Food Hacks Features
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.
How To: The Only Way to Make Buttered Popcorn in a Bowl
It's easy to grab a box of pre-prepared microwave popcorn at the grocery store. Yet with so much salt, butter, and other unpronounceable ingredients, microwave popcorn can go from a healthy snack to a complicated one.
How To: Make Restaurant-Grade Sushi Rice
Contrary to popular belief, sushi is not the raw fish that one gets at Japanese restaurants, but the rice that comes with it. It's hard to tell whether this popular misconception led to or came about because of the primary flavors that we think of in sushi are the fish. We often say a sushi restaurant has great fish, but almost never that it has great rice.
How To: Make Naturally Colored Pasta with Beets, Spinach, Squid Ink, & More
Although pasta is a remarkably simple dish, I find it to be one of the most aesthetically appealing foods. The noodles—especially thicker iterations, like linguine and fettuccine—are graceful and luxurious. Add in some sauce coating the noodles, and a sprinkle of Parmesan or a drizzle of olive oil, and pasta single-handedly reminds us of a basic tenet of cooking: sometimes keeping it simple is the perfect way to go.
How To: The Squeaky Clean Trick to Eating an Orange Without Getting Your Fingers All Sticky
As a kid, there was nothing more fulfilling than sinking my teeth deep into the succulent flesh of an orange, savoring every drop of juice that wasn't busy sliding down your chin and onto your clothes. While my adulation for oranges never ceased as I grew older, the way I consumed the precious fruit did evolve with my maturity. Gone were the days of messy eating, and here I was now, peeling my oranges as a teenager, taking my precious time in separating each individual slice for a clean and t...
Tongs: Your Most Underrated Cooking Tool
Don't leave your tongs out by the grill, as they are one of the most useful and versatile cooking tools to have in your kitchen. In my house, they come in a very close second to chopsticks, which I cook with everyday. Like chopsticks, they make it easy to delicately flip and turn food with precision. But unlike chopsticks, there's no learning curve, so anyone can use tongs for easier, simpler cooking.
How To: Make a DIY Roasting Rack for Your Turkey
One of the golden rules to cooking a Thanksgiving turkey is to place it on a roasting rack before it goes into the oven. Missing this step and cooking it directly on the pan will burn the bottom of the bird, resulting in overcooked, dry meat.
How To: Squeeze More Juice Out of Lemons & Limes—Without Getting Any Seeds
The late, great writer Laurie Colwin once wrote that if she were allowed to have only one fruit in her kitchen, she would always choose lemons (or limes, since they can often be used interchangeably).
How To: What's the Difference Between Tonic, Seltzer, Club Soda, & Mineral Water?
Tonic water, seltzer water, club soda, and mineral water: these 4 types of "bubbly water" are often, erroneously, used interchangeably. But the truth is that each possesses unique qualities and uses that set them apart from each other.
News: Massive 13-Pound Kit Kat Puts Your DIY Candy Bars to Shame
Breaking off a piece of that Kit Kat bar gets a lot more difficult when the whole thing weighs 13 pounds.
How To: Sushi + Burrito = The Ultimate Handheld Meal
Sushirrito offers burrito-sized sushi rolls that are on the cusp of becoming the trendiest handheld snack to hit the foodie world. According to its website, Peter Yen created the Sushirrito brand, trademarked it in 2008, and opened his first restaurant in 2011 in the Bay Area with Ty Mahler, executive chef.
How To: Creative 3-Ingredient Add-Ins That Make Vanilla Ice Cream to Die For
During our high school years, one of us (hint: her name starts with a B) worked at Cold Stone Creamery. She loved working there, and from this love emerged a fascination with adding creative ingredients to plain ol' vanilla ice cream.
News: Pizza Rolls Are a Better Use of Your Freezer's Built-in Ice Dispenser
I bet you've never put much thought into the water and ice dispensers that comes preinstalled in a lot of modern refrigerators and freezers. For chilled water or perfectly formed ice cubes, all you need to do is push the button and wait, right?
