- 2 days ago
In this edition of Epicurious 101, professional chef and culinary instructor Frank Proto shares 25 food hacks that will make you a faster, cleaner, and more confident home cook. From fruit and veg to reheating rice, organizing your kitchen, storing leftovers, and mastering simple chef techniques, these practical cooking tips will help you cook smarter every day.
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00:00Today I'm going to show you kitchen hacks, things that I've learned in my professional career that will make you
00:04a stronger, better, cleaner cook.
00:09I've spent so much time in my life peeling garlic, it's kind of sad.
00:12And with this tip, it's going to make it go just a little bit quicker.
00:16So what I do is peel my cloves.
00:19This step you can't avoid, but how do you get the garlic out of these little things?
00:23You can use a paring knife, smash them on your cutting board.
00:28There's a lot of different ways you can do this.
00:30All messy, all annoying.
00:32So take a bunch of cloves of garlic, put them in a bowl.
00:34And then what we're going to do is put them in the microwave for 10 seconds.
00:38What this is going to do is steam our garlic cloves, just so that the skin separates off of the
00:43garlic.
00:44Watch, the garlic falls right out.
00:46Look at that.
00:47So give it a little squeeze, and it falls right out.
00:50It's as easy as that.
00:51Put your cloves of garlic in the microwave and they pop right out.
00:54I'm going to show you a hack on how to peel a mango in seconds.
00:56Take your mango, put it up on its skinny side, and cut off the cheeks, which are just those beautiful
01:02two big slices.
01:04And then we get our pint glass, push down and go against the edge of the glass.
01:10And voila, it is peeled.
01:12The fruits in the glass, the juices in the glass, clean, easy, and quick.
01:17Kiwis are another thing that's annoying to peel.
01:19So cut off both ends.
01:21And then I just get a tablespoon and get under the skin.
01:26Twist, twist, twist.
01:28Go from the other side.
01:29Twist, twist, twist.
01:30And our kiwi should pop right out.
01:33Quick and easy.
01:33All you need is a spoon and a knife.
01:36Anytime you're measuring sticky ingredients like honey, molasses, or corn syrup, you always leave a lot behind.
01:42So in this measuring cup, it's just honey.
01:45And in this measuring cup, I'm going to give it a quick spray with nonstick spray.
01:50The nonstick spray will let the honey release and will get more out of it.
01:54This is our traditional way.
01:58Look how much is left in there.
02:00Let's try the nonstick spray.
02:04You can see how easily it comes out.
02:07So you can see that the measuring cup that I sprayed with nonstick spray has a lot less honey left
02:12over in it.
02:13You just do a lot less work.
02:14You don't have to get a spoon or a spatula and scoop it out.
02:17It just slides on out.
02:18Less work, more time to enjoy your food.
02:21One thing that I've taught throughout my whole career is always stabilize your cutting board.
02:25You don't want your cutting board moving around.
02:27It makes it super dangerous.
02:28So what you need to do is put something underneath the cutting board.
02:31And what I like to use is paper towels.
02:34So all you got to do with the paper towel, get it damp, squeeze it out, unfold it, put it
02:40on the table and then put my cutting board on it.
02:44Now my cutting board is super sturdy.
02:46It won't move around and I'm going to be safe.
02:48And when you're done with the paper towel, you can wipe your station down.
02:52Another thing that we do as well is to have a garbage bowl or a garbage container on my station
02:57when I'm cooking.
02:58You don't want to have to be going back and forth to the garbage every time you have a peel.
03:02You can peel everything into the bowl.
03:04Your station is neat and clean.
03:07You're not making all the trips back and forth to the garbage.
03:10I do it in my home kitchen every single day.
03:13Some sort of garbage bowl and securing your cutting board.
03:19Sometimes in the kitchen, you don't need to buy that new gadget.
03:22You can just use the old gadget in a new way.
03:25One of my favorite things to do with a microplane is give it a turn, flip it over or reverse
03:31your microplane.
03:32When I'm zesting lemons or limes, I like to flip it over so that I can see what I'm working
03:37on and give it a pull.
03:39Every time I pull, I give it a little turn.
03:41Not only am I getting just the zest and not the white, I'm also collecting all of my zest in
03:49the top of the microplane.
03:50And I can take my zest and just put it straight into my bowl.
03:56You don't have a citrus juicer.
03:57One of the best tools for this is a pair of tongs.
