25 Kitchen Hacks Every Home Cook Should Know

Today I'm gonna show you kitchen hacks,

things that I've learned in my professional career

that will make you a stronger, better, cleaner cook.

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I have spent so much time in my life peeling garlic,

it's kind of sad.

And with this tip,

it's gonna make it go just a little bit quicker.

So what I do is peel my cloves.

This step you can't avoid,

but how do you get the garlic out of these little things?

You can use a paring knife,

smash them on your cutting board.

There's a lot of different ways you can do this.

All messy, all annoying.

So take a bunch of cloves of garlic, put them in a bowl.

And then what we're gonna do

is put them in the microwave for 10 seconds.

What this is gonna do is steam our garlic cloves

just so that the skin separates off of the garlic.

Watch.

The garlic falls right out. Look at that.

So give it a little squeeze and it falls right out.

It's as easy as that.

Put your cloves of garlic in the microwave

and they pop right out.

I'm gonna show you a hack on how to peel a mango in seconds.

Take your mango, put it up on its skinny side

and cut off the cheeks,

which are just those beautiful two big slices.

And then we get our pint glass pushed down

and go against the edge of the glass.

And voila, it's peeled.

The fruit is in the glass, the juice is in the glass,

clean, easy, and quick.

Kiwis are another thing that's annoying to peel.

So cut off both ends.

And then I just get a tablespoon

and get under the skin, twist, twist, twist,

go from the other side, twist, twist, twist.

And our kiwi should pop right out. Quick and easy.

And all you need is a spoon and a knife.

Anytime you're measuring sticky ingredients

like honey, molasses, or corn syrup,

you always leave a lot behind.

So in this measuring cup, it's just honey.

And in this measuring cup,

I'm gonna give it a quick spray with non-stick spray.

The non-stick spray will let the honey release

and we'll get more out of it.

This is our traditional way.

Look how much is left in there.

Let's try the non-stick spray.

You can see how easily it comes out.

So you can see that the measuring cup

that I sprayed with non-stick spray

has a lot less honey left over in it.

You just do a lot less work.

You don't have to get a spoon or a spatula and scoop it out.

It just slides on out.

Less work, more time to enjoy your food.

One thing that I've taught throughout my whole career

is always stabilize your cutting board.

You don't want your cutting board moving around.

It makes it super dangerous.

So what you need to do

is put something underneath the cutting board.

And what I like to use is paper towels.

So all you got to do with the paper towel,

get it damp, squeeze it out, unfold it,

put it on the table

and then put my cutting board on it.

Now my cutting board is super sturdy.

It won't move around and I'm gonna be safe.

And when you're done with the paper towel,

you can wipe your station down.

Another thing that we do as well is to have a garbage bowl

or a garbage container on my station when I'm cooking.

You don't want to have to be

going back and forth to the garbage

every time you have a peel.

You can peel everything into the bowl.

Your station is neat and clean.

You're not making all the trips

back and forth to the garbage.

I do it in my home kitchen every single day,

some sort of garbage bowl and securing your cutting board.

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Sometimes in the kitchen

you don't need to buy that new gadget.

You can just use the old gadget in a new way.

One of my favorite things to do with a Microplane

is give it a turn, flip it over,

or reverse your Microplane.

When I'm zesting lemons or limes,

I like to flip it over so that I can see what I'm working on

and give it a pull.

Every time I pull, I give it a little turn.

Not only am I getting just the zest and not the white,

I'm also collecting all of my zest

in the top of the Microplane,

and I can take my zest

and just put it straight into my bowl.

You don't have a citrus juicer?

One of the best tools for this is a pair of tongs.

Cut my lemon in half, open up my tongs,

get the lemon in there.

And now you have some mechanical advantage, some leverage.

Give it a squeeze.

Get your other half.

No juicer? Use a pair of tongs.

Another use for those tongs is cracking a cold one.

In professional kitchens,

we pride ourselves on being able to open a bottle

with almost any tool you can find.

So let's use the tongs.

Common in every kitchen, spoon.

You're basically resting the spoon on your hand.

This one you got to be careful with

so you don't poke your eye out.

Use the back of the knife.

Pen.

Aha.

Slate works too. Cheers, everyone.

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One thing professional chefs do

that home cooks almost never do

is they harness the power of steam.

I have a burger on here.

My burger is cooking away happily,

but I want my burger to be medium rare.

By using a little steam,

we can melt our cheese quickly and efficiently

and keep our burger perfectly medium rare.

We take the cheese, we put it on top of our burger.

And what we do is we take a bowl and put it upside down.

That bowl's gonna trap the steam and cook from the top.

If you don't think that it's getting enough steam,

get a little squeeze bottle of water.

Give it a little spritz.

Put it on top. It'll add a little extra steam.

You can use this for a grilled cheese. Let tuna melt.

Eggs.

Say you don't want to do over-easy,

you want to keep that sunny side up,

but you want the egg yolk cooked.

