Food Hacks Features
How To: Yes, You Can Roast Ginger—It's Simple & Gives Any Dish an Intense, Smoky Flavor
Ah, ginger. From stir fry to smoothies, ginger is a reliably sharp and refreshing flavor that adds zing to everything it touches. It may be a pain in the ass to remove the skin from ginger (or not), but the zest it brings to food is well worth the trouble. Don't Miss: How to Brew Your Own Ginger Beer Like a Boss
How To: Make Perfect Poached Eggs, Every Single Time
Two slices of whole-wheat toast with lots of butter. Two eggs, poached to a firm yet custardy texture. The yolks should absolutely not be hard-cooked and the whites should be tender, not rubbery. That's my idea of the perfect breakfast.
How To: 5 Ingredients That'll Take Your Potato Salad to the Next Level
No summer season would be complete without potato salad, an essential side dish. The flavors and textures of a simple potato salad can be totally satisfying as is, but add in a few items and you can have a dish that is absolutely extraordinary.
How To: Why You Don't Really Need to Season Your Cast-Iron Pan
I love my cast-iron skillet, but I never seasoned it properly. Instead, I took that sucker out of its packaging, wiped it down with a damp cloth to remove any factory dust, and started cooking with it ASAP. And you know what? It works just fine.
The Science of Frothing: How to Make Your Own Milk Foam
Once upon a time in America, there was coffee and there was decaf. That's it. No capuccinos. No espressos. And certainly no Starbucks. Coffee was just coffee, something that you bought at a gas station or donut shop. If you made it at home, it was either in a metal pot or instant coffee.
How To: Make Water 'Bottles' You Can Eat
Bottled water is a rip-off. Not only is it pretty much the same stuff that comes out of your tap for free, but plastic bottles are rarely recycled and thus account for a huge amount of the waste that's overflowing our landfills. Next Up: Water Bottles You Can Eat
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: Dry Fruit in Your Oven—No Dehydrator Required
Dried fruit makes a great, healthy snack by itself, and it's a nice addition to both sweet and savory dishes. Most people assume you have to have a dehydrator to make it at home, but you don't really need one unless you plan on drying fruit pretty frequently. Your oven does the job just fine. Drying fruit in an oven is a pretty simple process: just bake it at a low temperature for a long time. It's usually cheaper than buying dried fruit from the grocery store, and a great way to use extra fr...
How To: Make Bad Booze Taste Better with These 10 Easy Hacks
When alcohol tastes bad, there's little you can do to save it—or so you think. While it might seem easier to toss your entire bottle of old, opened wine, or to give up and drink crappy vodka anyway, there are creative ways to turn a spoiled or just plain bad boozy beverage into one you actually want to drink.
How To: The Easiest Way to Serve Stubborn Ice Cream Isn't with a Scooper
Rock-hard ice cream is the bane of my culinary existence. If I try and scoop it out with a spoon, the spoon invariably bends. If I use a traditional ice cream scooper, I end up with a torqued wrist and one or two pathetic curls of ice cream for my efforts.
How To: The Fastest Way to Get Pieces of Shell Out of Your Egg
I've cracked thousands of eggs in my life, yet I still usually mess up when I make my morning eggs. Sometimes I crack the egg to hard and end up leaving half of the white on the counter. Other times I don't crack the egg hard enough, and end up spending 20 seconds digging with my fingers until I can pry apart the shell. Sometimes I puncture the yolk on the shell, and other times the entire thing slips out of my hands.
How To: Sour Patch Recipes Your Kids'll Go Crazy For
In my opinion, there is no candy greater or more timeless than Sour Patch Kids. They're the ultimate treat: sweet and refreshing, yet sour and tangy. These contrasting flavors are what make Sour Patch Kids perfect for the people of all ages—especially your kids. So let's make dishes that incorporate this awesome candy into your cooking rotation!
How To: Spread Cold, Hard Butter Without Ripping Your Toast to Shreds
You have warm toast, but your butter is chilled to a rock-solid state. Sure, you could warm a bit of that butter up in a microwave before spreading, but chances are you're just as impatient as the rest of us, so you slap that frigid butter on and hope for the best. It always ends up the same, though.
