I’ve only ever figured out how to use the *ulu *for mincing fresh herbs. I know it’s an all purpose knife for some people, but I can’t figure out how to slice, dice or chop evenly with it.
Okay, just watched a video on how they work. On the one hand it was a Ginsu knife style infomercial so I’m taking it with a grain of salt (he said you could cut a cow in half), but now I see how you’re supposed to hold it. Makes sense. But I still like my big ass chef’s knife.
Silver Tyger Girl- you need a Mezzaluna or Hachoir board- it has a concave surface to keep all the bits neat.
Almost anything stained or dirty in a kitchen can be cleaned using elbow grease and lemon juice, vinegar or bicarbonate of soda. Cheap, non toxic and easy to get hold of.
Um … kinda a kitchen tip.
Microwave your socks.
I mean socks that are too damp to put on. Experiment a little, because microwaves vary - mine I ‘cook’ for a minute then wait, then cook for another minute, and so on, until they’re dry enough. Warm too, in the winter. Your microwave might need shorter bursts of heat.
Works for any item of clothing that’s small enough to fit in the microwave and doesn’t have any metallic parts in. Ie. underwired bras? Not such a good idea.
This doesn’t come up these days, because I have a dryer, but back when I had no dryer and no garden and very little space to hang clothes to dry, it was a lifesaver.
My toaster oven pan is black and never comes clean with any amount of scrubbing and soaking. I have considered putting it in a plastic bag and spraying it with an oven cleaner. Any thoughts?
Depends what your pan is made of- if it has a fancy finish I wouldn’t mess with the oven cleaner.
You could try:
Making a paste of coarse salt or bicarb and a little water, slather it on, and scrub off with a scourer.
Soaking overnight in a sink with some biological laundry detergent or dishwasher powder.
Some people swear by ammonia or Borax for getting rid of black crusty bits- I’ve never had to use them.
We do. I must be doing something wrong. shrug
I don’t use anything other than a cutting board. I just hold a bunch of celery or slabs of cucumber or zucchini or half a pepper and chop away, rocking up on the tip, sliding the veg forward androcking down to the other tip, until everything is nicely chopped. I’ve never had a problem with runaway veg. I honestly can’t think of anything that ever gave me a problem with it.
When steaming, boiling or stir-frying anything, I always add a couple of splashes of Chardonnay. Adds a great flavor and no one can identify it.
You might have too smooth of a cutting board. Is is plastic, bamboo, or composite (like fancy plywood)? Those are smoother surfaces than a hard-wood board. Although they’re more expensive, an “end grain” cutting board is basically the best all-around type of board.
Just stick them in a container and freeze them? And they’re still usable when you thaw them out? Can you freeze yolks that are left over from recipes that only need whites? I have some recipes like that and I hate throwing the yolks out!
Can you explain this?
WhyNot - I’ve been doing the stock thing with freezer bags full of trimmings and bones for a while but never thought to concentrate the hell out of it and freeze it! :smack: How awesome, to have a supply of chicken stock in my freezer and never need to open a box or can of it for a recipe!
I know, right? It just occurred to me this last time, when I planned to make stock and freeze it, and then realized that I didn’t really have room for 40 cups of stock in my freezer! I just happened to glance at my jar of Better Than Boullion and thought, “hmmm…if they can concentrate stock, so can I!”
Apparently you can go a lot more concentrated than I did, even, and make something called glace de viande, but I found that going to the point I did made the math easiest. When the stock got to the strength I call “regular”, I then boiled it down to roughly 1/8 the volume. So 1/8 of a cup (or 2 tablespoons, which is conveniently the volume of my ice cube trays’ compartments) of this stuff reconstitutes to 1 cup of regular strength stock by my taste.
Related tip: when you’ve decided your stock is “regular strength”, strain it and return it to the pot, then stick the end of a wooden spoon in it. See the mark of moisture on the wood? Divide that distance into eight, and put a rubber band or twist tie at the 1/8 mark. That way, you can check the volume just by sticking your spoon handle in, instead of pouring it into measuring cups to check how far you’ve gotten. When you can just see the top of the rubber band when the handle is in the stock, you’ve gone far enough!
Hey, I use the rubber-band (or kitchen twine) on the wooden spoon handle technique, too, when reducing things! Very convenient! 
I, too, need an explanation of this de-seeding. 
Egg whites freeze pretty well in ice-cube trays. The thawed results are OK for baking, or for making an egg wash. Some Googling indicates that you can’t just thaw yolks - seems to be that you have to add a pinch of sugar or salt to keep the texture from changing, but I can’t speak to that from personal experience.
We have really hard water here in Las Vegas, so when using the dishwasher, we put in vinegar at the bottom of the machine and regular dishwasher soap in the dispenser - it has made all the difference - glasses come out shiny and there is no calk gumming up the works inside. And no, it does not smell like vinegar when the cycles are completed.
We do this with every load in the dishwasher, and also put in vinegar in about every fourth load of laundry in the washer.
We freeze lots of things in zip-lock bags but the best trick there is to seal it almost completely closed, then use a straw to suck the air out, quickly remove and then snap it closed. Removing the air avoids freezer burns on food.
Somewhere along the line, we bought a cheese slicer - a gizmo made of wires that you can use to slice a chunk of cheese into multiple slices. We don’t buy cheese in blocks like that much, but it works great when slicing tomatoes. One swipe through a tomato and you have perfect slices for BLT’s or other sandwiches, etc.
If you stack your non-stick pans (as I do), and worry about wearing the non-stick finish off by having the bottom of one pan rubbing against the top of the next one, lay a napkin or small dish towel between them. Problem solved.
I like to keep my Bloody Mary ice cold, but I can’t stand ice cubes in it, watering it down as they melt. If I think of it, I’ll keep an ice tray filled with tomato juice or V-8 and add a bit more vodka to the drink. No dilution!
Bacon Salt!
Alton suggested this in his “Raising the Bar 2” episode. I’m planning to start doing it with OJ for my screwdrivers.
Paper plates work, too. Also, if you’re behind on your dishwashing, you can eat off the plates. 
I do this with coffee, for iced coffee. No more watered down iced coffee!