40 Cooking Hacks and Tips That You’ll Wish You Knew Sooner

Andrew Kreeger

2 years ago

Cooking is such a blast because it requires us to use every single one of our senses to prepare something that both nourishes and spreads love. What makes time in the kitchen even more enjoyable is learning some cooking hacks and tips that will save you time and money as well as better results, meaning, more delicious food! Knowing some handy cooking tips will improve you and your family’s lives as you’ll get to spend more time with the ones you love.

We’ve rounded up the best cooking tips and hacks that ask you to take just a couple of steps that will fundamentally change how you perform certain tasks in the kitchen. From knowing how to properly store foods to learning how to keep your knives sharp, you’ve got to see these game-changing cooking tips and hacks.

Discover the Best Cooking Tips and Hacks Below to Learn How to Make the Most of Your Time in the Kitchen.

Make Your Cutting Board Stay In Place

40 Cooking Hacks and Tips — Shutterstock

Have you ever found yourself chopping vegetables on your cutting board only for the board to slide around on your kitchen counter? One way to keep your board in place is to wet a paper towel and put it under your board to keep it from moving. A thin kitchen towel that’s been moistened will also do the trick.

No More Garlic Fingers

Garlic improves many of the dishes we enjoy. The only bad thing about it is the pungent smell it leaves on your fingers after chopping it up. To get rid of the unpleasant odor, rub your fingers and hands over your stainless steel kitchen sink for thirty seconds. Really rub the tips of your fingers over the metal! Then, wash your hands and you should have no smell!

No Ants

Ants go for the sweetest things they can find and granulated sugar is a treat they just can’t seem to resist. It’s the worst! So, what can you do? Put a few cloves in your sugar jar and the ants won’t touch the stuff. They detest the smell of cloves and won’t bother the sweet stuff.

The Corn Hack

Shucking corn can be a messy pain but there’s one way to get those husks off with ease. Place your ears of corn on a microwave-safe and microwave them for about 30-60 seconds. It creates steam which makes the husks fall right off of your corn. How easy is it that?

Dry Brine Your Meats

If you salt your meat about an hour or so before you cook it, you’re doing better than most other home cooks. But, for the best results, dry brine your pork, beef, and chicken and let it hang out in the fridge overnight. That gives the salt time to deeply penetrate the meat so that every bite is full of flavor.

How to Remove Seeds

Removing the seeds from vegetables like squash and pumpkin can be a messy, stringy challenge. You likely are doing it with a spoon but another kitchen tool works much better. Use an ice cream scoop to get out the seeds. Almost all scoops have a sharper edge to them that makes getting rock-hard ice cream a breeze, That same feature makes getting rid of the seeds so much easier. It’s such an easy cooking hack!

Save Your Fats

Here’s one of the kitchen hacks that we really urge you to exercise. Do not throw away your bacon fat. Nicely rendered fat is the perfect swap for olive oil on most vegetables. It is such an amazing flavor enhancer that can be used in place of other fats (think about replacing butter for your next roux with it because it’s amazing) in recipes and is beautiful to drizzle over a veggie bake.

A Recipe Is a Guide Not a Law

If you’re baking a cake, you want to precisely follow a recipe so that you don’t mess it up. Recipes for cooking can be easily altered to your personal tastes. For instance, if you love garlic, cook with more garlic. If you like spicier foods, go ahead and add another pepper to that dish. This is less of a cooking hack and more of a way to ask you to follow your gut when you’re whipping something up.

Keeping Guacamole Green

Guacamole is one of the best snacking foods on the planet. However, it does tend to turn brown quickly adding lime juice tends to help with this but if you’re looking for a better way to keep your guac in the refrigerator, simply cover it with a thin layer of water. It will keep oxygen from getting to the dip, meaning it will stay that vibrant green color. It’s such a great hack that’s as easy as it gets.

Another Avocado Hack

Do you know how to pick a perfectly ripe avocado? Start by looking for only the darkest avocados lighter colored ones are not typically ripe. Find a good candidate and pop off the stem and look at the color underneath. An avocado that is too ripe will be brown under the stem and will be useless to just about everyone. An avocado that is just right will be green underneath the stem.

Easiest Ice Cream Hack

Ice cream can turn rock hard in the freezer and it takes ages to thaw out just enough that you can eat it. A simple hack to keep it from turning into a block of ice is to put the container in a plastic Ziplock bag before throwing it in the freezer. Yep, that’s all you got to do to keep it fresh. Further, remember to flatten down the top of your ice cream to prevent freezer burn.

