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How to quickly defrost butter and 17 more useful kitchen life hacks
Thinking outside the box and ingenuity is what will help us to brighten up the household and culinary routine and improve the quality of life.
How to quickly defrost butter?
Do you need to make a sandwich or add butter to your baked goods, but it’s fresh from the freezer and looks like a stone? There are several ways to solve this problem.
For a sandwich: pour boiling water into any glass container that can cover your piece of butter, and let it stand for a while, heat up. Then pour out the water and cover the piece of butter with a hot dish for one minute. The bath effect will quickly soften the top layer of the product.
For baking: simply grate a piece of frozen butter on a fine grater and add to the dough. This consistency of butter will even improve baked goods.
Store a roll of cling film in the refrigerator – it will unwind easier and less sticky to your hands.
Freeze minced meat properly
If you still have raw minced meat after cooking, freeze it, but so that it defrosts in a matter of minutes. Place the minced meat in a plastic bag. You can tie the bag with a knot, or you can not. Place the minced meat bag on a flat surface (table or cutting board) and smooth. The minced meat should be distributed inside the bag, turning into a flat “pancake”, but rectangular. Place this flat mince pancake in a bag in the freezer. When you pull out this frozen minced meat “plank” and remove the bag from it, you will be surprised how quickly the minced meat will defrost and become ready to use.
To prevent baking from burning
Often, the hostess believes that she is not successful in baking, but in fact the oven is to blame, in which the heat is unevenly distributed. As a result, pies and cakes, half-baked inside, but burnt from below, are obtained. The old method of our grandmothers will help: under the wire rack or baking sheet with the baked product, insert an additional baking sheet into the very bottom of the oven, onto which pour and distribute a couple of packets of rock salt evenly.
To make any sweet dough products more structured and crumbly, add a little semolina to the dough, 1-2 tablespoons when kneading. A worker from a bakery of one of the women’s monasteries in Russia shared her advice.
Cut the biscuit into cakes exactly
… ordinary reinforced sewing thread will help. In other words, the thread of increased strength – these are now sold in all sewing and “handicraft” departments. Make a neat and shallow circular incision on the baked biscuit, then unwind 50 centimeters of thread, insert into the incision and gently divide the biscuit into cakes. They will have a perfectly flat surface.
Chill the drink quickly without losing flavor
… frozen berries such as large black currants, gooseberries, or grapes will help. The wine, lemonade, or juice will become chilled, but not diluted with water, as is the case with adding ice.
If you make tiny holes with a needle in the blunt ends of the eggs before cooking, then they will be easy to clean when cooked!
Another secret: immerse raw eggs in hot water, this “shock” will prevent the egg white from sticking to the shell from the inside.
In order not to untie the bags
If you store bulk products not in cans, but in bags, such a life hack will come in handy. Cut off the top of an empty, clean plastic bottle with a cap, approximately in the area of uXNUMXb uXNUMXbthe “shoulders”. Unscrew the stopper, put this “collar” on the bag, pass the edges of the bag through the neck and straighten the outside. Screw on the stopper. It is easier to unscrew the cap from the neck than to constantly tie and untie the bag.
To make boiled rice snow-white, add a drop of vinegar to the water during cooking – this is how professional chefs do it. And so that the grains do not stick together, add a spoonful of olive oil to the boiled water.
When baking pancakes, you need a very thin layer of oil. Therefore, you will need a spray bottle. You can buy it at a specialty store or purchase the attachment separately and put on any container. In the same original way, you can season salads, sprinkle croutons with oil, and so on.
The water-soaked sponge is placed in a zip bag and frozen in the freezer. The result is a homemade ice pack to help with bruises and injuries.
… Use a knife to cut a circle from the thickest part of the peel and, as you cut the slices from the fruit, attach this “cap” to the lemon with a toothpick. You can do the same with cucumbers.
Soda and vinegar can help clean and disinfect the drain in the kitchen sink. Sprinkle soda over the plum, drizzle with vinegar and watch them sizzle at each other. At the end of the chemical reaction, wash off any traces of it with water.
Tomato juice and tomato paste can be frozen in ice cube trays – these “tomato cubes” will be very convenient when cooking soup, sauce, stew or stew. All the more experienced housewives know how quickly open tomato paste grows moldy in the refrigerator.
You can use coffee pomace from a coffee maker as a gentle abrasive for dishwashing, as well as to remove unpleasant odors from your hands after cutting fish.