You won’t believe which of these food hacks actually works!

  • By Nancy Stohs Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
  • Tuesday, June 21, 2016 3:51pm
  • Life

You’d think by now all the tricks to faster, easier and ultimately better food preparation would have been discovered.

Not so, if social media can be believed. My Facebook feed is punctuated on a regular basis by “awesome,” “amazing” and “mind-blowing” cooking hacks accompanied by a video, before-and-after photos and usually plenty of capital letters and exclamation marks. (You MUST try this!!)

Inspired by both curiosity and skepticism, I decided to put a new batch of these hacks to the test.

Thumbs up

Keeping avocados from browning. The trick? Store a cut avocado in an airtight container with a few onion slices. Supposedly, sulfur compounds from the onion will oxidize and keep the green surface from browning.

I did this, parked it in the fridge and kind of forgot about it for 24 hours. And wow, it was still pretty green. The avocado smelled faintly of onion but didn’t taste onion-y.

The next day, it was still primarily green. I packed a mixed-greens salad for lunch that morning, topped with chunks of avocado, and then threw a few onion slices on top. At lunchtime, the avocado was as green as when I’d chopped it.

Speed-ripening bananas. When you want banana bread, you can never find overripe bananas, am I right?

So here’s what you do. Bake your underripe bananas (even tinged with green, as mine were) in a 350-degree oven for 5 to 7 minutes.

I baked mine 7 minutes, during which time the peel turned mostly black (upon cooling, they were fully black). I peeled them and, voila — they were indeed banana-bread ready.

Speed-ripening avocados. Wrap the avocado in aluminum foil, place in a 200-degree oven until soft, and then cool in the fridge.

The directions said 10 minutes but added that it could take up to 1 hour, depending on how hard the avocado was. Well, my avocado was large and rock hard, so I left it in the oven for an hour. It never felt soft to the squeeze, but I placed it in the fridge as instructed to let it cool.

To my surprise, when I cut into it later, it was soft — though it still had that “green” taste to it, not that rich taste of a counter-ripened fruit. But for a batch of guac, with a multitude of flavors added? Or a salad with other ingredients? This is a viable solution.

Silk-free corn shucking. You really want to spend all that time picking silks out of a dozen ears of fresh corn? Didn’t think so.

Instead of trying to shuck off husk and silks all at once, peel away all the outer husks a layer at a time until you’re left with pretty much only the silky tassel. Then get a good grip on the tassel and pull it off with one tug. Success — my ears had just one or two silks left behind.

Removing bits of eggshell. You know how when you reach into a broken egg to extract a piece of shell, it seems to run the other direction? The trick here is to wet your finger first. Instant eggshell magnet!

Easier cheese grating. The trick: Coat the grater surface with vegetable oil spray before grating.

Well, this was a no-brainer. My chunk of 1-year aged cheddar slid across the surface, fewer shreds stuck in the holes, and the grater was easier to clean.

Faster pasta cooking. Soak pasta in a bowl of water for an hour, and then just drop it in boiling water for 60 seconds, and it’s ready to eat.

My elbow macaroni soaked for exactly 1 hour, but it took 2 minutes in boiling water to be properly al dente. Still, that’s faster than the 7 to 8 minutes the box tells you, for really no effort on your part.

Thumbs down

Easier peeling of hard-cooked eggs. Add a teaspoon of baking soda to the water before cooking the eggs, then let them cool and peel them. Supposedly, the baking soda makes the cooking water more alkaline, which helps loosen the bond between the white and the shell.

Don’t waste your baking soda.

My eight eggs consisted of four old ones, two newer eggs and two from a carton I had just purchased. And when I shelled them, exactly four peeled easily, two semi-easily and two were very difficult (read: pockmarked, with a bunch of egg that came off with pieces of shell).

I have yet to find any better way to make hard-cooked eggs easy to peel than simply: Use old eggs.

Keeping cut apples from browning. Slice an apple, then reassemble it around the core and wrap with a rubber band, this hack instructs.

First of all, for this to work, you have to use one of those apple slicer tools to end up with a core in one piece.

I tried this with three varieties: Granny Smith, Honeycrisp and Golden Delicious. Five hours later, there was some brown on all the pieces, though they weren’t terrible.

But why would you even do this? I suppose it makes sense for a brown bag lunch, when you don’t want to cut up an apple at work. If you cut and rubber-band it in the morning, it will have only a few hours to start to turn brown.

