Fix Those Cooking Blunders

A few weeks ago one of my friends made a big pot of chili.  When her husband tasted it, he said it was too salty - which got us to trying to figure out how to fix it.  Then the rest of us tasted it and thought it was just fine, no, better than fine, it was really good!  Which was a good thing because we never did figure out how to fix it if it was too salty.  I knew I had read it somewhere, I just couldn't remember where...

So, when I found this list - Fast Fixes for Blunders - in an old Family Circle magazine, I clipped it out.  Now we'll always know how to fix super salty soup as well as fix other cooking blunders or problems.

• To remove grease from stew, soup or gravy, drop a few ice cubes in the pot.  Spoon the cubes out once the grease sticks to the ice.
• Neutralize super-salty soup, stew or tomato sauce with brown sugar.
• To eliminate cabbage odors, place a small tin cup half filled with vinegar on the stove near the cabbage.
• If brown sugar gets lumpy, put an apple wedge in it and microwave on high for about 20 seconds.
• To absorb excess salt, drop in a peeled potato while cooking.
• Puree overcooked vegetables, add broth or milk along with seasonings, and you'll have delicious soup.

2 tips for taking care of too much salt!  I love the idea of ice cubes to remove grease, too.  Cabbage odors aren't something I usually have a problem with, but I have found that vinegar is great for taking care of all kinds of odors.  I don't know why or how, but it works.

I usually just put a slice of bread in my brown sugar canister when it starts getting hard and lumpy.  The bread dries out, and the sugar gets nice and soft again.  (Make that half a slice of bread - while the bread is nice and soft and can easily be folded a bit to fit into the canister, once it dries out, it's not so easy - and you don't really want to break it and get bread crumbs all in your nice, soft brown sugar.  Of course, this all depends on the style of your canisters.  If the top/neck/opening of your canister is smaller than a slice of bread, you'll want to use half.  Believe me, I know!)  The bread is not a quick fix, so if you're ready to bake, and your brown sugar is hard, that apple wedge and microwave tip sounds good.  Then put the bread into the canister so you'll be ready next time.

Do you have any good tips for fixing cooking blunders?

How to Dice an Onion

I was trying to find a good video to go along with my post last night.  A post about getting rid of that onion smell on your hands when you chop onions should have a video on how to chop those onions, right?  However, even though there are plenty of videos on YouTube explaining how to dice an onion, they all seemed a bit over-complicated to me and added unnecessary steps.  So, I made my own video.

Maybe not the best, but it will have to do for now.  I've really got to get an assistant for the camera work!

Let me know if you have any questions.

Related articles

• Get Rid of That Onion Smell (recipes.alwaysbcmom.com)

Get Rid of That Onion Smell

I can't cook without onions.  No, really - if I run out of onions I have a very hard time figuring out what to fix for dinner.  There are so many things I just can't won't make without onions!  But cooking with onions means hands that smell like onions, right?


Not necessarily.  There's a really easy way to get rid of that onion smell on your hands - stainless steel!  Simply rub your hands over stainless steel for several seconds while holding them under cold running water, and the smell will be gone.  I usually just use my knife, since I've got it, and it needs rinsed off anyway, but they also have Stainless Steel SOAP which works the same way, without the sharp edges.  I have several oval-shaped ones, but there are different sizes and shapes available, like this Amco Rub Away Bar which is shaped just like a bar of soap.


I'm not really sure how it works, but it does! (One of the product descriptions says: "Negatively-charged stainless steel soap combines with positive charge of cool water to neutralize germs" - so I guess that explains it.)  Onion, garlic, fish - any unwanted odor completely neutralized and eliminated!  Smells really bother me, so I am so happy to know this.  I wish I had known it years ago - back when I was working in the kitchen in college and chopping tons of onions and garlic.  I never could stand to wear the plastic gloves, so I just dealt with the smell, not knowing how easy it would have been to just get rid of it.

So next time you chop onions or get any kind of strong odor on your hands, try stainless steel.  You'll be wanting to keep one of these handy soaps right by your sink for everyday use!

De-Clutter Your Kitchen

We watch a lot of those HGTV shows about people either buying or selling houses.  One suggestion they always have for people who are trying to sell their houses is to de-clutter everything.  I'm always wondering what they're supposed to do with all their stuff, and how they're supposed to live in the house in the meantime, but I'm also thinking it would be extremely nice to get rid of some of the clutter around here.  So, when I found an article about de-cluttering the kitchen in the food section of my newspaper, I thought it might be helpful.

Does this sound like your kitchen?

Paperwork, mail and homework assignments litter the counter.  The sink is full of dishes and coated in grime, the stove spotted with stains.  A trip to the pantry is more like an excavation mission, and the spice cabinet is filled with bottles that lurk deep in the recesses of your cabinetry.

Mine isn't that bad, so perhaps I should just feel good about it?  Then again, these tips might be extremely helpful:

1. Start with the counter - the counter is the easiest place to toss mail and everything else that comes into the house because it's often the first area you go to when entering your house.  Clear off the counter and implement measures to prevent future pile-ups, perhaps stacking wire baskets for each family member.
2. Purge - go through cookware and utensils and get rid of what you don't need.  Keep things you use regularly in the kitchen and store items you use infrequently somewhere else, such as the pantry or basement.
3. But think "reuse" - don't just throw things away.  If it's something you won't use again, consider donating to Goodwill or giving it to a friend.
4. Consider your learning style - visual learners know what tool is right for them just by looking at it, while kinesthetic learners don't always know which pot or pan to use until they grab it.  What does this mean?  Visual learners may benefit from over-the-door hooks and hanging pot racks, anything that enhances visibility.  Kinesthetic learners work better having everything within easy reach.  Organize your kitchen according to what works for you, not for someone else or according to someone else's idea of how a kitchen should work.
5. Give new storage systems a try - consider baskets for you spices, organized alphabetically so you can find them easier (I'm considering this one) or installing slide-out shelves to make things more accessible.

and that's just a start.  There are 5 more tips, which I will continue next time.  Right now I'm thinking about going and cleaning off my kitchen counter...

Freezing Hamburger

It's almost always cheaper to buy your ground beef in packages of 3 lbs. or more.  Then, when you get it home, you can divide it up into smaller packages.  A kitchen scale is really handy for this, but you can divide it up into fairly even packages without one.  For most recipes it's not going to matter if you're off a little one way or the other.  I've only recently started using a scale. 

A pound of hamburger fits nicely into a quart-size zipper bag.  I've found that it works best to flatten each package before placing them into the freezer.  The hamburger will freeze faster that way, and the packages stack neatly in the freezer.  Additionally, when you're ready to use some of the hamburger, it will thaw faster, too.

I've started putting my hamburger into 1/2 lb. packages, since it's just my husband and me most of the time these days.  If I need to cook for more people or make a larger recipe, I can easily take two packages out of the freezer at once.  I bought two 3-lb. rolls of Ground Chuck at Walmart this week - because they'd marked it down to $5.94 (~$2/lb.) to sell it quickly, so I put 12 1/2 lb. packages in the freezer yesterday.  That ought to do us for a while.