25 simple cooking hacks you should add to your repertoire

Forget to soften your butter ahead of time? Break out your cheese grater and simply grate off as much as you want. This is actually our preferred method for putting butter on veggies, potatoes, or noodles, as you’ll get a much more even distribution with the cheese grater.

We love natural peanut butter, but it frequently ends up separating, with the oil on top and the hardened peanut butter hard to reach at the bottom. The solution? Simply store it upside down. Then, when you’re ready for some PB, flip the jar upright—the oil will rise and the whole thing will be easier to stir.

Using a spoon or fork to remove an eggshell shard from your bowl can be a tricky task, but try using one of the eggshell halves to simply scoop it out. Be sure to clean the outside of the shell by rinsing it under hot water first. If your hands are clean, you can also wet one of your fingers and use that to rescue the shard.

There are a few different hacks for separating an egg yolk from the white, but our favorite involves using a plastic bottle (20-ounce bottles work best). Crack the egg in a separate bowl, turn the (cleaned) bottle upside down, squeeze the bottle just a little bit, and gently place the bottle’s lips against the yolk. When you stop squeezing, the yolk will be sucked up into the bottle. Then just squeeze it back out into your mixing bowl.

Sure, you can use a knife to cut a kiwi. But it takes a while to cut off the skin, and you end up wasting some of the delicious flesh. (A sentence both fruit-lovers and zombies can relate to.) Instead, just slice the ends off with a knife, and then insert a spoon under the skin and use the curved utensil to perfectly peel your kiwi.

When we divide up the batter for muffins (or cupcakes), we always end up with some smaller muffins and some behemoths. If you want to evenly and easily portion out your muffins, try using an ice cream scoop. Not only will your baked goods be well-divided, but if your scoop has a trigger, you can easily drop the batter into the cups.

When you need fresh-squeezed lemon juice for a recipe (or a cocktail!) try zapping the lemon in the microwave for 7-10 seconds, and then rolling it on the counter with the palm of your hand. When you cut open the lemon, the tenderized interior will yield more juice with less effort.

Slicing the whole top off of a strawberry is too wasteful, and cutting around the green takes too long. Instead, stick a straw in the strawberry’s tip and push it all the way through. If you line it up right, the green top will pop right off. We’ve been doing this since we were kids—and back then, we’d blow through the other end off the straw to fire little strawberry darts at our siblings.

You can make guacamole a day or two ahead of time without the top getting brown just by adding water. Specifically: Put the guac in an airtight container, make sure it’s flat with no air pockets, pour in enough water to cover the surface, and put the lid back on. When you’re ready to eat it, simply dump the water out and stir.

We’re here to tell you that there IS hope when trying to salvage brown sugar that has hardened into a giant unforgiving block. Zap it for one minute next to a microwave-safe cup or container of water. If you just want to soften a few lumps of brown sugar, put them in a microwave-safe bowl, cover it with a damp paper towel, and heat for 20 seconds—or more, if needed. (You can also prevent the clumps in the first place by placing some marshmallows inside the storage container!)

If not having a cherry pitter is driving you to drink, grab a beer! Then use the clean, empty beer bottle to de-pit your cherries by placing a cherry on the top and shoving a chopstick through it in a downward motion. Not only will the chopstick pop the pit right out, but the pits will land in the bottle for an easy clean-up!

Trying to pry the top off a glass jar? If this is your first time opening the jar, insert a spoon or can opener in the crack between the lid and the glass, and press up until the center of the top pops. It will now be much easier to open. If it’s not a new jar, or it’s seriously stuck, wrap a rubber band tightly around the circumference of the lid—the thicker the band, the better. Now you’ll be able to get a grip when twisting off the top!

When baking with measuring cups, we used to always find ourselves scraping out honey, syrup, or other sticky substances with a spoon or rubber spatula. Then we started spraying the inside of the measuring cups with cooking oil beforehand, and now the ingredients slide right out!

