17 Clever Food Hacks You Need to Try
Everybody loves foods. Whether they are the healthy and sumptuous looking homemade meals or fresh and thirst quenching fruits or those sinful and fat laden favourites, nobody will be able to forgo it. So we eat, but why not make everything easy?
For this article we will be seeing some food hacks which will be life changing and will be diet friendly (just ignore the bacon and other diet killer, that is, if you can).
- Use dental floss to cut soft foods.
via HuffingtonPost
Dental floss is great to make perfect cut for cakes, cheese, rolls, burrito and other soft solid foods. There’ll be no mess, no knife sticking events and no hassle. Slide the floss under a rolled cake or bread and pull both ends up. For cakes, hold both ends across a cake, tighten and cut across the cake. For cheese, you can try both the techniques, whichever way you want.
For a note though, use some unscented floss for the slicing if you don’t want your food to taste like, er, your newly flossed teeth.
2. Wet your finger before removing egg shells.
Well, I know you know how hard it is to remove those nasty egg shells that somehow managed to get on the bowl after you crack the eggs. It will have you chasing for it to no success. For a trick though, you need to wet your fingers, target the shell that somehow eluded your pick before, and pull it easily out from your mix.
3. Make bacon and egg into breakfast bites by using muffin cups when cooking.
First, breathe in and breathe out. It’s just bacon. Now, make use of those mini muffin tins. Wrap bacons around it, pour in some whipped eggs (or un-whipped ones) and add some cheese and other things you wanted and bake for 30 minutes. Here’s a picture of the process. (Note to readers: finish the article first before dashing for the muffin tins).
4. Remove strawberry stem with a straw.
via whatthedogate
Strawberry stem can’t be that hard to remove but a clean cut way to vanish it is by using a straw. Insert the straw from the bottom, push it up and the stem will be removed all the way. No nasty battles or nitpicking with the minute stem that got stuck after. Use a stiff straw for this.
5. Use a pizza cutter to cut up ingredients into very small pieces.
via melissalonie
AT some point of your home cooking life, you may need some ingredients to be really, really small. For scrambled eggs for example or you may need to fine-chop garlic, onions and other things but you just can’t perfect the chopping techniques like in cooking channels. A pizza cutter may come in handy.
6. Thumb the middle of your patty to flat it down.
Burger patties, the one you took time to shape into round and flat burger, may cook round and swelling if you put it straight to the cooking pan. To flatten it for a perfect burger, put your thumbprint in the middle of the patty before cooking. The indentation will make sure that it will cook even.
7. Surround jelly with peanut butter for a drip-free sandwich.
I know you hate it when you make some peanut butter and jelly sandwich and just have the rest of the jelly dribbling down your chin, all your effort all in vain, plus you have your tongue disappointed. There’s a remedy for it though. Take some bread, surround it with peanut butter like a moat (make sure you left the centre part hollow), apply the jelly generously in the centre, close the sandwich and eat it drip free.
8. Keep apple slices fresh with honey and water.
Slicing apples and keeping them in the refrigerator to take out for snacks later on is a hassle free way to snacking. Sliced apples though that are kept in the refrigerator tend to go brown after a few hours. It is still edible but sometimes too unappetizing. To keep the brown away, mix two tablespoons of honey with one cup of water. The peptide compound of the honey will stop the activation of the apple’s Polyphenol oxidase when exposed to air. Soak apple in it for a few minutes. You’re done put it in zip lock and refrigerate it, it won’t turn brown anymore. Note: storing apples too long in the refrigerator, no matter how much time it was soaked in the honey-water solution, won’t stop it from going old. So yes, eat it in the nearest possible time.
9. Guilt free ice cream – made out of banana!
Take four or five ripe bananas, peel them and put them in the freezer for an hour. Once they’re frozen, slice them and put them in the blender. Blend it well and you’ll get a yummy treat in ice cream’s consistency. It’s guilt free but if want to risk the guilt, add some chocolate chips and some peanut butter.
10. Wrap banana stems in cling wrap to keep them fresh longer.
Bananas may go brown fast. A technique in the past is to wrap the whole crown of the bunch with a cling wrap but for bananas to last longer, for a week or so, separate the bananas first. Once the bananas are all separated, cover each stem with the cling wrap and you can keep them. The wrapping process slows down the ripening process of the stem where the off-gassing takes place.
11. Gauge avocado ripeness before cutting them up.
via thekitchn
Sometimes you may cut up an avocado already before realizing that it’s still not ripe or just too ripe for your taste. Or you may buy one, thinking it’s still good to eat only to discover it’s too ripe already. The technique is to remove the avocado stem. Peek at the dry little button on the stem end. If it’s green, then it’s perfect but if it’s brown, then it is overripe and may tend to be slimy inside.
12. Keep potatoes from budding.
How? Put an apple inside the bag where your potatoes are kept. Apples produce ethylene gas which keeps it from sprouting. An apple to save your potatoes? Sounds good, and it can last up to eight weeks max. Apples though shouldn’t be put on together with other fruits since the said ethylene gas that stops sprouting may also hasten ripening.
13. Keep your salad fresh through a paper towel.
When keeping a salad for the next day or the next next day’s meal, you may find that the veggies may turn up soggy and limp the day after. To keep it fresh, strain the remaining water since it can also be the cause of sogginess, put the salad in a bowl, top it with a paper towel to absorb it s moisture, then cover the whole thing with cling wrap. You can take some of the salad every day, replace the paper towel and close the cling wrap. It can also for a week or depending on how fast you can finish the whole bowl!
14. Determine if eggs are fresh.
There are 4 types of eggs in general. The very fresh, the week old ones, the 3 week old ones and the bad eggs. To determine which are still good for your breakfast, put them in a bowl of water. The one that sinks t the bottom and lay on its side is fresh. The one that rests on the bottom but with its fat end rising slightly is a week old egg. The three week old egg will be balanced on the pointy end, fat end up. The bad eggs will float.
Although this trick is handy, please don’t march to your grocery store and request for a bowl of water before buying your eggs.
15. Make some fruit ice cube tray for a refreshing and fruity water treat.
Make some of your regular ice cubes but instead of putting it in the freezer right away, add in some fruity treats. Blueberries, strawberries and other fruits you preferred are good for this as long as it fits the cube tray. If it doesn’t, then chop them up, and use them as well. Put these cubes in water to make your drinks more exciting.
16. Freeze grapes for snacks or for ice cubes alternatives for wine.
Frozen grapes are good snack options but it’s also the best way to chill wine without watering them down like ice cubes do. Plus the grapes won’t overpower the wine plus you can pop the fruit after finishing the wine!
17. Bake eggs instead of boiling them.
Baking eggs instead of boiling them is better since it can lessen the eggs sulphurous smell and the egg texture is a whole lot creamier. Bake eggs at 325 degrees for 30 minutes. Then voila, you have that better than before eggs.
So there you go. Your own little food hacks you can do right away or you can put in mind for future use. Do these hacks seem helpful? Do you have other yummy and helpful food hacks you can share with us?