Saving Tips for your Kitchen

April 18, 2008

Earlier in this website we have tackled different parts of the household and now we are zooming in to the kitchen area where it’s an extension of your food itself. Discover that asides from saving money, you can also learn to save time preparing your meals.

Tips and Tricks:

There are instances that you would throw the dripping of left over oil in your frying pan after cooking a batch of bacon. There are certain dishes that these dripping can be useful for in replacement for butter or margarine at the same time it can also add up a sense of flavor to your recipe. The next time you cook that batch of bacon wait for the oil to cool down and after which you can pour it in an ice cube trey to place it in an airtight freezer bag to freeze. These cubes can be used in sautéing or in replacement of oil in other recipes. Also be advised that not all recipes may be suited for a bacon like flavoring.

Do you notice how many times a week you cook pancakes for breakfast? If your family is a pancake lover and you spend so much time making and buying these items pre-made and frozen, it would be advisable if you could just make a bigger batch of pancakes then just let the others be frozen well, there are easily reheated in just a couple of minutes by toaster or microwave and then it is ready to eat.

What do you do to the heel of a loaf of bread, do you throw them away? These crusts of bread are very useful, just put these crusts into a food processor and freeze until they are ready to use. You can opt to place them in a plastic container or a freezer bag. These crusts turn into bread crumbs and you would never have to buy bread crumbs again. To add more seasoning to your bread crumbs, you can mix it with basil, garlic powder and oregano to have a bit of variety. These are best served with salad.

Now that you have lots of bread crumbs, there’s an extension on what else you can do with it. You can use these frozen breadcrumbs for stuffing. It is best to cut into cubes breadcrumbs when they are frozen. Now try to toast this cubes in 400 degrees F till it turns golden brown and while you’re baking you can sprinkle in whatever spices and herbs you would like to leave it plain.

Stop buying yourself or spending fortune on take out meals. You can invest a few dollars on plastic containers or individual serving freezer containers. When you have leftovers, you can use these containers to put your left over meal and freeze. There will be one of those days when you can just get a container and heat it to have a meal. You family will have a home cooked meal in a matter of minutes. With this you’ll save time and money.

Every body tries making a salad out of leftovers. There’s the usual chicken salad, ham salad and turkey salad, although these salads seem to sound great, sometimes you just get tired of the typical. So to spice up your salad a bit, you can add a little ingredient like creamy salad dressing like Ranch, Caesar or Creamy Italian. In this way, your family might think that you spent more time making them that you originally did in the kitchen.
Are you in a habit of buying and throwing plastic freezer bags after use? If you do, that can run into a bit of an expense. Try opting to buy two kinds of plastic freezer bags, there’s the a cheap kind of bag where in you can just store most of the non expensive food and an art zipper type of bag to store your meat. You can re use these art zippers and you’ll be surprised how many times you can reuse one.

When there are times that you would be boiling meat, remember that you are not only cooking the meat and that you are also creating yourself a stock. Don’t throw this stock away. So after cooking the meat, strain the water and save it in a covered bowl or a plastic container to place in a refrigerator. As it cools down the fats will surface, remove this off the stock then add some salt and pepper to taste it. From this point your stock is ready to use in your favorite recipes, and if not, you can freeze your stock until you are ready to use it.

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