Food Hacks How-Tos
How To: Save Time Prepping Veggies with These Insider Tricks
Vegetables are perhaps the most important part of our diets, but often times they're an absolute pain to prepare. Cleaning every fleck of dirt off of dozens of leafy greens takes ages, and eliminating the more fibrous parts of certain veggies can be extremely tedious.
Save Money: Break Down Your Own Chicken
Here's a not-so-well-kept secret about the food industry: retailers love to take your money. And one of the ways they do that is by dividing food into smaller sizes and charging more. Have you ever noticed that a container of precut, washed broccoli costs more than a head of broccoli with the same amount of florets and stems?
How To: Burn Your Cake? Keep Calm & Make Delicious Desserts
We've all been there before. Preheated the oven, popped in the cake, and then became distracted by this, that, or the other... until we either smelled burning or had the smoke detector pierce our eardrums.
How To: Make Sinfully Delicious Buffalo Wings (That Are Surprisingly Low on Fat)
Be it happy hour, a Super Bowl party, or just a gathering of friends, buffalo wings are a universal favorite. Since they're usually prepared for large groups, there is always a mix of both those that aren't counting their calories and others who are.
How To: Dry Salad Greens Without Any Special Tools
Salad spinners are one of the more divisive kitchen tools out there. On one hand, they're incredibly easy, efficient, and useful. On the other hand, they're a single-use tool that takes up a lot of space.
How To: Make a Freakin’ Great Cup of Joe Without Any Coffee Swag
As an avid coffee drinker, I used to be a big fan of single-serve coffee machines. One day, the machine decided to stop working—which does happen from time to time—so I decided to go old school and use my automatic drip. Then, I realized that all I had were pods of single-serve coffee grinds, and I was all out of regular coffee filters!
How To: 10 Insanely Delicious Pizza Dough Hacks
If I could survive on one food for the rest of my life, it would be pizza. The irresistible smell of baking pizza instantly makes me feel both comforted... and hungry!
How To: 4 Healthier Whipped Cream Alternatives
Whipped cream is one of the most iconic dessert toppings around, but the full-fat version is not the most forgiving when it comes to fat content. With the holidays just around the corner, learn how to spare yourself a few calories—especially if you love the creamy texture of whipped toppings!
How To: 3 Wacky Ways to Hack Your Pop-Tarts
Pop-Tarts are a pretty iconic breakfast food. And while I'm more of a bacon, eggs, and toast person myself... sometimes a sweet, gooey, artificially-flavored treat is just what you need in the morning. Yet, despite the fact that I do enjoy Pop-Tarts, I've always found them a little bit bland. Therefore I decided to make them better—by cooking with them.
How To: No-Stress Thanksgiving Desserts That Don't Require an Oven
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.
How To: How We Feasted Like Kings on… Instant Ramen?
I held the orange packet in my hands and presented it to my friend, Seth, as though it were a plastic-wrapped jewel—rather than three ounces of dehydrated noodles.
How To: 7 Steps to the Best Baked Potato You’ll Ever Have
If I could only eat one food for the rest of my life, it would definitely be potatoes. In fact, when I recently saw The Martian, I didn't feel that badly for Matt Damon. I mean, sure... he was stranded on a hostile planet, millions of miles from home. But he got to eat potatoes all the time! Pretty fair trade, if you ask me.
How To: 3 Easy Tips That Make Boxed Cornbread Mix Taste Homemade
I love making everything from scratch, but some things are just easier to buy. So there are times when you have to find a creative way to split the difference. For me, the easiest dish to buy without compromising on flavor is cornbread mix.
How To: Everything You Need to Know About Mulled Cider
When it's frigid outside, all you can think about is getting inside and shutting out the cold. But sometimes even the largest house can get a bit, well, stuffy.
How To: Time-Saving Food Hacks for the 7 Most Common Thanksgiving Foods
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.
How To: Frost Your Cake Like a Pro
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.
