Are any of these items lurking in your pantry past their expiration dates? You're probably keeping these items, like flour, baking soda, and butter, longer than you should. Here are the surprising shelf lives of five common kitchen staples and tips on how to properly store them.

More on Shine: Expert tips to make your food last longer

Flours - It's a common misconception that flour will simply last forever; however, that's just not the case. Store flour in airtight containers in the refrigerator or freezer. Flour kept in the pantry will last up to six months, but in the freezer, flour can last up to one year. Remember to write expiration dates on the airtight containers.

Butter - Butter will be past its prime in about two weeks. To keep butter tasting fresh, store only one bar of butter in the fridge at a time, and place the others in the freezer where butter will last up to a month.

Baking soda - Are you using the same box of baking soda as an air freshener for your refrigerator and in

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Cooking hard-boiled eggs is easy until you've had them come out green or labored over peeling them. Here are the secrets to getting them perfect every time.

10 variations on deviled eggs

Prick
Prick the rounded end of each egg with a push pin. (This releases a little air so they don't crack.) Note: Ultra-fresh eggs are difficult to prick. Let them sit in the fridge for about a week before cooking.


Bring to a boil
Cover eggs with cold water by about an inch and bring to a boil.


Let stand
Remove from heat, cover pan, and let eggs stand 12 minutes.


Drain
Drain eggs, holding the pan lid ajar.


Shake
Shake eggs in pan to crack them all over.


Soak
Fill the pan with ice, add cold water, and let eggs sit about 10 minutes (this makes them easy to peel).


Peel
Peel off shells.

More instruction guides from Sunset:
How to brine chicken
How to make a no-cook tomato sauce
How to toss a pizza
Quick and easy jams

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Published in the May 2013 issue

Chef Michael Kaphan, Purdy's Farmer & the Fish, North Salem, New York

I'm a chef who grew up in the era just before the green-market revolution. Like so many others, my mother was a Birds Eye queen, and the Jolly Green Giant was her best friend, always hiding in the cupboard. So as I grew older and my passion for food grew, I wanted to come up with a simple, tasty, and healthy way to prepare garden or green-market vegetables. After many years of cooking, I find myself always returning to this one tried-and-true technique. It never fails me, and my guests always want to know how I did it. Simplicity, I tell them. The secret lies in the technique, and after a couple tries, you'll pick it right up. To use a restaurant phrase, it's done à la minute - "in a minute," or done to order. The goal is a reduced sauce clinging to vegetables that still have their picked-from-the-garden taste.

There's another phrase in professional kitchens: mise e

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Monkey bread is a knotty-looking loaf of bread made from buttery balls of sweet dough glued together with caramel.

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WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS
It might have a funny name, but monkey bread is a soft, sweet, sticky, ultra-cinnamony treat (its moniker probably refers to how it's pulled apart and stuffed into eager mouths). To expedite the rising and proofing of the dough, and ensure our bread had plenty of yeasty flavor, we used a good amount of instant yeast. Butter and milk helped keep the dough rich and moist, and a little sugar made the bread sweet enough to eat on its own. A dip in butter and cinnamon sugar gave the monkey bread a thick, caramel-like coating after its stint in the oven. And a drizzle of a simple glaze finished it off.

Serves 6 to 8

Make sure to use light brown sugar in the coating mix; dark brown sugar has a stronger molasses

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