food

Couple cheapass tricks from me:

Water baths are not just the smoothest way to warm something up, but often the fastest way to cool something down. If you want to cool something you just cooked in the pan, put the pan in a bigger pan with some water in it. The heat will shift to the water and then you can use that water for cleaning instead of getting hot water from the tap.

Having a few pitas or slices of bread around is useful for when there's leftover fat in your pan. Soak it up in some toast for an appetizer. If the bread goes stale, that's nothing less than a source of breadcrumbs, or croutons or bread pudding or numerous other stale bread-based concoctions.

Many seeds (like from gutted pumpkins) can be roasted and eaten, if you find them too coarse as-is then you can blend them up with salt and garlic (or any spice you prefer) and make a variant of gomashio.

Have a designated bag that you crush brittle things in so they don't end up as crumbs all over your kitchen.

Something about to go bad, and you don't have a use to put it to yet? Just submerge it in brine about half the salinity of seawater, it will last longer and you will have something pickled at the end.

Leftover liquid from sauteing things, or from cooking pasta and rice and beans, deglazes, food scraps, rinses from jars to get the last little bit out, and brine from pickling* can all go into a broth for easy use.

*The exception is if you have done the previous trick with meat, pitch that brine after use.

Use one of those big gallon-size coffee containers with plastic snap-on lids for composting, to keep all the potentially smelly things out of your trash. To stop food buildup from sticking to it, tear up a paper bag and line the insides with it. The paper will give you a head start on balancing out the C:N ratio of your compost pile.

Build your own insulated cooker, it's a fun craft. Especially during the summer, you can cook stuff like soups in it without heating up your kitchen quite so much.

Leftover glass jar? That's a cup. Leftover rigid plastic container with a lid? That's a refrigerator dish.

If anyone else does pourover coffee, you can sub some of the hot water (I do like ~50%) with ice by weight in your vessel to make a ice coffee. I'll add more ice when I pour it into a glass to serve.

You don't need a garlic press. They are a pain to clean.

Instead, place the garlic clove on your cutting board, place the flat side of the blade of a knife on top of it and give it a good whack with your hand. Scrape your knife a few times over the crushed garlic to turn it into mush. If you sprinkle some coarse salt over the crushed garlic before scraping, the grains of salt will act as an abrasive and help break down the garlic.

You can check if you baking powder has expired by taking some and putting some water in it. If it doesn't or barely bubbles, it's expired.

Hell yeah good tips. For soy curls I boil them, this removes the oil more effectively than cold soaking (the oil has that bitter flavor). Then drain into a colander, cool with water, and squeeze before transferring to a bowl. Could probably use a mesh bag before that last step.

Bring the frying pan & oil up to temperature before you put the food in them. Also hold your cutting knife by the blade not the handle.

A+ to all this!! I'll add a few of mine.

Get some MSG and citric acid (or tajin). When you're making a dish and there's just something missing, it's usually umami or acid. The title of the book Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat tells you four basic elements that you can fiddle with to find what makes your dish suddenly pop!

Learn how to hone your knives and do it every time you use them. You'll almost never have to sharpen them. Pay a pro to sharpen them if you don't have the means, your knife should glide with a little gentle suggestion.

Sunny side up eggs. As the eggs sizzle on some oil, put a splash of water in the pan and move the water area over the heat and put a lid on it. This steams the egg on top and eliminate runny white.

Pickled onions, takes five minutes to make and keep in a jar in your fridge. Throw them on things, you'll wonder how you got along without them.

Sauces. Make your own for wildly cheaper than the store. Many of them keep well for weeks in a repurposed squeeze bottle.

These are really neat, i haven't heard of any of them before. The formatting came out good too

Taste your herbs and spices when you first get them and periodically, especially if you buy them in bulk. They lose flavor over time. Discard when no longer good. Spices want to live in the dark. Shelf life of a ground spice is short compared to whole. Grind them as you go is better. A dedicated coffee grinder is lazy way. Best place to buy spices is somewhere with high turnover so its not old when you get it.