04:01Cut my lemon in half.
04:02Open up my tongs.
04:04Get the lemon in there.
04:06And now you have some mechanical advantage, some leverage.
04:09Give it a squeeze.
04:12Get your other half.
04:15No juicer.
04:17Use a pair of tongs.
04:19Another use for those tongs is cracking a cold one.
04:22In professional kitchens, we pride ourselves on being able to open a bottle with almost any tool you can find.
04:27So let's use the tongs.
04:29Common in every kitchen.
04:31Spoon.
04:32You're basically resting the spoon on your hand.
04:36This one you got to be careful with so you don't poke your eye out.
04:38Use the back of the knife.
04:39Pen.
04:45Slate works too.
04:47Cheers, everyone.
04:51One thing professional chefs do that home cooks almost never do is they harness the power of steam.
04:57I have a burger on here.
04:58My burger is cooking away happily.
05:01But I want my burger to be medium rare.
05:03By using a little steam, we can melt our cheese quickly and efficiently and keep our burger perfectly medium rare.
05:08We take the cheese, we put it on top of our burger.
05:12And what we do is we take a bowl and put it upside down.
05:16That bowl is going to trap the steam and cook from the top.
05:19If you don't think that it's getting enough steam, get a little squeeze bottle of water.
05:24Give it a little spritz.
05:25Put it on top.
05:26It'll add a little extra steam.
05:28You can use this for a grilled cheese.
05:30A tuna melt.
05:31Eggs.
05:32Say you don't want to do over easy.
05:33You want to keep that sunny side up, but you want the egg yolk cooked.
05:36A little steam.
05:37Our cheese melted in a matter of seconds.
05:39Look at it.
05:41Look at that steamy, melty cheese.
05:43Absolutely delicious.
05:45Use the power of steam.
05:49You don't need a rice cooker to make rice.
05:51You don't even need a stove.
05:52All you really need is a microwave.
05:54When I worked at culinary school, one of our head butchers was from the Philippines and she
05:59made rice every day for us.
06:00And she used to do it in the microwave and she swore by this method.
06:03And she has converted me.
06:05I have my rice in a bowl.
06:06I rinsed it three or four times just to get the excess starch off.
06:10Add two cups of water.
06:12Put a pinch of salt in.
06:13We want to wrap it tightly with the plastic wrap.
06:15Poke one or two vent holes and pop it in the microwave on high for five minutes.
06:23After the five minutes, you're going to put it on for 15 at medium heat.
06:31I'm going to let it rest in the bowl for about five minutes and then it's going to be ready
06:35to go.
06:37I'm just going to give it a little bit of a fluff up.
06:40Look at that.
06:40Perfectly cooked in the microwave.
06:42Beautiful every time.
06:43Cooking rice for a crowd.
06:45The oven is your best friend.
06:46This is a rice pilaf.
06:47It starts off on the stove.
06:49We're going to take the rice and we're going to toast it in some butter or some fat.
06:54It coats the rice, makes it nice and fluffy.
06:57We're going to add a nice hefty pinch of salt.
06:58Bay leaf.
06:59All the rice is coated with the fat and now I can add my chicken stock.
07:04I'm going to let this come to a boil.
07:06Put the lid on, pop it into a 350 degree oven for about 20 minutes.
07:11Rice is ready.
07:12Let's get it out of the oven.
07:14Look at that.
07:15And just fluff it up.
07:16This is just a great way to do bulk rice for a larger crowd.
07:21Freeze up some of that important stove space.
07:24Perfectly cooked rice for a crowd.
07:26Sometimes you have some leftover rice and you want to heat it up, but it's a little dry.
07:30What I like to do is put my rice into a bowl and heat it with an ice cube.
07:35Why an ice cube?
07:36The ice cube is going to steam it without making it mushy.
07:38If I put water in here, I'm never really sure how much I need.
07:42An ice cube is going to lend some steam, but it's not going to melt all the way.
07:46I'm going to start it at a minute and see how we do.
07:48Let's see.
07:49So our rice is nice and warm.
07:51You can see the ice cubes only melted a little bit, just giving us the little bit of moisture
07:55we need to heat our rice up.
07:57Give it a mix, make sure everything's hot.
07:59Beautifully reheated white rice.
08:05Believe it or not, one thing I love to use in the kitchen is a Ziploc bag.
08:08They're great for storage.
08:09They're very low profile.
