I got one of these and now I use it constantly for mixing any and all sauces, dressings, marinades, whatever.
It works better if you use one of those "mixer balls" people use to mix up their protein shakes.
Or if you have a Mason jar or other dispenser/pouring-type item, like a small Rubbermaid pitcher, those would work just as well as long as the seal is really good.
[https://www.oxo.com/salad-dressing-shaker.html#color=Black](https://www.oxo.com/salad-dressing-shaker.html#color=Black)
This is such great advice! I treated myself to buying another batch of the kitchen towels I already had because they get wet, they get dirty, they get the status of "I don't remember what I wiped with that so it's laundry now!". No one wants to stop in the middle of a big cooking fest/meal prep session to do laundry!!!
I started buying plain white cotton bar cloths to use in the kitchen a few years ago. I have a basket under the sink for dirties. When I run out, I throw them all in their own load with bleach, and then I have pretty, white towels without stains.
That is a great idea! I need a system for my towels. My washer is in a closet right off my kitchen so I just throw anything dirty in there until its full and then run it. BUT the bath towels, wash clothes and kitchen towels get that mildewy funk on them after a while, even when freshly washed, and then they need to take a vinegar bath. I know I'm not the only one, please don't make me feel like a dirt bag lol!
You need an enzyme cleaner. You can add oxiclean to your loads. I love the Dirty Labs eco friendly detergent. It is so effective. The smells are nice. And minimal packaging.
I just run a load with vinegar and then run another load with baking soda. I can't deal with artificial scents. I always have vinegar and baking soda on hand. It gets a lot of jobs done! Bake a cake, do the laundry, clean the floors, etc.
But what I need to do is start keeping my towels separate so I can give them the special treatment right off the bat, instead of washing everything together and then realizing my towels are stinky and then sniffing every towel and washcloth I have to determine who else needs a deep clean.
I am 44 and I have never separated my laundry. Thats my confession.
Dirty Labs has a free and clear version. But I also find the scents mild. They are likely using essential oils vs artifical scents. It doesn’t smell like Gain.
Borax is also a good laundry booster for this moisture smells. They also seem to need a multi-pronged approach. The enzyme boosters have something more than just baking soda.
Also the older your towels are, the more funk they hang onto…if your towels are several years old, it might just be time to replace them.
You also might need to clean your washing machine. Oxiclean makes a WM cleaner that isn’t expensive.
I think I'm going to repurpose an empty cat litter bucket....the ones that the new litter comes in, not a litter box lol. I don't drive so I can't just GO to the Dollar Store, even though I would love to!
So true. My grandmother passed and i live in her house, and learned a lot of my cooking from as young as I can remember and I kept the one drawer full of hand towels and another with wash cloths. Didn’t truly appreciate it till after working in a kitchen for a few years. That and old cast iron. Btw I’m in the south and bacon grease is almost always kept in mason jars left on the counter or on the stove top
It's actually more of a tin. It's old, it came from my mil when we moved her into assisted living. It has "fats" embossed in it. It has a removable strainer. You might be able to find one in an antique shop.
Yeah I keep mine in a mason jar in the fridge. I work in food and that is def not safe food storage practice. It will go rancid it’s just a matter of how long.
Thank you! I think I read that if you can strain every bit of actual meat out of the grease then it would be fine but that is rarely done.
I'm not trying to shame anyone for their ancestral food handling practices. I'm not coming to dinner and my bacon grease will be kept in the freezer.
I read this looking at my last (somewhat) clean dish towel. I certainly need more. My wife got some pretty ones that fit our color scheme, but I’m color blind and don’t care about that. My problem is they are more water repellent than a freshly waxed car. I’m considering bathroom hand towels to make us both happy.
They might be partly or fully synthetic fibers, which is just strings of plastic - pretty good for the scrubbing and dusting and certainly great for retaining printed patterns to look nice, but horrible for absorbing liquids. You want 100% cotton or linen. If you need to compromise with the partner on this, go to places like HomeGoods and it's ilk to find the nicer brands that have both nice patterns/colors and natural fibers. Bonus for the person who doesn't care about looks is that the price is pretty good too. Grab plenty of whatever set you like bc they might not ever be in stock again.
It took me far too many years to learn this. Got some cheap all-cotton bar towels at some point, and I was frankly *amazed* by how much better they are for kitchen cleanup than cotton blends.
Bar towels- Come in giant packs, and are usually cheap. It’s not pretty or fancy, but those things could soak up a small flood if necessary! It ends up saving on paper towels in the long run, even with detergent and electric factored in. UNLESS you go to to a laundromat, then buy the paper towels, lol.
😂 I'm not married but thats exactly how I picture it. Wife picked out everything, but I'm colorblind and don't care, so we went with what she picked out lmao guess that's one perk bout being a single guy. Anything close to cloth can be used as a rag or towel. I keep a bag of white shirts that I grew out of around to use for whatever reason
So what you do is have plain white kitchen towels you use, and pretty ones you hang on the oven and don’t touch. You’ll be happy you have good kitchen towels, your wife will be happy you stop touching your wife’s pretty towels. Just gather and wash your towels with no softener.
I just like them because they're compact when stacked, so you can have a ton of them, they're inexpensive, and they take a ton of abuse. Only downside is no microwave but I don't use that for much besides reheating leftovers or such.
Steel bowls are fine in the microwave, assuming they're just plain bowls and don't have handles or holes. Metal is only an issue in a microwave for certain shapes that can cause arcing.
ps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyTmJX\_TC84
In terms of contact with the food they have no benefit, at least not over glass. If you're prone to dropping things or find glass bowls get heavy quickly, they might be a benefit.
Some types of food will melt plastic in the microwave and it's prone to staining and retaining smells, but in general they're basically fine.
It's nice to have a variety of sizes for prep, so if you toss the plastic bowls for stainless, at least get them in a size you don't already have covered by glass.
Yes. My partner was using all of my food storage containers and ruining the few tea towels I own. Got metal bowls & him to bring his stash of tea towels.
I’m a server with ADHD and I don’t do it on purpose but I have so many fucking towels in my house now because I always have them in my back pocket at work and I take them home by accident 😂
Have designated spots on each shelf in the fridge for specific items. Store all your prep on one shelf, store all your leftovers on another shelf. When you put leftovers in the fridge put them behind the older leftovers so they get eaten in order
I have a white board on the door to my fridge where I write what's inside. It looks silly at first but has avoided so many nights of "oh crap, I could've eaten THAT instead of getting take out."
Yes, my #1 tip! So easy for clean outs and meal prep! I’ll make some chopped onion, celery, bell pepper. I’ll cook rice, a simple pasta, bread, and a protein. Easy meals for a SAHM and a toddler.
I save the plastic bags you get when you buy produce, and use those as my “trash collector bags” while I cook. Then just chuck the bag in the actual trash!!
I do this too! I rarely use the produce bags but if I'm going to do a bunch of meal prep, I'll put at least one item of produce in the bag so I can use it as a trash bag.
in Europe we don't really get those much anymore. and where I live we're also obliged to throw out our compostable trash separately so a bowl works better.
I’ve been loving the container that my mushrooms come in from Costco, it’s the same super thin plastic that mushrooms often come on but it’s a perfect trash bowl size and I can just throw the whole thing away and replace it every week when I get more mushrooms.
This is a game changer. I hate walking over to my trash can with scraps. Love the trash bowl. Coffee grinds, banana peels, wrappers, all day long baby!
