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21 Simple Food Hacks That Might Help In The Kitchen

Food: it's what's for dinner. And breakfast. And lunch. Oh, and throw some snacks in your backpack, too! Gotta make sure you don't get hungry throughout the day. Here's the thing about food, though: it's tough to manage properly, and knowing your way around a kitchen is a lifelong process.

Now, we here at Cracked are not going to pretend that we're Michelin-starred chefs. We're not here to win The Great British Bakeoff and we're not going to Beat Bobby Flay (although we secretly think we could). But! We DO care very much about food—shut up, these Doritos stains are because it's cheat day—and we also care about you, our readers. So today we're going to talk about some easy hacks that maybe make your at-home food experience a little better, maybe punch up a staple dish you're already good at, and honestly? Try to impress your mother. It's doable. Here's how:

21

Chewy Cookies CRACKED.C COM If you want to cookies more chewy, the answer is ... surprisingly complicated. A lot of chemistry goes into baked goods. Getting the cookie just right will involve a lot of experimenting, such as substituting brown sugar for white and limiting the butter. But here's an easy

Source: Martha Stewart

20

Cut Cakes Better ULO When you cut a wedge out of a cake, the remaining cake goes stale quickly. Those spongy insides are great at sucking up moisture and every kind of odor, leaving the remaining cake rock-hard and tasting of unwashed freezer. To keep a cake good until

Source: NPR

19

Peeling Eggs CRACKED c COM Peeling a hardboiled egg by hand can make you feel like a scullery maid in 19th-century England. Here's how you can do it more Easily. Drop the egg into a container of cold water, then shake it vigorously for a few seconds. The shell falls right

Source: Pillsbury

18

Better Burgers CRACKEDCO When making burger patties, use your thumb to dent the center. This will keep the patties flat and make them cook evenly. Keep the meat fully cold right until you fry it. If it gets too warm, the fat leaks out, sapping taste from the burger. Add

Source: Washington Post

17

Cooking Fish GRACKEDG According to Parks And Rec, if you under-cook fish, the penalty is jail. You will not even get a trial; you just go immediately to jail. Though it is difficult to confirm whether that is true, fish integrity remains an important issue for us all. To make

Source: NY Times

16

Picking Watermelons CRACKED C To pick the perfect watermelon, look at the spot on the end. It's called the field spot, and it's less green than the rest of the melon. If it's yellow-green, that's good. If it's creamy yellow and big, that's even better. Also consider the shape. Elongated watermelons

Source: CBS News

15

Sprinkling Seasoning When you season dishes, keep your hand a foot above the food. The seasoning will spread as it falls, like water going through a mister. This allows for more even coverage and reduces the need to stir the dish. Plus, it makes you look like a professional

Source: Cooks Illustrated

14

Egg Freshness FRESH A WEEK OLD STALE VERY OLD When it comes to eating eggs, don't rely on the best before date stamped on the carton. That date is some combination of when the store is legally banned from continuing to sell the eggs and when it just wants

Source: USDA

13

Swirling Wine Swirling wine around in the glass may seem just a way of looking fancy, which is why the process ideally involves wearing a top hat. But aficionados know that swirling makes the wine taste better by aerating it. In the long term, this can do terrible things

Source: Wall Street Journal

12

Pasta Water CRACKED.COMT The cloudy water after you boil pasta may look like slurry that you'll want to pour right down the sink, but it has a use. Save a bit and add it to the sauce. Water absorbs more flavor when it's starchy, and it sticks to the pasta

Source: Smithsonian

11

Perfect Waffles CRACKED COM Thanks to the waffle iron, making waffles isn't that hard (compared to, say, making waffles without an iron). But you still stand a good chance of messing the thing up by having the whole waffle fall apart. To make waffles that don't stick to the iron

Source: Washington Post

10

Deep Frying CRACKED COM While deep-frying, don't just drop your food into the oil. This sends it straight to the bottom, where the batter might cause it to stick. Instead. hold each piece beneath the surface for a few seconds, just long enough for a crust to form. This keeps

Source: Food Network

9

Picking Pineapples CRACKED You can determine whether a pineapple is ripe by smelling it. It's ripe and ready to be consumed if the bottom has a sweet smell. If it doesn't smell at all, it's not ripe. If it smells sour, it's too ripe, and you should throw it out.

Source: Chicago Tribune

8

Soda Cake If you make cake using a mix, they'll ask you to throw in a bunch of raw ingredients on top of whatever's in the packet. Usually you've got to add butter, egg, and oil. Don't add any of that. Instead use soda. No, not baking soda-Coke, or

Source: Good Housekeeping

7

French Frying The French fry is a marvel of engineering compared to, say, a baked potato. You can't just fry it; you need the inside totally cooked without the outside getting too brown. Your attempts will generally leave the fry crunchy but still raw, or soft all the way

Source: NPR

6

Starting The Grill CRACKEDO Having issues starting a grill? Maybe wait a bit before dumping on pure ether engine starter. Instead, soak a few paper towels in cooking oil, cover them with charcoal, and light those, then let them burn. Not only will your grill start fast, but your meat

Source: ABC News

5

Peel Potatoes CRACKEDCOMT Potatoes have peels, and kitchen drawers have potato peelers, SO you can slowly strip a potato bare, stroke by stroke. Now, peeling a raw potato might be a great way to pass the time if you're a cabin boy aboard a pirate ship, but there's no need

Source: Better Homes and Gardens

4

Shred Easily GRACKEDcO Shredding chicken isn't something you' ever give much thought to, until the day you have to do it. Then you'll realize that reducing whole breasts into individual fibers of muscle is really hard to do with a knife or fork, and you'll feel guilty for taking every

Source: Food Network

3

cut Meat Right CRACKED Meat consists of long, thin muscle fibers, and the meat's grain refers to the pattern of these fibers. When you're cutting steak on your plate, you probably cut along the grain, which means you cut parallel to the fibers, because it's easy to do it that

Source: Men's Health

2

Resurrect Veggies CRACKEDCO If your broccoli florets go limp, put them in ice water to chill for an hour. They'll crisp up again. This works for other vegetables too, like carrots and celery. This may surprise you if you think of them as food items, which can generally be depended

Source: Washington Post

1

Easy Caramel CRACKEDCOMT Caramel comesfrom sugar, and making a caramel sauce from scratch is hard. You need to put butter, sugar, cream, and other ingredients together over a hot stove, and you have to whisk it all manually while timing things carefully SO it doesn't burn. Or you can try

Source: Orlando Sentinel

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