7 Useful Kitchen Hacks

Keep your hands clean while greasing a pan by using a plastic sandwich bag.
1. Wearing the bag like a glove, grease the pan.
2. When finished, remove the bag by turning it inside out and neatly discarding it. No more messy paper towels!

A. The traditional method of greasing and flouring cake pans can be a bit of a nuisance. Save yourself some work by combining the greasing and flouring steps: mix 2 parts shortening with 1 part flour and brush this paste lightly onto the cake pans. This eliminates the messy step of dusting the pans with flour.
B. Greasing and flouring cake pans prevents baked goods from sticking, but bakers often struggle with covering every nook and cranny. Instead of banging the pan on the counter to achieve an even coat, try using your turkey baster like a bellows to spread the flour evenly. (hold the pan upside down over the sink and tap once to remove any excess flour.)

Here’s a smart way to grease pans: save empty butter wrappers in a zipper-lock bag in the freezer. Whenever a recipe calls for a greased pan, pull out one wrapper and wipe it on the pan’s surface. Each wrapper is just enough to grease a pan.

Many cooks have encountered the oily film on their counter that results from using an aerosol vegetable oil spray. To avoid this problem, open the door of your dishwasher, lay the item to be greased right on the door, and spray away. Any excess spray will be cleaned off the door the next time you run the dishwasher.

When you need to quickly chill a liquid—whether it’s an ice cream base or a soup—recipes often instruct you to pour it into a metal bowl set in a larger bowl filled with ice water. Here’s a way to speed up the process: pour the liquid into a metal bundt pan and then place the bundt pan in an ice bath. More of the liquid comes in contact with cold metal in a bundt pan than in a bowl, so the temperature nose-dives faster.

For food safety reasons, soups and stews should be cooled to 40 degrees and stored within 4 hours of cooking, but placing large containers of the hot liquid directly in the refrigerator raises the appliance’s temperature to an unsafe level. Here’s a smarter approach: fill a large cooler or the sink with cold water and ice packs. Place the saucepan or stockpot in the cooler or sink until the contents register about 80 degrees, 30 to 45 minutes, stirring the pot occasionally to speed the chilling process. Refill the cooler or sink with cold water if necessary.

Here’s a simple way to cool down soups, stews, or stock quickly so they can be refrigerated: Fill a large, clean plastic beverage bottle almost to the top with water, seal it, and freeze it. Use the frozen bottle to stir the stock in the pot. The ice inside the bottle will cool the food rapidly without diluting it.