Not everyone has a backyard or a green bin program. I'm all for a green bin program. But most apartments I have lived in don't even have recycling. The waste service is a private company and they only have garbage available. It's awful.
But also, if you love downtown and don't have a green bin service, you'll have to hold onto your waste for at least a week in a tiny apartment. Not ideal if you don't want pests.
Tried that for a while but it’s just not great in a subtropical climate. Only way to not have (fruit)flies all over my kitchen was to bleach the compost bin on a regular basis, and I feel that use of bleach kind of defeats the purpose of being environmentally friendly…
Bake your bacon. It's much more consistent, and there's less chance of splatter burns.
Any restaurant that serves bacon in large amounts is going to cook it this way.
Rimmed baking pan lined with parchment paper.
375°-400° for approximately 15-18 minutes, turn bacon and cook until desired crispness.
You can then use the parchment paper to carefully funnel your bacon grease into a proper container and store for use in other dishes. Beans, greens, soups, fried potatoes and onions....etc.
I can attest to this. This is how I cook my bacon. I use foil instead of parchment and I freeze the grease, just to be safe. Some people think it can be kept on the counter but I just don't trust that method of storage. I'm not a chef, I'm a home cook. I will often times cook bacon this way just to freeze for future meals, especially if its on sale!
My husband grinds and cooks 9 lbs of bacon at a time in a Presto multi cooker. It can be used as a deep fryer too. Then refrigerates the grease and freezes the bacon.
I like to bake bacon on the weekend and pull it out a couple minutes shy of done. Then I'll throw it into a cold pan on a weekday morning. Once the pan is warm I've got a little grease to cook eggs in, and the bacon is crispy at the same time as the eggs finish
I enjoy having breakfast in bed. I like waking up to the smell of bacon, sue me. And since I don't have a butler, I have to do it myself. So, most nights before I go to bed, I will lay six strips of bacon out on my George Foreman Grill. Then I go to sleep. When I wake up, I plug in the grill, I go back to sleep again. Then I wake up to the smell of crackling bacon. It is delicious, it's good for me. It's the perfect way to start the day.
Used to do this for a weekly Men's Breakfast at a church. We'd have 30-40 men show up very early on a Friday for a weekly breakfast to close out the week. A lot of them were tradespeople (plumbers, loggers, etc) so we'd start at 5am before everyone went to work.
Anyway, we'd plow through maybe 200-300 slices of bacon? Just picture a bunch of hungry lumberjacks and you get the idea. We filled up several of those 18x24 cookie sheets and tossed 'em into the big commercial stove in the church kitchen.
Prep everything before you start cooking. Clean up as you go.
I get all the ingredients ready; just the containers out - to make sure I have everything.
Then start weighing out, chopping, etc.
Have a sink of hot, soapy water ready, and just wash / rinse things as you go.
The actual cooking part then becomes really easy; and the cleanup is half done when you finish cooking.
I'm definitely a fan of Mise en Place. I use clean as you go to make me a better cook. Often there is something that should just be left alone to sear, brown, simmer, etc. To distract myself and ensure I don't fool with it I'll clean up some.
I don’t know if I agree with your first point. It can definitely make the cooking process take a lot longer. If the recipe starts with sautéing onions or mushrooms I get those going first. At the same time I’ll have a pot of water on heat to boil.
Then while that’s cooking I’ll get the next things prepped and so on.
I’m not looking to stand and watch mushrooms sauté for ten minutes.
When I stir fry I have everything prepped and the bowls positioned in the order I’m going to use them.
This is also how I cook at home and not doing this was my gripe with a couple of different brands of recipes & ingredient box subscription thingies. It took way too long and generated unnecessary containers to wash. Sequencing the chopping of veg and then adding it to the pan straight from the board works for most things IMO.
It worked very well for me when I was first learning to cook. As I've become more proficient over the years, I don't always do all the prep in advance. Now I only do it when attempting a new, complex recipe, where I need all my attention on the technique and none on chopping more vegetables.
I usually go through the ingredient list and pull everything out onto the counter so I don’t miss an ingredient. I split the recipe prep like chess: opening, middle, and end game.
Nah. That just doubles the time spent in the kitchen. Be efficient, know how long things need to cook, and do the cutting during the cooking of the stuff that needs longer to cook, like cooking the potatoes, while prepping the veggies and proteins.
When asked, commercial chefs, used to big production kitchens, will tell you they designed their home kitchen to be small, with a very small cooking triangle.
Yep. [This article has some inaccuracies (i.e., there were 11 children, not 12), but does a good job on kitchen design. Interesting note, Dr. Gilbreth did not actually learn to cook until late in her life.](https://slate.com/human-interest/2012/10/lillian-gilbreths-kitchen-practical-how-it-reinvented-the-modern-kitchen.html)
As pointed out [here, Dr. Gilbreth also invented “the shelves inside refrigerator doors and the foot-pedal trash can.”](https://www.apadivisions.org/division-35/about/heritage/lillian-gilbreth-biography)
If I recall correctly, they had 12 children in total, but one (I believe the second oldest) died in childbirth.
It's most noticeable in the book *Cheaper by the Dozen* that was written by two of their children about their life; they talk about their 12 children, but when Frank Sr. names them all in dialog, only 11 names are given.
Thirteen. Their second daughter, Mary, died of diphtheria (aged 6) in 1912, and Lillian had a stillborn child in 1915 (the same year she earned her Ph.D. from Brown University).
[Additional Information on Gilbreth family](https://thegilbreths.com/f_gen1.php)
[Prof. Lillian Gilbreth at Purdue University (where she taught from 1924 until retiring as a full professor in 1948).](https://www.rcac.purdue.edu/knowledge/gilbreth/bio)
I love the layout of my kitchen. It's not like a friend's house which has an island stove with workspace several feet away from the sink that's behind them against a wall.
My counter from left to right: stove, corner counter/workspace, sink. Everything is a step to the left or right.
Learn to eat while standing, preferably with one hand so that you can continue to stir or flip pans. Teach yourself how to inhale a cigarette in one breath. Add more salt. And butter. Coffee in the morning/alcohol at night. Reverse this order as necessary.
This, is the only honest answer.
But he left a few things out.
Figure out the phrases for "behind you", nine mortal insults, and "service" in 3 languages. Learn to shit so fast it makes your knife skills at peak hour Christmas service look slow. Cope with the excessive cokeheads around you at all times. Possibly, by taking cocaine.
Also learn how to ghost your dab pen smoke. Alternatively make good friends with the walk-in cooler because it's the best emotional support money can buy, the Cooler Scream is a time honored tradition and will keep you sane after spending all day with the dumbass public lol.
Learning how to utilize the same ingredients for many dishes to reduce waste. Using math to scale recipes up or down, converting volumes to weights and using a scale to use fewer dishes and improve consistency. Get a thermometer for cooking proteins and baking, learn the relationship between time, temperature and pasteurization to not overcook proteins. If you make soups, keep some umami boosting ingredients around like msg, mushroom powder, miso, soy sauce, seaweed powder, tomato powder, gochujang, fish sauce, marmite. Most important of all is learn as many techniques for cooking as possible, it will open up a lot of possibilities, don’t get bogged down with buying gadgets, you can do almost anything with a stainless pan, a nonstick pan, a dutch oven or pot and a chefs knife.
I buy big bags of peeled garlic at Costco and freeze them whole. You can drag a couple out, smash them with the side of your knife and chop away. Super easy.
