Food Hacks How-Tos — Page 8 of 27 « Food Hacks

How To: When You're Sick of Almond & Soy, Try These 5 Milk Alternatives

Whether you are vegan, lactose-intolerant, or cooking for someone who is, standing before the non-dairy milk shelf in the grocery store can be daunting. Instead of playing it safe with the two most common milk alternatives—soy and almond—perhaps you should explore a few other choices that tend to be overlooked.

How To: 5 Reasons to Always Have Coconut Flakes in the Kitchen

For me, shredded coconut is something that is eaten several times a week in a variety of ways—and that includes in savory dishes. It can be added to just about anything, and this is a good thing if you enjoy having some variety in your diet. Because I get tired of eating the same foods all the time, over the last few weeks I've tried some pretty interesting and simple ways to use coconut flakes in order to keep my finicky palate satisfied.

How To: Ditch the Extract & Get Serious About Baking with Vanilla Beans

Most home bakers rely on vanilla extract as a flavor component to their cakes and cookies, but little do they know what they are missing until they trade in their extract for whole vanilla beans. The rich complexity and different notes of flavor of a true vanilla bean are often washed out and distilled into a one-note sweetness, especially if the extract is cheap or imitation. If you want to get more serious about baking, you need to get serious about using vanilla beans.

How To: 5 Things You Need to Do When Baking with Frozen Fruit

Frozen fruit is always in season at your local grocery store, so you don't have to wait until the farmers market starts again to enjoy delicious baked fruit desserts. Peach pie, blueberry muffins, raspberry scones... all of these delicious baked goods can be just as delectable when using frozen fruit, too.

How To: Clone KFC's Nashville Hot Chicken

What began as a regional specialty has turned into a national trend that looks like it's here to stay: Nasvhille hot chicken has caught on like wildfire, with hot chicken restaurants popping up across the country—not to mention the 8 hot chicken restaurants that you can find in Nashville alone! The history of this Deep South dish is fascinating, and you can read more about it here.

How To: Make a Gorgeous Heart-Shaped Cake Without a Special Pan

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.

How To: The Secret to Making Deliciously Soft Cookies Is Cake Mix

This is the easiest cookie batch you'll ever bake, I promise. And no, take-and-bake cookie dough doesn't count. With this recipe, it'll take you less than 20 minutes to go from your sad, cookie-less life to cookies in your absolute favorite flavor... of cake.

How To: Recreate KitKat's Awesomely Alcoholic Sake Flavor at Home

Listen up, children, pregnant women, and lightweights: this particular KitKat variety is not for you. Well, with 0.8% alcoholic content per 2 KitKat bars, it's highly unlikely anyone will actually get drunk on these things. Still...

How To: Cook Any Cuisine Perfectly by Knowing the Right Ingredients to Use, Part 2

Eating out is great, but being able to cook the delicious ethnic foods you eat at restaurants is even better. It may seem daunting to put together a bunch of ingredients with which you might not be familiar (some with names you've never even heard of!), but with the guidelines below, you'll be making your own versions of ethnic favorites in no time.

How To: The Fastest Way to Make Spaghetti Squash Noodles

Spaghetti squash is a versatile vegetable, but it has a reputation for being intimidating to prepare... not to mention time-consuming. Heating it up in the oven can take at least 30-40 minutes, which is a definite time-suck for those who want to get dinner on the table, stat.

How To: Make Eggs That Slide Right Out of Their Shells

There are a million (okay, slight exaggeration) ways to peel an egg, and countless numbers of tips, tricks, and hacks that are supposed to make that deviled egg appetizer you agreed to make for the party an absolute snap. More often than not, though, experiences vary... and pock-marked, greyish-yolked boiled eggs find their way into your collection whether you like it or not.

How To: Make Coffee Mugs Gleam Like New with This Little-Known Cleaner

If you consider yourself a regular coffee, tea, or hot chocolate drinker, you probably have a kitchen cabinet full of stained mugs that refuse to scrub clean. Thankfully, there is a better solution that doesn't involve continuing to fight those stains with a sponge, bleach, and elbow grease. The answer to your coffee or tea stain problems is Cafiza: an awesome espresso machine cleaning product that is popular amongst professional baristas... but also doubles as an extremely effective ceramic ...

