Kitchen hacks 101
Here are our top kitchen tricks this month that you need to know!
Words by Kirsty Buchanan
Images courtesy of Pexels
Bring some balance
Tomato-based sauces can often have an unpleasant acidity to them. Your solution? Carrots! Carrots add subtle sweetness to help balance out acidity. To get your sauce back on track, simply peel a carrot and add it in whole to your sauce. Let it simmer and remove before serving.
Ginger ninja
Keep your ginger fresher for longer by wrapping it up in cling film and storing it in the freezer. This prevents it from shrivelling up in your veggie drawer. You can even freeze ginger pre-sliced or grated to save you some prep time in the future!
How to fix salty soups
There’s nothing worse than cooking up a delicious pot of warm soup, only to realise it’s a touch too salty! Toss in a few wedges of raw apple or potato into the pot, simmer for 10 minutes and discard. The wedges will absorb some of the salt to help get the balance back.
Bake a bundt
Want to make a bundt cake but don’t have the correct tin? Then DIY one! Grab a regular round cake pan and place a clean tin in the centre tilled with uncooked rice or beans as a weight. Grease well and pour in your cake batter.
Flavour bomb
Did you know that you can use parmesan rinds in your food? Although they’re too hard and tough to eat, you can use them to infuse soups, stocks, sauces and stews with extra flavour and saltiness. Simply store leftover rinds in an airtight container until you’re ready to use them, then plop them into your concoction and let it simmer away. Remove whatever is left of the rind just before serving and enjoy!
Homemade buttermilk
Have you ever started baking and realised you don’t have an ingredient? I definitely have, and one of the worst culprits is buttermilk. Here’s how you can make an easy alternative at home. For every 1 cup buttermilk you need, simply place 1 tbsp lemon juice or white vinegar in a measuring jug, then add in milk up to the 1 cup marking. Mix well and set the mixture aside for 10 minutes until it has curdled. Then it’s ready to use!
Tried these Kitchen Hacks ? Tag us @foodandhomesa #cookingwithFH on Instagram!
ALSO SEE:How to meal-prep
A food stylist and recipe developer, contributing to Food & Home and other esteemed magazines under Habari Media. I love for creating mouthwatering recipes, I bring culinary visions to life through my work.