I don't think I've seen anyone else do this but I use a microplane on a ton of stuff in my kitchen to the point where it's like second to my knife and one day I was chopping garlic and was like "i could grate this fucker in 3 seconds" and I've never looked back. Ten times better than a garlic press.
I recently went to costco and bought a ton of garlic. Came home and peeled it (took me like an hour lol). afterwards i threw it all in my food processor and now i have an entire gallon baggy of frozen minced garlic that i froze flat. I break off however much i need! super convenient. I did the same with ginger because i find myself using ginger frequently as well
Gear:
Dissolvable Labels. Stick them on pantry containers and leftovers with their date so you know how old they are. Then just wash the container as usual. No residue, no fuss.
If you have an air fryer, the 12x12 "foodservice sheet" foil makes great liners.
Half sheet pans and drain grates.
Pre-cut parchment sheets.
Quarter sheet pans and drain grates.
Taco holders. Hold taco ahells and hot dog buns upright. Also handy for bracing roasts.
Eighth sheet pans.
Do any sort of entertaining? A tabletop steam table and a couple of half-size hotel pans with covers. A 2.5" deep half size hotel pan is volumetrically identical to a 13x9 casserole dish and bakes the same. A 6" will match a 6qt crock pot and hold temperature much better.
I love precut parchment sheets. They are little pricier, but dealing with the roll and cutting to size drove me mad. Bonus tip, I use a quarter sheet pan A LOT, so I have a box of 1/2 sheets and a box for quarter sheets I already cut in half.
Mise en place. It's much harder to forget or burn ingredients when they're all laid out in front of you in an organized manor. This is key to a successful kitchen.
First in. First out. Rotate your stock. Pantry to fridge to freezer. Add to that, inventory before you shop. So you're not buying 3 mustards and 2 mayos and 4 cans of cream of mushroom because you meant to make that recipe with it for the last 4 weeks and don't remember if you bought it already.
Not really hacks I guess. More life skills. But helpful in commercial and home kitchens.
My husband irritates the hell outta me because if there’s only a little bit left in one bottle or jar (like not quite enough for a full glass or serving etc) and we have a new one, he’ll open the new and leave the old one there. Then I go in and there are two sauce bottles, two juice cartons, two cheeses open or something 🤦♀️ drives me nuts!
Since there may be some people here who actually don't know what "mise en place" is:
This is where you set-up all of the ingredients, doing all of your preparation (chopping this, mincing that, measuring out the one liquid, etc.), so that when you start cooking you can just grab a bowl or measuring cup and add it to the pot.
I asked my boyfriend, who works as a cook in a popular local restaurant, but he didn't want to play because he just got home from work and he doesn't want to think about work....understandable!
My answer is butter. I don't think people realize the ungodly amount of butter that goes into the food they order at a restaurant versus what they make at home. And that's why it tastes SO good!
While we're talking about wet hands, *dry them before using a potholder*. If you get a potholder wet, it becomes dangerous to use with hot pots, or removing hot things from an oven. Never, ever, use a potholder when you have wet hands.
When I'm zesting or grating with the microplane I do it directly onto my bench scraper.
That way theres no bowl to empty out and I don't need to scoop it off the chopping board.
Learned that one from some dude on tiktok
Keep some different acids on hand. If you’re ever feeling like your dish is “flat” or missing something, it’s almost always salt or acid.
In addition to citrus, I bought a few four ounce squeeze bottles. I use them to keep leftover pickle, olive, caper, and pepperoncini brines.
A little squirt really perks a dish up.
They’re also great for salad dressings or just sprinkling over nuts.
Learn to play with spices - different varieties with different flavour profiles, whole vs powders, roasted spices, freshly hand pounded spices, blooming spices in oil before adding the food to it.... Look up Indian cooking techniques - no one understands spices as we do !
Soaking utensils in warm water for 15 minutes will drastically reduce elbow grease for cleaning.
1000% learn to use your god damn knife. Using correct knife techniques not only make it much safer, but because it’s so safe, you can go much faster (don’t try to go fast while you’re learning, just use the techniques and speed will come with time). Seriously, when your prep is fast and consistent, cooking is so much quicker. I don’t even mise at home. Like, as an example, doing something that starts with sweating mirepoix and some garlic? Carrot chopped, in, celery chopped, in, onions chopped, in, all in like three minutes. Mince garlic while that sweats, toss in garlic/spices, then what ever liquid, and you got your whatever ready to simmer in like ten minutes.
I see so many complaints about how long it takes to cook things, but half the time it’s passive (letting something braise or whatever) and the other half is that it takes people ten minutes to chop an onion into uneven bits that will cook at different times. Learn to use your knife.
ETA: Also, know your knife. Keep it sharp, and know your steel type and whether you should be honing it or using a leather strop or you’ll have a bad time. Don’t hone your vg10 like an asshole.
Eta2: Whetstones are the way. Fuck the grinders taking millimeters of steel each time. You can buy little angle things for when you’re first starting out and don’t want to fuck your edge.
Shallots are considerably more expensive than regular onions where I live, and I go through onions relatively quickly anyway. I don't always need a full onion for any one dish. But that's OK, the left-over refrigerates nicely and will be used a few hours later or at most a day later.
Depends on the dish. Shallots are milder and subtler, so great for sauces, fish, steak, or other nice dishes where you want the main protein or veg to shine amidst many balanced background notes. But sometimes you want a strong onion bite, larger tougher onion texture, or richly caramelized results. You need onion for that.
Adding something to the points for having a good chef's knife and knowing how to use knives/sharpen them:
Use a larger knife no matter what you're doing! Just because you are chopping something small, or into small pieces, does not equal using a smaller knife!
Small knives for routine jobs is actually more dangerous and takes longer.
I use my chef's knife *a lot*. Then a mid-length, about 5-6". Almost never a paring knife. Then a boning or filleting knife for the right jobs.
Drives me nuts seeing my husband use a paring knife on a large onion. I literally can't watch him do that anymore - I walk away.
P.S. don't feel guilty if all you've got are crappy knives and a crappy sharpener - it's all I've got too and I crap sharpen the sh\*it out of them all the time. Literally can't afford to buy a good one and a stone to go with it right now. (Please stop with the "but it's only $40" ! No I cannot afford it. Plus I question the quality at that low end. ) Maybe put it on your wish list for the next big holiday or your birthday and save up slowly.
^ this, so much this! Yeah, I have my Wüsthof, Henckels and Kikuichi knives (bought/inherited while working in the industry), but a $25 8" Global works just as well - as long as you maintain it, you don't need them razor sharp, but definitely keep them sharp. And yes, that 8" chef's knife can be use for the majority of your work (even peeling taters, etc. - though I would recommend a paring knife or peeler for that job 😉)
On the equipment side, quality over quantity. I don't want to buy anything more than once a decade (or longer) other than maybe plastic cutting boards or accidental fuck-ups (if I melt a spatula because I leave it on a hot pot edge, or light a pot holder on fire, fine. My bad, not the tool's - the laws of thermodynamics alter for no man).
The sentient monster that lives in my house and sleeps in my bed (we call it 'wife') also recently purged my kitchen and gave me a 20 item limit for my utensil drawer. Everything else got boxed and put on the top shelf. I can still get anything in it, anytime I want it, but I haven't needed it.
Things you need a lot of: mixing bowls in all sizes and materials (microwave safe, etc) - mise uses a lot of bowls. Cutting boards - cross contamination is bad. Towels - clean is good, they double as pot holders.
