I realized today that there are some kitchen hacks that I’ve used for many years that not everyone knows about, which is amazing to me. Then again, I’ve been cooking and cleaning up since I was about 5 years old, so that’s more than half a century of experience!
I was also a busy working mom for years so I had to learn some new kitchen hacks..
I’ve been making my son batches of chicken salad recently because it makes a great and healthy snack. The recipe is simple – cold diced chicken, mayo, diced seedless grapes, diced pecans, chopped onion, and diced celery. There are three hacks here. One, take a fresh lime and halve it and use lots of fresh lime juice. It’s also great on tuna salad. Lime juice is sweeter and has no seeds so I like it much better than lemon juice. Two, take a paring knife and strip the strings off the celery, and it’s much easier to chew. In terms of seasonings, I go in heavy with onion powder, garlic powder, celery salt, and powdered curry seasoning by McCormick.
Cutting cakes and brownies: put Pam on the knife blade to prevent it from getting gunked up.
Peeling hardboiled eggs: hold the egg under running water while you peel it.
Easy Pie: Do you need to take something to a potluck but you don’t cook or bake and you are tired of buying paper plates/cups or ice? Take an ice cream pie! Buy a graham cracker piecrust at the store, and a 1.5 quart tub of ice cream [we are partial to Mayfield] and let it soften on the kitchen counter for 30 minutes. Spoon it into the piecrust and smooth it out. Pop it back into the freezer until it’s time to leave. If you want to get fancy, buy a plain Hershey bar and smash it up, and sprinkle it on top of the pie, or buy chocolate syrup and drizzle it on top before freezing.
Most people will love this Green Bean Salad. My kids loved it. Buy some Del Monte canned green beans – 4 or 5 regular-sized cans. Drain them in a colander, then put them in a bowl. Cut up an onion and add it. Add some diced cucumber if you like, and some original Ranch dressing, onion powder, and lots of dill weed. Leave out the raw onion if your kids won’t eat it - onion powder is easier anyway.
Do you want your kids to eat veggies and find them resistant? Boil that cauliflower or broccoli until really soft. Not mush, but not at all crunchy, either. Pop it into a mixing bowl and take a hand blender and puree it and add: mayo and mustard / real butter and garlic salt / cream of mushroom soup and mayo. Any one of these combos is improved with grated cheese. Don’t sweat the cholesterol in real butter and mayo, unless your child has high cholesterol, which is rare. Call it creamed cauliflower or creamed broccoli and serve it in little dishes topped with cheese and paprika so it looks “partyfied.”
Potatoes are great, cheap and filling and they can make an easy dinner. Scrub your large spuds and wipe them dry, then poke holes in them with a fork, grease them with oil, and sprinkle salt all over them. Wrap them in foil and bake them at 400 for 45-60 minutes. Bake ten at a time and stick them in the fridge to pull out for meals later. When it’s time for dinner, pull them out and open them up and top them with cheese, bacon bits, butter, sour cream, broccoli, chili, etc. Run them under the broiler for a few minutes or just microwave them.
Beef Roast: buy a bottle of decent Sherry or red wine, and add 1-2 cups of it, along with lots of soy sauce and fresh garlic. I like to use bought beef stock, too [see photo]. Soy sauce and liquor always make beef better. In fact, if you have a crock pot, throw in your beef roast, wine, broth, garlic and soy sauce along with a couple of cans of potatoes and a package of baby carrots and cook on high for 6-8 hours and you have a one dish dinner. Prep time is 5-10 minutes. If you leave your meat on the kitchen counter for an hour before popping it in the crock pot it will be much more tender.
Super Easy Chili dinner: My crock pot chili is a super easy one dish meal. I use 1-2 lbs. of ground beef, 2-4 cans of Bush’s chili beans, chopped onion, a can of Rotel, several cans of tomato puree, and a can of pumpkin. Yes, pumpkin! It absorbs the chili flavors and nobody knows they are eating pumpkin. If you hate chopping onion, use lots of onion powder. / I made this chili years ago for a party, and of course bought Fritos and grated cheese because those make chili much better. One of my son’s friends who was a super picky eater ate a huge bowl of it. His mother called me the next day and said he had raved about how much he loved Dee’s chili. I rattled off the ingredients. His mom is a great cook herself. She was astonished he had not noticed the pumpkin. I asked her what she put in her chili. She said grated carrots! No wonder the kid didn’t like it.
Cleaning scrubby pads and brushes: rinse them off and then put them in the dishwasher and run them through.
Cleaning any pot or pan: if there are baked-on glops of food or food residue, put in a cup or two of water and heat the pan on the stove for a few minutes. The warmed water will loosen the gunk so you can scrape it off.
Cleaning the microwave: put water into a sturdy [think, Pyrex] cup and heat it for 5 minutes. Go in with a dry paper towel to get big stuff, then a wet paper towel for the final pass.
Cleaning the counter: Do you have some sticky mess on your kitchen counter? Boil some water and put a dollop on the mess and wait a couple of minutes. It should come off really easily then.
Want more recipes and/or tips? A couple of years ago I wrote a little cookbook, What's for Dinner, Mom? and it's available on Amazon. My mother's memoir, Singing to the Cows, also has a lot of recipes and more cooking tips.
