Sunday, April 20, 2014

3842 Kitchen shortcuts

Sunday, April 20, 2014

I just saw a nifty way to halve cherry tomatoes on another website.  Put the tomatoes on a dinner plate.  Put another plate upside down on top.  There should a space between the two plates.  Cut through that space.  All tomatoes are cut at one pass.

I have my own hacks that I'd never seen before:
  • If you want to make nice even slices of onion or large tomato, first cut an end off so you have a flat surface.  Instead of cutting down through the onion or tomato, which puts your fingers in jeopardy and sometimes gives you uneven slices, plop the thing flat on the cut surface on the cutting board.  Cover the "top" with your flat hand.  Using a very sharp knife with a fairly flat-sided handle, lying on its side, cut parallel to the cutting board, away from you, sliding each slice out from under after it's cut.  If you need thinner slices, move the cutting board to the edge of the counter to drop the handle (depending on your board), or for thicker slices, support the knife handle with your fingertips as you pass it through.
  • For uniform pie crust and pastry rolling, you'll need some pieces of wood the thickness of the dough (I've used variously chopsticks, a pair of rulers, strips of plastic Jay had cut to size for me, etc.).  When you're almost finished rolling the dough out, while it's still a little bit too thick, place the sticks on either side and roll across them.  You get uniformly thick dough.  I started doing that when I was making Welsh cookies.  They are rolled in batches, fairly thickly, and then cut into circles, and it's important that they all be the same thickness so they'll all cook evenly on the griddle.
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