight+) and preparing after hours meals, occasionally a roach or two may sneak into your kitchen. I really hate those bastards and am very efficient at keeping them away. There will be whole months where I wont see a single one. However, for whatever purpose now and then somehow one or more may enter. I always have a really simple non messy solution. A spray bottle with dish soap and water. In high enough concentration it works better than Raid. I have actually seen roaches run off from someone soaking them in the chemicals. Soapy water works because it clogs their pores from being able to breathe, or it dries out their exoskeleton and they crack apart and die. Cant quite remember the explanation, but I have witnessed them either violently #, or their rear end is going through a small explosion of some kind, not sure what is going on. But they always die, and will rarely make it a few inches from where you shoot them. Unlike RAID, where the #ers sometimes thank you for a free bath and return to haunt you later.

I love the kitchen, cooking in it, and cleaning it. I got ideas for days.

1. Peel Ginger with a Spoon

Ginger can be tricky to peel with all its bumps and irregularities. Rather than using a paring knife or vegetable peeler, reach for the spoon. Scrape it against the skin and it'll come right off, following every contour and minimizing waste.

2. Get an Immersion Blender

I use my immersion blender more than any other electric tool in the kitchen by a long shot. Whether it's puréeing soups directly in the pot, getting rid of ugly lumps in my cheese sauce, or making mayonnaise or hollandaise in under two minutes, the immersion blender is the tool for the job.

Much easier to clean than a countertop blender or food processor, no need to transport hot ingredients from a pot to the blender jar, and the ability to work with even small quantities of ingredients (provided you have a cup that fits its head properly) make it an invaluable asset.

3. Keep a Small Strainer for Citrus

I keep a small handled-strainer in my tool crock next to the stove so that I can quickly cut a lemon or lime in half and squeeze it directly through the strainer into the pot. Much easier than picking out seeds afterwards! Oh, and you do keep a crock full of common tools by the stovetop, don't you?

4. Use that Same Small Strainer for Eggs

That same strainer can be used to make perfectly shaped poached eggs. How? Crack the eggs into the strainer over the sink and swirl them around gently to remove the excess watery white. What's left will be a tight, egg-shaped egg that poaches up clean. You can use the same trick to make picture-perfect, billboard glamour-shot-ready fried eggs. Check out the video above for more details.

5. Think Like a Factory Line, and Work Clean

When working with beginning cooks, the most common inefficiency I see is in task planning. Say you've got four onions that need to be peeled, finely diced, and transferred to a large bowl. If you do each of these steps to each onion one at a time, you spend a lot of time moving back and forth between the board, the compost bin, and the bowl, picking up and putting down your knife, and mentally preparing yourself for the next task.

Instead, work like a factory: start by cutting off the end and splitting all of the onions. Next peel all of the onions. Then make all of your horizontal cuts, followed by all of your vertical cuts. Finally, transfer all of your perfect dice to the bowl and clean down your board and countertop before you move on to the next task.

Apply this kind of thinking to all of your tasks and you'll find that the time you spend in the kitchen will not only be more efficient, but also neater, cleaner, and more organized.

6. Use a Garbage Bowl and a Bench Scraper

New York Site Editor Max recommends always having a garbage bowl near your work station. I wholeheartedly agree, and I'd add that a bench scraper is an essential piece kit as well. Not having to walk back and forth to the garbage every few minutes can take a lot of drudgery our of your prep, and nothing's better than a bench scraper for moving large quantities of fiddly ingredients or scraps from point A to point B.

7. Freeze Liquids in Useable Portions!

Serious Eats Drinks Site Editor Maggie Hoffman says that she freezes wine in ice cube trays and stores them in the freezer, ready to be pulled out one at a time and added to pan sauces and stews, saving you from having to open a whole bottle every time a recipe calls for some wine.

Similarly, if you make yourself a large batch of stock, freeze it in convenient portion sizes in the freezer—ice cube trays and half-pint deli containers are great for this—then transfer them to a plastic freezer bag to be pulled out an used whenever you need fresh stock.

8. Freeze as Flat as Possible

One more freezer trick: freeze things flat and stack them. Whether it's soups, stews, or ground meat, the flatter and wider you can get them, the faster they'll freeze and defrost, which not only makes you more efficient, it also improves the quality of the food (the longer something takes to freeze, the more cellular damage it will suffer).

When freezing raw meat, soups, and stews, if you have a vacuum sealer, use it! Otherwise, place foods in heavy-duty freezer bags, squeeze out all the air, lay the bag flat, and use your hands to work the contents into as flat and even a shape as possible.

When freezing vegetables, cut them into pieces 1-inch or less and blanch any green vegetables. Place them on a large plate or sheet tray spaced apart from each other and freeze them solid before transferring to a plastic freezer bag and storing flat.


9. Defrost Meat on Aluminum Trays

The fastest way to defrost meat is under a cold running tap. But if you want to save water and speed things up a bit, place your meat on an aluminum sheet tray or skillet. Aluminum is a great conductor of heat and will draw energy from the surrounding environment into your frozen meat much faster than a wooden cutting board or wood or stone countertop. You can cut defrosting times down by about 30 percent this way. It also works on soups, stews, and anything frozen flat.

10. Slice Avocados in their Skins

To slice avocados for salads or guacamole, split them in half, remove the pit by whacking it with the heel of your knife and twisting it out, then slice it directly in the skin using the tip of a paring knife or chef's knife. When you then scoop it out with a spoon, you'll have slices ready to go, with less mess than trying to fiddle with slippery peeled avocado a cutting board.

11. Buy Pre-Peeled Garlic

I might get a lot of hate for this one, but truth be told, I use pre-peeled garlic almost exclusively. I find peeling garlic form a whole head to be a bit of a pain in the butt and usually can't be bothered. The pre-peeled stuff, so long as you buy it fresh, will last for weeks in the refrigerator and despite what some snooty chefs may tell you, it tastes just fine. In fact, I challenge anyone to taste identical dishes made in a triangle test with pre-peeled and whole head garlic and identify the odd one out. Seriously.

12. Read the Recipe First

Associate Editor Niki suggested this one and it might sound like the most obvious one on the list. But let me tell you something: back when I use to work for Cook's Illustrated magazine, part of our interview process for new hires was to have them cook through recipes. Their only task was to read the recipe and follow it exactly as written. You wouldn't believe the number of folks who would start cooking before reading through every step only to find that they were missing a tool they needed at a time sensitive juncture, or that they hadn't divided ingredients properly.

"When prepping ingredients for a recipe, check to see when things are added collectively and combine them ahead of time—saves stress and dishes," says Niki. "Same when thinking about the order of things that you're cooking—can you use the same cutting board if you cut veggies before chicken? Do you REALLY need to have two pans going at once, or can the processes be combined? etc."
Read More:KITCHEN TIPS

Tips For Kitchen
Peel Ginger with a Spoon
Get an Immersion Blender
Keep a Small Strainer for Citrus
Use that Same Small Strainer for Eggs
Think Like a Factory Line, and Work Clean
Use a Garbage Bowl and a Bench Scraper
Freeze Liquids in Useable Portions!
Freeze as Flat as Possible
Defrost Meat on Aluminum Trays
Slice Avocados in their Skins
Buy Pre-Peeled Garlic
Read the Recipe First
Use a Scale for Baking
The Microplane is Your Friend
Make Your Vinagrettes in Squeeze Bottles
Buy Deli Containers with Matching Lids

reply to post by MystikMushroom



very useful, thank you

There are some useful tips to be found in this thread. One that I didn't see anybody mention is to save your uncooked veggie and fruit scraps!! They make an awesome compost when mixed with leaves, lawn clippings, rinsed eggshells, coffee grounds, and even WORMS! I keep a pretty nice sized heap in my backyard and will turn it and mix it all around about once a week. I will also sprinkle a tad bit of water on top to keep everything moist. Then sit back and let Mother Nature do her work. The resulting compost will do wonders for your garden

Im sure I will be browsing this thread for more tips yum yum

Here's one of mine...

Need cut up veggies for your recipe? Feel lazy? Go to the salad bar at the grocery store and buy just the amount you think you'll need. They usually always have celery, carrots and onions.

If you're making omelets, you can do the same thing, as most salad bars have stuff like bacon bits and diced ham. I like to portion out the omelet filling out into plastic bags and freeze them for ease of use. I also buy that egg beaters stuff so I don't have to crack eggs. Usually if you go to a place and order an omelet, you're getting liquid egg product anyway.

I know people have said some of these, but I will say them again because they are good to know.

1. Get a microplane if you dont already have one. They are great for citrus zest, grated cheese, grated garlic, grated ginger, and the list goes on.

2. sharp knife

3. have everything ready before you cook!!!

Use dental floss to cut cheeses, breads, cakes, and any other soft food that can accommodate it. Will make the cleanest cuts and doesn't mash things like a heavy blade.

Always remember your oven mitts when taking things out of the oven.

For garlic, I just break off whatever cloves I want to use, then cut the "root" ends.

Then I put the flat side of my chef's knife on the clove and give it a whack with my free hand which smashes the clove a bit.

The skin comes off pretty clean and easy and chopping the clove got easier as well.