Keeping That Brown Sugar Soft

Now, we all know that brown sugar can easily go rock hard. If you need to loosen a brick of sugar up, simply microwave it for a few seconds and you’ll be good to go. However, if you find that a pain to do, you can keep your brown sugar from going hard in the first place. Simply store the sugar with a piece of bread or a marshmallow. It’s that easy!

Adjusting Temperature

Most recipes you read have been tested on a gas range. That means if you have electric or induction, you will need to adjust accordingly. Gas ranges tend to run hotter so just tick up the heat a bit to keep you rolling right along with the recipe.

The Great Citrus Hacks

For lemons, limes, oranges, etc., let them come up to room temperature before use if you had them in the refrigerator. If you don’t have time to wait, you can submerge the fruit in hat water for a minute or two to get the juices flowing. Further, rolling your citrus under your palm will help release the juice as well.

Keep the Veggies Crunchy

If you’re cooking for adults, don’t stew your vegetables down to a mash. Veggies that retain their crunch are so much more pleasing to eat. So, don’t make baby food for yourself and your friends. Instead, consider cooking vegetables quickly!

The Fruit Salad Hack

Throughout summer, fruit salad makes for such a refreshing treat. But, a couple of the ingredients do get rather gross in a fruit salad. Bananas and apples turn brown so quickly. If you’d like to avoid that, put them on the bottom of your salad when you go to construct it.

Finish Your Dishes with Acid

One of the best things you can do to help balance and enhance flavors in a dish is to finish it with an acid. You can use a squeeze of lemon juice or wine or wine vinegar, or distilled vinegar to help bring an added zip to a dish. This is especially true for sauces, soups, and gravies. If you taste your dish and think it needs something, try an acid. It usually gets the job done.

A Piece of Cake Floss Hack

Cutting a cake precisely can seem impossible. While most go for a large knife or cutter, the best thing to reach for is dental floss. You can use (unscented/unflavored) floss to accurately cut cakes and other baked goods but also cheese. It’s so much easier than a knife and you’ll achieve some seriously clean lines.

A Hack for Spicy Foods

If a curry or sauce is too spicy, add some potatoes, cream, tomato sauce, or coconut milk to balance it. Any sort of creamy things will work (also consider using sour cream). Adding a creamy element will mellow the spice to make it very nice.

Easy Boiled Eggs Hack

For easy peeling, use a thumb tack to poke a small hole in the bottom of an egg before boiling. It will make separating the shell from the egg much easier. It’s not perfect but it does work most of the time. Another note: really fresh eggs are not ideal for boiling. Older eggs will peel more easily.

Added Richness

If you’re trying to add richness to a sauce, soup, or gravy, a nut butter like cashew butter is ideal. You want to use the unsweetened kind. It will add smoothness and a rounder mouthfeel that your dish could be lacking. It’s great for vegans and vegetarians who don’t to use cream, cheese, butter, etc.

Try This Hack for Crunchy French Fries

For the crunchiest French fries, let potatoes sit in cool water for about half an hour, or quickly blanch them before frying. This removes starch and helps keep the fries crispier for longer. We definitely prefer the soak method over blanching. But, both will deliver for you.

It Takes Time

How long does it take to caramelize onions? Every single person seems to have a different answer to this question. The answer is tricky because getting onions to the point of being “caramelized” is a subjective thing. For the best results, 30-45 minutes is about the right time for your onions to be just right. But, if you’re over higher heat, it could go faster. If you’re lower, it could take even longer.

Tomatoes Are Hot Natured

Whatever you do to a tomato, do not store it in the refrigerator. Storing your tomatoes in cold actually changes the chemicals that make them taste good. Further, the texture changes too into a more mealy feel. The best place for your tomatoes is on a sunny window sill. They really do love keeping warm.

Roast Those Tomatoes

Have you ever wondered how a great Italian restaurant makes such a good red sauce? They know how to build a massive depth of flavor through high-temperature roasting. Any type of tomato, be it canned or fresh, big or small, can benefit from a blast of hot air in the oven. With a little olive and salt, roast your tomatoes at about 425 degrees until you see that the sugars have caramelized. Then, those deeply flavorful gems go into your red sauce or other dishes. It’s a cooking hack that really makes a difference.

