7 Kitchen Tips & Simple Solutions

Sprinkling popcorn with table salt usually results in a pile of salt at the bottom of the bowl—and a bland snack. Clingy superfine popcorn salt is available for purchase, but it’s easy to make your own.
1. Pulse salt in a spice grinder for about 30 seconds (its texture should be very fine). Pour the pulsed salt into an empty spice jar fitted with a perforated shaker lid.
2. Season the popcorn in a very large bowl, carefully stirring to evenly distribute the salt.

Removing excess water from thawed frozen spinach by pressing it against a colander or squeezing it by hand or in a towel inevitably leaves little green bits everywhere. Here’s a neater approach: puncture the bag a few times with a fork and set it inside a bowl to defrost. Once the spinach has thawed, squeeze the bag; water drains out through the holes without mess or waste.

Squeezing cooked spinach dry is a tedious but necessary step before incorporating it into a recipe. Here’s a very effective method for doing so: place the waterlogged spinach in a colander in the sink and position a slightly smaller glass bowl on top. Then squeeze the two vessels together, pressing out the unwanted liquid.

When a recipe calls for blanching spinach, it means boiling lots of water for a mere 30-second plunge. Speed things up by heating the water in a teakettle and pouring it over the spinach, placed in a colander. Boil 4 to 6 cups of water in a teakettle. Place 1 pound of cleaned and stemmed spinach in a colander set in the sink. Pour the boiling water over the spinach in a steady stream to wilt. Shock the spinach with cold running water, squeeze out the excess moisture, then use as directed in the recipe.

The serrated tip of a grapefruit spoon is a better tool than a paring knife for removing the green crown from strawberries. It’s faster, easier to maneuver, and wastes less fruit.

Many cooks do not own a strawberry huller. However, they may have a drinking straw, which makes the perfect replacement tool. Pushed through the bottom up to the top, a straw cores and hulls whole strawberries quickly and easily.

Here’s a quick way to solve the problem of uneven-looking chocolate-dipped strawberries. Rather than laying them on waxed paper once they’ve been dipped, try following this procedure: use scissors to trim the edges from an empty egg carton. Trim the tall center divider from the egg carton. Then place the strawberries, dipped side up, in the egg holes of the trimmed carton.