Easier fridge cleaning.It sounded good in theory: Cover refrigerator shelves with Press ‘n’ Seal wrap, then peel off and replace the wrap when the shelf needs cleaning.

But then I tried it.

A, the wrap wasn’t wide enough to cover my clear plastic slide-out shelves. And B, it didn’t stick! At all!

And then I remembered that the real hassle of cleaning the fridge isn’t the wipe-down — that’s NBD. It’s the clearing out of all the food and containers, which you would have to do regardless.

— Sources: purewow.com, sweetandsavoryfood.com, chowhound.com, lifehack.org, 30secondmom.com, onegoodthingbyjillee.com

Talk to us

> Give us your news tips.

> Send us a letter to the editor.

> More Herald contact information.

More in Life

Brandon Hailey of Cytrus, center, plays the saxophone during a headlining show at Madam Lou’s on Friday, Dec. 29, 2023 in Seattle, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
Lynnwood-based funk octet Cytrus has the juice

Resilience and brotherhood take center stage with ‘friends-first’ band.

FILE - In this April 11, 2014 file photo, Neko Case performs at the Coachella Music and Arts Festival in Indio, Calif. Fire investigators are looking for the cause of a fire on Monday, Sept. 18, 2017, that heavily damaged Case’s 225-year-old Vermont home. There were no injuries, though a barn was destroyed. It took firefighters two hours to extinguish the blaze. (Photo by Scott Roth/Invision/AP, File)
Music, theater and more: What’s happening in Snohomish County

Singer-songwriter Neko Case, an indie music icon from Tacoma, performs Sunday in Edmonds.

Dominic Arizona Bonuccelli
Tangier’s market boasts piles of fruits, veggies, and olives, countless varieties of bread, and nonperishables, like clothing and electronics.
Rick Steves on the cultural kaleidoscope of Tangier in Morocco

Walking through the city, I think to myself, “How could anyone be in southern Spain — so close — and not hop over to experience this wonderland?”

chris elliott.
Vrbo promised to cover her rental bill in Hawaii, so why won’t it?

When Cheryl Mander’s Vrbo rental in Hawaii is uninhabitable, the rental platform agrees to cover her new accommodations. But then it backs out. What happened?

The Moonlight Swing Orchestra will play classic sounds of the Big Band Era on April 21 in Everett. (submitted photo)
Music, theater and more: What’s happening in Snohomish County

Relive the Big Band Era at the Port Gardner Music Society’s final concert of the season in Everett.

2024 Honda Ridgeline TrailSport AWD (Honda)
2024 Honda Ridgeline TrailSport AWD

Honda cedes big boy pickup trucks to the likes of Ford, Dodge… Continue reading

Would you want to give something as elaborate as this a name as mundane as “bread box”? A French Provincial piece practically demands the French name panetiere.
A panetiere isn’t your modern bread box. It’s a treasure of French culture

This elaborately carved French antique may be old, but it’s still capable of keeping its leavened contents perfectly fresh.

(Judy Newton / Great Plant Picks)
Great Plant Pick: Mouse plant

What: Arisarum proboscideum, also known as mouse plant, is an herbaceous woodland… Continue reading

Bright green Japanese maple leaves are illuminated by spring sunlight. (Getty Images)
Confessions of a ‘plantophile’: I’m a bit of a junky for Japanese maples

In fact, my addiction to these glorious, all-season specimens seems to be contagious. Fortunately, there’s no known cure.

2024 Hyundai IONIQ 6 Limited (Hyundai)
2024 Hyundai IONIQ 6 Limited

The 2024 Hyundai IONIQ 6 Limited is a sporty, all-electric, all-wheel drive sedan that will quickly win your heart.

The 2024 Dodge Hornet R/T hybrid’s face has the twin red lines signifying the brand’s focus on performance. (Dodge)
2024 Hornet R/T is first electrified performance vehicle from Dodge

The all-new compact SUV travels 32 miles on pure electric power, and up to 360 miles in hybrid mode.

Don’t blow a bundle on glass supposedly made by the Henry William Stiegel

Why? Faked signatures, reused molds and imitated styles can make it unclear who actually made any given piece of glass.

Support local journalism

If you value local news, make a gift now to support the trusted journalism you get in The Daily Herald. Donations processed in this system are not tax deductible.