0

15 Kitchen Hacks to Make Your Life Easy

The art of cooking entails exercising your creativity to churn out innovative dishes with countless permutations and combinations of ingredients. However, working in the kitchen shouldn’t feel tedious. That’s where kitchen hacks come into play.

Embracing various kitchen hacks in your cooking regimen and kitchen management makes your kitchen tasks easy and user-friendly. Numerous path-breaking kitchen hacks save our time and effort and promise pleasurable kitchen experiences every time.

If you are armed with the knowledge of kitchen hacks, working in the kitchen feels like a breeze. Keep reading this article to explore 15 exceptional kitchen hacks that provide a great time in the kitchen.

Thanks to our “Juggad culture”, we Indians are great at inventing hacks for everything, and our kitchen is no exception.

Whether you would like to peel veggies quickly, maintain the freshness of food for longer, heat food evenly in your microwave, or store utensils/bottles perfectly in limited spaces, numerous kitchen hacks make your life easier.

Freeze homemade pie crust

Before a large gathering or party, you can ease your cooking workload by preparing a large batch of pie crust dough a few weeks in advance.

All you need to do is to roll out each crust and wrap it in wax paper. Now, keep these crusts in your freezer within zipper-lock bags. Ensure to label every zipper bag as per your pie requirements.

If you are packing crusts for apple pie, label the bag as “apple” that need top and bottom crust. Similarly, a bag marked as pumpkin is meant for pumpkin pie that needs only one bottom crust. The freezer provides convenient storage for stacking the bags flat and nicely.

When the party day comes near, remove the pie crust bag from the freezer the previous night and defrost it in the refrigerator compartment overnight. This allows you to complete your pie the next day without much hassle.

Store garlic correctly

The rich Indian cuisine finds immense application of fresh garlic in almost every other dish. The fresh garlic is not only healthy but provides great flavour in any meal.

To keep garlic fresh, store heads of garlic in a small mesh bag. This way, the garlic heads receive optimal airflow via the holes in the bag and stay fresh for longer. Moreover, it also provides a great way of containing garlic skins.

Remove grease by using paper plates

Have you ever landed in a mess created by the greasy surfaces due to sauces, soups, or broth? You can efficiently deal with the issue by using an uncoated paper plate.

To remove grease, place the paper plate over the greasy surfaces. It will absorb most of the grease. In cases of too much grease, use two paper plates instead of one for achieving satisfactory results.

Using a paper plate to remove grease is convenient and less messy than blotting with paper towels. It’s a great alternative to skimming the surface using a spoon or transferring the objects with greasy surfaces to another grease strainer.

Prepare muffins overnight

With this hack, preparing muffins overnight is a piece of cake. First, prepare a batch of muffin batter the previous night and fill the muffins tins with the portioned amount. Now seal these muffin tins by using plastic wrap. Keep them in your refrigerator overnight.

The next morning, take the muffins out of your fridge and unwrap the plastic covering. Now bake muffin batter as you usually do.

In this process, the baking powder reacts twice, including when it gets wet and hot. On the other hand, baking soda reacts only once when it is mixed with liquid.

During the overnight refrigeration, the reaction rate of baking powder and baking soda slows down, giving them more power for lifting. Ensure to avoid refrigerating your batter for more than 24 hours.

Lemon juice kitchen hack for avoiding sticky pasta

If you reside in areas plagued by hard water, preparing pasta and noodles that are less likely to clump becomes challenging. The high alkalinity of hard water leaves you with sticky pasta. It happens due to higher levels of calcium and magnesium.

You can solve your sticky pasta issue by adding lemon juice to the water during cooking. This not only helps in correcting the pH imbalance but also reduces sticking. Moreover, it also ensures that your sauce stays over the pasta.

Store vanilla beans the right way 

While it’s inexpensive to buy vanilla beans in bulk, it’s challenging to keep them from drying out. To maintain their freshness and prevent their dryness, you should store them in a bottle of vanilla extract.