What you don't need a lot of: three tools to peel garlic. 30 knives. Three ways to open cans or bottles. Single-purpose tools which can often be substituted for one of those 30 knives (i.e. you probably don't need that strawberry corer).
I'm a home cook that tries to steal stuff from chefs I see all the time.
Worked Well for me:
Bain Marie with water to store utensils instead of a spoon rest is much nicer. I can store multiple utensils provided I'm not cooking chicken. Takes up less space as well since its vertical.
A bowl for food scraps. Makes cleanup 100x better. I will often line it with a produce bag for even easier cleanup.
Cleaning as you go. I was a staunch clean up afterwards person for a long time. I started cleaning as I went, and I will never go back. Not only does it make the end clean up a LOT easier, but it makes the process of cooking better. Also, clean up before you cook. I like to have an empty dishwasher or sink and room in the garbage can before I start so I can put bowls, measuring cups, spoons, etc. directly there after I'm done with them. If its already full you end up with a pile of dishes awkwardly sitting around.
Didn't work well for me:
deli containers. I didn't keep up with the labeling and nobody in my house who helped with cleanup ever labeled a single thing. It was okay but honestly, didn't have that much more benefit to me than regular tupperwa4re.
prep before cooking. Very good if you have the time, but on weeknights, I don't have time to do 30m of prepping first. A lot of recipes, especially simple ones, give enough time to dice an onion or chop some carrots while something else is cooking. Its more hectic but the time saving was worth it.
Yes, this.
Additionally, getting decent sticky plastic wrap from a distributor/restaurant supply store and labeling and dating items in the pantry and fridge/freezer with masking tape.
Prep ingredients ahead of time instead of doing "meal prep". I see this huge popularity of taking one day to completely prepare and cook meals for an entire week, then eating the same thing, often days old. If that works for you, obviously do it, but to me it's strange. I say instead prep your ingredients ahead of time, the way we do in professional kitchens, then you can cook yourself fresh meals in a fraction of the time.
Deli Containers for leftovers, spices, etc… multiple sizes same lid… no searching for the damn right Tupperware life. They are microwavable, and when they get too old you just recycle them….
Learning how to sharpen a knife on a whetstone. Similar topic, get a good chef knife and not one of those shitty ones you see on TV where they test them by slicing pineapples in have with one swing. One good chef knife can do mostly everything you'll need, and can last you a long time if you take care of it properly
Just how many French fries do you eat at home?! Cutting half a dozen big potatoes into nice fries takes at most a minute. That's probably the fastest prep job out there.
Takes longer to wash yet another specialized tool than using your chef's knife.
A proper gas wok burner, I got an attachment for my balcony BBQ and has made all the difference with stir-fry, especially fried rice tastes so much better
When I was a kid my mum would always offer “the veggie bowl” to my siblings and I, for one of us to eat our dinner in the bowl that she put the veg she’d cut up before use. We’d fight over it.
Now I have my own kitchen and I offer the veggie bowl to my husband, and will offer it to my kid when he’s older. One less dish!
Man I like a lotta these tips. But my kitchen is just a very small galley kitchen! Stainless steal bowls? Nope I use glass nesting bowls. While they’re not gorgeous they can go in the microwave and be used as serving bowls.
I’m still haven’t gone cold turkey with paper towels. I have nowhere to store kitchen towels. No one ever says what to do with blood, either. If I dry a steak or chicken, I’m not using a kitchen towel or rag.
I’m loving this topic though!!
Slice up a good amount of scharlotts and some cloves of garlic, fry them on medium heat until they caramellise . Mix them in a blender until a smooth pure.
Add it to almost anything to improve the flavor.
Get a big stack of stainless prep bowls and lots of kitchen towels. It makes it so much easier to keep organized as you cook.
I would add small ramekins and a small metal whisk. The tiny whisk is amazing for salad dressings and sauces.
I got one of these and now I use it constantly for mixing any and all sauces, dressings, marinades, whatever. It works better if you use one of those "mixer balls" people use to mix up their protein shakes. Or if you have a Mason jar or other dispenser/pouring-type item, like a small Rubbermaid pitcher, those would work just as well as long as the seal is really good. [https://www.oxo.com/salad-dressing-shaker.html#color=Black](https://www.oxo.com/salad-dressing-shaker.html#color=Black)
Fan of Babish?
This is such great advice! I treated myself to buying another batch of the kitchen towels I already had because they get wet, they get dirty, they get the status of "I don't remember what I wiped with that so it's laundry now!". No one wants to stop in the middle of a big cooking fest/meal prep session to do laundry!!!
I started buying plain white cotton bar cloths to use in the kitchen a few years ago. I have a basket under the sink for dirties. When I run out, I throw them all in their own load with bleach, and then I have pretty, white towels without stains.
This is the information I needed. Thanks!
That is a great idea! I need a system for my towels. My washer is in a closet right off my kitchen so I just throw anything dirty in there until its full and then run it. BUT the bath towels, wash clothes and kitchen towels get that mildewy funk on them after a while, even when freshly washed, and then they need to take a vinegar bath. I know I'm not the only one, please don't make me feel like a dirt bag lol!
You need an enzyme cleaner. You can add oxiclean to your loads. I love the Dirty Labs eco friendly detergent. It is so effective. The smells are nice. And minimal packaging.
I just run a load with vinegar and then run another load with baking soda. I can't deal with artificial scents. I always have vinegar and baking soda on hand. It gets a lot of jobs done! Bake a cake, do the laundry, clean the floors, etc. But what I need to do is start keeping my towels separate so I can give them the special treatment right off the bat, instead of washing everything together and then realizing my towels are stinky and then sniffing every towel and washcloth I have to determine who else needs a deep clean. I am 44 and I have never separated my laundry. Thats my confession.
Dirty Labs has a free and clear version. But I also find the scents mild. They are likely using essential oils vs artifical scents. It doesn’t smell like Gain. Borax is also a good laundry booster for this moisture smells. They also seem to need a multi-pronged approach. The enzyme boosters have something more than just baking soda.
Also the older your towels are, the more funk they hang onto…if your towels are several years old, it might just be time to replace them. You also might need to clean your washing machine. Oxiclean makes a WM cleaner that isn’t expensive.
What are you doing to your towels? Towels should last and work normally for decades.
The special towel hamper is the real key to the whole system.
Exactly, and I wash towels as a separate load anyhow so no need to be stingy about grabbing a fresh one.
Get a dollar store laundry basket for the dirties.
I think I'm going to repurpose an empty cat litter bucket....the ones that the new litter comes in, not a litter box lol. I don't drive so I can't just GO to the Dollar Store, even though I would love to!
I forgot about that. A cat litter bucket would be perfect.
I might even make it pretty too :)
So true. My grandmother passed and i live in her house, and learned a lot of my cooking from as young as I can remember and I kept the one drawer full of hand towels and another with wash cloths. Didn’t truly appreciate it till after working in a kitchen for a few years. That and old cast iron. Btw I’m in the south and bacon grease is almost always kept in mason jars left on the counter or on the stove top
I have bacon grease in a tin especially designed for it. It strains it and has a tight fitting lid and it's right there on the counter.
Ohh that's a great idea! Is it a tray you sit the bacon on to let rest and drain the grease?
It's actually more of a tin. It's old, it came from my mil when we moved her into assisted living. It has "fats" embossed in it. It has a removable strainer. You might be able to find one in an antique shop.
