It’s always amazing how a good cook can take just a few ingredients out of an understocked refrigerator and create a delicious meal. The reason they find it easy is because they have an almost intuitive grasp of the science of taste, something you may recall in grade school class when you were taught how our tongues can quickly discern the difference between sweet and sour and salty and bitter. This uncanny ability is something that takes years of experience to hone and train.
Still, while you may not have the time or patience to learn how to produce gourmet-like meals even if you are given a recipe, you can still make any dish or drink as long as you have the right, high-quality ingredients or if you know some clever cooking hacks.
Let’s take a look at some quick hacks to make food taste better or to preserve it longer.
2 Hacks to Make Foods Taste Better
- Make morning coffee taste so much better.
If you tend to feel groggy in the morning, you may reach for a cup of home-brewed coffee to help you become alert enough to get dressed, find the car keys and get to work on time. However, sometimes the coffee tastes so awful that you have to drown it in artificial creamers and way too much sugar. The good news is that there is a better way, a way that will have you singing your favorite songs to the radio when you get on the freeway. Simply add a dash of Monin coffee syrup to your wake-me-up brew. Your worldview will instantly switch from black-and-white to technicolor.
- You love spices but have no idea what to buy or how much to use.
With so many spices available in a spice rack, it can be hard to figure out what to add to flavor your meals in just the right way. Here’s a quick solution: buy premixed spices. Since these have been carefully proportioned, they will make bland meals suddenly taste great. You don’t have to know what spices to use. This precision thinking has been done for you. All you need to do is figure out how much to sprinkle on.
3 Hacks to Preserve Food Longer
- How to stop your bananas from getting overripe before you get around to eating them.
It’s aggravating spending all that money on organic bananas for your energy smoothie for your gym workouts only to find that your bananas have gone from golden yellow with just a few dark spots to pitch black. Here’s a quick fix to slow down the ripening process. Strip the skin off your bananas, put them in a plastic bag, and pop them into the refrigerator. Now you will have edible bananas when you need, and, as an added bonus, you won’t need to add ice to your smoothies.
- How to quit eating mushy salads.
You’ve decided to eat healthier, so you bought everything you need to make your own salads. This, of course, includes plenty of big leafy greens, like Romaine, kale, Swiss Chard, or baby spinach. Unfortunately, you often find that your lovely greens have turned into a watery, dark green mush when you finally get around to making a salad. It’s tragic, and, of course, frustrating, but there is a quick fix. Store your greens in paper towels rather than in plastic bags or boxes. This works for one simple reason: the paper towels absorb excess moisture that accumulates over time. Since your greens stay drier, they last longer when in the fridge. You will get an extra 10 days of shelf life so that you are closer to staying true to your New Year’s resolution of healthier eating.
- How to relish your gourmet cheeses for a longer time.
You’ve developed a fondness for gourmet cheese. You’ve learned so much about what types of cheese to buy that you’ve developed a rather sophisticated palette when it comes to cheese and crackers. Unfortunately, your pleasure is often marred by the fact that your cheese tends to get moldy before you can enjoy your favorite treats. Since you’ve paid some hard-earned money to get the best quality cheese from grass-fed cows, this does not make you happy. Fortunately, there is a simple solution. Don’t touch the cheese with your fingers. It’s the contact between skin oils and the cheese surface that precipitates the molding crisis. When you when you need to slice off a chunk, use a paper towel to make sure that the skin on your fingers never makes direct contact with the cheese.
While these shortcuts aren’t likely to make you an instant celebrity chef in your household, at least you won’t be considered a novice chef anymore. After all, you can now serve up tastier food and have your favorite foods last longer.