How To: Cut a Cooked Steak the Right Way
There is no greater food to master than steak. If you can make a steak that's only marginally better than your neighborhood Applebee's, you'll still have friends waiting outside your door for steak night. And if you can make steak as good as that expensive gourmet steakhouse you went to for your birthday? Well, your popularity is about to increase dramatically.
How To: DIY Altoids! How to Make Your Own Miniature Mints in Any Flavor You Want
It's always a good idea to have a pack of mints on hand, especially right after a cup of coffee or a lunch made with loads of garlic. Whether you're going on a date, to the dentist, or to an interview, bad breath is a major faux pas and totally avoidable. Simply pop a mint! But not just any old mint — homemade ones not only freshen your breath but can give you a sense of pride every time you need one.
Addictive Snacks: How to Make Homemade Popcorn Taste Exactly Like Movie Theater Popcorn
No matter which brand you buy, microwave popcorn never tastes as good as its movie theater counterpart. Even if you pop it yourself on the stovetop and drizzle it with real butter, it doesn't have the same flavor. That's because movie theaters don't use real butter—their popcorn has one secret ingredient that gives it that distinct taste.
How To: Skip Room Service with These 4 Ways to Cook in Your Hotel Room
Are you stranded in a hotel room with no kitchen, but craving the comfort of a home-cooked meal? Fear not, I have found some interesting ways to cook food without the luxury of an oven, stove, microwave, or even a toaster!—also known as "hotel room cooking."
How To: Why Vinegar Is a Kick-Ass Salt Substitute You Should Be Using
Most people are familiar with the fact that vinegar adds sourness to a dish, in varying degrees from light acidity to puckering acid. However, vinegar can also be used in lieu of salt when seasoning the final touches to sauces, soups, and stews.
How To: How You’re Really Supposed to Wash Fruits & Vegetables for Safe Eating
Most people give their fruits and veggies a cursory rinse under the faucet before eating or cooking them, but is that few seconds under running water really enough to remove any remaining dirt, pesticides, or wax clinging to the surface?
How To: Why You Should Always Save Parmesan Rinds
There are certain ingredients that chefs regularly use to elevate their food beyond the status of what us mere mortals can create. Shallots are one. Good, real Parmesan cheese is another. And the rind of that real Parmesan cheese just so happens to be one of the culinary world's biggest kept secrets.
How To: Caramelize Onions in Half the Time
Caramelized onions are one of those ingredients you can add that immediately makes any dish feel a little fancier. They have that delicious savory-sweet combination, they're great in almost anything, and they're surprisingly easy to pull off at home. So why don't more people make them?
How To: Naturally Deodorize a Stinky Garbage Disposal
Things smell, and whether or not those things smell good or not is up to you. For lingering food odors on your hands, try using stainless steel or coffee grounds to remove the stench. To de-stink smelly jars, use mustard and water. For cutting boards, use lemons and salt, and use cinnamon and sugar for your funky kitchen. In your fridge, combine baking soda and a sponge, or even just orange peels and salt.
How To: Tell if Beef, Pork, or Poultry is Cooked (Without a Thermometer)
Knowing if your meat is cooked properly is both the difference between a delicious meal and an inedible one... and the difference between making your guests sick and keeping them safe.
How To: Why You Should Use Boiling Hot Water for Faster Ice Cubes
It's a small but very real frustration: you want a chilled drink, but you open the freezer only to see nothing but empty ice trays. Fortunately, there's a simple way to make ice cubes quickly—use hot water. Yup, you read that correctly. Hot water freezes more rapidly than cold.
How To: 10 Key Things Everyone Should Know About Seasoning, Cleaning, & Maintaining Cast Iron Pans
Cast iron is one of the best surfaces to cook on, but taking care of it is a whole 'nother story. It's not as simple as just washing it in soapy water like all of your other pans, and everyone has different ideas about how it should be done. It seems intimidating at first, but once you learn the basics, you'll be making the best steaks, homemade pizza, and fried chicken of your life.
