Buy brown sugar as you need it, in as small a quantity as possible. The stuff just doesn’t keep very long. But if your brown sugar is rock-hard, don’t throw it out. Revive it with a minute or so in the microwave.
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Caramelize more onions than you need to. A lot more—you’ll use the extras in omelets and sandwiches; on chicken, steak and pork; in pastas and stews.
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Always keep lemons in the fridge. They’ll keep longer that way, so you’ll always be able to add fresh lemon juice to everything from dressings to cocktails. Plus, you can use the squeezed rinds to clean and deodorize your wooden cutting boards.
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Buy your avocados at a Mexican grocery store. Those are the stores that sell them ripe.
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Don’t toast your toast. Fry it! Warm some butter or olive oil over medium-high heat. Lay in bread and fry until golden on both sides. Sell your toaster.
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Marinate your cheese. Mozzarella, feta, and fresh goat cheese? Delicious. Mozz, feta and goat cheese marinated in olive oil, chile flakes, and fresh herbs? More delicious.
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Air dry your chickens. After you’ve unwrapped and rinsed your bird, pat it dry, salt it generously, and let it stand in the refrigerator, uncovered, for a few hours before roasting. The bone-dry skin will cook up to a crackly, crunchy, golden brown.
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Make your own croutons. Toss cubed bread on a rimmed baking sheet with oil, salt, pepper and whatever other tasty thing you fancy. Bake at 350, tossing once or twice, until golden brown. Now see if any actually make it to your salad.
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Keep your vegetables scraps. Toss fennel fronds, carrot ends and other vegetable scraps into a resealable plastic bag you keep in the freezer. When you reach critical mass, make vegetable stock.
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Oil-salt-roast- in that order! When roasting vegetables, toss them in oil, then season them with salt and pepper and toss again. This way, the seasoning actually sticks to your food.
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Bake pies in glass pie pans. It heats more evenly than tin, and when your pie is perfectly golden-brown everywhere, you’ll know it.
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Establish a salt bowl. Having a stash of salt always within arm’s reach when you’re at the stove is the first step to better seasoner.
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Cool your food before putting in the fridge or freezer. If you don’t, the temperature in the refrigerator will rise. And the only thing that benefits is mold.
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When a recipe calls for chocolate chips, break out a bar of chocolate instead. Chopping your own chips creates pockets of melty chocolate throughout your cookies—some small, some large, all delicious.
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Season some of your vegetables with sugar. Carrots, squash, tomatoes—these vegetables have a natural sweetness that’s enhanced by a dash (just a dash!) of sugar.
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Toast your grains and nuts. It’s the first step to building roasty, warm flavor. Using quinoa? Toast it before you rinse it. Using almonds? Toast it for more crunchiness!
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Toast your spices. A quick stint in a dry skillet over medium heat wakes dry spices up and releases their oils, which means your paprika will taste a lot more paprika-y. Use whole spices, watch the pan like a hawk, and stir constantly until the spices are fragrant, then transfer to a plate to cool before using.
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Stop crowding your pans. Food that’s crowded into a cast-iron skillet or sheet tray gets steamed—and soggy—instead of crisp.
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Buy two loaves of that awesome bread and freeze one. And there are always plenty of uses for it. Just remember: Air is the enemy! Wrap that loaf in foil (sliced or unsliced) and put it in a freezer bag before stashing.
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Avoid evil glass cutting boards! And they’re all evil. Glass cutting boards send shivers down your spine when you use them. They dull your knives. They’re slippery. And they’re hard to use. Use wood, bamboo or plastic instead.
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Find the biggest mixing bowl you can and buy it! You cannot toss a salad or mix cookies or make meatballs in a tiny cereal bowl. All you can do is make a bigger mess.
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Use a garbage bowl! Buy a large bowl and keep it at the ready to fill up with egg shells and other trash generated while cooking.
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Save the schmaltz. Chicken fat is amazing stuff, whether you’re frying onions in it, sautéing greens in it or spreading it on toast. So after eating your roast chicken dinner, drain the now-cooled liquid fat into a plastic container and store it in your freezer. (Pro tip: This also holds true for bacon fat)
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Dry your salad greens using a kitchen towel. Salad spinners? So bulky and annoying. Instead, pile your just-washed greens into a clean dish towel, gather it by the ends, and swing that sucker around until your salad is dry (or your arm is tired).
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Stock up on super-cheap, random cuts of meat. A freezer full of roasted turkey necks and bony beef cuts will ensure you always have what you need to make broth.
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Toss most of your spices- especially that ground cumin! Ground spices die quickly. So give them a whiff—if they don’t smell like anything, they won’t taste like anything. And if they don’t taste like anything, you’re cooking with a flavorless, brown powder.
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Make sure your work area is well lit when cooking! Look, the 40-watt light bulb in your oven hood isn’t going to cut it. Get a cheap lamp light from a hardware store so you can see what you’re doing.
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Double that batch of rice (or quinoa, or bulgur, or…). Having cooked grains in your fridge means that fried rice, pilafs, rice bowls and robust salads are just minutes away.
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Get a mandoline and don’t be afraid to use it! Want gorgeous scalloped potatoes or perfectly julienned carrots? Buy a mandoline. Are you a scaredy-cat? Wear a cut-resistant safety glove until you feel comfortable bare-handed.
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Treat your herbs like flowers. There’s nothing worse than limp herbs. Next time, trim the stems and put the parsley in a glass of water, fit a plastic bag over it, and stash it in the refrigerator.
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Replace your non-stick skillet. Do your scrambled eggs slide off the pan even if you don’t use oil or butter? They should. If not, might be time for an upgrade.
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