Cooking Hacks To Help Save Time In The Kitchen

As much fun as it may be to try our hand in the kitchen, there is always a lazy siren that goes off in our head screaming “tedious tedious tedious”. And that siren isn’t entirely untrue because preparing a dish is a pain, let alone cooking the thing! So try out these super simple hacks – unless you have these super cool kitchen gadgets – that’ll save your time and sweat when you’re in the kitchen!

1. Peeling Garlic

More than you, your fingers and nails dread garlic cloves and its peel. Try this – chop the top and bottom end of the clove, microwave it and slide the peel off! Or you could also smack each clove with a knife to separate it from the skin.

2. Picking Up Eggshells

Cracking an egg can be messy business at times. Get rid of those cheeky shells in your batter by simply using a half of a cracked eggshell. The eggshell acts like a magnet for these tiny bits of shells and reduces the chance of wastage.

3. Skinning Citric Fruits

Oranges, sweet limes and lemons are all excellent fruits and taste enhancers but peeling most of them almost pulls us away from them. Not anymore – just microwave the fruit enough not to warm it up and see how it pulls away from the skin.

4. Potato Peeling

Although a known hack, this one deserves a special memo on the fridge for all the cooks and chefs. The trick is to run boiled potatoes through cold water and the skin peels off like magic!

5. Hard Boiled Hack

Avoid the messy and time-consuming shell peeling routine when getting your breakfast done. All you need to do is add vinegar or baking soda to the water. Both vinegar and baking soda pierce through the tough shell, separating the egg whites easily.

6. De-kernel Faster

Salads, soups and pizzas sprinkled with corn are a much-loved favorite. But snipping the kernels from the cob isn’t equally as exciting. But try this, place the pointed end of the cob in the center of a ring cake pan (open side up). With a sharp knife slice the cob downwards. The pan acts both as a support and kernel collector.

7. Skim The Fat

No one likes the layer of fat floating atop stocks and stews. Ditch the spoon-chase and wrap ice cubes in a paper towel or muslin cloth and skim it along the liquid to remove the fat. The ice solidifies the fat and skimming it becomes easy.

8. Group Slice

Cutting or slicing small fruits and veggies like cherry tomatoes is often difficult and tiresome. Instead of cutting each tomato into half, place a bunch of tomatoes between two lids or flat plates, press the top lid and slice the tomatoes horizontally into equal halves. Voila!

Now that you have these sneaky tricks up your sleeve, go ahead and make yourself a fancy meal while the rest of ‘em wonder how you did it so fast!