Ready to transform your cooking? Consider your most common cooking and kitchen problems solved with our clever culinary fixes!
From how to stop runny onion-chopping eyes to making sauces and gravy diet-friendly, these kitchen tricks will make all your favourite recipes an absolute cinch.
We’ve even got an easy tip that will ensure beautiful and perfectly round pancakes each and every time…
ALSO SEE: Useful Baking Hacks You Need To Know
8 clever culinary fixes
1. Make skinnier sauces
If a soup, sauce or gravy is too fatty or greasy, turn off the heat and let it cool. Place a few ice cubes on the surface. The oil close to the ice will solidify, making it easier to scoop out.
2. Stop runny onion eyes
Stick your head in the freezer for a few seconds after cutting onions. The cold air will stop tears and reduce redness by constricting blood vessels.
3. Salvage salty soup
Ever made a delicious, hearty soup only to realise that it’s more than just a tad too salty? Don’t fret – and definitely don’t throw the soup out. It’s possible to salvage a salty soup. Just add a peeled and quartered potato (which you remove before serving). It will act as a sponge, absorbing the salt. Easy!
ALSO SEE: French Onion Soup Recipe
4. Neutralise cooking oil
If you’ve run out of vegetable oil and need to recycle some you’ve used already, pour it into a pan and gently heat with sliced root ginger for about 15 minutes. When you scoop out the slices, they will have absorbed any flavours and smells.
5. Get rosier red cabbage
A squeeze of lemon juice helps red vegetables keep their colour during cooking. This trick also works with white vegetables.
6. Stop pasta from sticking
You may think the answer is to toss it with oil but that way, the sauce won’t stick to the pasta. Instead, stir in a little sauce immediately after draining. Or, if you’re serving it later, rinse under cold water then reheat the pasta directly in the pan of sauce.
ALSO SEE: 15-minute Creamy Avocado Pasta Recipe
7. Banish oniony and garlicky fingers
If you don’t like your hands smelling of onions or garlic after chopping them, rub your fingers on a stainless steel spoon to absorb the odour. The sulphur from the onions binds with the metals in the steel. Remember to wash the spoon afterwards!
8. Create top-notch pancakes
Wash out a squeezy ketchup bottle to fill with pancake mix – squeezing them out, as opposed to ladling, makes perfect spherical pancakes.
ALSO SEE: Buttermilk Blueberry Pancakes Recipe