How To: Trust Us… Use a Lemon Peel When Loading the Dishwasher
If you're lucky enough to have a dishwasher, you probably use that sucker to clean everything (minus your good cooking knives), and maybe even to cook your food, too. However, dishwashers are not without their faults. Dishes can still come out spotty and even with chunks of food on them, which usually leads to some hand-washing afterward.
How To: DIY Instant Baby Food Is Easier Than You Think
When it comes to your baby and your time, nothing but the best and most efficient will do. These high standards carry through every aspect of your life as a new parent, from diapers to strollers and especially to food.
How To: Make REAL Tater Tots at Home
When you're young, utensils tend to be optional—and eating with your hands is optimal. One of the best examples of finger food for kids that has pervaded today's nostalgia-driven culture is tater tots.
How To: 10 Food Hacks for Making Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies Every Time
Everyone and his mother (and grandmother) has a chocolate chip cookie recipe that he swears is the absolute best recipe, guaranteed to produce a chocolate chip cookie so good it will make you weep with joy. The problem with that is that everyone—relatives included—has a different idea of exactly what constitutes a perfect chocolate chip cookie.
How To: Coffee Beans Still Fresh? Here’s How to Check
Everyone starts their mornings differently, but one common thread amongst the masses tends to be the consumption of coffee, albeit in many different forms—instant, pre-ground, K-Cups, Nespresso, and so on. And I'm sure that we all have our own preferred methods, as well.
How To: 10 Unbelievably Delicious Substitutes for Boring Ol' Croutons
Fall is a time of change. The leaves change color, the weather changes from warm to cool, and we change our clocks to fall back an hour. This last change means that many of us will get home from work in pitch-black darkness; for me, the early onset of night makes me less interested in cooking dinner and more interested in getting in my sweats, throwing leftovers in the microwave, and binge-watching The Affair.
How To: Take the Bite Out of Garlic
Garlic is magical. It fends off vampires (or so I hear), helps lower blood pressure, reduces the production of cholesterol in the body... oh, and it's also freaking delicious, of course. Garlic is a culinary staple in countries all over the world. That lovable stink and sharp bite of flavor are essential to many dishes we know and love today, from spaghetti to sesame chicken.
How To: Make Gatorade at Home with No Artificial Ingredients
I'm not ashamed to admit it: I love Gatorade. It's probably from all of those times I watched Michael Jordan chug it during basketball games when I was a kid. But I'm not the only one that loves Gatorade—a large percentage of people who work out regularly choose to replenish their electrolytes with sports drinks.
Screw Pillsbury: You Can Make Better Slice & Bake Cookies Yourself
There are few things more satisfying than fulfilling a craving with instant gratification. Companies like Pillsbury and have made this possible with the introduction of their famous Ready to Bake Cookies line: just rip open the package, break off the cookies along the creased lines, place on a cookie sheet, and bake.
How To: 5 Delectable Ways to Use Up Your Leftover Halloween Chocolate
There's only one day that can top the aftermath of Easter and its copious amounts of leftover candy, and that is November — the day after Halloween. As you come down from your sugar rush and realize you now own more chocolate than your stomach can physically hold in one sitting ... fear not! Here are several ways to turn your Halloween chocolate into delicious snacks and desserts that you can enjoy at your leisure.
How To: 'Hot Chocolate' Balls = Next-Level Instant Cocoa
Winter—or any cold, gray day, for that matter—is the best time for a warm cup of something hot. For me, hot chocolate is my "warm cup" of choice: rich and milky, deliciously sweet, and oh-so-comforting. On super-cold days when I can't feel my face, a nice, large cup of hot chocolate warms my tummy and cheers me up. (And lucky for me, it's pretty healthy for me too!)
How To: The Clever Trick That Makes Stuffed Pancakes a Cinch
Any other person can make plain pancakes... but only the most awesome of cooks can make stuffed pancakes. Luckily, this isn't a tough technique—in fact, it's so easy that you'll find yourself getting bored of the run-of-the-mill pancakes and dreaming of all the things you can stuff pancakes with, instead.