How To: Cook Any Cuisine Perfectly by Knowing the Right Ingredients to Use, Part 1

Home cooks are often quite intimidated when trying to reproduce the delicious ethnic dishes they enjoy at various restaurants. Thankfully, there are definite flavor profiles and spice/seasoning/herb combos that are very specific to various regional cuisines and cultures; with a little guidance, you can create dishes that are tasty homages to the cuisines you love to eat. In this two-part article (second part here), I'll cover both categories and sub-categories of some of the most popular ethn...

How To: Save All Your Veggie Scraps & You'll Never Buy Stock Again

Stock is a crucial ingredient for so many recipes: soups, gravies, and risottos depend on stock; quinoa and rice are both more flavorful when cooked with it, too. So, chances are that broth is a staple on your weekly shopping list.

How To: Cook Grains Perfectly, Every Time

When it comes to cooking grains, there is an unspoken rule to never stray from the exact measurements. Consulting charts for the proper ratio of liquid to grain is considered the difference between crunchy, undercooked pebbles and a mushy mess... that is, until now.

How To: This Is the Best Way to Cook a Perfect, Sumptuous Duck Breast

Many home cooks struggle to cook duck breast because they cook it as they would chicken. But not all poultry is created equal, and duck is definitely unlike chicken.

How To: The Foolproof Way to Perfect Home-Baked Bread

Almost every bread recipe will tell you to look for a golden brown crust or to tap on the bottom of your loaf and listen for a hollow sound. That visual and sound technique will work most of the time, but it can still come up short, leaving you with a soft and gooey spot in the middle of your loaf.

How To: Cut 500 Calories Each Day with These Diet & Exercise Tips

It's a well-known fact (supported by myriad sources, including Fitness Magazine) that in order to lose a pound, you need to cut and/or burn 3,500 calories... which, divided by the number of days in the week, equals 500 calories a day.

How To: Make Amazing Sauces & Dressings with This Ultimate Guide to Emulsion

The way in which cooking can be used to both illustrate science and create a beautiful bite of food is fascinating to me. And emulsions, the results of combining liquid fat and water, are a fantastic example of science in harmony with great cooking.

How To: 5 Shortcuts to Making Killer Breakfasts in a Hurry

Personally, I think everyone should have the freedom to sit down and enjoy a delicious breakfast each morning... but that isn't always attainable, especially because of the prep work and cook time that tasty meals often require.

How To: The Ultimate Guide to Making a Kickass Meat & Cheese Plate

Whether it's college football, the NFL, basketball, soccer, or baseball, sporting events are prime opportunities to entertain. No matter what the sport, food that's easy to eat is a must. Your guests should be able to mingle, eat, and talk trash... all at the same time! So a meat and cheese plate—also known as a characuterie board— is sure to be a crowd pleaser.

How To: Raise Your Slow Cooker Game with These 10 Essential Tips

A slow cooker can be both your culinary companion and your go-to gadget in the kitchen. That's right: the idea of slow cooking is no longer for Southern housewives or purveyors of the Ladies' Home Journal anymore. The times, they are a'changing!

How To: Portion Out Cookies Months Ahead with This Ingenious Egg Carton Trick

Back in the days when June Cleaver was our role model, stay-at-home moms eagerly greeted their offspring's arrival home from school with fresh-baked cookies. But in the current vernacular, "Ain't nobody got time fo' dat!"

How To: The Trick to Making Roast Chicken Perfect Every Time

When roast chicken is concerned, perfection is hard to attain. The reason for this is surprisingly simple: the light meat and the dark meat should be cooked to different temperatures. Ideally, chicken legs should be cooked to at least 170°F, while breasts should be cooked to 150°F. Naturally, this poses a conundrum: how can you cook two parts of the chicken to two different temperatures, without taking the bird apart?

How To: 10 Clever Ways to Use Juicing Pulp in Your Cooking

Juicing fruits and vegetables is very beneficial to your health. For some, it's a trend; but to me, it's a part of my morning routine.

How To: Make Delicious & Juicy Sausage at Home in Just 10 Minutes

I hate wasting money. To be fair: I doubt there are many people out there who relish the idea, but I especially hate it. And I also dislike spending in excess of what I need. This happens all too often, I feel, when it comes to recipes that involve using sausage.

