TTT - Kitchen Tips

Yesterday, when I should have been working on a REAL TTT list, I got side-tracked by my daily email from Tipnut (http://tipnut.com). One of the items looked interesting, so I clicked on it, which then had 2 or 3 more links, each of which also had more links… I not only found myself going from site to site to site, but copying and pasting tidbits I wanted to remember to a Word document. After about an hour and a half of clicking, copying, and pasting, I had a list of 25 items I had extracted. Here are 10 of them:

Ten Kitchen Tips from Tipnut -

1. French toast is made crisper by adding a tablespoon of flour to the egg and milk mixture. Oooh! I can’t wait to try this; I LOVE crispy French toast!
   
2. Popcorn should always be kept in the freezer. Not only will it stay fresh, but freezing helps eliminate “old maids”. We keep ours in the ‘fridge – seems to work.
   
3. Measurements: Mamie this is for you, particularly the yeast part
   a. 1 cup of whipping cream = 2 cups whipped
   b. 1 cup uncooked rice = 3 1/2 cups cooked
   c. 1 pkg. yeast = 2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast
   
4. Whenever boiling potatoes, it seemed that the pot always boiled over no matter how we tried to prevent it . . . until discovering this simple tip: simply put a little slice of butter into the pot! Hope this works – wonder if it also works for rice?
   
5. Use a steamer basket to cook potatoes for mashing (instead of boiling them). The flavor is MUCH better, and you never have to worry about your potatoes being watery. Now THIS would be a way to prevent the dreaded boilovers!
   
6. Prepare your mashed potatoes an hour or two before serving the meal and store them in the slow cooker (on low heat). Serve with the rest of the meal and they’re still hot and tasty. How great for Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc. when the stove is extra busy.
   
7. Use a pizza cutter to quickly slice everything from pizzas, fudge, pancakes, French toast, chicken strips and more. If you have small kids, this is a great time saver when cutting up food! Mamie uses a fork to poke vent holes in hot corn dogs to get them down to kid temperature!
   
8. When you buy a container of cake frosting from the store, whip it with your mixer for a few minutes. You can double it in size and frost more cake/cupcakes with the same amount. Doesn’t this kind of negate the whole convenience thing of canned frosting?
   
9. Use spices and herbs sparingly when preparing dishes for freezing. Cloves, black pepper and garlic become stronger; onions lose flavor; nutmeg, cinnamon and sage remain about the same; celery flavor becomes more noticeable. Mamie and Mrs. Igor, pay attention to this when you do your big cookathon!
   
10. Use a small funnel for separating eggs. Cracking/separating eggs is one of many activities that I do not excel in, maybe this will help with some of that.
    

The rest of the hints next week – got to make this last you know!