kitchen hints & other helpful information

Baking powder vs. soda
Baking powder (sodium bicarbonate plus tartaric acid) helps cookies expand or puff up. Baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) helps tenderize the dough and also provides a bit of leavening. Sifting or sprinkling these ingredients into the mix will help ensure an even interior crumb, says Joy the Baker.

Bacon
Carefully separate each slice and dredge in flour. Place in a medium hot frying pan and notice how little the bacon shrinks. Continue to do this until you have the desired amount. Cooking slowly is the secret. And turn only once. You can make them dark in color to very dark in color. It makes excellent Crispy Bacon and/or crumple the bacon when it is cool and place in the freezer and use for salads, soups or sauces.

Bread Dough
Place dough in your oven with the oven light on. This creates a nice warm environment for the yeast to get to work.

Bromo-Seltzer – Home Made
Vinegar and baking soda - though unsure of the ratio.

Brown Sugar
If your brown sugar gets hard, add a slice of apple to the container to soften. You could purchase one of those brown sugar bears to moisten and keep in your container. Brown sugar will stay fresh if stored in the freezer.

Buttermilk Substitution
Have a recipe that calls for buttermilk, but don’t have any on hand? Place a tablespoon of white vinegar or lemon juice in a liquid measuring cup. Add enough milk to bring the liquid up to the one-cup line. Let stand for five minutes.  Stir and use according to your recipe.

Cabbage for Cabbage Rolls
Instead of boiling your cabbage for cabbage rolls, put it in the freezer. Once thawed, use as if you had cooked it. You can also substitute fresh grape vine leaves for cabbage.

Cheese
Find a great sale on cheese but can’t use it up right away? As long as you don’t plan to slice it, cheese can be stored in the freezer. Once thawed, it is great for grating.

Cheesecake
When mixing ingredients use the lowest speed of the mixer, and beat only until eggs are blended in. Using a higher speed will infuse air into the batter which causes the cheesecake to puff and then fall, causing cracks. Place a shallow pan half full of water on the bottom oven rack during baking. This helps keep the cheesecake top moist. Always cool a cheesecake in a draft free place. Let the cheesecake cool for 10 minutes before removing the ring.

Cookies
Recipe permitting, whenever you make cookies, make a big batch of cookie dough. Bake a few cookies to enjoy right away. Portion and freeze the remaining dough on a cookie sheet. Once frozen, package for storage in the freezer. Next time you want some cookies, take a few portions out of the freezer and let them thaw out. Bake normally. Enjoy the fresh baked cookies with almost no clean up.

Put a slice of fresh bread into the container with your cookies. That’s the best way to keep them nice and moist, says Milk Bar’s Christina Tosi. It will breathe new life into your cookies for three or four days.

When you are defrosting baked/frozen cookies, open the lid or bag or wrapping slightly so condensation does not form.

Corn on the Cob
When boiling corn on the cob, add a pinch of sugar, instead of salt for sweeter corn.

Eggs – Hard-Boiled
For perfect hard-boiled eggs, fill the sauce pan with water, just above the level of the eggs. (Some say that adding a pinch of salt will prevent the eggs from cracking.) Cook on high. Once the water has been boiling for 5 minutes, turn off the element and cover the pan. Set the timer for 13 minutes. Immediately immerse in cold water and let cool. Peel the egg and enjoy in your favourite recipes. Or, cook them in your Instant Pot.

Eggs
When you need to separate whites from yolks, do so when the eggs are cold. It will reduce the chances of yolk breakage. Eggs for beating into cookie doughs will incorporate more readily when they are at room temperature. Yolks equal fat and richness; whites lighten the texture. Most recipes rely on large eggs for baking, says cookbook author Joy the Baker, even if they don’t specify the size. A large egg translates to about 50 millilitres or 3 1/4 tablespoons; if you were to use extra-large or jumbo eggs instead of large, you would be adding substantially more liquid to the dough.

Flour
Never measure flour by putting your measuring cup inside your flour bin and scooping up the flour. Always use a separate scoop to fill your measuring cup. It can make quite a difference to the amount of flour you are actually using and definitely give you different results than you were expecting in your baking.

Unbleached all-purpose flour has more protein and weighs slightly more than bleached flour. So if you are able to use bleached flour for cookies, which will help make them more tender and may make coloured doughs brighter, do so.

Garlic
When chopping several cloves of garlic, pour a little oil on top, ensuring that all the cloves are covered in oil, then chop them up. That prevents the cloves from flying all over the place.

Ginger
Peel ginger with the edge of a spoon to remove the husk.

Gravy
Be sure to use cold water when mixing with flour (and pepper) for nice smooth gravy.