Hosting Hacks

Most home cooks make the mistake of trying something new for a dinner party or gathering. If you don’t want the added stress, make dishes that you know how to do and can do them well. Further, don’t make it too hard on yourself. Do as many make-ahead dishes as possible so that you actually get to enjoy your party and not just cook the entire time! You really can be the host with the most!

Don’t Wait Until It’s Too Late

One of the more counterintuitive things people do in the kitchen is to wait until cooking is finished to season and taste the foods their making. It’s important to season and taste along the way so you know how things are coming together. Your ingredients absorb salt and flavor as they cook meaning that if you skip it, you’re missing out on fully flavorful ingredients. It doesn’t like a hack but you really should be salting and sampling as you go.

Use Your Toaster More Often

You can make use of your toaster far beyond just toast. Use it to roast vegetables, bake bacon, and toast spices. This is an essential hack if your kitchen is hot. A toaster puts off less heat than your oven and can bring you the same results.

The Newspaper Refresher Hack

Got a weird smell going on in your refrigerator? Take a newspaper, wet it using water, make a ball of it, and put it in the middle of the refrigerator. Take it out after six or seven hours, and the smell will be gone. Can you believe this hack? It’s just so darn easy and a great way to make another use for an old paper.

Not Friends

Potatoes and onions might be delicious when cooked together but the opposite is true for the produce. Do not store your onions and potatoes together because the onions cause potatoes to rot. They are best to keep separate until you’re ready to prepare them. We don’t know why they are so fussy but we’re glad to have this hack.

The Salt and Grinder Hack

To keep the blades in your spice grinder and mixers, grind up a little bit of salt to give the blades a refresh. If you do this every couple of months or so you will notice a big difference over time.

Safety First

This is not really a cooking hack but more of a best practice to get into. Do not leave handles on pots and pans hanging over your counter’s edge. If you are heating water or oil, this is even more important. By pushing the handles away from you, you’re less likely to bump into a handle and send it flying all over your kitchen!

Remove Odors from Your Freezer with This Hack

Our freezers can put off some bad smells but it’s not the end of the world. Chop or tear up some mint leaves and let them sit uncovered in your freezer. You’ll soon notice that any unpleasant odors are gone. It’s that simple!

Clean Your Dirty Pans

Some of us are guiltier than others when it comes to cleaning up after making dinner. If you happened to skip clean-up right after you’ve eaten and instead let the mess sit overnight, you will be facing a herculean task to get them cleaned. But, this hack helps! The next time you’ve got a very hard pan to wash, put two tablespoons of vinegar and four tablespoons of water in and bring it to simmer. The vinegar will eat through the mess in a matter of minutes.

Keep It Fizzy Hack

Gently add frozen ice cubes to your already poured soda to retain more carbonation. You likely grew up putting ice first, then soda, but it’s the other way around! This is such a useful hack for those who enjoy fizzy drinks out there.

When You Should Salt That Water

When making pasta, wait to add the salt to the pot until the water starts to boil. Saltwater has a higher boiling point and a higher specific heat, so it will take longer and uses more energy to heat than if we add it when it starts to boil. It’s also better for your pots and pans to wai to salt water. For your pasta, make sure to add a liberal amount of salt to the water to ensure that the pasta is properly seasoned.

A Genius Cooking Spray Hack

When a recipe calls for you to coat a baking dish with a cooking spray, open your dishwasher and place the dish on the door. Then you can spray away, and any over-shots will get washed away with your next load. If you don’t have a dishwasher, you can spray your dish over the sink to catch the excess.

A Better Way to Fry

When you are deep frying, use a tong to hold each bit of food as you toss it into the oil. Make sure you hold it under the surface of the oil prior to releasing it. By doing this, the exterior will be sealed which means that it will not stick to the pot or to the food as well. It’s already a great hack but it also is a great way to get food frying without splashing oil on your kitchen or yourself.

Punch Up the Flavor

If you are not baking, substitute different cooking liquids. Many recipes will call for you to add water but by adding a stock that’s flavorful, you’re going to get even better-tasting end results. This is a tip that’s great but we urge you to sample your cooking liquids for seasoning to determine the right level of salt to add.

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A Better Way to Measure

The only accurate way to ensure that you’re measuring out your baking ingredients properly is to use a kitchen scale. Measuring cups cause some ingredients to compact while others don’t get packed tightly enough. An inexpensive kitchen scale is a great addition to your kitchen toolbox. You’ll bake better treats and more by measuring out your ingredients.

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