My kitchen has always been my favorite room in my house. Whether I’m cooking up a storm, rooting through the fridge, snacking at the counter, or pouring myself a glass of wine after a long day at work, I spend a lot of my waking hours in there. Add in the fact that I’m married to a bottomless pit, and we might as well just move our bed into the kitchen.
My passion for cooking and eating is not all fun and games, however. I make impulsive food purchases (half of which go bad before I use them), I frequently prepare dishes that require me to use far too many intricate machines (which then need to be painstakingly cleaned), and I’m a big-time slob—if you came over to my house on an average night, you’d find the kitchen counter littered with the remnants of onions, garlic, parsley, and shredded cheese, and the stove splattered with red sauce and olive oil. As a result, I’ve made it my mission to research all kinds of kitchen shortcuts that will enable me to streamline my operations, reduce my mess, and prolong my perishables’ staying power. Some of the best tips I’ve discovered are the most unusual ones—who knew you could use dental floss as a knife? The following tricks may be offbeat, but trust me—the first time you realize you never have to shed a single tear over an onion again, you’ll be sending me flowers to thank me.
Freshen Up
When you buy celery, wrap it tightly in tin foil before you put it in the refrigerator; it will stay fresh for weeks. To preserve herbs and raw asparagus, store them upright in the fridge in a container filled with two inches of water.
Not only are refrigerated apples crisp and delicious, but they remain fresh up to ten times longer than their room-temperature counterparts. Store them in a plastic bag in your crisper drawer to prevent them from speeding up the ripening of other produce.
Unless you have a duck pond behind your house, you’ve probably had to throw out a fair amount of stale bread in your lifetime. Not anymore, thanks to these two effective ways to freshen it (though these tactics work only for slightly stale loaves, not irredeemably petrified ones):
- Put individual slices of bread on a splatter screen and hold it over a sauté pan filled with simmering water for about two minutes; the steam from the water will soften the bread.
- Put a stale loaf of bread inside a brown paper bag, then seal the bag and sprinkle it with water. Put the bag on a baking sheet in a 350° oven for about five minutes; the bread will come out warm and soft.
