7 Kitchen Tips & Simple Solutions

It’s tedious to individually dip shrimp in batter before deep-frying, and the cooked shellfish are also hard to pick up and eat when their tails are covered in batter. Here’s an ingenious technique that keeps the tails clean and gets the job done quickly: tuck the ends of three shrimp (shelled and deveined but with the tails left on) between the fingers of one hand, form a loose fist around the tails, and dip all three shrimp at once into a bowl of batter.

Between pulling off all the little legs and prying open the shells, peeling shrimp can be a tiresome chore. Over the years, though, we’ve perfected an easy two-step method.
1. Holding the tail end of the shrimp with one hand and the opposite end of the shrimp with the other, bend the shrimp back and forth and side to side to split the shell.
2. Lift off the tail portion of the shell, then slide your thumb under the legs of the remaining portion and lift it off as well.

Deveining usually creates a large, unsightly slit on the outer curve of shrimp. Here’s a technique for more attractive results.
1. Insert one tine of a dinner fork into the shrimp, pass the tine beneath the vein, and hook it under.
2. Draw the vein out through the very small hole you’ve created, leaving the shrimp looking virtually untouched.

Once removed from a shrimp, the vein can stick tenaciously to the tip of a paring knife, nail scissors, fork, or other deveining tool of your choice. Instead of fighting to remove each vein from your utensil (as it fights to stay right where it is), try this method: place a sheet of paper towel flat on your work surface. Once you have freed the vein with the tip of the paring knife, just touch the knife to the paper towel and the vein will slip off the knife and stick to the towel. When you are through, toss the dirty towel into the trash.

Measuring fresh-ground pepper for a recipe can be tricky. A coffee grinder works, but, if you’re like us, you end up grinding much more than you need. Solve this problem by counting the number of grinds your pepper mill requires to produce ¼ teaspoon of pepper and then marking the number on a piece of tape affixed to the mill.

Try this trick for a way to catch your pepper mill’s loose grinds and make neat work of measuring fresh-ground pepper.
1. Grind the pepper into a cupcake liner.
2. Bend the liner edges to pour the pepper into a measuring spoon.
3. Discard any extra pepper and store the mill and liner inside a ramekin.

After you remove the rind from a pineapple, the hard, dark bits, or “eyes,” remain attached to the flesh. Using a paring knife to trim the eyes is time-consuming and can result in a good deal of waste. Here are two easy and efficient solutions.
A. Use a small melon baller to quickly and neatly scoop out the eyes.
B. Use a strawberry huller to remove the spiny eyes from a pineapple. The tool’s prongs pluck out the fruit’s tough spots with minimal effort.