Search icon

Life

04th Feb 2019

The best 5 food hacks to save you a lot of bother

JOE

Brought to you by Cully & Sully

Some of these food hacks would definitely come in handy.

It’s all well and good if you enjoy cooking, but it can all be a bit of bother sometimes. More often than not, you spend more time slicing, dicing and peeling than you do actually cooking the food.

These are all just obstacles. Obstacles that stand between you and food.

Anything that makes those obstacles a little bit easier to overcome should be welcomed with open arms.

1. Grate advice

It is a scientific fact that butter straight out of the fridge is the hardest known substance on earth. Once it has reached the consistency of a brick, you have little to no hope of spreading it across a slice of bread.

That is, unless you simply use a cheese grater. Once you’ve broken that brick down into easily-spreadable flakes, it’s a lot easier to measure the right amount and it melts a lot quicker.

2. Mango glass

There is no denying that mangos are absolutely delicious, but they can be a bit time-consuming to peel. The outer skin is a lot tougher to peel than an apple or an orange, and it lies between you and the sweet fruit within.

As you’ll see with the video below, all you need is a glass.

3. Put the “straw” into strawberry

There might not be any tough skin to get through with strawberries, but after slicing the top off your 10th one you tend to get bored. Plus, there’s a good chance you’ll end up slicing a good chunk off the top.

With just a straw, you could have a bowl full of strawberries ready to go a hell of a lot quicker than you would otherwise. Just start from the bottom, and push straight up towards the stem.

4. Separate the yolk

If whatever you’re cooking requires you to separate egg whites from the yolks, the traditional method of transferring from one half of the shell to the other is risky. One wrong move and the yolk will split, bringing you back to square one.

If you have a spare empty plastic bottle, then you can use that to suck up the yolk. Just put all the eggs you need into a bowl, and squeeze the empty bottle over the yolk to suck it up into the bottle for you to do as you please.

5. Poach eggs in cling film

As great as poached eggs look and taste, they can be quite tricky to get right. The old-school technique of swirling the water around the saucepan can lead to no shortage of botched eggs.

In truth, all you need is a small bowl and a bit of cling film. Line the bowl with the film, throw in a small bit of oil and salt, then pop in the egg.

You’ll get perfectly round poached eggs every time.

Did we miss any cool hacks? To be in with a chance of winning a Smeg fridge and weekly Smeg prizes, share your favourite food hacks with Cully & Sully on their social media. Follow Cully & Sully on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to find out everything you need to know!

Brought to you by Cully & Sully