I think it is fascinating that after all my long 33 years on this earth (ha!) I am still always learning new tips and tricks about the most basic things that I do all the time! I love learning new or more efficient ways to do things I do every day. There are a lot of little tricks you can do with your most basic kitchen gadgets and appliances that I wanted to share today in case you didn’t know about these tips either! Hopefully you pick up a new thing or two to try in your kitchen that will be just absolutely life changing! ;)

No-no #1: You’re using hot water in the garbage disposal. 

We all know that we should use hot water when washing dishes to ease getting off grease and food bits, but did you know that you should actually use cold water when turning on the garbage disposal? When you use hot water running the garbage disposal, it can turn the food more of a thick paste that can clog your pipes and could need to be rooted out by a plumber. Try to remember to use the cold water so the food can clearly and quickly make its way through the pipes instead of  clogging and sticking together. 

No-no#2: Your dishwasher is not hot enough to clean the dishes properly.

Did you know that there is a sweet spot for the dishwasher that is between 120-150 degrees--any less than 120 degrees and it isn’t getting hot enough to sanitize the dishes; any more than 150 degrees and it will melt plastic. You can test the temperature of your water by turning on your kitchen faucet for about 90 seconds--that should be how long it takes to get to it’s hottest temperature, and take the temperature of the water with a candy thermometer or even a meat thermometer. Hopefully, it is right in that sweet spot within those 30 degrees. If not, you might need to call a repairman to see what is going on.

No-no #3: You are holding your knife wrong when cutting.

Most of us hold a chef ‘s knife by the handle when chopping things like vegetables, which is actually not the correct way to hold the knife and chop. For the most precise cutting, you should hold the knife with your thumb and pointer finger on either side of the blade, as pictured above. 

No-no #4: You are not layering items in your blender properly.

There is a proper order to add the ingredients to your blender for it to blend the very best and not get stuck and jammed, especially at the beginning of it’s “cycle”. They recommend that you put it in order of what you would want to dive into a pool of--going from  least painful (liquid) first to most painful (ice) last. So the order would be something like: liquids, powders, leaves, fruits, solids (ice, frozen fruits or veggies, and other ice-hard items). 

No-no #5: You don’t rotate your food in the microwave (if applicable).

If the plate in your microwave doesn’t rotate your food as it’s cooking on it’s own for whatever reason, you should definitely be doing it manually and here’s why. The microwave actually has hot spots in it--areas where it will heat up your food, as well as “dead” areas where it won’t do anything. If your food isn’t rotating and you reheat a leftover dinner from the night before, there will be areas where it is freezing cold and areas it is piping hot. Rotate the food manually every 20-30 seconds to ensure even cooking. 

No-no #6: You don’t realize your spaghetti spatula is for more than just serving.

Okay, you might know this one, but the hole in the spaghetti spatula in the picture above is actually a way to measure spaghetti noodle servings. Each time you fill up that hole on the spatula with dry noodles of spaghetti, fettucini, linguine, etc., is one serving worth of pasta. This makes it easier to really gauge what is the right noodle to sauce ratio, which is something I tend to be off on. I always seem to make WAY too many noodles. 

Did you have any tips you would add to secret things your kitchen tools, gadgets or appliances knew that we might not be aware of? Please feel free to share in the comments below.