How To: 3 Bakers' Tricks to Getting a Perfect Crispy Bread Crust at Home
One of the best qualities about fresh bread (such as sourdough) is a thick, crispy crust—which is easy to create in a commercial oven, but can be tricky for home cooks to replicate. Luckily, the the trick to baking a professional-style crust is a simple one—just bake your loaf with steam using one of these three methods to achieve the perfect, crispy crust.
How To: The Science of Sourdough & Why It Tastes So Much Better in San Francisco
As a lover of food, I'm often asked, “If you could only have one food the rest of your life, what would it be?” My answer is always the same: sourdough bread. (Okay, it's not always the same... I usually cheat and say sourdough, fancy cheese, and a good beer.) Admittedly, I'm biased by my own sentimentality. My mother is an expert bread baker, with a major in making sourdough. Her sourdough starter is older than I am, and in all honesty, she's made thousands of loaves, each better than the ne...
How To: Tell When Your Chef's Knives Are Truly Sharp (And Keep Them That Way)
After years of making do with a cheap knife, I finally bought a really good 8" chef's knife—a Henckels, although I was also eyeing a Global santoku. It quietly but literally changed my life.
News: These Edible Flowers Will Literally Shock You
Eating flowers is a time-honored culinary tradition, from nibbling on nasturtiums to grazing on candied violets. And why not? They look beautiful and lend a unique floral flavors to salads, desserts, and anything in between.
How To: Make Crappy Cheap Vodka Taste Like the Good Stuff
Let's be honest, most of us buy the bottom-shelf vodka either because we're broke or because we're going to disguise the gag-inducing taste of it with juice or something fizzy. If you're cooking or baking with vodka (ice-cold vodka works wonders in pie crust), what's the point of buying Belvedere?
How To: Make Crappy Wine Taste Good & Good Wine Taste Better Without Any Special Tools
Letting wine "breathe" isn't just something that happens in restaurants in '80s teen comedies with snooty maître d's. It's really a thing, and you should learn how to do it at home, because it'll make just about any wine—including Two-Buck Chuck—taste much, much better. It's also astonishingly easy, and despite what the Home Shopping Network may tell you, does not require buying extra gadgets.
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: Why Kitchen Shears Are the Best Tool You Aren't Using
Listen, I'm not disparaging using really good knives—they can literally change your life, or at the very least, the way you work in the kitchen. However, there are many cutting and slicing tasks where you're better off using a sturdy pair of kitchen shears rather than a chef's or even a paring knife.
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: Pit Apricots, Plums, Nectarines, & Other Stone Fruits Like a Chef
Summer is the season to enjoy stone fruit: peaches, plums, nectarines, and apricots are all kissed by the sun and bursting with juicy flavor—which is all well and good when you're eating them as is.
Quickles: DIY Pickles That Take Only 10 Minutes to Make
Pickles are one of those rare foods that most people love, but never even think of making. Most home cooks shy away from making pickles because they take time and patience, and because the grocery store option is both cheap and delicious.
News: Sip in Style with These Delectable Cocktail Rims
Cocktail rims are an easy way to add extra fun and pizzazz to your favorite drink; Most cocktail rims only take a few minutes to put together, and are a great way to add a burst of flavor to compliment what you're drinking.
How To: Make Soggy, Wilted Lettuce & Other Leafy Greens Edible Again
Sometimes you've got a head of lettuce that you want to eat but it lacks a certain youth. In other words, it's wilted and browning at the edges. Other times, you get to the grocery store near the end of day and the only lettuce or greens available look a little on the sad side. Never fear. You're not doomed to a meal of fast food or mouthfuls of soggy salad. You can easily revive those leaves and have something crisp, green, and delicious for your next meal, so don't dump it in the trash.
How To: Etch Permanent Volume Markers into Your Cooking Pots Using Salt & Vinegar
Volume markings on large pots and mixing bowls make life so much easier. They cut out the step of measuring and save you the trouble of washing measuring cups. However, there aren't many containers out there that actually have volume markers in them.
Better Than Brita: Water Filters with No Plastic Parts
I used a plastic water filter for years. Who wouldn't? It cuts down on buying bottled water, which, as it turns out, is pretty much the same as unfiltered tap water. Plus, bottled water is terrible for the environment and your wallet, too. Water that costs only pennies a day and actually was purified as opposed to just saying it was? That's a no-brainer.