8 super-smart kitchen tips for every home cook

Peeling ginger, making mayonnaise, squeezing a lemon or separating an egg in the blink of an eye makes you feel like a real whiz, doesn’t it? With these super-smart kitchen tips, you’ll be a true kitchen ninja in no time.

Peel ginger with a spoon

A knobbly ginger root is difficult to peel because of all those bumps and lumps. How do you do it? Grab an ice cream scoop or a teaspoon and scrape the skin right off the ginger. Or maybe you don’t need to peel the ginger at all, for example when you’re grating it?

Buy an immersion blender

Make mayonnaise yourself. Chop garlic, chili and ginger. Make guacamole. Purée soup. Get lumps out of the sauce. No, we don’t own shares, but: buy an immersion blender, and you can do all these jobs in no time.

Use a tea strainer when juicing citrus fruit

Keep a tea strainer or fine-mesh sieve close at hand – for example in that handy pot with spoons and spatulas on the counter, or on the rack by the stove – and use it when squeezing a lemon. Hold the sieve underneath, and you won’t have to fish the seeds out of the sauce. Super handy!

Use that sieve to poach eggs too

Want to quickly poach an egg? Grab that same sieve and crack the egg over it. Let the watery part of the egg white run through by gently shaking the sieve. What remains is firm egg white around a yolk, making it much easier to poach.

Clean up your mess and work neatly

Pretend you work in a restaurant. Need to chop four onions? Cut the skins off all four onions, then chop them finely instead of working onion by onion. Faster and cleaner. Throw away the skins and trimmings immediately, put the cutting board in the dishwasher and wash your knife. Done! Even if there’s no chef shouting in your ear that it needs to be faster, FASTER, that’s no reason to bumble around your kitchen like an idiot.

Use a separate bowl for waste

Cutting lots of vegetables? Put out a bowl where you can throw all the peels and skins. Then take it to the green bin in one go. No more endlessly opening and closing the lid.

Get out the scales when you bake

Many recipes – especially American recipes – list ingredients in cups. It then seems as though it doesn’t matter much exactly how much flour, butter or sugar you use, because one cup isn’t the same as another, so a little freestyling probably can’t hurt. Wrong! Convert the recipes and weigh everything you’re going to bake to the nearest gram.

Buy one of those expensive graters

You can grate garlic, lemon zest and ginger. Parmesan? Truffle? Nutmeg? You guessed it. Don’t buy one of those graters from a bargain bin; buy the real deal. Again: we don’t own shares, but you’ll genuinely enjoy a good one for years.

Also read:

• 6 mega-good kitchen hacks (and 2 to forget)
• Dirty containers? This TikTok hack cleans them in the blink of an eye
• Veggie and fruit hacks

Source: Serious Eats