Along with their great recipes, our Aunties and Grandmas passed on their collection of kitchen wisdom—old timey ways to function with greater ease and efficiency in the kitchen. Here’s some of their great know-how:
Heat lemons well before using and there will be twice the quantity of juice.
To cream butter and sugar easily, warm the bowl first then add the butter. Then sieve the sugar onto the top. Beat until the mixture is like whipped cream.
As you take a cake from the oven, place it for a very few moments on a cloth wring out of cold water. Then it can be turned out easily without sticking to the pan.
To keep lint from clinging to blue jeans and corduroy, add ½ cup of vinegar to each wash load.
To bake potatoes quickly, boil them in salted water for ten minutes, then put them into the oven. The boiling water will heat them through more rapidly than if they were placed cold into the oven.
Before scraping new potatoes, soak them for half an hour in cold salted water. Not only do the skins peel off easily, but the hands are not stained.
Wash parsley with hot water rather than cold, and it will retain its flavor and be easier to chop.
Add ¼ tsp soda to cranberries while cooking them and they will not require much sugar.
A teaspoonful of vinegar added to the water in which eggs are poached keeps the whites from spreading and makes the whites cook over the yolk.
Milk can be prevented from boiling over by the use of an outer saucepan containing water. Place a smaller saucepan containing the milk in the larger saucepan of water, and boil both together. There is then no danger of the milk boiling over!
