WHAT KITCHEN SHORT CUTS AM I MISSING?
I have owned a food processor for almost a decade but only recently tried out the cheese grater attachment - and instantly felt like a complete idiot for wasting countless hours of my life grating cheese by hand. I am sure there must be many other techniques i haven't tried that will also make me feel like an idiot: do you have any suggestions?
—Sent by rondertaker
Things to make you not fee like an idiot, eh? I always follow the Dwight Schrute model for not feeling like an idiot: Whenever I'm about to do something, I think, would an idiot do that? and if they would, I do not do that thing.
But what you're asking is more difficult. What are some things that non-idiots do regularly that idiots would not think to do?
I can't claim to be 100 percent qualified to answer that question (my idiocy is still TBD), but I can give you a short list of some of the tricks I find most useful in the kitchen. I'm sure that you guys all have some great tips too, so please leave them in the comments so we can all benefit from your non-idiocy!
1. PEEL GINGER WITH A SPOON
Ginger can be tricky to peel with all its bumps and irregularities. Rather than using a paring knife or vegetable peeler, reach for the spoon. Scrape it against the skin and it'll come right off, following every contour and minimizing waste.
2. GET AN IMMERSION BLENDER
I use my immersion blender more than any other electric tool in the kitchen by a long shot. Whether it's puréeing soups directly in the pot, getting rid of ugly lumps in my cheese sauce, or making mayonnaise or hollandaise in under two minutes, the immersion blender is the tool for the job.
Much easier to clean than a countertop blender or food processor, no need to transport hot ingredients from a pot to the blender jar, and the ability to work with even small quantities of ingredients (provided you have a cup that fits its head properly) make it an invaluable asset.
3. KEEP A SMALL STRAINER FOR CITRUS
I keep a small handled-strainer in my tool crock next to the stove so that I can quickly cut a lemon or lime in half and squeeze it directly through the strainer into the pot. Much easier than picking out seeds afterwards! Oh, and you do keep a crock full of common tools by the stovetop, don't you?
4. USE THAT SAME SMALL STRAINER FOR EGGS
That same strainer can be used to make perfectly shaped poached eggs. How? Crack the eggs into the strainer over the sink and swirl them around gently to remove the excess watery white. What's left will be a tight, egg-shaped egg that poaches up clean. You can use the same trick to make picture-perfect, billboard glamour-shot-ready fried eggs. Check out the video above for more details.
5. THINK LIKE A FACTORY LINE, AND WORK CLEAN
When working with beginning cooks, the most common inefficiency I see is in task planning. Say you've got four onions that need to be peeled, finely diced, and transferred to a large bowl. If you do each of these steps to each onion one at a time, you spend a lot of time moving back and forth between the board, the compost bin, and the bowl, picking up and putting down your knife, and mentally preparing yourself for the next task.
Instead, work like a factory: start by cutting off the end and splitting all of the onions. Next peel all of the onions. Then make all of your horizontal cuts, followed by all of your vertical cuts. Finally, transfer all of your perfect dice to the bowl and clean down your board and countertop before you move on to the next task.
Apply this kind of thinking to all of your tasks and you'll find that the time you spend in the kitchen will not only be more efficient, but also neater, cleaner, and more organized.
6. USE A GARBAGE BOWL AND A BENCH SCRAPER
New York Site Editor Max recommends always having a garbage bowl near your work station. I wholeheartedly agree, and I'd add that a bench scraper is an essential piece kit as well. Not having to walk back and forth to the garbage every few minutes can take a lot of drudgery our of your prep, and nothing's better than a bench scraper for moving large quantities of fiddly ingredients or scraps from point A to point B.
7. FREEZE LIQUIDS IN USEABLE PORTIONS!
Serious Eats Drinks Site Editor Maggie Hoffman says that she freezes wine in ice cube trays and stores them in the freezer, ready to be pulled out one at a time and added to pan sauces and stews, saving you from having to open a whole bottle every time a recipe calls for some wine.
Similarly, if you make yourself a large batch of stock, freeze it in convenient portion sizes in the freezer—ice cube trays and half-pint deli containers are great for this—then transfer them to a plastic freezer bag to be pulled out an used whenever you need fresh stock.
8. FREEZE AS FLAT AS POSSIBLE
One more freezer trick: freeze things flat and stack them. Whether it's soups, stews, or ground meat, the flatter and wider you can get them, the faster they'll freeze and defrost, which not only makes you more efficient, it also improves the quality of the food (the longer something takes to freeze, the more cellular damage it will suffer).
When freezing raw meat, soups, and stews, if you have a vacuum sealer, use it! Otherwise, place foods in heavy-duty freezer bags, squeeze out all the air, lay the bag flat, and use your hands to work the contents into as flat and even a shape as possible.
When freezing vegetables, cut them into pieces 1-inch or less and blanch any green vegetables. Place them on a large plate or sheet tray spaced apart from each other and freeze them solid before transferring to a plastic freezer bag and storing flat.
9. DEFROST MEAT ON ALUMINUM TRAYS
The fastest way to defrost meat is under a cold running tap. But if you want to save water and speed things up a bit, place your meat on an aluminum sheet tray or skillet. Aluminum is a great conductor of heat and will draw energy from the surrounding environment into your frozen meat much faster than a wooden cutting board or wood or stone countertop. You can cut defrosting times down by about 30 percent this way. It also works on soups, stews, and anything frozen flat.
10. SLICE AVOCADOS IN THEIR SKINS
To slice avocados for salads or guacamole, split them in half, remove the pit by whacking it with the heel of your knife and twisting it out, then slice it directly in the skin using the tip of a paring knife or chef's knife. When you then scoop it out with a spoon, you'll have slices ready to go, with less mess than trying to fiddle with slippery peeled avocado a cutting board.
11. BUY PRE-PEELED GARLIC
I might get a lot of hate for this one, but truth be told, I use pre-peeled garlic almost exclusively. I find peeling garlic form a whole head to be a bit of a pain in the butt and usually can't be bothered. The pre-peeled stuff, so long as you buy it fresh, will last for weeks in the refrigerator and despite what some snooty chefs may tell you, it tastes just fine. In fact, I challenge anyone to taste identical dishes made in a triangle test with pre-peeled and whole head garlic and identify the odd one out. Seriously.
12. READ THE RECIPE FIRST
Associate Editor Niki suggested this one and it might sound like the most obvious one on the list. But let me tell you something: back when I use to work for Cook's Illustratedmagazine, part of our interview process for new hires was to have them cook through recipes. Their only task was to read the recipe and follow it exactly as written. You wouldn't believe the number of folks who would start cooking before reading through every step only to find that they were missing a tool they needed at a time sensitive juncture, or that they hadn't divided ingredients properly.
"When prepping ingredients for a recipe, check to see when things are added collectively and combine them ahead of time—saves stress and dishes," says Niki. "Same when thinking about the order of things that you're cooking—can you use the same cutting board if you cut veggies before chicken? Do you REALLY need to have two pans going at once, or can the processes be combined? etc."
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