How To: Turn Your Sour Milk into an Unbelievably Tasty Jam
Wait, don't dump that milk! It may have a slightly sour smell and be expiring tomorrow, but you can still put it to good use by making sour milk jam.
News: Go Blue, Not Green—Introducing the Newest Superfood, Blue Majik
You're all kale-d out, you've had it up to here with golden milk, and you're on the prowl for the next superfood. Well, get ready for some unicellular goodness: the next superfood is an algae named Spirulina, also known as Blue Majik. (Kudos to the marketing exec that came up with that, am I right?)
How To: The Perfect Way to Eat a Burger with No Mess or Sticky Fingers, According to Science
I don't know many meat eaters who don't appreciate a good burger, but unless you eat it plain, it usually gets pretty messy. Toppings falling off and sauce running down your arms seems like it's all just part of the process.
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: 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: Get Rid of Fruit Flies Naturally Using Cloves
Fruit flies are nearly as frustrating as ants and equally impossible to eradicate—but there are a few ways to get rid of them. We've already shown you that apple cider vinegar, dishwashing soap, and plastic wrap is a great way to trap and kill fruit flies, but if you just want to keep them away, there's another option—cloves. Fruit flies are attracted to ripened fruits and vegetables, but don't actually eat them. They eat the fungus or rot that grows on them, according to Todd Schlenke, assis...
How To: Zest Citrus Fruits Without a Zester Tool or Microplane
When I first started cooking, if I saw lemon juice or zest in a recipe, I almost always left it out. Unless it was a main component, I never thought it made much of a difference in the overall flavor of the dish, but I couldn't have been more wrong.
How To: 40 Damn Cool Things You Can Do with Eggs
All day I dream of eggs: scrambled, poached, over easy, hard-boiled, fried, baked, raw... Okay, the last one is a joke (unless you're Gaston, which means that you eat five dozen of them and you're roughly the size of a barge). But eggs are freaking good in just about any cooking prep, and more often than not are the foundation of your favorite baked goods.
News: This Cauliflower Is Fractal-ly Delicious
One of the best things about talking to other people who love food is that they point you to weirdly beautiful ingredients, like this: No, that's not an escapee from Middle Earth you're seeing. It's one of Mother Nature's best attempts at making fractals come alive into a golden spiral: the Romanesco (sometimes called fractal broccoli, broccoflower, or Romanesque cauliflower). Here's another view: So Just What Is It & What Does It Taste Like?
How To: 10 Tricks You Need to Use for Better-Tasting Food from Your Microwave
The microwave oven is a monumental technological achievement that's saved college students and single people from starvation for decades. Almost 97% of all American households have one, which makes it the most-owned kitchen appliance in US homes right after the refrigerator.
How To: 5 Delicious Ways to Reinvent Your Stale Potato Chips
Now that the Super Bowl is over, you might find that you have an econo-sized bag or two of opened potato chips slowly going stale in your pantry. After all, there are only so many bowls of Buffalo Chicken Pizza Beer Dip you can eat with 'em—and you definitely don't want them to get so old that you have to throw them out.
How To: One-Minute Pasta! Plus More Revolutionary Pasta-Cooking Hacks You Need to Know
Everything you thought you knew about cooking pasta is wrong. When I took cooking classes in Italy, they taught me to bring a large volume of salted water to a rolling boil, add a drop of olive oil so that the noodles wouldn't stick together, and wait several minutes until it was al dente (which literally means "to the tooth," i.e., firm and not mushy when bitten).
How To: 10 Herbs You Can Buy Once & Regrow Forever
Fresh herbs are a surefire way to enhance a dish, but buying them at the store each time you need them is costly. Luckily, growing your own herbs is a lot easier than it seems: You can even using cuttings from the herbs you already buy to start your own little herb garden.