Did you know you can froth your own milk at home without a fancy frother or cappuccino machine? Instead, put the milk in a jar, screw on the lid, and shake, shake, shake until the volume doubles. Then microwave your froth for 30 seconds, and presto!

Eggs are still good beyond their sell-by date, but how long exactly? The amount of air inside an egg increases as they go bad, so submerge the eggs you want to use in a glass or bowl of water. If they sink, they’re still good; if they float, throw ‘em out!

Ever notice if you microwave a plate or container of leftovers—say, spaghetti mixed with tomato sauce—that it never seems to cook evenly? The outside starts to burn before the middle is even warm. Try pushing the food toward the edge of the plate/container, creating a donut shape with no food in the middle. Now your food will heat evenly, although you might also want to stir halfway through.

Cutting corn off the cob—especially in large quantities—can be a tedious task. You’ve got to steady the cob, and the kernels end up going everywhere. To make things easier, lay down a bundt—a bundt cake pan, that is. Insert the pointed end of the corn into the center hole of the cake pan for stability, and then simply slice, turn, and repeat. In the end, all your fresh corn kernels will land neatly in the bundt pan.

If you’re still breaking up ground meat with a spoon or spatula, let us be the first to tell you: there’s a better way! Instead, reach for your potato masher (pictured second from right). The twisted, zig-zag shape will break apart the meat much faster, and the even spacing of the metal will produce more consistently sized chunks. Taco Tuesday just got a whole lot easier!

We’ve tried every method of chopping onions, and nearly all of them left us in tears (for multiple reasons). But by combining two methods, we can now chop tear-free. First, put your onion in the freezer for about 30 minutes. This already will reduce your teariness drastically, but you can hold back your tears even more by placing your cutting board on your stovetop and turning on the exhaust fan before dicing.

If you’re peeling a clove or two of garlic, nothing beats the old classic method of cutting off the root ends with a chef’s knife, putting the clove between the cutting board and the flat of the knife, and smashing it with your hand. Easy-peezy. But if you need to peel numerous bulbs, try putting the cloves in a mason jar with plenty of extra space. Then shake it as hard as you can for at least 10 seconds, and the cloves will slip right out of their skins. Effort-wise, this doesn’t save you any energy, but it can certainly save time.

If the only thing you make with your waffle iron is waffles, you are missing out. You can cook an entire breakfast with this handy gadget—from eggs and bacon to cinnamon buns and hash browns (of the shredded variety). You can also make lunch or dinner dishes like grilled cheese and pizza, or desserts, like brownies!

Parchment paper is great for—and sometimes critical to—baking. But while it’s easy to lay down a piece on a baking sheet, getting it into a deep baking dish or a circular/square pan can be an annoying task…especially while you’re trying to pour batter on top of it! Instead, crumble up your parchment paper into a ball like you’re going to throw it out, and then unfold it completely. Your parchment paper is now much more malleable and can be shaped any way you wish. 

Fresh ginger is oddly shaped, so cutting it can be both difficult and wasteful. Try this method instead: First, wash the skin. Then get a spoon, firmly grip it by/near the bowl, and scrape the skin away with the edge of the spoon. Easy!

A knife is almost always the best cutting utensil, but not when it comes to soft cheeses. The cheese always ends up sticking to the knife or getting super smashed. Instead, use unflavored dental floss to cleanly cut the cheese. (Pull it tightly!) The same method works for soft cakes, cheesecakes, and some pastries.

You probably know about putting baking soda in your fridge to keep it smelling fresh, but baking soda can also deodorize garbage disposals, garbage cans, and carpets. Baking soda can remove coffee stains in mugs and juice stains on countertops. And if you mix it with hydrogen peroxide, it can clean your sink, faucet, greasy baking sheets, hard-water-stained plastic utensils, and old pots and pans. There are even more uses out there, so give it a Google!