25 hacks you need to know
We share tricks and tips to make life a little easier in the kitchen
Freeze for ease
- Keep grapes in the freezer for adding to your glass of wine – they'll keep the wine nicely chilled without diluting it as ice would.
- Portion out sauces or leftover egg whites in sealed food bags, then lay flat on your freezer shelf. Once frozen, you can stack or file the pouches like books for easy access, and they'll defrost in no time.
- Wrap bottles in wet kitchen paper and put in the freezer to chill them more rapidly. Just don’t forget about them, as they can eventually explode!
- Got leftover cheese from a cheese and wine night, and don’t want to see it go to waste? Pop it in the freezer for up to three months.
- For an effortless breakfast or brunch, freeze blocks of American pancake batter in a large ice cube tray, adding berries, if you want. Pop the cubes out into a freezer bag – they can then be cooked from frozen in the same way as raw batter.
- Stick lolly sticks straight through the lids of yogurt pots and freeze for after-school lollies.
Bake well
7. Lightly oil a measuring spoon before using it to scoop honey or treacle, and watch it slide into your bowl, leaving no sticky residue behind.
8. If your cookies have spread too much when they come out of the oven, use a pastry cutter or glass larger than the cookies and shuffle them inside it to make them perfectly round. Leave to cool on the tray.
9. Scrunch up your baking parchment, then unwrap before lining a tart tin – this makes the parchment more pliable and it will tuck into the corners of the tin much more easily.
10. To neatly slice a sponge into layers, wrap a piece of thread or unscented dental floss evenly around the circumference, then pull the ends tightly to cut through.
Become an eggs-pert
11. To make separating eggs easier, crack an egg onto a plate. Get an empty plastic water bottle, squeeze it slightly, then put it over the yolk. Release the water bottle and it should suck up the yolk. You can then tip the yolk into a separate bowl and tip the whites into another.
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12. Make hard-boiled eggs easier to peel – just add a little vinegar to the water when boiling.
13. The problem with poached eggs is the wispy whites. By cracking the egg into a sieve first, the runnier white drains away (and can be kept and frozen), then the rest of the egg can quickly be tipped from the sieve straight into hot water.
14. To make a quick meringue for an eton mess (or to crumble over a dessert), mix 1 egg white and 300g icing sugar together until you have a thick paste, then roll into marble-sized balls and microwave, three at a time on parchment, on high for 90 seconds until puffed up. Leave to cool and turn brittle.
Prep like a pro
15. When chopping beetroot, oil your board lightly using a neutral oil so it doesn’t stain.
16. To get neat pieces of kiwi, halve it crosswise, then use a teaspoon to scoop the fruit out of the skin.
17. You can put any strawberries that are on the cusp of going bad in the freezer. Once solid, you can finely grate them over lemon sorbet or strawberry ice cream for a shaved snow-style dessert.
18. Store unwaxed lemons submerged in a jar of water in the fridge to extend their shelf life – trust us, it works! Lemons can last up to four weeks with this clever trick.
19. If you’ve run out of eggs when breading meat, you can use mayonnaise or a mixture of cornflour and water instead.
Useful utensils
20.Use a vegetable peeler to peel cold butter for easy spreading.
21. Use an apple cutter to cut potatoes into perfect wedges.
22. Balance a wooden spoon over a pan of boiling water to keep it from boiling over. When bubbles hit the wood, they pop and fall, and rising steam condenses back into water.
23. To strip herbs without the faff, use a box grater – poke a stalk through one of the larger holes from the outside, then pull through from inside and the leaves should come off easily.
24. Clean an old ketchup bottle and fill it with pancake batter. You can then squeeze the batter into a hot frying pan to make pancakes. This helps you control the size and prevents dripping. You can also easily make shapes, if you like.
25. Push a halved and stoned ripe avocado through a wire rack set over a bowl for perfect cubes of avocado for guacamole.
