Timeless Kitchen Hacks

Washing your hands is one of the best ways to stop the spread of food-borne pathogens. Wash before and during cooking, especially after touching raw meat and poultry. The u.s. Food and drug administration recommends at least 20 seconds in hot, soapy water. How long is that? Try singing “happy birthday.

No matter how hard you scrub your hands, simple soap and water do little to remove lingering red beet stains. However, rubbing a dab of whitening toothpaste with peroxide over the area can help erase the stains. Or you can try avoiding the stains altogether by rubbing the hand that will be holding the beets with about ½ teaspoon vegetable oil, taking care to keep the knife-holding hand dry, and then cutting the beets as desired. Afterward, wash your hands with hot, soapy water.

Here’s a trick for shortening your scrubbing time after kneading sticky dough.
Just sprinkle some flour on your hands and rub them together. You’ll notice how easily the gunk on your hands starts to slough off onto the counter. Add a bit more flour and keep scrubbing until your hands are relatively free of dough.

This flour-clean method will also work with utensils, metal and wood. Sprinkle and rub. Any dough left over in your mixing bowl can be left out to dry. Once the dough is dry, you can easily scrape it out of the bowl and into your compost waste bin.

And what about the countertop?
Using a plastic scraper, scrape flattened dough residue into the middle of the counter, creating a small pile of bits. If you have a lot of flour amidst these bits, use a sieve and sift it into a bowl. Once this reusable flour has been collected, throw away the rest.

Dough sticks like glue not only to fingers, but also to baking bowls and spatulas, and the cleanup that comes with bread baking can be a headache. To get the sticky dough off, simply rinse (or soak, if you’re multitasking) with cold water to relax the gluten, then use your fingers to rub the dough off. Make sure to throw the doughy blob into the trash so it won’t clog your kitchen sink, then clean as you normally would with warmer water and a sponge.

After working with pungent ingredients such as garlic, onions, or fish, many cooks use a little lemon juice to wash away any lingering odors from their hands. But sometimes the smell is stronger than the citrus. For those tough cases, try washing your hands with a couple of tablespoons of mouthwash. Any inexpensive brand is fine.