Little steam.

Our cheese melted in a matter of seconds. Look at it.

Look at that steamy, melty cheese. Absolutely delicious.

Use the power of steam.

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You don't need a rice cooker to make rice.

You don't even need a stove.

All you really need is a microwave.

When I worked at culinary school,

one of our head butchers was from the Philippines,

and she made rice every day for us.

And she's doing the microwave and she swore by this method

and she has converted me.

I have my rice in a bowl.

I rinsed it three or four times

just to get the excess starch off.

Add two cups of water, put a pitch of salt in,

but we want to wrap it tightly with the plastic wrap.

Poke one or two vent holes

and pop it in the microwave on high for five minutes.

After the five minutes,

you're gonna put it on for 15 at medium heat.

I'm gonna let it rest in the bowl for about five minutes

and then it's gonna be ready to go.

I'm just gonna give it a little bit of a fluff up.

Look at that. Perfectly cooked in the microwave.

Beautiful every time.

Cooking rice for a crowd? The oven is your best friend.

This is a rice peel off. It starts off on the stove.

We're gonna take the rice

and we're going to toast it in some butter or some fat.

It coats the rice, makes it nice and fluffy.

We're gonna add a nice hefty pinch of salt, bay leaf.

All the rice is coated with the fat,

and now I can add my chicken stock.

I'm gonna let this come to a boil.

Put the lid on, pop it into a 350-degree oven

for about 20 minutes.

Rice is ready. Let's get it out of the oven.

Look at that. And just fluff it up.

This is just a great way to do bulk rice for a larger crowd.

Frees up some of that important stove space.

Perfectly cooked rice for a crowd.

Sometimes you have some leftover rice

and you want to heat it up, but it's a little dry.

What I like to do is put my rice into a bowl

and heat it with an ice cube.

Why an ice cube?

The ice cube's gonna steam it without making it mushy.

If I put water in here,

I'm never really sure how much I need.

An ice cube is gonna lend some steam,

but it's not gonna melt all the way.

I'm gonna start it at a minute. See how we do.

Let's see. So our rice is nice and warm.

You can see the ice cubes only melted a little bit,

just giving us the little bit of moisture we need

to heat our rice up.

Give it a mix, make sure everything's hot.

Beautifully reheated white rice.

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Believe it or not, one thing I love to use in the kitchen

is a Ziploc bag.

They're great for storage. They're very low profile.

I take my Ziploc, I open it up, I roll the edge over.

I want to keep the zipper area clean.

Make sure whatever you put in here is cold.

We don't want to put hot soup in a Ziploc bag.

It might melt right through it.

Squeeze most of the air out.

And then what I do is I take it and flatten it out.

This is the key.

You want things to stack neatly?

Flat packing your food works every time.

Once it's frozen, super neat, super easy to see what it is.

Look how easily and nice they stack. Easy to defrost too.

Because it's flat, it has a lot of surface area.

And if you put this in the pan or the microwave,

it defrosts like a dream.

If you have extra pesto, stock, or some sort of sauce,

you can freeze it.

I have some extra pesto here. I just fill up the cubes.

I tap it, flatten it out.

I'm gonna stick this in the freezer.

So my pesto is frozen,

and say you have a ton of basil from the garden this summer,

make pesto, freeze it into cubes,

and then you could store

these single portions out every time.

You can do this with so many different things.

I have some lemon juice that I froze.

You can do this with tomato sauce, tomato puree.

There's so many different things you can do this with.

And if there's only a couple of people in your house,

you don't have to feed a lot of people,

take a couple of cubes, make pesto for two,

and you're good to go.

One thing that we do in restaurants

is we label and date everything.

It's super important to keep track

of when things were put in containers,

how long they've been there,

and if it's actually good or not.

I get some painter's tape. We lay it out flat.

And instead of trying to put the tape on the container,

then write it in this space,

laying it out on a flat surface makes it easier to write on.

I have some rice there. And today's date.

I have some pasta, some almonds, tomato sauce.

Everything's written out,

and all I have to do is cut, get my nice, neat labels.

I always put it on a lid; I find it easier to take off.

You can get all different colors

and make an organization system and say pink is for meat.

Purple is for vegetables, right?

All you really need to do is have a roll of painter's tape,

a marker, and a paring knife,

and you could be as organized as the pros.

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When it comes to salad, this is how the pros do it.

We start off with a big bowl.

A lot of times I see people put a salad

in a small bowl like this.

There's no room to mix the salad in.

Stainless steel bowls like this are super cheap.

I have stacks of them at home,

and they're kind of multipurpose.

If you have a party

and you want to chill down your beer or your soda,

put some ice in here.

The next thing that I do is season my salad.

Get a nice, hefty pinch of kosher salt.

Table salt's very fine grained.

You can't see how much you put on.

With kosher salt, you can see that I have salt on there.

It doesn't melt immediately.

So I'm gonna dress my salad.

