Here are some simple tips about some simple kitchen tools from a simple-minded cook.
I use a splatter screen for frying chicken, then I drain some of the oil from the cooked pieces by placing them on top of the screen for a few minutes before serving. The oil drips back into the pan and the pieces have a little less oil. And no, I don’t fry chicken often, it’s an occasional treat since I don’t frequently use that much oil. I’ve found that brown rice flour used for dredging the chicken produces a perfect crust. I mix the flour with paprika for a nice color, Mrs. Dash, and iodized sea salt, then coat the chicken pieces and fry in medium hot olive oil.
To best preserve the ‘seasoning’ of a cast iron skillet, I don’t use soap on the inside. (I often do use soap on the outside.) I use hot water and a greeny pad I’ve rinsed the soap out of. If food is really cooked on, I pour boiling water into the skillet and wait till it’s cool enough to use my greeny pad. I never soak a cast iron skillet! Letting water stand in the skillet will steal the ‘cure’. While the pan is still warm from the hot water used to wash it, I dry it and add olive oil to lightly cover inside bottom. I use my cast iron skillet every day. In fact, I don’t own any other kind of skillet. I even stir fry in it rather than use an aluminum wok. Aluminum cooking utensils can leach aluminum into the food- not good. However, the cast iron skillet leaches iron into the food- good!
A blender can help your whole wheat bread/rolls bake lighter. Sometimes I can’t get fine whole wheat flour because my small town grocery store doesn’t always stock the good kind. So I have to buy a coarser generic brand that makes my rolls heavy. I found that putting coarse whole wheat flour in the blender first makes it fine enough to produce lighter rolls.
A mixture of vinegar and water removes the hazy soap scum off my Formica counters. But DON’T use vinegar on marble or granite counters. I also use very diluted vinegar and water to clean my cork floor in the kitchen. I dampen my mop cloth with the diluted solution and pop the terry mop cover or cleaning rag into my microwave for one minute (only clean before-wiping-up-the-floor cloths!). I carefully take it out of the microwave and use immediately while still steamy. It cuts the greasy spots and the sticky spills like magic. I’ve bought several steam mops and haven’t found one I like, so this is my DIY version of steam mopping. It’s fine for small areas, but the heat in the cloth dissipates quickly. Speed is key here.
After more moves than I like to admit, I’ve found that keeping my kitchen gadgets and tools to a minimum makes me more efficient. A very brave older lady once babysat our 6 children in our home while my husband and I took a much-needed break. Afterward, (yes, she and her husband survived the ordeal! ) she told me she was surprised when she found so few things in my kitchen, but after a week of cooking in it, she said there was nothing she needed that wasn’t there. She decided a streamlined kitchen had a lot of advantages.
When a greeny pad gets nasty but isn’t worn out, put it through the dishwasher tucked in the silverware basket.
I read a great trick for peeling garlic and now I use it every day. I place garlic cloves on a small plate, put it in the microwave with my trusty glass lid over it and cook for 20 seconds. The skins slip right off and make garlic prep time shorter. Experiment with cooking times in your microwave. You may not need to cook for 20. I don’t mind that the cloves are a bit soft if the skins come off in one piece.
A magic eraser is my friend. It cleans in tight places that are dirt traps like stove control knobs, refrigerator handles, dishwasher inside and outside, inside my microwave.
I store our plastic bin of spinach from Costco upside down in my fridge so the contents don’t crush the bottom layer. I figure the bottom layer was on the bottom all the way from the farm, now it gets to be on the top. Guess it works, because it takes us more than 2 weeks to eat all that spinach and it doesn’t get yucky.
If you wear glasses and you’re a hugger or a huggee, you get the greasy glasses syndrome. You know the drill, hugging gets your glasses smeared with make-up or just oily faces. But sometimes your eyeglass cleaner isn’t up to the challenge. I actually took my glasses back to Costco (did you know I shop at Costco?!) and told the nice man at the eyewear counter, “My glasses have hazed up and your cleaner isn’t getting it off.” He kindly took the glasses and held them up to the light, then he reached under the counter and pulled out a bottle of. . .alcohol. Not Jack Daniels, just regular old rubbing alcohol. I hadn’t driven him to drink yet. He proceeded to wipe all that haze right off my glasses with a cloth saturated with alcohol. He told me that it was perfectly safe to wipe plastic lenses with alcohol. Now I just whip out my special wipe cloth and my 99 cent alcohol to make my glasses sparkle when I get home from a good hugging session after church.