Six essential shortcuts in the kitchen
By Melissa Breyer
More from Care2 Green Living blog
In my days of homemade butter and baking bread from scratch (read: before children), I bristled at the memory of my mom's constant employment of the 1970's number one secret ingredient (cream of mushroom soup) and her reliance on frozen vegetables.
Two kids and a full-time job later, I'm thinking, wow, a can of soup fixes everything, and by the way, where can I fit in another freezer around here?
Fortunately, you need not surrender to Hamburger Helper or cheese in a jar to save time and money in the kitchen. Even if spending time in the kitchen is one of your favorite pastimes, spending less of it on the mundane chores will leave you more time for the pleasurable tasks at hand, like eating and drinking!
Here are six places to start:
1. Master some signature sauces
In The Art of Simple Food, Alice Waters recommends four essential sauces that you can practically make in your sleep: vinaigrette, salsa verde, aioli, and herb butter. I couldn't agree more.
Having a stash of sauces and condiments at your beck and call can whittle kitchen time by allowing you to deftly dress up simple preparations. Plus, homemade sauces are free of ingredients that require a science degree to understand.
Try one of Waters' sauces, or learn a pesto by heart. Pesto is versatile way beyond pasta -- it can be used on vegetables and sandwiches; in soups, dips, spreads, and marinades; on eggs, you name it.
And once you master pesto, you can play around with other herbs, nuts, and flavors in the mix as well. My go-to pesto is always spiked with jalapeno.
Simple pesto:
Place 2 large cloves of garlic in the bottom of a blender or food processor.
Add 3 cups very firmly packed fresh basil leaves, 2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese, and 1 cup olive oil.
Grind for 10 seconds.
Add 1/2 cup pine nuts, and season to taste with salt and pepper.
Read more from The Pesto Manifesto.
2. Pre-prep your produce
After a big grocery or farmers market shop, wash and prepare all of your produce in one fell swoop. This sets you up for the week, and means you only have one round of veggie-prepping clean-up rather than after each meal -- while saving you money on pre-packaged produce.
For leafy greens, rinse very well and dry in a salad spinner before packing in plastic bags. Cut produce in the way in which you are most likely to use it: dice carrots, make celery sticks, slice cucumbers, cut broccoli into florets -- whatever will work for you.
If you buy organic produce you don't need to remove the peel from thin-skinned fruits and vegetables. Don't bother peeling apples, tomatoes, eggplant, pears, potatoes, cucumbers, and most fruits and vegetables where the skin is thin or edible. Much of the insoluble fiber and many of the antioxidants and vitamins are located in the skin.
If you have small children, prepare some of the produce with the aim of freezing it to use as a cool-down tool. Freeze rinsed blueberries, sliced banana, or diced strawberries to add to piping hot oatmeal -- they defrost and quickly bring the oatmeal to eating temperature. The same thing can be done to peas and other vegetable to be added to pasta, soups, etc.
3. Become a mix master, make your own baking mixes
Unknown to many, there is a happy place located somewhere between the box of Bisquick and the chaos of a baking mess. Welcome to the homemade mix.
There are a number of pancake/muffin/waffle mix recipes floating around the Internet, but this "Fauxquick" one is great because you can use it for any Bisquick recipe:
6 cups all-purpose flour (swap out any portion of this for whole wheat flour)
3 Tbsp baking powder
1 Tbsp baking soda
3 Tbsp sugar
1 Tbsp salt
1 cup vegetable shortening (Spectrum Naturals is organic, free of hydrogenated oils, and has no trans-fats)
Sift everything except shortening into a mixing bowl. Add shortening and mix with a hand mixer until the mixture is fine and free of lumps. Store in an airtight container in your refrigerator for up to two months.
4. Tout your tools
I've never been much of an Inspector Gadget in the kitchen, but there are a handful of tools that I live and die by -- they end up saving a surprising amount of time and a load of agita.