A lot of times you'll see people at this point

will grab a pair of tongs.

Part of the reason I like tongs

is because people tend to mash the salad up here,

and I don't want mashed salad.

I want nice, light, airy, fluffy greens.

So what I do is I use salad fingers.

Salad fingers are the new jazz hands.

Open your hands up.

Get in there and toss your salad nice and lightly.

Go around the bowl.

We're not squeezing and damaging the greens.

We're lightly tossing them in the dressing

so that our salad is getting nicely mixed

and coated with that dressing.

If you want to use gloves, use gloves.

I don't think they're necessary

as long as your hands are clean.

Before I put this on the plate, I'm gonna taste it.

Make sure it's seasoned enough.

Make sure it has enough dressing.

Now we get a plate.

And when I put the salad on the plate, I'm going light.

Don't squeeze it, don't mash it.

Let's get some height. Let's get some volume out of this.

At no time did I really damage my greens.

My greens are still all intact, not soggy.

The salad is light, beautiful, and delicious.

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Anytime I cook with nuts,

I like to make sure that they're toasted.

Toasted nuts have better flavor, better texture,

and they're just all around delicious.

And to ensure that they are toasted evenly,

toast them in the oven on a tray.

Part of the reason I don't like using the pan

is that the heat from the pan is coming from the bottom.

So the bottom of your nut is getting toasted

while the top is not getting toasted at all.

So lay the nuts out in an even layer,

put them in a 350-degree oven

until they are nice and toasty and brown.

Set a timer, maybe start at five minutes,

check them, make sure they're nice and brown.

Take them out of the oven, let them cool.

They're toasty and roasty and delicious.

You can see the inside is nice and brown.

So if you're toasting nuts, go with the oven.

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In every kitchen I've ever worked in,

we've used squeeze bottles.

Squeeze bottles are a great way

to deliver sauces, garnishes, dressings.

In my squeeze bottles here, I have some salad dressing,

some chocolate sauce, and some spicy mayonnaise.

When I want to put it onto a dish,

I could give it a quick shake.

You can get fancy and put lines on things.

It's a great way to get sauce in the area that you want it

without big globs of it on your food.

Squeeze bottles are also great for garnishing your desserts.

I have some brownies, a little chocolate sauce.

I'll make like a little dot,

and that dot can hold my brownie in place.

Put another one there, and then we could kind of just do

like nice little polka dots around.

We'll put a little scoop of ice cream on top.

And it's just a way to make your desserts

just a little more special for the people that you love.

Go online, get some squeeze bottles.

It makes your cooking a lot easier and a lot more fun.

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If you have yourself a really beautiful pineapple

or a really juicy peach,

just cut it up and eat it like that.

But if you have like maybe a peach or a nectarine

or a piece of pineapple that's not super ripe

and it's not really quite ready to go,

but you want to use it up, throw it on the grill.

It's gonna concentrate some of that flavor,

make it just a little sweeter.

I'm gonna start with my cut side down, flesh side down.

I make sure my grill is clean. There's no debris on it.

You want to just leave it alone.

Because fruit has a lot of liquid in it,

it's gonna take just a little bit longer to get that char

and get those marks on there.

So be patient. Just give it a few minutes.

Now that I have the grill marks on that one side,

I give it a quick flip.

Just remember, we don't want to overcook our fruit

and make it mushy.

We just want to give it some color and some caramelization.

I'll put it on the other side for like a minute or two.

There's so many different ways you can go with this.

Sweet, savory, serve the peaches with some burrata.

Put it in a salad. It goes with a pork chop.

You can put it on a dessert as well. It's super versatile.

Just like the pineapple and the peaches,

you can grill some lemons.

What this does, it gives our lemons a nice savory flavor,

a little richer flavor, makes it a little more caramelized.

They are great garnish for your fish, for chicken,

pretty much anything you put on the grill.

Another tip is oil your protein before you grill it.

Steak, pork chops, chicken thighs, I will oil them first.

Just enough oil to give it a nice sheen

and jumpstart that browning on the skin.

I have a piece of salmon here,

and I'm gonna cook this on the skin side.

So there you go, I have my marks there.

I'm gonna give it a little crosshatch.

You can see my lemons are getting nice and grilled.

Just check out how good these lemons look on the plate.

You can easily just put a slice of lemon on there

and it'll probably look really good,

but you grill it, it makes them just a little extra special.

So look at my salmon, crisped up really nice.

I got some really nice grill marks that didn't stick.

Squeeze that grilled lemon over the top. Beautiful meal.

Your friends and family will give you hugs and kisses.

We've talked about a lot of tips and hacks today,

and if you take a couple of these or take all of them

and put them into your kitchen arsenal,

I promise you, you will be a better cook for it.

If you have any kitchen tips or tricks,

please put them in the comments.

I always like to read what you guys have to say.

You can also use another bottle.

That's so awesome. Can we use that?

I have another jacket, thankfully.

Okay, I got to change my shirt.