Food Hacks Features
How To: How a Breakfast Badass Makes Eggs: Scrambled AND Hard-Boiled (Without Cracking the Shell)
Eggs are one of the most versatile foods imaginable. They can be cooked in tons of different ways, eaten for breakfast, lunch, or dinner, and go with just about anything. Most of us have hard-boiled and scrambled eggs before, but have you ever thought about combining the two? That looks pretty good, doesn't it? But it's not exactly the kind of scrambled and hard-boiled eggs combo I'm referring to. And thankfully, this isn't what I'm talking about either... No, even though balut may look like ...
How To: Skip the Fondant—Make Picture-Perfect Cakes with Paper Towels Instead
Fondant looks pretty, but man, it sure does taste weird. Don't Miss:
How To: Potato Mashers Are So Yesterday: Mash with a Mug & Save Money
The potato masher is one of the most dreaded tools in my kitchen; it always gives me flashbacks to when I had to mash potatoes for Thanksgiving dinners while growing up.
How To: Keep Sliced Pears and Apples from Turning Brown
To prevent sliced fruits like apples and pears from oxidizing and turning brown before serving, start by juicing one lemon.
How To: Five Ways to Repurpose Shellfish Shells
When I was a little kid, I was obsessed with shells. And while most of my shell collection came from combing the beach for treasure, some of it came from a different source: dinner. Whenever my parents had fresh clams or mussels, I would take the leftover shells, soak them overnight in soapy water, and add them to my collection.
How To: Make Perfectly Moist Fish with the No-Cook Poaching Method
Poaching, the cooking method that gently cooks food at the barest simmer, is awesome because it keeps in moisture and flavor. The no-cook poaching method is even better, because you don't add heat to your kitchen on hot days, and you don't have to watch the pot.
How To: Make Your Own Soda Pop at Home with a DIY Carbonation Kit
Even if you're not a hipster with your own self-sufficient garden, making your own edibles at home can be pretty cool. And while it's obviously easier to pick up a bottle of 7-Up at the store, there's something undoubtedly fun about making your own. For those addicted to their fizzy drinks, DIY soda is a great way to save some cash and make their drinks healthier with natural flavors and sweeteners, instead of something like corn syrup or aspartame.
Chef's Quick Tip: Char Your Citrus for Extra Flavor
We're a little citrus-obsessed, and with good reason: lemons, limes, oranges, grapefruit: Mother Nature really packed those babies with flavor, from peel (which you can zest without special tools) to juice. Now executive chef Amanda Freitag of Empire Diner has come up with a way to make those lemons and limes give up even more flavor by applying a lot of heat.
Keep Champagne Bubbly (Hint: A Spoon Doesn't Work)
One booze hack that's been making the rounds for years is that inserting a spoon by the handle in a champagne bottle's neck will preserve its carbonation. This is one of those tips that I wish were true. Champagne is a great thing to have around on a special occasion, and it seems a shame to pour any leftovers down the drain once its lost its fizz. While there's lots of anecdotal evidence surrounding this trick, Harold McGee and Stanford University chemist Richard Zare debunked this myth as d...
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.
Food Tool: Jaccard Beats All Other Meat Tenderizers
Meat tenderizers are absolutely necessary when dealing with leaner, tougher cuts like flank or skirt steaks. And while fruit like papaya, kiwi, and pineapple contain enzymes that can tenderize meat, the results can be hit-or-miss, and impart a fruity flavor that you may not always want.
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.
How To: Cook Fish Without Actually 'Cooking' It
Preparing and serving seafood can be a daunting task. Fish is so delicate that one extra minute of heat can turn a juicy, flaky filet into a dried-out disaster. But that same fragility also allows us to use unconventional methods to chemically transform the fish into its cooked consistency.
How To: Food Processor Pasta Is So Easy Anyone Can Do It
Fresh, homemade pasta definitely beats the dried stuff from the store. However, most of us aren't usually in the mood to knead dough for 10 minutes... or to clean up a sticky, doughy, floury mess afterward.
Coffee Mugs: They're Not Just for Coffee
Coffee mugs: nothing proliferates more quickly in my kitchen cabinets. People are always handing them out as gifts or as swag, plus I always seem to find a vintage model or two at a garage sale that I'm compelled to buy. I used to do a yearly purge of my excess muggage, but it turns out it's a good idea to hold on to one or two extras.
How To: Give Your Food a Bath or a Rubdown for More Flavor
Brining is magic. All you have to do is make a mild saline solution, toss in your protein of choice, let it soak, and cook. You end up with incredibly tender, flavorful meat or tofu for very little effort. So why aren't more of us doing it?
How To: Engineer a No-Slip Sandwich
Most of us know how to make a sandwich, but how many of us know how to make a sandwich correctly—i.e., so that the slippery ingredients like tomatoes and cucumber don't come gushing out the other end when we take a bite?
How To: S'mores & Tiramisu Have a Baby & It's Freakin' Beautiful
This decadent dessert is inspired and created by marrying tiramisu and s'mores. It's a moan-worthy version of that classic English dessert, trifle, that combines the soft, creamy layers of tiramisu with the gooey, sticky goodness of s'mores. You can make it as easy as you wish, with store-bought whipped cream and pound cake, or you can make everything from scratch for a special company-ready dessert.
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: The One Trick You Need to Use When Microwaving Leftovers
There is and always will be a staunch anti-microwave camp, but they're a fact of life. The whole point of a microwave is convenience, right? But it's not so convenient when you pull out reheated leftovers and discover that your food is only partially warm.