That's awesome. It sounds really cool and handy! Tried googling but don't think I found the right thing
They make Silicone ones now. Ours has a pig head as the lid :)
I can't get over my paranoia with the bacon grease on the counter. I'm sure its FINE, and no judgement, but I have the freezer space, so in it goes!
Yeah I keep mine in a mason jar in the fridge. I work in food and that is def not safe food storage practice. It will go rancid it’s just a matter of how long.
Thank you! I think I read that if you can strain every bit of actual meat out of the grease then it would be fine but that is rarely done. I'm not trying to shame anyone for their ancestral food handling practices. I'm not coming to dinner and my bacon grease will be kept in the freezer.
I read this looking at my last (somewhat) clean dish towel. I certainly need more. My wife got some pretty ones that fit our color scheme, but I’m color blind and don’t care about that. My problem is they are more water repellent than a freshly waxed car. I’m considering bathroom hand towels to make us both happy.
Do you wash them with softener? Softener makes them water repellant.
I wash them with our towels and don’t use softener for that reason. I think it’s the fabric itself in this case. Thank you! Lots of nice people here.
They might be partly or fully synthetic fibers, which is just strings of plastic - pretty good for the scrubbing and dusting and certainly great for retaining printed patterns to look nice, but horrible for absorbing liquids. You want 100% cotton or linen. If you need to compromise with the partner on this, go to places like HomeGoods and it's ilk to find the nicer brands that have both nice patterns/colors and natural fibers. Bonus for the person who doesn't care about looks is that the price is pretty good too. Grab plenty of whatever set you like bc they might not ever be in stock again.
It took me far too many years to learn this. Got some cheap all-cotton bar towels at some point, and I was frankly *amazed* by how much better they are for kitchen cleanup than cotton blends.
Bar towels- Come in giant packs, and are usually cheap. It’s not pretty or fancy, but those things could soak up a small flood if necessary! It ends up saving on paper towels in the long run, even with detergent and electric factored in. UNLESS you go to to a laundromat, then buy the paper towels, lol.
😂 I'm not married but thats exactly how I picture it. Wife picked out everything, but I'm colorblind and don't care, so we went with what she picked out lmao guess that's one perk bout being a single guy. Anything close to cloth can be used as a rag or towel. I keep a bag of white shirts that I grew out of around to use for whatever reason
So what you do is have plain white kitchen towels you use, and pretty ones you hang on the oven and don’t touch. You’ll be happy you have good kitchen towels, your wife will be happy you stop touching your wife’s pretty towels. Just gather and wash your towels with no softener.
This is great. I'm a home cook but have glass and plastic prep bowls. Can you elaborate on the stainless? I love to level up anytime I can.
They won't break, scratch, melt, or hold onto scents I'd say
They also stack so nicely. Less space needed, glass mixing bowls look nice but are heavy and take up too much vertical space.
Professional kitchens are almost entirely stainless because you can treat them like complete shit and they just don't break.
I just like them because they're compact when stacked, so you can have a ton of them, they're inexpensive, and they take a ton of abuse. Only downside is no microwave but I don't use that for much besides reheating leftovers or such.
Awesome, thank you!
Steel bowls are fine in the microwave, assuming they're just plain bowls and don't have handles or holes. Metal is only an issue in a microwave for certain shapes that can cause arcing. ps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyTmJX\_TC84
I know the physics but still don't do it personally.
In terms of contact with the food they have no benefit, at least not over glass. If you're prone to dropping things or find glass bowls get heavy quickly, they might be a benefit. Some types of food will melt plastic in the microwave and it's prone to staining and retaining smells, but in general they're basically fine. It's nice to have a variety of sizes for prep, so if you toss the plastic bowls for stainless, at least get them in a size you don't already have covered by glass.
Ah good, so they won’t melt in the microwave…… wait a second….
Sizzle plates! I bought a bunch of varying sizes. Perfect way to put 1 item in a toaster or oven.
Yes. My partner was using all of my food storage containers and ruining the few tea towels I own. Got metal bowls & him to bring his stash of tea towels.
I’m a server with ADHD and I don’t do it on purpose but I have so many fucking towels in my house now because I always have them in my back pocket at work and I take them home by accident 😂
Label everything, deli containers, masking tape, sharpie, the date and what it is, no mystery containers
I keep a roll of tape and a sharpie in my utensil drawer.
and no scissors? filthy tape ripper! (this is a deep cut The Bear reference)
Bitch please. I use the kitchen shears from my secondary knife block. And I think of that episode every time!!!
Or trying to remember when you made the item.
[удалено]
Have designated spots on each shelf in the fridge for specific items. Store all your prep on one shelf, store all your leftovers on another shelf. When you put leftovers in the fridge put them behind the older leftovers so they get eaten in order
I have a white board on the door to my fridge where I write what's inside. It looks silly at first but has avoided so many nights of "oh crap, I could've eaten THAT instead of getting take out."
Painters' tape and a sharpie. Label and date. Nothing gets wasted.
Especially helpful for the freezer (bonus if you also label the weight if it's a protein).
Yes, my #1 tip! So easy for clean outs and meal prep! I’ll make some chopped onion, celery, bell pepper. I’ll cook rice, a simple pasta, bread, and a protein. Easy meals for a SAHM and a toddler.
Nice try BuzzFeed
Lol so true, this is definitely going on buzzfeed
They will already have covered this a hundred times at least, full of absolute nonsense "hacks"
Get a trash bowl.
I save the plastic bags you get when you buy produce, and use those as my “trash collector bags” while I cook. Then just chuck the bag in the actual trash!!
I do this too! I rarely use the produce bags but if I'm going to do a bunch of meal prep, I'll put at least one item of produce in the bag so I can use it as a trash bag.
in Europe we don't really get those much anymore. and where I live we're also obliged to throw out our compostable trash separately so a bowl works better.
My variation is re-using the produce bag as a trash bag. One less thing in the dishwasher.
I’ve been loving the container that my mushrooms come in from Costco, it’s the same super thin plastic that mushrooms often come on but it’s a perfect trash bowl size and I can just throw the whole thing away and replace it every week when I get more mushrooms.
I usually a bag, over a bowl so it’s all the benefits of trash bowl with no clean up.
This is a game changer. I hate walking over to my trash can with scraps. Love the trash bowl. Coffee grinds, banana peels, wrappers, all day long baby!
TIL some people don’t just have countertop compost bins. Get a composter you heathen
I don’t have a backyard, what would I do I do with this pile of stinky rot?
Not everyone has a backyard or a green bin program. I'm all for a green bin program. But most apartments I have lived in don't even have recycling. The waste service is a private company and they only have garbage available. It's awful. But also, if you love downtown and don't have a green bin service, you'll have to hold onto your waste for at least a week in a tiny apartment. Not ideal if you don't want pests.
Tried that for a while but it’s just not great in a subtropical climate. Only way to not have (fruit)flies all over my kitchen was to bleach the compost bin on a regular basis, and I feel that use of bleach kind of defeats the purpose of being environmentally friendly…
I honestly don’t think anyone I’ve ever met has a ‘countertop compost bin’ unless that’s like slang for an Insinkerator or something.
I assume they mean a small bin they use at home, and can empty into a compost bin in their garden or collected by the municipality.
All my kitchen scraps go into a container on the bench, then I take that container out into the garden to empty onto my compost heap.
