photo by Laura Henderson Design
I’ll admit it. I’m kind of a sucker for tips and tricks. I love getting a picture into what other people do in their house and what works for them. I also just love learning new things. So, I thought I’d do my own little post on some of my tips and tricks in the kitchen.
*When making cookies, use a small ice cream scoop (melon baller size) to scoop your cookie dough on to your pan. It’s much faster and all your cookies will be the same size. This also works if you need to roll balls of dough in sugar or something. Scoop the dough into your hand, roll into a ball and roll in sugar.
*Use that same above technique for meatballs.
*If you have a large family like me, consider roasting a turkey on occasion instead of a chicken. For my family a 5 pound chicken would be roasted for one meal and then *maybe* have enough left over to make soup or something. But with a turkey, we can have several meals. Roast your turkey on the first day dinner. Take all your leftover turkey and boil all the remaining meat and bones until the meat is falling off the bones. You can even season the water with salt, pepper, sage, chicken broth, parsley, etc to make broth. When the meat is done, set a strainer onto a large bowl and pour contents into the strainer. Divide the broth into single use containers and freeze. Pour the meat onto a cookie sheet and allow to cool. Once cool, take out all the bones and shred meat with your fingers. Divide meat into meal sized portions and freeze. It is SO handy to have meat pre-cooked shredded turkey meat in the freezer to add into meals at dinner time. Huge time saver! For our family of 7, I got about 5+ meals worth of meat out of one turkey without hardly any more effort than a chicken would have taken.
*Make a large pot of beans all at once in your crock pot. When they are done cooking, divide the cooked beans into meal sized portions and freeze for later use.
*Fresh bouquets of parsley (or cilantro, etc) stay fresh MUCH longer if you put the stems in water and put the whole thing in the fridge.
*Canning jars are an inexpensive and (I think) attractive way to store food. I use pint jars for storing bulk spices and half gallon ones for storing things like dried beans, pasta, etc. You can also use them to store leftovers in the fridge.
*In my cooking cupboard, I have found that having all “like” items together and labeled is a huge time saver. I used Ziploc storage containers (flat, rectangle shape) and labeled them “baking items”, “broth”, etc. When I am baking something, just pull out that one box of baking items and all my baking soda, baking powder, vanilla, cocoa, etc is right there at my fingertips. Then I can just slide the whole box back into the cupboard when I’m finished. No climbing on the counter and digging around in the cupboard for an ingredient.
*Reuse an empty olive oil bottle for dish soap.
*Use a shot glass for easy measuring of spices or other ingredients for cooking and baking.
What are some helpful tips you have for kitchen storage or cooking and baking?
Use those metal camping dishes for the kids (graniteware, enamelware). They stack easily, do not break, and look so much nicer than the plastic ones with little mermaid and bob the builder. I also like to put the kid dishes in a lower cupboard so that one of the little ones can set the table themselves and put dishes away themselves.