You are not always in the mood for ordering food from a restaurant or going out to eat, but cooking something also requires a lot of time that you may not have. The good news is that there are some time-saving cooking tips that can be incredibly useful and enable people to enjoy homemade food and not need a lot of time to make it. Ido Fishman has disclosed some of these amazing tips below to help everyone out:
- Keep everything within arm’s reach
Every cook has their own way of setting up the station, but one thing you need to bear in mind is to have everything within arm’s reach. This will save you from having to run around the kitchen to find something you require during the cooking process. You will be able to work efficiently and quickly and have your meal prepared in no time.
- Make a simple list of what to do
Ido Fishman recommends that you make a mental or written list of things you have to do for cooking and the order in which they need to be done. This will give your efficiency a solid boost. For instance, if you are making pasta, you need to boil your water first. If you overlook this, you will waste almost 20 minutes of your time. Thus, making a simple list can actually be a big time-saver.
- Learn cooling hacks
Most people don’t really worry about cooling hacks, but according to Ido Fishman Chef, they can come in handy when you have to cool something quickly. If you have to cool a liquid, you can just transfer them in a bowl and then put them in a sink filled with ice water. You can stir them a bit and they will cool down in no time. As far as solid items like blanched veggies, quinoa and rice are concerned, you should spread them out on a sheet in a single layer. They will cool down quickly due to the larger surface area.
- Shake garlic between two metal bowls for peeling it
If you don’t have peeled garlic, there is a clever trick that you can use for peeling whole garlic in a flash. Ido Fishman says that you just need to break the bulb a bit, put it between two metal bowls and then shake it up. There will be a change in sound, as it goes from a dull clunking to a much louder banging and this will tell you that the cloves have separated from the skins.
- Do things in stages
Instead of jumping from task to task, it is better for you to do everything in stages. It is better to work from left to right, similar to line cooks, especially when you have some helping hands in the kitchen.
- Run something under cold water to defrost it
There are times when you forget to defrost something. You are human, after all. Ido Fishman suggests that you turn to the running water method to defrost quickly. This means that you run cold water over the frozen item and you will speed up the defrosting process. It can actually be faster than submerging the items in cold water.
- Use the equipment you have
A lot of people simply shove their food processors in the back of their kitchen cabinet and don’t bother making use of it. According to Ido Fishman, this is a mistake and you need to rectify it. A food processor can help you save a lot of time. You can use it for chopping a ton of garlic, shredding a block of cheese and even slicing carrots. Most of these processors come with a number of attachments that can be used for doing just about anything. Therefore, they are considered quite useful and you should take full advantage of them rather than leaving them in the cabinet.