How To: The One Thing That Even Cheap Vodka Is Good For—Making You Smell Better
It's always tempting to grab yesterday's shirt and toss it on in a fit of laziness, but before you do and venture outside, it's probably wise to freshen it up a bit first. The most obvious way to do that is with some Febreze, but if you don't have any around, your liquor cabinet will do the trick.
How To: Perfectly Cooked Steaks Require More Than One Flip & Here's Why
To flip, or not to flip, that is the real question. When you're nervously standing over the stove or grill, what do you do with that steak before you?
How To: 8 Reasons Why You Should Never Throw Away Eggshells
The other day I was doing the math on roughly how many eggs I eat each year. I estimated about 500. That's a lot of eggs. And, subsequently, that's a lot of eggshells to throw in the trash.
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.
No-Boil vs. Traditional Pasta: Should You Make the Switch?
We here at Food Hacks are all about saving you, our wonderful readers, time and trouble in the kitchen. So when I saw that Barilla had come out with their Pronto line of "One Pan, No Boil, No Drain" pasta, I had to give it a try. While no-boil lasagna noodles have been around for a while and allow the pasta to essentially cook en casserole, this relatively new addition to the pasta scene includes elbow, penne, spaghetti, and rotini varieties that allow for usage in a greater variety of pasta ...
How To: 5 Creative Flavor Combos to Upgrade Your Boring Old Popcorn
Calling all popcorn fanatics: we know a bit of drizzled butter is all that's needed to make a delicious bowl of your favorite finger food, but we've got some interesting mash-ups of flavors that we think you should try the next time you veg out on your couch for another Netflix marathon.
How To: Transform a Loaf of Bread into a Stuffed Sandwich Fit for a Picnic
We like picnicking of all sorts, from picnics in bright, sunny weather to grey or rain-drizzled picnics. So it's not a stretch to say that we've become quite good at packing sandwiches to enjoy later. But we're always looking for a better way to do things, and that includes our sandwich making—and we think we've found the best way to make a sandwich ever.
Weird Ingredient Wednesday: The Alien Melon from Star Trek
Mother Nature's creativity is infinite, especially when it comes to fruit. We've got black sapote, which tastes like chocolate pudding, and Buddha's hand citron, which looks like Freddy Kreuger's digits merged with a lemon. How could she possibly top herself?
How To: Flavorful & Intense Whipped Cream Is Simple with Freeze Dried Fruit
We're wild for whipped cream in our coffee, atop our brownies, and in-between wafer cookies, so we always have some in our fridge. To be specific, we always have homemade whipped cream in our fridge, because the taste is just so much better than the pre-made stuff.
How To: Pancakes, Mashed Potatoes & Bread—Rice Cooker Hacks for Lazy Cooks
We've told you how a rice cooker can work as a DIY sous vide machine and make amazing risotto the lazy way, but did you know that it can also make pancakes, bread, mashed potatoes, and poached fruit?
Trash Talk: 5 Food Scraps You Should Not Be Throwing Away
A few years ago I went hog-wild trying to achieve a zero-waste lifestyle. I didn't succeed, but the experiment taught me that we throw away things we could—and should—be using more.
How To: Missing an Ingredient? Consult This Guide to Cooking & Baking Substitutions
We've all been there: you're cooking along quite happily when you get to one or two ingredients on the list that you realize you don't have. You really don't want to run to the store or borrow something from a neighbor, so what do you do? Thankfully, eReplacementParts has come up with a handy-dandy infographic for ingredient substitutions, all using stuff you have in your own home, whether you lack ingredients for pasta sauce, marinades, or basic foodstuffs like eggs (even the expired ones), ...
News: Why Cachaça, Pisco, & Aguardiente Are Must-Have Additions to Your Liquor Cabinet
Everyone has the same five spirits in their bar: vodka, rum, whiskey, tequila, and gin. They're all great, but every so often the mood strikes to try a cocktail with a little something different. We'd like you to meet three spirits from South America that would make a welcome addition to your next cocktail party.
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 Trick Makes Spaghetti Squash “Noodles” More Like Actual Pasta
Using spaghetti squash "noodles" for a healthy, low-carb meal seems like such a great idea, but as many of us know, turning this vegetable into a decent pasta facsimile usually has less-than-satisfying results. The usual method is to cut the squash lengthwise and roast, microwave, or steam it. Often, it comes out overcooked and underwhelming.
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: Make Your Own Sore Throat Lozenges
It's that time of year again. The month after we exchange gifts, most of us tend to exchange germs. Cold and flu season always seems to creep up on us, often leaving us ill-prepared to deal with the ailments.
How To: Chill a Cocktail Correctly (Yes, There's a Correct Way)
The point of ice in your cocktail is to make it cold, right? Yes and no.
How To: Why You Should Stop Buying Single-Serve Yogurts & Start Making Them Yourself
Single-serve yogurt cartons are so much fun. They're delicious, convenient, and the perfect size; no wonder it's so fun to open a new container of yogurt every morning. Yet as awesome as single-serve yogurt cartons are, there's something you really need to do: stop buying them!
How To: 5 Must-Know Tips for Better Home-Baked Cakes
It's very easy to get your hands on a good cake. These days, a store-bought cake or even one made from boxed cake mix will usually be pretty good. Heck, make the first simple recipe you find on the internet, and it's likely to taste fine.