Cooking

You don't need to slave over a stove for 3 hours to get caramelized onion. Here's what you do. After slicing the onion, get the pan up to a medium heat with a splash of oil. Toss in the onions and add a bit of salt to make them sweat. Once they start to dry out, go golden at the edges, and even stick to the pan a bit, add a splash of water. You do have to stir continuously for this method as well, but it takes much less time. Do this process a few times where you add water, cook it until its dry, another splash of water, cook it until it dries out again, etc. Sometimes I'll even alternate in a splash of white wine for fun. You should have beautiful caramelized onions in 30 min with this method.

Grilled cheese hack: assemble the sandwich open-faced on a baking sheet and place under the broiler for a few minutes until the cheese is melted and bubbling and slightly browned, then close it up and cook it like normal in a covered skillet on medium heat with butter. The cheese will be completely melted and (more importantly) it will stay melted while you're actually eating the sandwich, and the browning on the cheese adds a big flavor component.

I used to make them the normal way just in a skillet, and even if the cheese was just barely melted it would cool off and re-solidify before I started eating it. And often I would burn the crust just trying to get the cheese melted.

Reverse taring - instead of placing the bowl on the scale and taring before weighing, place your ingredients on the scale and tare, and you can then scoop out and see the negative weight of how much you have used. This is especially helpful if you are trying to weigh an ingredient into a hot pan you can’t just set on the scale

When slow cooking a roast lay it on a bed of potatoes or whatever other sides you want, fill the water to the top of the veggies (or taters) then soak the roast in your sauce of choice. Gravity and heat will help the sauce work into the veggies giving them a nice flavor. The roast pretty much always comes out perfectly moist and you get amazing veggies out of the deal.

Store ripe avocados submerged in water and they last weeks.

@PoodleDoodle

• when dicing onions cut radially first, then slice across, it saves you that weird half slice that's traditionally used for dicing onions.

• I use cast iron for nearly everything, it survives a hundred years because it's bulletproof not because it's gingerly handled every time it's removed from it's velvet case. People dragged them around on Chuck wagons, you will not kill it with soap. Worst case it gets a little sticky and now you need to cook some bacon in it.

• A splash of acid in your soup or stew at the end really wakes it up.

• Never cook rice without at least a couple bay leaves. Ideally you'll cook it in chicken stock as well, add flavour where you can.

• The best chicken stock in a jar is Better Than Bullion. Hands down. No contest.

• With a splash of oil you can cook eggs even in a sticky cast iron pan.

• Always use hand protection of some kind with a mandolin. I've never seen a non-pro chef go without and not fuck up their hand. Even pros lose the tips of their fingers sometimes too.

• If you want to recreate movie theater popcorn at home you need the following things:
  A whirlypop or other stovetop cooker
  Coconut oil, refined
  Popcorn kernels, quality varies, find a good brand
  Fine salt
  "Popcorn oil" - this is butter flavored oil sold next to the kernels

Here's what you do, set up a bowl to dump your popcorn in, throw some salt in the whirlypop with a spoon of coconut oil, and just a tiny glug of the popcorn oil, not much just a tad. Add your kernels, crank the heat to high and start cranking. Do. Not. Stop. The popcorn will begin to pop after an interminable wait. Keep cranking until it either gets hard to crank or the popping slows down significantly. Then quickly dump your popcorn into the waiting bowl. Do not add salt, you already did this, the fine salt will be well distributed this way. Add a bit of popcorn oil. Shake the bowl a bit to distribute, add more if desired etc. Then enjoy your movie theater popcorn.

It took me years to work out how to do it without the Naks oil, which I bought from a local popcorn shop for awhile.

Ah, the alchemy of the kitchen! A dash of efficiency, a sprinkle of passion, and a dollop of savviness. First off, mise en place - French for 'put in place.' Prepare your ingredients ahead of time, it can help remove a loot of stress.

Secondly, invest in a sharp knife - it's the Excalibur of the culinary world, turning the toughest veggies into paper.

Lastly, experiment! Like any good inventor, a chef isn't afraid of a few mishaps; it happens to the best of us! You'll surprise yourself with some of things you may come up with 😉

To get a good sear on a steak in a pan, the pan doesn't have to be super hot, you just have to make sure the contact surfaces are as dry as possible.

If your stew tastes like it's missing something, it's bay leaf.

Don't buy hyperspecialized tools for cooking if you can use more generalized tool for the task with the same amount of effort. You can do a lot with a good chef's knife.

Cut through greasiness with a bit of acid.

Adding a little bit of sugar, but not so much you can taste the sweetness, to otherwise salty dishes will mellow out and enhance the flavor of the dish.

Mine is, don’t eat anything solid, hold your poop for 3-days. When the redditors arrive why won’t understand, but whatever food you eat will be the best you ever tasted, they also will remain confused about why there is so much karma on your foodporn posts!

deglazing. it's when you use an acid to pull all the glaze off the bottom of a pan. it flavors the dish and makes cleaning your pan easier.

rice vinegar and red or white wines are favorites

If you're making rice without using a rice cooker, the amount of water you need is not quite a direct ratio like the package suggests. You need a 1:1 ratio of rice to water plus an additional quarter to half cup of water depending how firm you like your rice.

Not really a hack but just something important, always remember to account for how much salt you need if you don't have the recipes specific type of salt because different salt types have different shapes and sizes

Instead of using a pastry cutter to incorporate butter, freeze the butter then grate it with a box grater then mix it in. It stays much colder. Perfect for pastry or biscuits.