Food Hacks

Greek yogurt has always been in my regular snack rotation. Packed with more protein than plain yogurt, it fills me up and stabilizes my energy with its low levels of carbohydrates and sugar.

We like our Egg McMuffins around here, albeit homemade with our preferred ingredients: whole wheat (or homemade sourdough) English muffins, a slice of thick Tillamook cheddar cheese, a meat, perhaps, like Canadian bacon, and finally — that perfectly-fried, perfectly-shaped egg.

I grew up in a rural town, which meant we dehydrated a lot of food. Even with a hungry family of five, there was no way that we could eat all the season's tomatoes before they molded, all the orchard's apples before they grew soft, or all the wild mushrooms we picked. And so our dehydrator was always getting a good workout.

People will go to amazing lengths to make a grilled cheese sandwich. They'll use irons, waffle makers, or whatever appliance gets hot enough to marry golden, crisp bread with oozy, molten cheese.

I'm not a big fan of single-use tools, especially ones that aren't used particularly often. I'm especially not a big fan of seldom-used single-use tools that take up a large amount of space.

Want to show all your foodie friends that you're really in the know? Then it's time to master the art of making edible dirt. Chefs are finding ways to dry, char, and combine various foodstuffs to give the appearance of actual dirt — only with a rich, savory taste.

Fish are delicate, flaky, and can be damn tricky to cook; more often than not, you end up with a hard, dry block of flesh that makes your taste buds sad. And the best ways to cook fish that you know of — c'mon, who doesn't love a fried fish — take way too much effort for you to bother with on a weeknight. Or maybe you're looking for a healthier way to enjoy fish that doesn't require batter or frying at all.

Skip the drive-thru — you can fry up KFC-style Nashville Hot Chicken at home in less time than it takes to find out whether it's still on the menu.

Instant ramen has been popular in the States for decades, and restaurants that serve the real thing in any variety you can imagine have been popping up everywhere in the last few years. But you don't have to go out or cook all day to have a gourmet ramen experience.

We're all familiar with the sinking feeling that happens when you cruise through a recipe, only to arrive at an instruction that calls for a tool you don't have. Some of the best food hacks (and my personal favorites) exist to combat that problem. Why spend money on a kitchen tool — or worse, avoid a recipe altogether — when you could find a new way to achieve the same result?

There are few kitchen tools as elusive as the oyster knife. Many people—even seafood lovers—don't own one. If you own one, it probably gets used so infrequently that it gets sent to the back of the shelf, where it proceeds to get lost. Then you accidentally find the knife once a month when you don't need it, but you can't for the life of you find the sneaky little thing when you do need it.

Many lazy cooks skip rinsing their grains before cooking them, but that's a big mistake for several reasons. Some grains have coatings you should rinse off to cook properly and taste good.

Valentine's Day is right around the corner... which is the perfect excuse to ignite your inner cupid and bake a heart-shaped cake. If you have a heart-shaped cake or springform pan, you're all set. If not, don't worry—you don't need one! With a little ingenuity, you'll have a beautiful heart cake using the pans you already own.

Cake decorating is one of those activities that used to leave my hands sticky and my spirits dampened. No matter what I seemed to do, the final result always ended up looking like a preschool art project.

I recently enjoyed ice cream rolls at an ice cream corner and I wonder can we make them at our homes. I asked the ice corner's owner about it and he said there is a chemical under the plate where ice cream liquid is rolled. Is there a way to make them at our homes without that chemical?

Making chicken stock or any stock for that matter, is NOT about a recipe whatsoever. You can make two completely different kinds of stock with almost the exact same ingredients and yet have them be totally different in flavor and appearance.

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Home made Potato, Cucumber, Green peas Achar recipe.This is vegan side dish that is good for any occasion. Very easy to make and with very few ingredients.

Look through the dessert recipes on any food blog and there's a pretty good chance you'll find something with chocolate and peanut butter. It's one of the most common combinations in candy bars and other sweets (not that I'm complaining).

A to Z Food Challenge in 24 Hours. I Ate Food in Alphabetical Order. Can You?

There are those who prefer Thanksgiving leftovers to the actual official meal, much like people who prefer cold pizza over hot. I'm definitely in the latter camp. There's something luxurious about enjoying your perfectly cooked turkey and stuffing while wearing sweatpants and not having to make small talk with your weird uncle who drinks too much.

Oven space is scarce on that fated fourth Thursday of November. Even if you can find a spare space for pumpkin pie on the bottom shelf, you risk turkey drippings overflowing from above and ruining your beautiful dessert — not to mention a burnt crust from different temperature requirements. The bottom line is: oven real estate is valuable, and it's tough to multitask cooking for Thanksgiving when every dish requires baking or roasting.

With T-Day on the horizon and approaching rapidly, you are probably in one of two camps. The one that is eagerly awaiting the holiday feast with barely-contained drool. Or the one that involves breathing heavily into a paper bag while worrying about your lack of oven and stovetop real estate, while also bemoaning the lack of multiples of you to get all the prep work done.

Gravy is a relatively simple dish, yet it's remarkably easy to mess up. We've all experienced the disappointment of excitedly pouring gravy onto our mashed potatoes, only to realize it's too runny, too lumpy, or too bland. And because gravy is so simple, even if you don't mess it up, it's still challenging to make it memorable and delicious.

Roasting turkey is a topic that inspires endless debate among cooks. How do you get the perfect mixture of juicy meat, crispy skin, and flavor? Everyone has a favorite technique, whether it's brining the bird or spatchcocking it. However, if you're ready to move onto Ph.D. levels of turkey cooking, you might just want to look beyond these methods and get genuinely wild.

Mashed potatoes are universally beloved, and for a good reason — they're cheap, tasty, and relatively easy to make. What's more, they're adaptable to just about every dietary regimen, whether you're vegan, gluten-free, or lactose-intolerant. And they're a staple for holidays such as Thanksgiving.