Halving a Recipe

If recipe calls for	Half would be
1/4 cup	2 tbsp
1/3 cup	2 tbsp & 2 tsp
1/2 cup	1/4 cup
2/3 cup	1/3 cup
3/4 cup	6 tbsp
1 tbsp	1 1/2 tsp
1 tsp	1/2 tsp
1/2 tsp	1/4 tsp

Honey
To restore crystallized honey, just stand the jar in a bowl of boiling water for a few minutes till it becomes runny again.

Ice Cream
Keep Ice Cream from getting ice crystals by storing the container upside down in the freezer.

Lettuce – Iceberg
The easy way to core a head of iceberg lettuce is to remove the outer layers of the head. Then pick up the head and slam it on the counter, core first. It will break apart a bit, so you can easily reach in a grab the core, leaving nice leaves behind.

Mashed Potatoes
Add a small splash of Eggnog to the potatoes as part of the amount of milk you add when mashing your holiday potatoes. This happy accident worked out wonderfully for the Clark household. But beware, too much is not a good thing.

Mixing
A mixture of butter and sugar that is over beaten can result in cookie dough that spreads, says cookbook author and Paris food blogger David Lebovitz. Even when a recipe says to beat until fluffy or "cream the butter and sugar together," mix those two ingredients only until thoroughly blended.

Mushrooms
Don’t wash your mushrooms. Because they are so sponge-like, they absorb whatever liquid you use to clean them. Use a brush instead.
(The following tip is from Emilienne Zastre Leclair, passed on to her family) Have you picked mushrooms out in the woods, but aren’t sure if they are edible? Fry them up with a dime made of silver (newer dimes are not suitable). If the mushrooms turns black, don’t eat them.

Nuts
Toasted/roasted nuts have more flavour. When you bring home fresh ones from the store, toss them on a baking sheet, roast, cool and stash in a container in the freezer until ready to use. This will save you time when you are baking in multiple batches. Bonus flavour: Drizzle them with melted butter before toasting; be sure to freeze or refrigerate once they have cooled.

Ovens
Make sure your oven temperature is accurate. Oven thermometers are inexpensive and helpful for monitoring. Consider getting the oven professionally calibrated before a big baking session if you can’t adjust it yourself (check the manual). Hot spots and uneven heating are common in many home ovens, especially as the appliances age. That’s why rotating baking sheets full of cookies halfway through the baking time is generally a good idea even when you are baking them one sheet at a time. For convection, the rule of thumb is to set a convection oven 25 degrees Fahrenheit lower than for a conventional oven.

Parmesan Cheese Rinds
If you grate your own Parmesan Cheese, don’t throw out the rind once you’ve removed all the cheese. Save it and add it into your homemade soups (remove before serving). This is a great secret ingredient.

Pasta
To keep cooked pasta from sticking, either rinse in cold water or add a small amount of oil and stir to coat.

Pie Crusts
For shells baked empty, once pastry is placed in pan, put in the fridge for 30 minutes before you bake. This will help keep the crust from shrinking as much. And be sure not to stretch the dough. Stretched dough will shrink as it bakes.
Don’t waste the leftovers from your pies and pastries. For a sweet treat, cut into bit-sized pieces, sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar and bake like cookies. For a savoury result, cover with some Parmesan or Gruyere cheese and bake it for a delicious appetizer.

Popcorn
Keep popcorn fresh and encourage more kernels to pop by storing in the freezer.

Potatoes
Don’t store potatoes in the refrigerator.
Whether you do your baked potatoes in the oven, the barbeque or the microwave, be sure to prick them with a fork to let the steam out and keep them from exploding. Murphy's Law suggests that if your potatoes are going to explode, it will happen shortly after you clean your oven.

Punch Ice
Freeze juice in the bottom of a Bundt pan to create a great ice ring that won’t water down your punch as it melts.

Salt
Does your salt clump in the shaker? Put a few grains of rice in the shaker to absorb the moisture and keep your salt running smoothly.

Sour Cream
Store sour cream in its original container, upside down in the refrigerator. It will last much longer as no air will be able to get in the container.

Special Plate
Keep a “special plate” on hand for use now and then. When it is someone’s birthday, they did something extra special, or just because you love them, serve their meal on the “special plate”. It makes meal time more fun.

Tomatoes
Store tomatoes with stems pointed down and they will stay fresher, longer. Do not refrigerate.

Turkey
If you hate the thought of dry turkey, buy a fresh, not frozen turkey. They truly are juicier, more tender, and tastier than frozen birds.

Wine Leftovers (ya, it does happen sometimes)
Freeze leftover wine into ice cubes for future use in casseroles and sauces.

Yeast - Dry
Active and Instant Yeast should be stored in a sealed container in the freezer, or at least the fridge. They are very similar and can almost be used interchangibly. The only difference is that you need a little less instant yeast. If you use 1 1/4 tsps of active yeast, use only 1 tsp of instant yeast