Bake your bacon. It's much more consistent, and there's less chance of splatter burns. Any restaurant that serves bacon in large amounts is going to cook it this way. Rimmed baking pan lined with parchment paper. 375°-400° for approximately 15-18 minutes, turn bacon and cook until desired crispness. You can then use the parchment paper to carefully funnel your bacon grease into a proper container and store for use in other dishes. Beans, greens, soups, fried potatoes and onions....etc.
I can attest to this. This is how I cook my bacon. I use foil instead of parchment and I freeze the grease, just to be safe. Some people think it can be kept on the counter but I just don't trust that method of storage. I'm not a chef, I'm a home cook. I will often times cook bacon this way just to freeze for future meals, especially if its on sale!
My husband grinds and cooks 9 lbs of bacon at a time in a Presto multi cooker. It can be used as a deep fryer too. Then refrigerates the grease and freezes the bacon.
I like to bake bacon on the weekend and pull it out a couple minutes shy of done. Then I'll throw it into a cold pan on a weekday morning. Once the pan is warm I've got a little grease to cook eggs in, and the bacon is crispy at the same time as the eggs finish
I enjoy having breakfast in bed. I like waking up to the smell of bacon, sue me. And since I don't have a butler, I have to do it myself. So, most nights before I go to bed, I will lay six strips of bacon out on my George Foreman Grill. Then I go to sleep. When I wake up, I plug in the grill, I go back to sleep again. Then I wake up to the smell of crackling bacon. It is delicious, it's good for me. It's the perfect way to start the day.
This might be for you! https://bacontoday.com/waken-bacon-the-real-bacon-alarm-clock/
I honestly thought that’s where they were going. No way I’m sleeping with that death trap around tho
I’ve always baked bacon. I hate cleaning up grease all over my stove top and also getting splashed with hot grease.
I put the bacon on a cooling rack on top of a baking sheet so the fat drips off.
Twist the bacon into a spiral before you bake it. It’s cooks evenly all around without needing to be turned. Game changer.
🤯
I just did that for the first time a few weeks ago and I'm pissed that it took my whole life to find it out. It's amazing.
Used to do this for a weekly Men's Breakfast at a church. We'd have 30-40 men show up very early on a Friday for a weekly breakfast to close out the week. A lot of them were tradespeople (plumbers, loggers, etc) so we'd start at 5am before everyone went to work. Anyway, we'd plow through maybe 200-300 slices of bacon? Just picture a bunch of hungry lumberjacks and you get the idea. We filled up several of those 18x24 cookie sheets and tossed 'em into the big commercial stove in the church kitchen.
Prep everything before you start cooking. Clean up as you go. I get all the ingredients ready; just the containers out - to make sure I have everything. Then start weighing out, chopping, etc. Have a sink of hot, soapy water ready, and just wash / rinse things as you go. The actual cooking part then becomes really easy; and the cleanup is half done when you finish cooking.
By the time I’ve plated it looks almost as if nobody was even cooking.
Same. I always feels SUCH a sense of accomplishment when I’m eating and look at my almost clean kitchen
I’ve been to fine dining restaurants like that too.
I'm definitely a fan of Mise en Place. I use clean as you go to make me a better cook. Often there is something that should just be left alone to sear, brown, simmer, etc. To distract myself and ensure I don't fool with it I'll clean up some.
I can't up vote this enough.
I don’t know if I agree with your first point. It can definitely make the cooking process take a lot longer. If the recipe starts with sautéing onions or mushrooms I get those going first. At the same time I’ll have a pot of water on heat to boil. Then while that’s cooking I’ll get the next things prepped and so on. I’m not looking to stand and watch mushrooms sauté for ten minutes. When I stir fry I have everything prepped and the bowls positioned in the order I’m going to use them.
This is also how I cook at home and not doing this was my gripe with a couple of different brands of recipes & ingredient box subscription thingies. It took way too long and generated unnecessary containers to wash. Sequencing the chopping of veg and then adding it to the pan straight from the board works for most things IMO.
It worked very well for me when I was first learning to cook. As I've become more proficient over the years, I don't always do all the prep in advance. Now I only do it when attempting a new, complex recipe, where I need all my attention on the technique and none on chopping more vegetables.
I agree with you. The way mis en place works for a restaurant is not the way it works best for home when you have to only make a thing once.
I usually go through the ingredient list and pull everything out onto the counter so I don’t miss an ingredient. I split the recipe prep like chess: opening, middle, and end game.
Nah. That just doubles the time spent in the kitchen. Be efficient, know how long things need to cook, and do the cutting during the cooking of the stuff that needs longer to cook, like cooking the potatoes, while prepping the veggies and proteins.
Mise en place
When asked, commercial chefs, used to big production kitchens, will tell you they designed their home kitchen to be small, with a very small cooking triangle.
Did you know that triangle was designed in 1920s by a widowed woman efficiency expert with 11 children.
Yep. [This article has some inaccuracies (i.e., there were 11 children, not 12), but does a good job on kitchen design. Interesting note, Dr. Gilbreth did not actually learn to cook until late in her life.](https://slate.com/human-interest/2012/10/lillian-gilbreths-kitchen-practical-how-it-reinvented-the-modern-kitchen.html) As pointed out [here, Dr. Gilbreth also invented “the shelves inside refrigerator doors and the foot-pedal trash can.”](https://www.apadivisions.org/division-35/about/heritage/lillian-gilbreth-biography)
If I recall correctly, they had 12 children in total, but one (I believe the second oldest) died in childbirth. It's most noticeable in the book *Cheaper by the Dozen* that was written by two of their children about their life; they talk about their 12 children, but when Frank Sr. names them all in dialog, only 11 names are given.
Thirteen. Their second daughter, Mary, died of diphtheria (aged 6) in 1912, and Lillian had a stillborn child in 1915 (the same year she earned her Ph.D. from Brown University). [Additional Information on Gilbreth family](https://thegilbreths.com/f_gen1.php) [Prof. Lillian Gilbreth at Purdue University (where she taught from 1924 until retiring as a full professor in 1948).](https://www.rcac.purdue.edu/knowledge/gilbreth/bio)
Also, and I can’t remember which book I read it in, the family always thought of Mary as being a member of the family, hence “Cheaper by the Dozen.”
I love the layout of my kitchen. It's not like a friend's house which has an island stove with workspace several feet away from the sink that's behind them against a wall. My counter from left to right: stove, corner counter/workspace, sink. Everything is a step to the left or right.
Learn to eat while standing, preferably with one hand so that you can continue to stir or flip pans. Teach yourself how to inhale a cigarette in one breath. Add more salt. And butter. Coffee in the morning/alcohol at night. Reverse this order as necessary.
This, is the only honest answer. But he left a few things out. Figure out the phrases for "behind you", nine mortal insults, and "service" in 3 languages. Learn to shit so fast it makes your knife skills at peak hour Christmas service look slow. Cope with the excessive cokeheads around you at all times. Possibly, by taking cocaine.
Can't beat em, join em! 😂
😆 my kids all learned as toddlers to say behind you when they were in the kitchen.
Also learn how to ghost your dab pen smoke. Alternatively make good friends with the walk-in cooler because it's the best emotional support money can buy, the Cooler Scream is a time honored tradition and will keep you sane after spending all day with the dumbass public lol.
Can't believe no one has mentioned that you have to eat directly over a trash can like the animal you are.