How To: Dice an Onion Faster by Using Its Root as a Handle

There are myriad wrong ways to cut an onion, a few right ways to cut an onion (including this one)... but only one ultimate way to dice onions, and that's what I'll be sharing with you today.

How To: Black Peppercorns Make a Surprisingly Delicious Tea

I'll be the first to admit that I have a problem: I'm utterly addicted to tea.

How To: Make Your Pasta Even Better by Throwing It in the Sauce Before Serving

As a kid, my mother would always bring the noodles onto the table in a colander, then bring the pot of sauce she cooked separately. So I grew up with the idea that pasta and sauce were two separate entities that you combined table-side, and continued to eat pasta that way well into my adulthood when cooking at home. It was only much later that I realized the error of my ways... that pasta could taste so much better than I had previously imagined.

How To: 5 Tips That Make Cooking for a Crowd Easy

Even those of us most comfortable in the kitchen can be daunted by the idea of cooking for a whole houseful of people. Whether you have a large, well-equipped kitchen or a small one with just the essentials, it can prove to be quite a task to prepare food for a dozen or so people. It takes a certain type of recipe that allows for mass production, in respects to both technique and ingredients. And what I've provided below includes several recipes that you might normally make for just a family ...

How To: The Only Seasoning Your Cast Iron Pans Will Ever Need

Cast iron pans are a timeless treasure—they're an essential kitchen tool that will stand the test of time, and no home kitchen is complete without one. However, they do have a reputation for being difficult to care for... with arguments both for and against regular seasoning. In 2010, a blogger named Sheryl Canter claimed that she found the best way to season a cast iron pan that would keep the cast iron from rusting... or requiring re-seasoning! And after a few hands-on test by Cook's Illust...

How To: The Only 'Recipe' You'll Ever Need for Roasting Veggies

I've never had a problem with veggies—we've always been the best of friends—but I do have a lot of other people in my life that have been less than enamored with this basic food group in the past. Some cite the bitter flavor associated with veggies like Brussels sprouts, while others dislike the various consistencies that come with boiling or steaming vegetables such as broccoli or eggplant.

How To: This Simple Step Will Take Your Quinoa to the Next Level

Nowadays, it feels like you can't talk about eating healthy without bringing up quinoa. Quinoa (KEEN-wah) has been the "superstar" of the health movement for a while; 2013 was declared the International Year of Quinoa by the United Nations, and has only continued to grow in popularity with both health nuts and culinary experts alike through the past few years. The true testament to quinoa's success has been its eventual integration into our everyday lives. Quinoa is now very accessible to fol...

How To: If Cooking Stresses You Out, Mise en Place Can Help

My daughter moved into her first apartment last year, a huge rite of passage in any young person's life. With a mother and two grandmothers who are good cooks (to say the least, in the case of the latter), it's not surprising that she turned to us for some advice about how to improve her own skills in the kitchen. Without question, the single best piece of advice we have given her is to employ mise en place each and every time she prepares a meal.

Good Veggies Gone Bad: When to Throw Out Those Onions, Mushrooms, & Greens in Your Fridge

Most of us lead busy, work-filled lives, often clocking in a 9-to-5 five days a week. And when that clock signifies the hour to leave, the last thing on anyone's mind is: "Time to go to the grocery store to pick up more fresh produce!" (Well, to be fair... maybe more people are psyched about this, but I know with certainty that I am not one of them.)

How To: Ripen Bananas Faster with These 3 Simple Tricks

A trip to any grocery store's produce section will quickly reveal that bananas are often picked from the tree well before their prime—which is necessary for them to arrive at our local store without going bad. In fact, bananas are refrigerated en route to our supermarkets in order to stave off the ripening process... which makes sense, since they travel quite the distance (from the Tropics around South America or Africa to our proverbial doorstep).

How To: Do This Before Freezing Chicken, Turkey, & Other Poultry for Insanely Juicy Meat

I'm no coupon-cutter (I just don't have the patience for it, sadly), but I do love buying things in bulk to save a buck or two. And one of the staples on my bulk-buy list is chicken; I cook with chicken so often that trying to save money on it is a no-brainer.