10 Food Hacks You Need To Know

Image by Alyson McPhee (Unsplashed)

We all love spending time in the kitchen, whether it is to create our food invention, or simply to indulge in food when we are hungry. However, do you know there are many things in your kitchen that have several usages to them instead of their common usage, or the actual way to separate the edible and inedible part of the food? There are many interesting hacks about food that you should know so your life can be made easier the next time you try to show your cooking skills, or simply for you to take note of.

1. Batch make hard-boiled eggs using an oven.

Hard-boiled eggs can be as delicious as they are healthy for us, but unfortunately, try to cook them is not the most convenient thing to do. If you have an oven at home or wherever you’re staying, this hack is great for you. If you do not like waiting for the water to boil and then cook your eggs into hard-boiled eggs, cook them in your oven instead. Simply place your eggs into the oven on the rack, cook them at 175 degrees Celsius for around 30 minutes, and there you have it, perfectly cooked hard-boiled eggs. You do not need to keep an eye on boiling water when using the stove, and you can even make many hard-boiled eggs at the same time!

2. Remove strawberry leaves with straws.

Strawberries are delicious and healthy, with their juicy flesh and sweet/sour taste. However, they aren’t always the most convenient to prepare. Washing them is one thing, but trying to remove the leaves from their top is another. It is not a difficult task, but it is definitely tedious. If you want to prepare strawberries for your guests or yourself the convenient way, simply poke a straw through the bottom of a strawberry and up towards the leaves. The core of the strawberry would be removed along with the leaves. Not only is this way super quick and convenient, but eating strawberries without their tasteless core would certainly make them taste much better.

3. Use an apple slicer to slice potatoes into wedges.

Wedges are super delicious, but they aren’t the easiest to prepare. Of course, the part to peel off their skin is probably the most tedious, but there are still other parts of it that are not the most convenient. Sure, slicing them with your knife can be easy, but they often do not turn out to be a perfect size, in fact, they do turn out to be overly large or small, which ruins the whole food. A great way to ensure wedges turns out to be the same size overall is to use an apple slicer. Slice a potato the same way you would slice an apple, and there you go, a perfectly sized potato that will turn into delicious wedges.

4. Slice cakes easily using new dental floss.

During someone’s birthday or any other party, the slicing cake part is not really the most fun part of the party. Using a knife would squish the cake, making it shallower, and it would get the knife all dirty and the cream sticking to it. A great way to slice cakes is to use dental floss. It is cheap, hassle-free, and makes the cake look 10 times better than using a knife. Plus, the layers would all remain as they are without looking like they are compressed into a short layer. They work great not just with layered cakes, but also brownies, sponge cakes, anything that is soft enough to be cut through with dental floss.

5. Remove eggshell from raw eggs using a wet finger.

When we are beating an egg, there will be times where the eggshell would find its way into the bowl. And when you try to get it out, it just seems to be impossible! A great way to get the shell out and not have it stuck in your recipe is to wet your finger with just water, and then dip your finger into the bowl and tap on the eggshell. The shell would stick to your hand and you can easily remove it from the bowl.

6. Create on-the-go coffee with an ice tray.

Coffee is unarguably one of the most drank morning beverages for many people. However, not many people have the time to brew it in the morning, and drinking pre-packaged just doesn’t taste as good as the original ones. A way to have quick on-the-go coffee is to simply brew coffee on a free day, and pour the drink into ice cube molds and freeze them. Come morning, all you need to do is to drop some of the “coffee ice” into your water bottle and add some water, milk, and sugar to it. It wouldn’t be as good as a hot cup of warming coffee, but they sure do safely you a whole lot of time in the morning and keep you refreshed as they are cold.

7. Remove mango peels using glass.

Mangoes are healthy and super delicious. They are also super versatile as they can be sour to be used in salads, or sweet for tea time snacks. However, the thing about them is to remove them from their skins. This hack only works for mangoes that are yellow on the inside and have softened, as the skin can be twisted easily, unlike the raw ones. Slice your mangoes as a whole half piece, and “dig” the flesh out through the glass where it separates the skin and the flesh. You’ll have yourself a nicely slices mango from its skin and its flesh.

8. Slice oranges the right way.

Oranges can possibly be the fruit with the easiest peeling method, as you totally do not need a knife to open it up at all. However, there is another way to peel oranges aside from tearing it all apart. Though you do need a knife for this, this can save you a whole lot of mess. All you need to do is to slice off the top and bottom part of the orange, which is the stem, and cut a slit in between two slices of oranges that you can see. After cutting a slit, roll the orange out and you have a line of tidy oranges waiting to be served to your guests

9. Shake garlic in a bottle to remove garlic peels.

Garlic adds great flavor to whatever dishes we are having, but the difficult part is not cooking them but preparing them. Although not as struggling as an onion, peeling the skin off garlic aren’t the easiest thing. Not only are they tedious, but they also make your hand smell. A great way to if you want to get the skin off garlic without all the trouble and having garlic-smelling hands is to throw your garlic into a bottle and shake it. Weirdly, the skin would slip right off the garlic, and you end up with perfectly naked garlic and hands that don’t smell like them.

10. Get shredded cheese from cheese cubes using the vegetable grater.

Cheese cubes are undoubtedly tastier and cheaper than pre-packaged grated cheese in the grocery stores, but we all probably do not want to be eating the whole cheese and we only desire to have them grated on our dishes. A way to do so is to use a vegetable grater and use it on your cheese. You can even grate out different sizes of cheese according to what you prefer. They would certainly taste better and fresher than those already shredded cheese in the stores.

Although not all these hacks are necessarily more convenient than the “normal way” but they do have a good side of them, and they allow you to experiment with different ways to make and prepare your food instead of the usual old boring ways to do so. If you are planning to cook or prepare any food, try using the hacks as shown. You might be surprised by the results.