These ones get my vote:
Tongs -- A simple pair of kitchen tongs can become an extension of your hand, like very facile fingers that can take extreme heat. I feel like Edward Scissorhands with mine. Use your tongs for everything from getting pizza out of the oven to tossing salad, roasting peppers on the gas burner, stirring pasta, whatever you don't want to do with your fingers.
A good garlic press -- If you use a lot of garlic and don't have a good garlic press? Poor you! You don't know how badly you need one. I seldom recommend specific brands, but this one's a beaut: the Rosle Garlic Press. This high-tech stainless-steel presses unpeeled cloves into smithereens, and unlike other presses, it doesn't leave any garlic left in the press, just the skin that you didn't have to peel! (Also washes wonderfully clean in the dishwasher.)
A good vegetable peeler -- A bad vegetable peeler is an exercise in futility and frustration. A good vegetable peeler is a dream, especially when it's strong enough to tackle winter squash. (Which, by the way, is an excellent way to prep butternut squash.)
Ceramic ginger grater -- This very low tech tool is one of my all-time favorites. It's a little bumpy slip of porcelain, and it pretty much performs miracles. No more peeling and fine-dicing ginger. Just rub it, unpeeled, on this grater and voila, an easy perfect mound of chunky ginger puree. I have also adopted it for grating nutmeg, and recently found that it can stand-in as a citrus zester.
Rice cooker -- This always seemed to me like an utterly unnecessary tool for anyone in possession of a pot and a stove. But then I was given one, and it's been true love ever since. It is an extraordinary multitasker, it can make the best 'real' oatmeal, be used as a one-pot meal steamer; make poached fruit or applesauce; make slow-cooking soups; make stir-free risotto; and so much more.
5. Quicken kitchen clean-up
I am engulfed by a recurring fantasy after each and every dinner party; it involves throwing every last plate, pan, and spoon in the trash, just tossing the whole shebang.
Instead, alas, it's a more prudent plan to keep "clean" in mind when cooking. Clean as you go, even if that just means scraping and putting dirty items neatly in the sink (bonus points for getting them in the dishwasher). Also look at your game plan and figure out which pans, pots, and bowls you can use more than once without cleaning in-between (use the scrambled egg bowl for pancake batter; steam broccoli in the pasta pot, etc.) to reduce items requiring cleaning.
In terms of dish washing, save time and water by skipping the rinse; simply scrape instead. Most people pre-rinse dishes before loading them into the dishwasher, yet modern dishwashers -- certainly those purchased within the last 5 to 10 years -- do a superb job of cleaning even heavily soiled dishes. Many manufacturers, in fact, recommend not rinsing.
Also to save time and water, wash only full loads. The dishwasher uses the same amount of water whether it's half-full or completely full. Putting dishes in the dishwasher throughout the day and running it once in the evening will use less water and energy than washing dishes by hand throughout the day.
Read more about energy-saving dish-washing tips.
6. Make the freezer your friend
Frozen food has taken a bum rap, but all frozen food need not be equated only with TV Dinners and petrified pizza. I know many a chef who secretly (and not so secretly) swears by frozen peas over fresh ones. I have found the freezer to be an invaluable tool in so many ways.
Here are a few ideas to get you started:
Take advantage of sales on meat. When you get home, divide it into individual packets before freezing.
Put all the ingredients for a soup or casserole in individual bags, then put them together in a larger sealable bag, label it, and freeze for an easy-to-combine meal later on.
Cook in bulk and freeze the extra soups, stews, desserts, and more. If you store these in small servings, you can take out as many as you need.
Preserve local produce. Use the freshest produce you can find, and freeze it as soon as you can. Wash and dry everything thoroughly, remove pits, and cut into uniform sized pieces before storing it in containers or freezer bags. Here are some more tips for freezing fresh produce.
Save time on some cleaning tasks. If you freeze a pot with burnt food, it's easier to clean. You can also easily remove wax from frozen candlesticks.
How do you save time in the kitchen? Share your tips in the comments.
More great kitchen tips:
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