What Are Your Favorite Cooking Tips And Tricks?

Seeing as many of us are just as into cooking as we are into wine I’m sure there are a few tricks and tips you have up your sleeve that you go to when in the kitchen. Sure you can find gimmicky tricks all over google but I want to know what really works for you.
I’ve got a few I can think of off the top of my head.
1.) When making pizza in the oven, instead of setting the temperature to 550 on bake, leave the broiler on for 45min-1hr and you’ll have an oven temp closer to 750.
2.) The best way to get a crisp and well browned grilled cheese, tuna melt, or any sandwich that hits the pan is to use a light layer of mayo instead of butter. Works like a charm but watch your sandwich or it will burn. It browns and crisps much quicker than butter.
3.) Best way to peel an entire head of garlic super fast is to stick the head of garlic in between two stainless steel bowls and shake away. The entire head and all the skins will be entirely peeled within 10 seconds. Shake for too long though and you’ll have bruised all the cloves.
4.) When freezing liquids in ziplock bags I place them on sheet trays so that they freeze completely flat and make storing super easy. I even stack bags on top of each other on the sheet tray so that they mold perfectly to each other and store without slipping all over the place.
5.) If like me you don’t have an extra fridge for dry aging or making charcuterie but are still dying to do it at home these Umai Dry Bags are amazing.

What are your favorites tips and tricks?

Bring water to right at 100 Deg C to cook pasta.

Great tip. Until now I’ve been sous videing the pasta at 68C for 24 hours to get that perfect al dente [snort.gif]

If you have an extra two minutes, toasted the inside of the bread before building the sandwich lends a nice extra crunch

Definitely giving that one a go! Never even crossed my mind to do that.

Don’t be afraid of salt and heat

When making a pizza, bake the crust blind. Then, pour on hot, pre-cooked toppings, and return to the oven or perhaps grill, for a few minutes to allow integration.
All the toppings will be perfectly done, and the crust will be crispy also.

I’ve done this for years, thought I was the only one. Actually my MIL saw me do it and now she does also.

Roasted potatoes

Oven to 425ish, convection on.
Cut potatoes into desired size
Put some fat (butter is nice for browning) in a baking pan an put in the oven
Cook medium low in sugared water for a few minutes (just enough to break down the outside)
Drain, toss w fat, salt, pepper, and any herbs. Be rough, you want to beat them up a bit to create a slurry of fat and potato starch as a coating.
Dump the coated potatoes and slurry into the hot baking pan.
Cook high for 10-15, then you can turn them down.

Along the lines of roughing up the taters, I have been using a MicroPlane ultra fine grater/zester on the cut surface of halved Yukon Golds. Just a quick one or two strokes is all it takes.

That’d do it…the idea is to get some starch out to form a crust

I follow a similar technique for the par-boiled spuds but without sugar in the water.
As with pasta, I make sure my water temp is 100 Deg C. (heh heh)

As for par-boiling vegetables such as broccoli or cauliflower, I follow the Thomas Keller rule that your boiling water should be as salty as the Atlantic Ocean.

  1. simple weekday sauce: can of San marzanos, one onion peeled and sliced in half, half a stick of butter, salt. Cook over medium low to medium for 30 to 45 minutes. Discard onion. Add fresh basil. Serve over pasta cooked at 100C.
  2. cook some jasmine rice in 2 parts water, 1 part coconut milk, add sugar to taste. Makes for an incredible side to most any stir fry.
  3. microplaning garlic cloves (separated by bowls!) is a super quick and easy way to max garlic flavor with minimal effort.
  4. if you like spicy food, make dorowat. Chicken, caramelized onions, chicken stock, garlic, ginger and berebere seasoning. Not super quick but super easy and unlikely like anything you’ve ever had.
  5. add fish sauce to stir fries. If you’ve ever wondered why your home stir fries don’t taste as good as a restaurant’s add fish or oyster sauce a little at a time.
  6. if you use hoisin sauce at home, heat it with some oil in a pan first. Changes the flavor profile a bit and the texture greatly.

When making pigs in the blanket, get good ( kosher?) hot dogs, cut them into thirds, and boil them for a few minutes (plumps them up a bit and gets rid of some grease). Then run them under cold water. Roll them in the crescent dough after they cool down.

And as the NYS Lottery Winner Curtis Sharp said, “Don’t Be Stingy With the Mustard!!!”

Potatoes (and sweet corn) start out young and sweet. Over time, that sugar turns starchy. By the time we get potatoes in the store, they’ve lost their sweetness. The sugar water just gets them “young” again.

Also throwing in some baking soda to the boiling water helps increase the PH thereby making them quicker to brown.

This is all pretty interesting and useful. Could you explain what “separated by bowls” means?

I think he’s referring to the method I mentioned earlier by putting a whole head of garlic between two bowls and shaking like crazy.

The baking soda trick is great in general from chicken skin to potatoes and even to baked goods. These bagels that I made this past weekend for our New Year’s party were boiled in a malt syrup and baking soda solution. They browned in 15 minutes flat.

When making basic salad dressing, always create your emulsion first. Mustard, then oil, and then vinegar last. I don’t understand why every recipe out there (not that most people here use recipes for dressing) calls for drizzling the oil in at the end - it’s so much more difficult to get an emulsion that way.