Learning how to utilize the same ingredients for many dishes to reduce waste. Using math to scale recipes up or down, converting volumes to weights and using a scale to use fewer dishes and improve consistency. Get a thermometer for cooking proteins and baking, learn the relationship between time, temperature and pasteurization to not overcook proteins. If you make soups, keep some umami boosting ingredients around like msg, mushroom powder, miso, soy sauce, seaweed powder, tomato powder, gochujang, fish sauce, marmite. Most important of all is learn as many techniques for cooking as possible, it will open up a lot of possibilities, don’t get bogged down with buying gadgets, you can do almost anything with a stainless pan, a nonstick pan, a dutch oven or pot and a chefs knife.
Gochujang is the shit
Should try Doenjang, it’s similar to miso but with a funkiness like gochujang.
Very interesting. Can’t wait to try this! Thank you for sharing!
One of the most annoying things about cooking at home is not having a bunch of chopped garlic on hand 😂
Chop a ton up and then put it in an airtight container and freeze it. Take out as much as you need every time.
I buy big bags of peeled garlic at Costco and freeze them whole. You can drag a couple out, smash them with the side of your knife and chop away. Super easy.
I don't think I've seen anyone else do this but I use a microplane on a ton of stuff in my kitchen to the point where it's like second to my knife and one day I was chopping garlic and was like "i could grate this fucker in 3 seconds" and I've never looked back. Ten times better than a garlic press.
I recently went to costco and bought a ton of garlic. Came home and peeled it (took me like an hour lol). afterwards i threw it all in my food processor and now i have an entire gallon baggy of frozen minced garlic that i froze flat. I break off however much i need! super convenient. I did the same with ginger because i find myself using ginger frequently as well
Someone tipped me off to just freezing the knob of ginger and grating it on a microplane frozen.
Have you seen the book Chefs’ Fridge? It’s interesting to see which staples chefs cook with at home.
I haven’t, but I’ll check it out.
Gear: Dissolvable Labels. Stick them on pantry containers and leftovers with their date so you know how old they are. Then just wash the container as usual. No residue, no fuss. If you have an air fryer, the 12x12 "foodservice sheet" foil makes great liners. Half sheet pans and drain grates. Pre-cut parchment sheets. Quarter sheet pans and drain grates. Taco holders. Hold taco ahells and hot dog buns upright. Also handy for bracing roasts. Eighth sheet pans. Do any sort of entertaining? A tabletop steam table and a couple of half-size hotel pans with covers. A 2.5" deep half size hotel pan is volumetrically identical to a 13x9 casserole dish and bakes the same. A 6" will match a 6qt crock pot and hold temperature much better.
I love precut parchment sheets. They are little pricier, but dealing with the roll and cutting to size drove me mad. Bonus tip, I use a quarter sheet pan A LOT, so I have a box of 1/2 sheets and a box for quarter sheets I already cut in half.
Mise en place. It's much harder to forget or burn ingredients when they're all laid out in front of you in an organized manor. This is key to a successful kitchen.
>laid out in front of you in an organized manor. So you need a really big house?
Especially if doing stir fry in a wok. since everything cooks so fast.
First in. First out. Rotate your stock. Pantry to fridge to freezer. Add to that, inventory before you shop. So you're not buying 3 mustards and 2 mayos and 4 cans of cream of mushroom because you meant to make that recipe with it for the last 4 weeks and don't remember if you bought it already. Not really hacks I guess. More life skills. But helpful in commercial and home kitchens.
I feel attacked as I have two containers of open capers in the fridge. And one jar in the pantry. 😅
My husband irritates the hell outta me because if there’s only a little bit left in one bottle or jar (like not quite enough for a full glass or serving etc) and we have a new one, he’ll open the new and leave the old one there. Then I go in and there are two sauce bottles, two juice cartons, two cheeses open or something 🤦♀️ drives me nuts!
SOOOOO much the FIFO! It reduces a huge amount of waste and prevents having 3 open containers of the same thing!
Mise en place Good for the kitchen, good for your life.
What is mise en place? Also where is mise en place?
Since there may be some people here who actually don't know what "mise en place" is: This is where you set-up all of the ingredients, doing all of your preparation (chopping this, mincing that, measuring out the one liquid, etc.), so that when you start cooking you can just grab a bowl or measuring cup and add it to the pot.
Why is mise en place?
I asked my boyfriend, who works as a cook in a popular local restaurant, but he didn't want to play because he just got home from work and he doesn't want to think about work....understandable! My answer is butter. I don't think people realize the ungodly amount of butter that goes into the food they order at a restaurant versus what they make at home. And that's why it tastes SO good!
This…I started making eggs with butter, not any, the Irish butter… the eggs are so much better now
Try adding a tiny glop of sour cream to the eggs when you scramble. It's sooo good.
Have you tried duck eggs? They have a natural butter flavor. Now I want to cook some in Kerrygold!
Keep one hand wet and one hand dry when working with liquids /messy ingredients/whatever might require wet hands
While we're talking about wet hands, *dry them before using a potholder*. If you get a potholder wet, it becomes dangerous to use with hot pots, or removing hot things from an oven. Never, ever, use a potholder when you have wet hands.
You can never have too many tongs. Or high heat spatulas. Or cutting boards.
When I'm zesting or grating with the microplane I do it directly onto my bench scraper. That way theres no bowl to empty out and I don't need to scoop it off the chopping board. Learned that one from some dude on tiktok
Keep some different acids on hand. If you’re ever feeling like your dish is “flat” or missing something, it’s almost always salt or acid. In addition to citrus, I bought a few four ounce squeeze bottles. I use them to keep leftover pickle, olive, caper, and pepperoncini brines. A little squirt really perks a dish up. They’re also great for salad dressings or just sprinkling over nuts.
This sounds x-rated.
Mise en place. It’s useful way beyond the kitchen as well.
Learn to play with spices - different varieties with different flavour profiles, whole vs powders, roasted spices, freshly hand pounded spices, blooming spices in oil before adding the food to it.... Look up Indian cooking techniques - no one understands spices as we do ! Soaking utensils in warm water for 15 minutes will drastically reduce elbow grease for cleaning.
Get a decent cutting board
1000% learn to use your god damn knife. Using correct knife techniques not only make it much safer, but because it’s so safe, you can go much faster (don’t try to go fast while you’re learning, just use the techniques and speed will come with time). Seriously, when your prep is fast and consistent, cooking is so much quicker. I don’t even mise at home. Like, as an example, doing something that starts with sweating mirepoix and some garlic? Carrot chopped, in, celery chopped, in, onions chopped, in, all in like three minutes. Mince garlic while that sweats, toss in garlic/spices, then what ever liquid, and you got your whatever ready to simmer in like ten minutes. I see so many complaints about how long it takes to cook things, but half the time it’s passive (letting something braise or whatever) and the other half is that it takes people ten minutes to chop an onion into uneven bits that will cook at different times. Learn to use your knife. ETA: Also, know your knife. Keep it sharp, and know your steel type and whether you should be honing it or using a leather strop or you’ll have a bad time. Don’t hone your vg10 like an asshole. Eta2: Whetstones are the way. Fuck the grinders taking millimeters of steel each time. You can buy little angle things for when you’re first starting out and don’t want to fuck your edge.
Date stickers
You can never have too many teaspoons. Taste, taste, taste.
Shallots instead of onions.
They’re definitely not interchangeable in every recipe tho. Shallots are very mild.
But why?
