Many people love to cook in the company of their loved ones because it makes for a fulfilling experience. Sadly, it also comes with its fair share of challenges.
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Fortunately, you’ll discover useful hacks for families which highlight that meal prep can be easy and enjoyable for everyone. From encouraging children to assist in preparing the food in the kitchen to easy recipes that you can make without strain, you’ll love us for this!
Preparing Ingredients for Freezing
It’s useful to always have several ziplock bags in the freezer that contain different ingredients for a particular dish. For instance, diced bell peppers, diced carrots, diced onions, and diced ham.
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These preparations allow you to have easy and quick access to the basic things you may require in the preparation of food. Hence, at any time you can make your meals.
Perfect Mashed Potatoes
If you want to prepare mashed potatoes, warm the milk or cream to be a little hot before adding it to the mixture.
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This is because it will shock the mash and make it have a gluey texture. This trick helps to keep your mashed potatoes smooth and thick and make the texture richer.
Reviving Leftover Pizza
This might be weird, but, getting a leftover pizza slice and submerging it in water then toasting it in the microwave tastes better.
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Also, you can run a slice of bread under warm water and then toast it to make it fresh again. This trick restores that softness and freshness making it brand new again.
Nonstick Frying Pan Hack
The non-stick method of cooking can be applied on any type of frying pan provided you do this. Spread a little oil on the frying pan, spread a piece of parchment paper on the oil, then add the rest of the fat you’re using.
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Fry as usual and your delicate fish or anything else that you wish to make will easily come off.
Soft Cookies and Brown Sugar Hack
If you want your cookies soft and prevent them from becoming hard, put a slice of bread in a plastic container together with them.
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To prevent the formation of lumps in brown sugar, store a slice of bread in a container containing the sugar. This is a very easy hack that will help you to maintain your baked foods correctly.
Easy Lemon Juicing
The best way to juice your lemons is to heat them in the microwave for a minute before using them. The fruit seems to naturally release its juice, therefore this step will be effective.
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With this trick, you will be able to save time and not waste the valuable juice components for your recipes.
Ready-to-Use Caramelized Onions and Mushrooms
You can caramelize onions and sauté mushrooms and keep them in the fridge if you want to save some time. It’s advisable to freeze them and use a little each time you wish to incorporate them into meals.
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These two can make a big factor when it comes to seasoning or taste and that is convenient if you have them ready ahead of time.
Making Enhanced Bolognese Sauce
Almost everybody who cooks Bolognese sauce uses dry red wine, but you can make it better by adding drops of balsamic vinegar. Then let it simmer for at least, five hours to enable the different ingredients to blend properly.
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It’s divine! With this, you learn how a secret ingredient can enrich the sauce and give it just the right tang.
Salted Butter for Baking
This highlights the importance of using only salted butter while baking irrespective of the recipe. And yes, it gives more layers to the recipe and aids in counterbalancing all the overly sweet elements.
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Chefs have said that they found this trick useful from their childhood days and it works marvelously well.
Multi-Purpose Spray Bottle
Have a food-safe plastic spray bottle containing filtered water in your kitchen because it has many uses. For example, reducing splattering when heating leftovers in a microwave, and melting cheese on burgers, and fries under the grill.
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It also comes in very handy for spraying people who attempt to pick at your food before you are set for it. LOL
Rich Beef Stew
When cooking beef stew, sear meat on high heat. Then go ahead to deglaze with a tablespoon full of Guinness Stout before cooking the vegetables in the same pan.
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The last ingredient is Guinness which not only adds a different flavor to your stew but also enhances the flavor to another level.
