7 Inventive Kitchen Hacks For Everyday Use
What can you do when the butter is hard but you want to spread it on your bread right away? How can you tell if an egg has gone bad? And why would anyone bake entire bananas in the oven? These are all great questions that you'll find answered here – we'll show you how to have fun mastering a range of everyday kitchen challenges.
1. Egg Test
When you're not sure if the raw eggs in the fridge are still good, there's a simple test to check. First, fill a glass with water and put an egg in it. If it sinks to the bottom, you can eat it without worrying.
2. Peppers To Eat Vs. Peppers To Cook With
Peppers with 4 bumps on the bottom are better for eating, while peppers with 3 bumps on the bottom are better for cooking.
3. Ripen Bananas In No Time
Very ripe bananas are especially suited to making banana bread because they're particularly sweet and easy to mash. But you don't always have some on hand. If your bananas aren't ripe enough yet, just use this trick: place them on a sheet pan lined with parchment paper and bake them in the oven for 20 minutes at 400°F. Then peel the bananas, mash the fruit into a pulp, and add it to the dough. Done!
4. Frozen Herbs
This trick really is a nifty way to avoid throwing away spare ingredients after cooking: if you have leftover herbs, chop them into small pieces and put them in an ice cube tray. Then pour olive oil over them and place the tray in the freezer. The herbs are stored in practical portions and later, you can take a single cube and let it melt in the pan as the basis for a fried dish.
5. Peeling Eggs
It often takes an annoyingly long time to get the shell off a boiled egg. But there's a simple solution: peel just the pointed end and then bash the flatter end against the table. Now you just have to puff the egg out of its shell by blowing into it from the pointed end. When doing this, don't forget to hold your free hand under the egg so you can catch the egg when it slips from the shell.
6. Buttering Bread with Hard Butter
When you want to quickly butter some bread, but the butter comes out the fridge hard as a rock, you mustn't despair: first unwrap the paper from the butter and then re-wrap it around half the butter so that you can get a good grip on it. Now simply use a cheese grater to grate as many curls of butter as you need for buttering the bread.
7. Rolling Pin & Cookie Cutter Substitute
You want to to bake some beautiful round cookies, but don't have a rolling pin or cookie cutter on hand? No problem! Just cover an empty wine bottle with flour and use it to roll out the dough. And instead of a circular cookie cutter, you can use a glass to give the cookies a uniform shape and size. It's best to put some flour on the rim of the glass beforehand.
When you know these hacks, not only will they make you the King of Kitchen Small Talk, but you'll also have useful solutions on hand for everyday cooking and baking problems. So head to the kitchen and give them a try!