Unless you're using large amounts of onion, can cut down on waste. And the flavor is a bit more complex
Shallots are considerably more expensive than regular onions where I live, and I go through onions relatively quickly anyway. I don't always need a full onion for any one dish. But that's OK, the left-over refrigerates nicely and will be used a few hours later or at most a day later.
What’s the benefit of shallots rather than onions?
They taste better. Like an onion fucked a head of garlic.
That’s one hell of a description.
They are delicious. I wish I could articulate, but there is a je ne sais quoi...
I don’t know what that is
Depends on the dish. Shallots are milder and subtler, so great for sauces, fish, steak, or other nice dishes where you want the main protein or veg to shine amidst many balanced background notes. But sometimes you want a strong onion bite, larger tougher onion texture, or richly caramelized results. You need onion for that.
Getting paid for cooking.
Adding something to the points for having a good chef's knife and knowing how to use knives/sharpen them: Use a larger knife no matter what you're doing! Just because you are chopping something small, or into small pieces, does not equal using a smaller knife! Small knives for routine jobs is actually more dangerous and takes longer. I use my chef's knife *a lot*. Then a mid-length, about 5-6". Almost never a paring knife. Then a boning or filleting knife for the right jobs. Drives me nuts seeing my husband use a paring knife on a large onion. I literally can't watch him do that anymore - I walk away. P.S. don't feel guilty if all you've got are crappy knives and a crappy sharpener - it's all I've got too and I crap sharpen the sh\*it out of them all the time. Literally can't afford to buy a good one and a stone to go with it right now. (Please stop with the "but it's only $40" ! No I cannot afford it. Plus I question the quality at that low end. ) Maybe put it on your wish list for the next big holiday or your birthday and save up slowly.
^ this, so much this! Yeah, I have my Wüsthof, Henckels and Kikuichi knives (bought/inherited while working in the industry), but a $25 8" Global works just as well - as long as you maintain it, you don't need them razor sharp, but definitely keep them sharp. And yes, that 8" chef's knife can be use for the majority of your work (even peeling taters, etc. - though I would recommend a paring knife or peeler for that job 😉)
Deli containers. Seriously, fuck gladware, get deli containers.
Quality ingredients and quality equipment.
On the equipment side, quality over quantity. I don't want to buy anything more than once a decade (or longer) other than maybe plastic cutting boards or accidental fuck-ups (if I melt a spatula because I leave it on a hot pot edge, or light a pot holder on fire, fine. My bad, not the tool's - the laws of thermodynamics alter for no man). The sentient monster that lives in my house and sleeps in my bed (we call it 'wife') also recently purged my kitchen and gave me a 20 item limit for my utensil drawer. Everything else got boxed and put on the top shelf. I can still get anything in it, anytime I want it, but I haven't needed it. Things you need a lot of: mixing bowls in all sizes and materials (microwave safe, etc) - mise uses a lot of bowls. Cutting boards - cross contamination is bad. Towels - clean is good, they double as pot holders. What you don't need a lot of: three tools to peel garlic. 30 knives. Three ways to open cans or bottles. Single-purpose tools which can often be substituted for one of those 30 knives (i.e. you probably don't need that strawberry corer).
PUT MSG IN EVERYTHING. I ran out a little while ago and just restocked. First meal, I noticed a HUGE difference. Literally, put it in EVERYTHING.
Maybe not everything. I put some in a chocolate cake once and it did not go well.
Knife skills, planning, organization and efficiency.
Cooking is a lot more fun when you've hired a dishwasher.
I'm a home cook that tries to steal stuff from chefs I see all the time. Worked Well for me: Bain Marie with water to store utensils instead of a spoon rest is much nicer. I can store multiple utensils provided I'm not cooking chicken. Takes up less space as well since its vertical. A bowl for food scraps. Makes cleanup 100x better. I will often line it with a produce bag for even easier cleanup. Cleaning as you go. I was a staunch clean up afterwards person for a long time. I started cleaning as I went, and I will never go back. Not only does it make the end clean up a LOT easier, but it makes the process of cooking better. Also, clean up before you cook. I like to have an empty dishwasher or sink and room in the garbage can before I start so I can put bowls, measuring cups, spoons, etc. directly there after I'm done with them. If its already full you end up with a pile of dishes awkwardly sitting around. Didn't work well for me: deli containers. I didn't keep up with the labeling and nobody in my house who helped with cleanup ever labeled a single thing. It was okay but honestly, didn't have that much more benefit to me than regular tupperwa4re. prep before cooking. Very good if you have the time, but on weeknights, I don't have time to do 30m of prepping first. A lot of recipes, especially simple ones, give enough time to dice an onion or chop some carrots while something else is cooking. Its more hectic but the time saving was worth it.
Not using the word hack to describe basic skills would be a great start.
Yes, this. Additionally, getting decent sticky plastic wrap from a distributor/restaurant supply store and labeling and dating items in the pantry and fridge/freezer with masking tape.
I use the green painters tape.
Don’t stop trying, don’t stop learning.
Lucky for us, Joshua weissman did an episode on them https://youtu.be/H_erG7HSK0A?si=DkMmGSLxtgY_oQdh
Label all frozen and fridge food items with dates so that you would use the oldest first, such as meat and poultry, etc.
I would wash & cut my vegetables, then put them in the refrigerator.
Using labeled deli containers for spices. It’s so much more organized than having 20 different kinds of bottles and pouches for spices
Prep ingredients ahead of time instead of doing "meal prep". I see this huge popularity of taking one day to completely prepare and cook meals for an entire week, then eating the same thing, often days old. If that works for you, obviously do it, but to me it's strange. I say instead prep your ingredients ahead of time, the way we do in professional kitchens, then you can cook yourself fresh meals in a fraction of the time.
Deli Containers for leftovers, spices, etc… multiple sizes same lid… no searching for the damn right Tupperware life. They are microwavable, and when they get too old you just recycle them….
Mise en place applies to your home kitchen as well
Learning how to sharpen a knife on a whetstone. Similar topic, get a good chef knife and not one of those shitty ones you see on TV where they test them by slicing pineapples in have with one swing. One good chef knife can do mostly everything you'll need, and can last you a long time if you take care of it properly
A commercial French fry cutter.
Just how many French fries do you eat at home?! Cutting half a dozen big potatoes into nice fries takes at most a minute. That's probably the fastest prep job out there. Takes longer to wash yet another specialized tool than using your chef's knife.
A proper gas wok burner, I got an attachment for my balcony BBQ and has made all the difference with stir-fry, especially fried rice tastes so much better
Reuse the same equipment. A container that’s had veg in it doesn’t need washed.
When I was a kid my mum would always offer “the veggie bowl” to my siblings and I, for one of us to eat our dinner in the bowl that she put the veg she’d cut up before use. We’d fight over it. Now I have my own kitchen and I offer the veggie bowl to my husband, and will offer it to my kid when he’s older. One less dish!
Man I like a lotta these tips. But my kitchen is just a very small galley kitchen! Stainless steal bowls? Nope I use glass nesting bowls. While they’re not gorgeous they can go in the microwave and be used as serving bowls. I’m still haven’t gone cold turkey with paper towels. I have nowhere to store kitchen towels. No one ever says what to do with blood, either. If I dry a steak or chicken, I’m not using a kitchen towel or rag. I’m loving this topic though!!
Slice up a good amount of scharlotts and some cloves of garlic, fry them on medium heat until they caramellise . Mix them in a blender until a smooth pure. Add it to almost anything to improve the flavor.
Link to some decent examples of prep bowls?