08:11I take my Ziploc, I open it up, I roll the edge over.
08:15I want to keep the zipper area clean.
08:17Make sure whatever you put in here is cold.
08:19We don't want to put hot soup in a Ziploc bag.
08:22It might melt right through it.
08:24Squeeze most of the air out.
08:26And then what I do is I take it and flatten it out.
08:29This is the key.
08:30You want things to stack neatly.
08:32Flat packing your food works every time.
08:35Once it's frozen, super neat, super easy to see what it is.
08:39Look how easily and nice they stack.
08:41Easy to defrost too.
08:43Because it's flat, it has a lot of surface area.
08:46And if you put this in the pan or the microwave, it defrosts like a dream.
08:50If you have extra pesto stock or some sort of sauce, you can freeze it.
08:55I have some extra pesto here.
08:57I just fill up the cubes.
08:59I tap it, flatten it out.
09:00I'm going to stick this in the freezer.
09:02So my pesto is frozen.
09:04And say you have a ton of basil from the garden this summer.
09:07Make pesto, freeze it into cubes.
09:10And then you can store these single portions out every time.
09:13You can do this with so many different things.
09:14I have some lemon juice that I froze.
09:17You can do this with tomato sauce, tomato puree.
09:20There's so many different things you can do this with.
09:21And if there's only a couple of people in your house, you don't have to feed a lot of people.
09:24Take a couple of cubes, make pesto for two, and you're good to go.
09:28One thing that we do in restaurants is we label and date everything.
09:32It's super important to keep track of when things were put in containers,
09:36how long they've been there, and if it's actually good or not.
09:39I get some painter's tape.
09:40We lay it out flat.
09:42And instead of trying to put the tape on the container, then write it in this space,
09:46laying it out on a flat surface makes it easier to write on.
09:48I have some rice there, and today's date.
09:51I have some pasta, some almonds, tomato sauce.
09:56Everything's written out, and all I have to do is cut, get my nice, neat labels.
10:00I always put in a lid.
10:01I find it easier to take off.
10:03You can get all different colors and make an organization system and say,
10:06pink is for meat, purple is for vegetables, right?
10:09All you really need to do is have a roll of painter's tape, a marker, and a paring knife,
10:14and you can be as organized as the pros.
10:19When it comes to salad, this is how the pros do it.
10:21We start off with a big bowl.
10:23A lot of times I see people put a salad in a small bowl like this.
10:26There's no room to mix the salad in.
10:28Stainless steel bowls like this are super cheap.
10:31I have stacks of them at home, and they're kind of multi-purpose.
10:34If you have a party and you want to chill down your beer or your soda, put some ice in
10:38here.
10:38The next thing that I do is season my salad.
10:41Get a nice, hefty pinch of kosher salt.
10:44Table salt's very fine-grained.
10:46You can't see how much you put on.
10:47With kosher salt, you can see that I have salt on there.
10:50It doesn't melt immediately.
10:51So I'm going to dress my salad.
10:53A lot of times you'll see people at this point will grab a pair of tongs.
10:56Part of the reason I don't like tongs is because people tend to mash the salad up here.
11:00And I don't want mashed salad.
11:02I want nice, light, airy, fluffy greens.
11:05So what I do is I use salad fingers.
11:08Salad fingers are the new jazz hands.
11:10Open your hands up.
11:11Get in there and toss your salad nice and lightly.
11:15Go around the bowl.
11:17We're not squeezing and damaging the greens.
11:20We're lightly tossing them in the dressing so that our salad is getting nicely mixed and coated with that dressing.
11:28If you want to use gloves, use gloves.
11:30I don't think they're necessary as long as your hands are clean.
11:33Before I put this on the plate, I'm going to taste it.
11:36Make sure it's seasoned enough.
11:38Make sure it has enough dressing.
11:39Now we get a plate.
11:40And when I put the salad on the plate, I'm going light.
11:43Don't squeeze it.
11:44Don't mash it.
11:45Let's get some height.
11:46Let's get some volume out of this.
11:49At no time did I really damage my greens.
11:52My greens are still all intact, not soggy.
11:55The salad is light, beautiful, and delicious.
12:01Anytime I cook with nuts, I like to make sure that they're toasted.
12:05Toasted nuts have better flavor, better texture, and they're just all around delicious.
12:09And to ensure that they are toasted evenly, toast them in the oven on a tray.
12:14Part of the reason I don't like using the pan is that the heat from the pan is coming from
12:18the bottom.
