The concept of sharing is so integral within the world of cooking. Many families will pass on recipes for generations and recipe books are readily available in stores as well as being accessible online. On top of this, anyone who has lived in a shared house will have, at some point, shared their recipes or tips with one another. Finally, sitting down to share a meal with your friends or family is a cultural experience celebrated throughout the world.

Although cooking can be a very relaxing experience at times, there are many tasks that can make cooking rather stressful indeed. Although many are dismissed as “old wives tales”, through years of collective experimentation and communication, there are now many hacks that can be used to alleviate the stress caused by the more cumbersome tasks in the kitchen.

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In this article we have provided the top  hacks to help ensure that your cooking experience is as stress-free as possible:

1. Bananas Turning Brown

For those of us that like to stay healthy, as well as saving money, buying food in bulk may seem like the best course of action. When buying fruit, this often proves to be a problem if you are not able to eat it in time. This tip is a surefire way to stop your bananas from going off too soon.

Bananas become overripe very quickly due to the ethylene gas that is released from the tops of the stems. By separating each banana and wrapping the stem in a plastic wrap, this reduced the amount of gas that can escape, thus increasing the time it takes for your bananas to turn brown.

Bonus Hack: By using this knowledge, you can also rapidly ripen any other fruit that you wish by placing them closer to your bananas (without plastic wraps on the stems).

2. Peeling Garlic

Garlic has a very pungent and distinct smell that can cling to your hands, it can also sometimes be a bit fiddly to remove the skin from each clove. Although this isn’t hugely time-consuming, this hack makes it that much easier.

For this to work, firstly take the garlic bulb and break off the cloves. Using a Kitchen knife, simply hit the clove with the side of the knife. Once done, the skin will now easily peel off in one swift motion.

3. Separating Egg Yolks from Whites

When baking, there are many occasions when the recipe requires you to separate the egg yolk from the egg white. If you have tried to do this, you may have found this to be a slightly messy ordeal.

Luckily for you, an empty bottle can be an incredibly effective tool for separating this.  Simply crack the desired amount of eggs into a bowl with your empty bottle in hand. By squeezing the bottle to release the oxygen inside the bottle you can then slowly release this tension to suck the egg yolk up inside.

4. Peeling Potatoes without a Peeler

Peeling potatoes, although very simple, can become a very laborious task when cooking large quantities. This next method completely removes the need for a peeler at all.

To begin with, boil the potatoes until fully cooked. Once, the potatoes are boiled, place them into a bowl of ice cold water for 5 seconds. After 5 seconds, remove the potatoes and firmly grip the potato at both ends. With a very firm grip, begin to twist the ends of the potato until the skin breaks in the middle. Once you have done this, each half of the potato skin will now pull off with practically no effort.

This hack is not only much quicker than using a peeler, but also much easier to clean up.

5. Preventing Pasta from Boiling Over

Although this trick can work for anything that you would want to boil, this hack is so useful as it allows you to not continuously monitor your food. This hack almost seems hard to believe, but once you have tried it once, you will wonder why you haven’t been doing it for years.

While boiling your food, place a wooden spoon across the top of the pot… and that is literally it! Because wood is incredibly bad at conducting heat, as the heat rises, the wood almost repels this heat so that it does not rise further out of the saucepan.

6. Reheating Pizza

After a night out on the town, many people retreat to one of the various fast food establishments on their way back home. The problem with this is that the 20-inch pizza that seemed like a great idea the night before is often barely finished by the morning. If you have been in a situation similar to this, you may have tried to reheat this pizza in the microwave to find that your once delicious meal is now incredibly dry, a shadow of its former self.

For the perfect, day-old pizza experience, make sure to place a glass of water into the microwave along with your pizza. When heated, the water adds moisture to the air which in turn stops your pizza from drying out. Perfect!

7.   Avoiding Cross-Contamination

This hack is essential for the meat-eaters out there. When considering food hygiene it is well-known that you should always wash your hands after touching anything that has come in contact with any raw meat.

It might seem so obvious but you should aim to supply your kitchen with a specific chopping board for meat and another chopping board for everything else. This is so you never run the risk of letting the meat juices from one chopping board come into contact with anything else. To make this even simpler, why not opt for two different colours so that you can easily differentiate.

8. Cleaning a Cast Iron Skillet

A cast iron skillet is a great choice as they usually come pre-seasoned and food will generally not stick to them. If you have ever noticed stubborn stains and crust built up on the pan, you may be inclined to reach for the dishwasher soap and begin scrubbing it with a scourer.

The proper way to ensure that your Cast Iron skillet remains as effective as possible is to opt for a salt scrub, using kosher salt. Rather than using a scourer, fold over a piece of kitchen towel and begin scrubbing the dirt away with the kosher salt solution.

In Conclusion

As you can see, there are a variety of hacks that can be used in the kitchen. There are probably even hundreds more that would be impossible to include in one article. We hope that by reading this, you may be inclined to try one out to see whether this will help you the next time you are cooking, even if you just want to impress your friends and family.