What are the best cooking hacks you've learned over the years?
What are the best cooking hacks you've learned over the years?
What are the best practices you've learned to save time or make a meal better.
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I'm a big fan of frozen herbs, frozen cubes of garlic save a ton of time breaking open cloves, frozen basil still has that fresh taste and smell relative to dried.
If you make pizza in a home oven, baking steel is a game changer. It gets nice and hot and makes your crust crispy. Like a pizza stone but better.
If you have a blender, try making your own almond milk for a fraction of the cost. It's easy.
Elaborate on the almond milk, and does it work with oat and cashew as well?
@HappycamperNZ It should.
Nut milk:
- Soak ~1c raw almonds (or cashews or oats etc.,) in water overnight
- Put them in the blender, fill the rest of the way with water (leaving a little room for froth)
- Blend on highest setting until it's a smooth consistency
Some people like to strain it through a sieve or add a stabilizer, but I think that's too many steps, so just be aware it just might need a shake or a stir before serving. I started making my own when regular protein shakes at the gym caused my consumption of almond milk to go way up.
Cheers!
TY
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Soak raw almonds overnight.
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Blend at 1 to 4 ratio. Ex: 1 cup almonds, 4 cups water. Strain through nutbag or cheesecloth. Save pulp for recipes (Google will help)
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Some people drink the milk as is but to me, but it tastes even more amazing if you cook it on a stove just until it starts to boil and immediately turn off heat. Add a tablespoon sugar.
Cashews: same but don't need to boil. These don't strain as well so some people prefer using high speed blender and not strain but I didn't care for it that way. I haven't made oat milk that I'm happy with so no advice on that
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Oat is so easy. And you can easily get organic, gluten free oats if that is important to you, plus you can make it when you need it - no store trip or disposable containers.
You just need a blender/food processor and a milk bag (you can get away with almost anything but the milk bag removes the most silt, if you only have a strainer w large holes, let the milk sit and pour off the top gently, it will leave the silt)
- Add 2-3 cups of water and a pinch of salt to 1 cup quick oats. Immediately process it.
- Gently strain it thru bag.
- It keeps almost a week in fridge in a mason jar.
NB: some people add oil or vanilla or a couple cashews - I like it plain, if you want more excitement, you can find recipes where they use other stuff, or just have fun experimenting!
Also NB: the recipes I started with said that immediately processing and only gently straining will prevent any sliminess. I haven’t had that problem, so I don’t know if it’s because I do it that way or because I don’t have slimy oats?!?
frozen cubes of garlic save a ton of time breaking open cloves
I take issue with that one specifically. Frozen, jarred, canned, tinned or tubed garlic is so much worse than freshly chopped garlic and it really isn't that much of a hassle to peel and chop it.
I'm lazy as shit and use tons of garlic and you just smash it with the broad side of the knife and give it a little slap slap to chop it up and you're done. I've never had non fresh garlic that's anywhere near as good as fresh garlic, same with ginger. Pickled ginger's good too, but it's not the same thing as regular ginger and isn't interchangeable in most recipes.
I'm not even that much of a snob about fresh ingredients, I almost exclusively use refrigerated lemon and lime juice because I don't go through those often enough to keep them fresh and it's 95% there, but garlic is probably the one thing that I refuse to get preprocessed.
@BettyWhiteInHD I agree with you when it comes to canned or jarred garlic, but I can't tell the difference when I cook with frozen, at least for minced or mashed garlic. I use the kind they sell at Trader Joe's, 'dorot' brand, not sure if others taste different. Usually I'm using it as an aromatic for sautéing. I really only bother with fresh if I need to slice the cloves a specific way.
That's fair enough if you can't taste the difference, but I've tried that exact same brand (they also do other herbs) and I can't stand it.
I don't know, I love garlic, maybe I am a garlic snob lol.