6 Kitchen Hacks That We Wish We Knew Last Year
We have all thought about the things we could have done differently and the new year particularly has a way of bringing all our past mistakes into sharp relief, but some things can only be learned through mistakes. Luckily, you won’t have to make mistakes yourself when you have our tips and tricks to learn from.
Life hacks start at the kitchen
The kitchen can be a scary place and a lot of us only know what we have learned from watching our mothers cook but there is so much that we miss out on when we try to implement these techniques. This is why Badshah has collected our top 6 tips and tricks that:
1. Life hack #1: Boiling Water
Before you roll your eyes at this life hack, you would be surprised to know that boiling water isn’t just one simple task. There are many factors to consider when boiling water. One kitchen hack that you should keep in mind when boiling water is, covering your pot with a lid.
Placing a cover over any heating liquid traps the heat within the vessel which allows it to come to a boil faster. Another tip is knowing when to add salt. Adding salt to boiling water allows you to flavor your food while cooking it but if you add salt early in the heating process this will make your water take longer to boil.
2. Life hack #2: Prep Work
When making Indian food, it is always useful to have onion and tomato purees since they are the base to so many recipes. Simply add equal amounts of onions and tomatoes to a blender and puree it. You can then freeze the mixture and use it whenever you require. You can do the same for ginger and garlic.
No one likes making food in the middle of the week. Everyone is tired after a long day of work and going to slave away in the kitchen is the last thing on anyone’s mind. However, you can make your job easier by doing some prep work.
3. Life hack #3: Adding salt
Following up on the first point, there are a lot of factors to consider when adding salt to your dishes. Primarily salt is essential to any dish as it brings out all of the other flavors. Without salt, you won’t be able to taste the subtle flavors that come from your ingredients.
You can add salt when cooking onions, tomatoes or any vegetable that contains a lot of water, to draw out the liquid but you should also be careful to avoid adding too much salt too early because you won’t know the exact amount required until you have added all your ingredients.
4. Life hack #4: Whole spices or ground spices
Knowing how to use spices can be an intimidating prospect. There are simply a huge variety of spices that function differently when combined together which is why it is important to know when to use whole or ground spices.
A simple kitchen hack is to use particular spice blends from a trusted brand which will help you get the general flavor profile but you can also add particular whole spices for an extra kick of flavor. For example, if you are making Punjabi Chhole you can use Badshah’s spice blend but also add whole jeera to accentuate the jeera flavor which is so iconic to this dish.
5. Life hack #5: Soaking
This kitchen hack might seem to be a limited one but it can easily cut your cooking time in half when used effectively.
Simply soaking your rice or your lentils half an hour before you cook them can shorten how long it takes to cook them which helps you get food on the table as fast as you need it even on busy days.
You can also soak dried ingredients like cashews, dates, raisins, etc in a flavored liquid of your choice to add an extra pop of flavor and rehydrate them.
6. Life hack #6: Buy smart
One thing that novice cooks often get wrong (us included) is buying according to recipes. Recipes all have different ingredients which may result in us having a large number of vegetables and spices that we cannot finish.
It is more beneficial to have a loose plan of what you want to cook for the week and buy ingredients accordingly so that you can cook recipes that have overlapping ingredients. This way you prevent food waste and avoid having to make repeated trips to the grocery store.
Conclusion
There is never a shortage of things to be learned in the kitchen. It is a constant process and no one expects you to know everything in one go. Try implementing some of these kitchen hacks in your day-to-day cooking and see how much of a difference they make when you cook. For more recipes and techniques follow us on badshahmasala.com
