6 useful food tricks you can use in your home kitchen

1: Egg Freshness Test

Sometimes you’ve got some eggs and you just don’t know whether they’re fresh or not. 

It’s kind of impossible to look at an egg and know that it’s fresh even though most grocery stores these days do print the date on them, just like so, but sometimes these dates get rubbed off because of some other reason that we just don’t know.

In that kind of case what do you do to figure out if an egg is fresh or not? Well here’s a simple trick, just drop your egg in some water and the fresh ones will sink to the bottom just like this, and the un-fresh ones will float to the top just like so.

Now the great thing about this trick is you can do it with multiple eggs if you have a big enough tub, and then you can easily detect which eggs are fresh and which eggs are no good.

2: Ginger Peeling

Alright here’s a trick how to peel some ginger. Normally you use a gadget like Peeler or another gadget like knife, but for this we’re going to use a simple and humble spoon like so, or you can use a smaller one like a teaspoon like this one.

All you do is scrape it across the surface at a little bit of an angle and it just removes the skin from the ginger. You can also use a big one, it doesn’t really matter what spoon you use but the great thing about spoons is they can get into the crevices and valleys where other tools can’t really get into and they just remove the skin from the ginger so you’re leftover with much more ginger root at the end of peeling.

3: Instant Mayonnaise

Alright this here is the easiest mayonnaise recipe in the world. Add 2 egg yolks, one broke slightly there, and then you want to add half a teaspoon of mustard, just like so, followed by 2-tablespoons of freshly squeezed lemon juice. Then one tablespoon of water, this is very important – this is the key here to make the blender mayonnaise.

Then you want to add ½ teaspoon of flaked salt, just like so – that was smoked flaked salt. And then you want to follow that with 240-milliliters of canola oil. You can use any other kind of oil and you’ll get different flavors of mayonnaise, but this is a very good oil to use for making it.

Once you’ve done that then you want to take your hand blender and place it in, I always put it at an angle so there’s no air pocket and then you press it against your egg yolks at the bottom and start it. This is very important, don’t pull it up until it starts to become mayo and then slowly pull it up so that it can make the mayonnaise. Once it becomes a thick consistency you want to pump it up and down quickly while it’s still on the blender and this will create a homogenous mayonnaise, just like this.

Once you’ve done that just pull it out and there you go, you’ve got the simplest, easiest delicious mayonnaise you can make. There is no point to really buy mayonnaise when you can make it this easily.

4: Cutting Board Movement

Cutting boards are great for cutting but sometimes they can slip and slide and move.

 

Now this can be very dangerous when you’re using a big sharp knife like this. If it moves at the wrong moment you would cut yourself. 

A very simple solution I found for this is I went to IKEA and bought this special roll they have; it’s sort of sticky material that used to keep carpets down. You just cut it to size and place it underneath your cutting board and it stays put and does not move. If you don’t want to go to IKEA and get this or you don’t want to spend the very small amount of money to get this then I’ve got another solution for you.

You just take some water and a paper towel, just put it in there then remove most of the water and then just unravel that, place it on your surface, place the cutting board on top, press down and then it does not move.

Now I do recommend the other material from IKEA but if you can’t get this the other system is a very cheap and easy solution that you can use to keep your cutting board in place.

5: Soft Butter Trick

Sometimes you want to spread some butter but when you take it out of the fridge the butter is super hard and really hard to spread. This is super annoying, so what do you do?

You usually just pop it in the microwave but the issue with this is it always seems to over melt the butter and make it into a big soupy mess just like this. That can be very annoying, so there must be a better way.

Well there is, take a cheese grater and then you just grate your butter stick. Yes that’s right, grate your butter stick. That’s got two added benefits – one, it delivers energy to the butter by the grating motion which makes it a bit softer and also the higher surface area makes it softer quicker also. 

Lastly it’s in this funny interesting spaghetti like consistency which now is super spreadable so you can just spread it on whatever you want and you have nice soft butter. Success!

6: Easy Poached Egg

Alright so the worst thing that can happen when you’re poaching eggs is this – the egg white runs away from the egg yolk and leaves it completely unprotected in the water and then it just comes out all weird like flat and the egg yolk is completely overcooked.

Here’s a very simple trick to make perfect poached eggs every single time. Take a little bit of cling film, place it into a bowl just like this, then crack your egg and drop it in just like so. 

Then pick up the sides of the cling film and just wrap it around tightly, trying to remove as much air as you can away from the egg. 

Once you’ve done that then you want to take a little piece of string like this, wrap it around and then tie one tight know just like this. Once you’ve done that just remove any excess cling film that’s not necessary.

The great thing about this technique is you can ready make them and have them in the fridge ready to go for whenever you want to make them. I’m just going to use one right now and just drop it in some hot boiling water, and you can do many at the same time because you don’t have to pay much attention and just leave it in for four minutes to cook. Once you’ve done that then you just fish it out just like so.

I recommend you let it cool down a little bit before you unwrap it, and once it’s cooled down untie the knot just like this and then unravel the cling film very gently just like so, and then you’ve got a perfectly poached egg you can use with your eggs Benedict or salad or whatever you want. 

On the inside you have a delicious slightly runny egg yolk just like this – done!