How To: This Simple Trick Will Keep Your Bread Fresher Longer
Fresh loaves of bread from the bakery are both delicious and often free of the preservatives that come with buying sliced, bagged bread off the supermarket shelves. However, these same loaves of bread tend to become stale much more quickly when sliced. It's quite the dilemma, especially for those who want to avoid throwing away and wasting stale bread (or are tired of turning said stale pieces into breadcrumbs or croutons).
How To: The Easiest Way to Make Guilt-Free Ice Cream
I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream. It's a universally loved treat that seems to make everyone who eats it giddy. However, there are two downsides to ice cream, in my opinion.
Halloween Food Hacks: How to Make a Bubbling, Brewing Pumpkin Cooler
Bubble, bubble, toil, and trouble... it's time for another Halloween-themed food hack. This time, we'll be tackling the pumpkin cooler—an idea that has been done to death on DIY blogs around the internet. And there's no point in reposting something that everyone else has done, so I decided to change things up a little bit.
How To: The Proper Way to Make a French Omelet
A classic French omelet is supposed to be completely cooked through with no brown edges. This is a delicate balance to strike, though. I always find that the moment I flip an omelet, it completely falls apart—unless it's so well-done it's rubbery, of course.
How To: Keep Your Lemons Fresher, Longer
Lemons are often displayed as a bright and beautiful pop of color in many home kitchen displays. They lend a lovely scent to the air and an aesthetic sense of freshness to any setting. Therefore, it would be easy to assume that lemons are best left at room temperature.
How To: The Simple Trick to Rescuing Over-Toasted Food
It's Friday night, you're in the kitchen, and your guests are arriving way sooner than you want them to. The soup is not thickening like it's supposed to, the salad still needs dressing, and the pine nuts for the salad are... wait, what's that smell? Crap, the pine nuts!
How To: "Preserve Your Herbs"
Whilst drying herbs is a well known method they do suit certain types of dishes but with this method of using olive oil to infuse before freezing, you get the best results many weeks after you've cut them and it allows you to continue enjoying those summer flavours well into winter.
How To: 13 Deeply Disgusting Dishes, Drinks & Desserts for Halloween
It's almost time for Halloween, which means that it's time for the nastiest-looking food and drink to make its appearance. Severed fingers, brains, vomit... everything that would normally make our stomachs turn at any other time of year makes us cackle with glee instead on Halloween night.
How To: The Easiest Way to Make Delicious Pumpkin Brownies at Home
I love brownies. Through the turmoil of my teenage years and the raucous over-eating of my college years to now, brownies have been a constant companion to my highs and (calorie-laden) lows. I've made brownies from scratch, I've used the box mix... hell, I was a baker at a bakery that specialized in brownies. So yeah... I'd say I'm pretty familiar with them.
How To: Keep Cheese from Drying Out in Your Fridge
Few things are as frustrating as grabbing food from the fridge just to discover that your leftovers have gone bad. When it comes to cheese, you may have taken every last precaution to keep it as fresh as possible—sealed plastic containers, saran wrap, parchment paper—but to no avail.
How To: 10 Reasons Why Drinking Gin Can Actually Be Good for You
Alcohol isn't exactly considered a healthy lifestyle choice; more often than not, it's associated with empty calories and bad decisions. But that doesn't mean there aren't a few benefits to drinking in moderation. In fact, gin is a liquor with a wealth of potential benefits to offer. So read on, and discover ten ways in which gin might actually be a good drink for you.
How To: The Easiest Way to Make Food & Drink Look More Classy
Lemons, limes, and even oranges compliment a wide variety of both food and drink: gin and tonic, poached salmon, shrimp cocktails, fajitas, and so on. And you can easily step up your hosting game by making citrus garnishes: a presentation that is both elegant and interesting.