12:19So the bottom of your nut is getting toasted, while the top is not getting toasted at all.
12:24So lay the nuts out in an even layer.
12:26Put them in a 350 degree oven until they are nice and toasty and brown.
12:30Set a timer.
12:31Maybe start at five minutes.
12:33Check them.
12:33Make sure they're nice and brown.
12:35Take them out of the oven.
12:36Let them cool.
12:37They're toasty and roasty and delicious.
12:40You can see the inside is nice and brown.
12:41So if you're toasting nuts, go with the oven.
12:47In every kitchen I've ever worked in, we've used squeeze bottles.
12:50Squeeze bottles are a great way to deliver sauces, garnishes, dressings.
12:55In my squeeze bottles here, I have some salad dressing, some chocolate sauce, and some spicy mayonnaise.
13:01When I want to put it onto a dish, I can give it a quick shake.
13:04You can get fancy and put lines on things.
13:06It's a great way to get sauce in the area that you want it, without big globs of it on
13:11your food.
13:12Squeeze bottles are also great for garnishing your desserts.
13:15I have some brownies, a little chocolate sauce.
13:17I'll make like a little dot, and that dot can hold my brownie in place.
13:21Put another one there.
13:22And then we could kind of just do like nice little polka dots around.
13:25We'll put a little scoop of ice cream on top.
13:27And it's just a way to make your desserts just a little more special for the people that you love.
13:32Go online, get some squeeze bottles.
13:34It makes your cooking a lot easier and a lot more fun.
13:39If you have yourself a really beautiful pineapple or a really juicy peach, just cut it up and eat it
13:44like that.
13:44But if you have like maybe a peach or a nectarine or a piece of pineapple that's not super ripe,
13:49and it's not really quite ready to go, but you want to use it up, throw it on the grill.
13:53It's going to concentrate some of that flavor, make it just a little sweeter.
13:56I'm going to start with my cut side down, flesh side down.
14:00I make sure my grill is clean.
14:02There's no debris on it.
14:03You want to just leave it alone.
14:05Because fruit has a lot of liquid in it, it's going to take just a little bit longer to get
14:09that char and get those marks on there.
14:12So be patient.
14:13Just give it a few minutes.
14:14Now that I have the grill marks on that one side, I give it a quick flip.
14:18Just remember, we don't want to overcook our fruit and make it mushy.
14:21We just want to give it some color and some caramelization.
14:25I'll put it on the other side for like a minute or two.
14:27There's so many different ways you can go with this.
14:29Sweet, savory.
14:31Serve the peaches with some burrata.
14:33Put it in a salad.
14:34It goes with a pork chop.
14:35You can put it on a dessert as well.
14:37It's super versatile.
14:38Just like the pineapple and the peaches, you can grill some lemons.
14:42What this does, it gives our lemons a nice savory flavor, a little richer flavor.
14:47Makes it a little more caramelized.
14:48They are great garnish for your fish, for chicken, pretty much anything you put on the grill.
14:53Another tip is oil your protein before you grill it.
14:56Steak, pork chops, chicken thighs.
14:58I will oil them first.
15:00Just enough oil to give it a nice sheen and jumpstart that browning on the skin.
15:05I have a piece of salmon here and I'm going to cook this on the skin side.
15:08So there you go.
15:09I have my marks there.
15:10I'm going to give it a little crosshatch.
15:13You can see my lemons are getting nice and grilled.
15:16Just check out how good these lemons look on the plate.
15:18You can easily just put a slice of lemon on there and it'll probably look really good.
15:22But you grill it, it makes them just a little extra special.
15:25So look at my salmon.
15:26Crisped up really nice.
15:28I got some really nice grill marks.
15:30It didn't stick.
15:31Squeeze that grilled lemon over the top.
15:33Beautiful meal.
15:34Your friends and family will give you hugs and kisses.
15:37We've talked about a lot of tips and hacks today.
15:39And if you take a couple of these or take all of them and put them into your kitchen arsenal,
15:43I promise you, you will be a better cook for it.
15:46If you have any kitchen tips or tricks, please put them in the comments.
15:49I always like to read what you guys have to say.
15:53You can also use another bottle.
15:55Oh!
15:59That's so awesome!
16:00Can we use that?
16:02I have another jacket, thankfully.
16:03Okay, I got to change my shirt.
16:04I got to change my shirt.
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