News: Those Soy Sauce Packets from Your Takeout Chinese Are Probably Lying to You
Since the dawn of time—well, that maybe a slight exaggeration, but let's roll with it—sly entrepreneurs have been swindling the general public with inferior products for the sake of saving a few cents. Nothing is sacred when it comes to saving money: caviar, cheese, or even baby formula. Hell, there's even an entire book dedicated to the history of food swindling.
How to "Eat" Your Sunscreen: 10 Nutrient-Rich Foods That Will Increase Your Sun Tolerance
Even as someone with super pale skin that burns instead of tanning, I don't use sunscreen nearly as often as I should. Or, uh...ever. My skin cancer prevention routine mostly involves hiding from the sun as much as humanly possible. If you're like me and hate the greasy feeling of sunscreen, there are other ways you can protect your skin by increasing your sun tolerance. Your diet actually has a lot to do with how easily you burn, so by getting enough of a few key nutrients, you can decrease ...
How To: At Last—We've Hacked Thai Rolled Ice Cream So You Don't Have To
Yes, I know it's autumn and the trees are losing their leaves, but the seasons do not decide when I can or cannot enjoy ice cream. No matter how warm or cold is is outside right now, I will remain completely fascinated by rolled ice cream. Yes, rolled.
How To: Freshen Your Older Fish Filets with This Simple Trick
I love eating fish at restaurants—the flesh is flaky and tender; the scent, fresh and sweet. Cooking fish at home is a completely different story, though. Even when I do cook successful fish dishes, it often leaves this (for lack of a better description) fishy smell that permeates everything it touches. Monday's salmon becomes Wednesday's odor. It's enough to deter me from cooking fish, period.
Weird Ingredient Wednesday: Black Sapote (The Chocolate Fruit)
Mother Nature is one creative entity, especially when it comes to fruit. Let's face it: most major supermarkets stock only the most common fruits like apples, pears, and grapes, but they're so basic. Why not explore other options, from the stinky-yet delicious durian to the captivating citrus caviar that is finger limes?
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: 5 Healthy (But Just as Addictive) Alternatives to French Fries
I've never met a person who doesn't love French fries. And, to be frank, I have no desire to meet such a person.
How To: 10 Paper Towel Hacks for Your Kitchen & Beyond
The paper towel is a wondrous invention. It allows cooks to wipe up really gross stuff without having to constantly do laundry and drain fried foods so they're crunchy and crispy instead of oily and heavy. But did you know that your humble paper towel has several other uses besides the obvious ones? Read on to find out these essential hacks.
How To: Boil Pasta in Half the Time
The standard way to make pasta requires a lot of water, and it takes a long time for that big pot of water to actually start boiling. For these reasons, as well as my hatred for washing large pots, I don't cook pasta at home very often—at least not the traditional way.
How To: Cooking Fish with Foil Is Fantastically Foolproof
Sometimes the idea of cooking fish, especially for a group of guests, can be intimidating. There's the fear of the fish not cooking right, or sticking to the pan or grill. And even if you cook it right and the fish doesn't stick, you're left with the inevitable fishy-smelling cleanup. Not fun!
Halloween Food Hacks: How to Make Shrunken Heads Out of Apples & Potatoes
A great Halloween party depends on the right spooky ambience. Having some shrunken heads in strategic locations is an easy, fun way to get your guests in the right (frightened) frame of mind, and they require items you can easily find in your kitchen or at the local grocery store.
How To: The Know-It-All's Guide to Caramelization
Look on any bistro or pub menu in America and you'll likely find the term caramelized onions as an option for your burger. The word "caramel" may conjure up images of candy, which is somewhat correct.
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: Add Citrus to Your Scrambled Eggs to Make Them Literally Mouthwatering
Even for an avid egg enthusiast, a popular dish like scrambled eggs can get tiresome if it's on repeat in your breakfast rotation. For an unusual way to add some oomph to your œufs, consider adding a squeeze of lemon to your scramble. Read on to understand why this seemingly odd suggestion will boost your eggs' flavor.