Food Hacks Features
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.
Nature's Secret Code: How to Select Vegetables at Their Peak
There are a lot of people out there who don't like vegetables, but I would contend that that's because they haven't eaten any really good vegetables. I thought I hated tomatoes (okay, technically a fruit, but used mostly as a vegetable) until I ate some fresh from a garden. One bite of a juicy, ripe heirloom tomato made me realize that I love tomatoes—it's those bland, mealy supermarket tomatoes that I hate.
How To: Why Opened Wine Doesn't Last Long (& How to Change That)
Bad news, guys. The shelf life for liquor leftovers does not apply to your two-buck chuck. While an opened bottle of your favorite whiskey will stay respectable for ages thanks to its high ABV (which makes it inhospitable to outside elements), an opened bottle of merlot will sour quickly. However, it turns out that red and white wines have different life spans once they're opened—for reasons which we'll cover below.
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: The Effortless Secret to Baking Perfect, Crispy-Edged Cookies with Chewy Centers
No matter how good you are at baking, we've all had a cookie mishap (or disaster) or two. Sometimes you forget about them and they burn, other times you open the oven to find your sweet treats have melted into one huge, disappointing blob of a cookie. And occasionally, you just picked a bad recipe (although no one ever believes you when this is the case).
News: 10 More Egg Hacks That You Shouldn't Live Without
You may have caught our prior list of excellent egg hacks. Well, we've rounded up 10 more awesome tips and tricks to perfect your egg game. Check 'em out below.
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: 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.
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: 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.
News: Use Blood for Pancakes, Sausages, Desserts & More
Cooking with animal blood is as old as civilization itself. I promise that your ancient ancestors, no matter where you're from, didn't have the luxury of throwing away any part of the animal, including the very lifeblood that used to run through it. Animal blood, along with everything but the skin, would invariably end up in the stew.
How To: Make a Foolproof Meringue with This Easy Tip
When it comes to a perfect summertime dessert, lemon meringue pie is the ideal contender with its rich lemon filling and light-as-air meringue topping. In my humble opinion, the meringue is the true star of the dessert, instantly elevating what is simply a lemon pie to something more elegant and certainly more decadent.
How To: Organize Your Fridge More Efficiently
The fridge is the heart of the kitchen; take it away, and the whole operation falls apart. Yet, despite this, the fridge is also one of the most overlooked appliances in any kitchen. Most people organize their drawers and shelves for maximum efficiency, while many others buy islands simply to make their culinary playground more space efficient. Heck, I know some people who have passed up on otherwise great apartments because the counter space simply wasn't large enough.
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: Mug Cake Tips That'll Change How You 'Bake' Cakes Forever
There are countless recipes for mug cakes (and breads) on the internet, but not all of them are good. Mug cakes promise a warm, moist, and fluffy cake after a few minutes and with minimal work... but sometimes, all you end up with is a chewy, rubbery mess.
How To: The Essential Secrets for Amazing Homemade Mac & Cheese
Macaroni and cheese is one of those dishes that automatically make me feel all is right with the world. I even like the boxed kind in a pinch. However, real macaroni and cheese is pretty easy to make and is worlds better than the boxed kind. It's also pretty easy to make really, really good macaroni and cheese once you know some essential pointers.
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: This Formula Creates Perfectly Pickled Fruits & Veggies Every Time
Pickling isn't rocket science. In fact, anyone can make their own speciality pickles using just about any fruit or vegetable. For example, I've pickled everything from lemons, watermelon rinds, and apples to red onions, carrots, radishes, and cucumbers.
How To: Make Mess-Free Pancakes with a Ziplock Bag Instead of a Bowl
Pancakes are a pretty simple breakfast. You add a few dry ingredients and a few wet ingredients, cook them up, and voilà—a delicious breakfast that's just waiting to suck up all that maple syrup.
How To: Your Juicer Is Actually a Sauce Maker in Disguise
There are several reasons why restaurant food tastes so good. One is that the cooks know how to make reductions, which involves cooking down large amounts of liquid until it becomes a pool of thick, glossy sauce. While this technique isn't hard to learn, it can be time-consuming.
How To: Vegans Rejoice! Finally, a Damn Good Substitute for Bacon
Seaweed isn't just for rolling sushi anymore. The food science world is introducing chefs and home cooks to dulse (rhymes with pulse), kale's wacky seaweed cousin that tastes surprisingly like bacon and may even be the next big superfood.
Food Tool Friday: The Potato Ricer Is a Multipurpose Marvel
Like most people who cook in a small kitchen, I'm very wary of adding anything to my drawers and cabinets unless I'm sure it's going to be essential to my cooking arsenal or that it can be used in multiple ways.