Storing vanilla beans in a bottle of vanilla extract keeps them fresh, moist, and flavoursome. Moreover, your vanilla extract gets further enriched with enhanced vanilla flavour.

Prevent milk from getting spoiled 

You need to take special care of your milk to not get spoilt before its expiration date. While you may be boiling it and refrigerating it frequently to prevent it from going bad quickly, the best way is to store your milk carton in the main compartment of your fridge.

Ensure to keep your milk carton on a middle shelf. Avoid storing it in the fridge’s door spaces as this can warm up milk quickly when you open your fridge and make it go bad sooner.

Make soggy chips edible again.

The humidity in the air or water may make your chips go soggy. As you can’t eat soggy chips, you would be tempted to throw them away. However, don’t do so. Here is an interesting hack that can make your soggy chips edible again.

Take a plate and put a kitchen towel or napkin over it. Now spread your soggy chips on the plate over the kitchen towel. Take another napkin and cover the chips. Keep this plate in your microwave for 30 seconds, and then take it out to find your chips crispy again.

Salad dressing solution

Are you fond of eating salad daily for lunch? It’s a great way to add fibres to your diet and keep you healthy; however, dressing your salad during lunch seems an issue.

The solution lies in carrying your salad dressing in small empty glass spice jars. These small and narrow jars contain the right amount of salad dressing for spreading on a large salad. These glass jars are reusable and easy to pour from.

Moreover, these glass jars don’t absorb odours, and they are easy and safe to wash in the dishwasher.

Sharpen your knife

Your knife is the workhorse of your kitchen that takes an immense load for cutting veggies, fruits, etc. Its sharpness wears down over time, and it needs to be sharpened regularly for maintaining its peak performance.

Do you have a special knife sharpener for sharpening your knife? Most of us get it done from the street vendors. What if you need to sharpen your knife immediately? You can use an ordinary ceramic cup for that purpose.

Place your ceramic cup upside down and slide your knife forward over it many times. This will sharpen your knife in no time.

Disinfect sponges

The sponges absorb lots of dirt, dust, and germs while cleaning. However, you need to clean your sponges because uncleaned sponges may spread more dirt than cleaning them.

The ideal way to disinfect your sponges is to pop them in the microwave for a few minutes every couple of days. This will kill bacteria and other germs that got accumulated during scrubbing of various surfaces.

Coconut kitchen hack for toasting them

Do you toast your coconut in the oven? It carries the risk of burning. Rather than toast it in your microwave. It is a quick and efficient way of toasting coconut.

Spread the coconut on a large microwave-safe plate in an even layer. Now cook it in a microwave on high power and keep stirring at small intervals of 30 seconds. Keep cooking till the coconut turns golden brown.

Eggnog kitchen hack for making French toast

Have you ever thought about preparing creative meals with leftover eggnog after the party? For example, you can easily make a French toast out of it.

To do so, immerse the slices of bread in the eggnog rather than batter. Now fry these pieces as you usually do. Next, add toppings of your favourite syrup and fruits. Voila! Your French toast is ready.

Cherry pitting 

Does your hand get bright red while rinsing cherries due to cherry juice? The ideal way to do cherry pitting and rinsing cherries is by placing them in a large pan or bowl of water in the sink. Now add your cherries and remove the pits.

This way, the removed pits float to the bottom of the bowl. During pitting, if the cherries get squeaked, it indicates the presence of a worm in the cherry. Also, if a cherry floats on the water surface, it signals a worm inside the cherry.

Making perfect bread cubes or croutons 

Do you find it challenging to cut bread into cubes while making homemade bread pudding, croutons, or other stuffing? The bread you bring home is quite soft and fluffy.

To firm up your bread, freeze it before cutting. This makes it easier to cut bread into bite-size cubes. Moreover, it also ensures that the cut cubes have clean and neat edges.