How To: Properly Flambé Without Burning Your Food
Few things in life are as exciting and magical as fire. And setting things on fire while cooking? Well, now you're speaking my language. I'm not talking about grilling, though I do love some outdoor cooking. No, I'm talking about the most badass trick in any cook's arsenal: the flambé.
Browning Prevention: This Food Hack Keeps Sliced Fruits & Veggies Fresh & Bright for a Full Day
Prepping fruits and vegetables ahead of time makes putting together the final dish a lot easier, but once you cut them up, they start to turn brown almost instantly. However, thanks to this quick and easy tip from America's Test Kitchen, you can keep them looking fresh for much, much longer.
News: Grow Fresh Herbs & Veggies Indoors with a Tabletop Greenhouse
Here at Food Hacks, we're very fond of finding ways to regrow food. That means taking things like carrot tops and leftover bits from garlic, onions, chives, and other herbs and aromatics to create mini reusable herb gardens.
How To: Colonel Sanders' KFC Recipe Revealed!
The Holy Grail of chicken has just been found by an unsuspecting reporter of the Chicago Tribune. Yes, that's right: The secret 11 herbs and spices in Colonel Sanders' Original Recipe chicken has finally been revealed, and it looks legit as hell.
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...
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: 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: The Cleanest & Easiest Way to Eat a Mandarin Orange Without Peeling
Like a lot of other fruits, mandarin oranges are delicious but annoying to peel. There are tons of tricks for peeling fruits and vegetables faster, but what if you don't want to peel them at all?
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.
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 Trick to Squeezing Out Every Last Bit of Juice from Lemons, Limes, & Other Citrus Fruit
Cooks both humble and great are constantly trying to figure out how to get the most juice out of lemons and limes. Why? Because they add so much freaking flavor to everything and are endlessly useful in cooking. Sometimes, it's even a matter of squeezing the most out of your money (earlier this year, the price of limes quadrupled, though it only lasted a few months).
How To: Why Bananas, Flax, Chia, & Even Blood Make Great Egg Substitutes
Eggs are incredibly important to cooks, and not just because they're tasty and a complete protein (many erratic genius/artist types make a point of eating an egg or two for breakfast). Yes, they are great when perfectly poached, scrambled, hard-boiled, and even scram-boiled, but they serve literally dozens of functions when used in recipes, especially baked goods.
How To: The Secret to Quick & Easy Italian Dinners Is Instant Ramen
Instant ramen makes me nostalgic for my college days, when a bowl of this cheap noodle soup was my go-to comfort food for many all-nighters.
How To: Grate Fresh Tomatoes Instead of Buying Canned (You Can Thank Us Later)
The thought of peeling tomatoes for pasta sauces and soups has long been an overwhelming idea for us, one we often steer clear from when reading recipes or searching out new dishes to create. Even the methods that are supposed to speed up the peeling process (like roasting, poaching, and freezing) are more work than not.
How To: Dull Knife? Use Your Car Window to Make It Sharp Again
Although wear and tear on kitchen knives is unavoidable, it's extremely frustrating when I can't cut through tough, fatty tendons in meat or even make a clean slice through an onion. If you don't have a steel rod or water stone to sharpen your knives, or even a cheap knife sharpener, you can get creative by using a coffee mug and even a newspaper.
How To: Make Your Own Dippin' Dots Ice Cream with Liquid Nitrogen
Dippin' Dots are a fun way to enjoy ice cream, but the price tag is not so fun. Plus, the company filed for bankruptcy last year, so they may not be around much longer. The good news is that you don't need them—you can make your own at home with some ice cream and liquid nitrogen. Redditor hypoid77 posted instructions on how to make your own DIY Dippin' Dots Maker out of a Styrofoam cooler, a couple two-liter bottles, a thumbtack, and some liquid nitrogen. Use the thumbtack to poke a 3-inch p...
How To: Everything You Know About Microwave Ovens Is a Lie
Chances are that you've been using your microwave just to nuke leftovers, but they can do so much more than heat up last night's dinner—microwaves can help you peel garlic more quickly, get more juice out of lemons, disinfect your kitchen, dry out herbs, give beauty products new life, cause exciting explosions, and even arc weld.
News: The 5 Weirdest Items on the In-N-Out Super Secret Menu
As a California resident, I'm all too familiar with the delicious western fast food chain In-N-Out. The food is great: the fries, the shakes, the fresh ingredients, the secret sauce. And of course, the secret menu. There are only 4 items posted on the in-store menu, but for customers in the know, there are more "secret" items available: