B2 — THE OBSERVER & BAKER CITY HERALD
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TUESDAY, MARCH 22, 2022
Hacking your way to easier cooking
By DANIEL NEMAN
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
I’m so old, I remember
when “hack” was a bad
thing. Or a taxi.
These days, of course,
“hack” means a work-
around, an alternative and
easier way to perform some
minor task.
So I was intrigued when
I stumbled upon yet another
internet listicle, “45 kitchen
hacks to help make even a
novice chef feel like a total
foodie.” I clicked, and I’m
not ashamed.
Published on the cring-
ingly named morehackz.
com, the suggestions are
aimed — as the title indi-
cates — at people who are
relatively new to cooking.
In particular, they are
aimed at young people. But
some of the ideas are worth
noting even for those of us
who have been cooking for
decades.
For instance, one hack
addresses the issue of
overly hot coff ee. If you
drink coff ee, you know
the problem: You’re on the
go and it is still too hot to
drink before you have to
dash out the door.
The solution is easy.
Pour cooled coff ee into ice
cube trays, save the cubes
of coff ee ice in a bag and
plop one into your coff ee
to cool it down without
diluting it. You can also use
coff ee ice cubes with the
same eff ect in iced coff ee,
or tea ice cubes to turn
your just-brewed hot tea
into iced tea.
Another coff ee-related
hack: Fans of cappuccino
can froth their own milk
without having to shell out
hundreds of bucks for some
fancy cappuccino machine.
All you have to do is pour
milk into a small jar, close
Dreamstime-TNS
If you drink coff ee, you know the problem: You’re on the go and it is still too hot to drink before you have to dash out the door.
it tightly and shake it vigor-
ously until the milk froths
itself. Then the froth can be
quickly heated in a micro-
wave before adding to the
coff ee.
I tried this. It works, but
it does take a lot of shaking.
If you cook winter
squash, you know it can
be diffi cult to remove the
seeds. This article suggests
using an ice cream scoop,
which is sturdier than ordi-
nary spoons and often has a
slightly sharper edge.
The article also has a
universal solution to a uni-
versal cake conundrum:
After you have cut a cake,
its exposed sides quickly
become stale and dry. To
stop this from happening,
simply attach a slice of
bread to each open side
with toothpicks; the bread
will keep the cake nice and
fresh.
If you’ve ever gradually
whisked a liquid into a bowl
with dry ingredients, you’ll
know the experience of
desperately wanting three
hands — one to pour the
liquid, one to whisk and one
to hold the bowl to keep it
from spinning. The hack for
this is familiar, but eff ec-
tive. Simply place a damp
towel underneath the bowl
to keep it stationary.
Another familiar-but-
helpful hack is my favorite
way of opening tight jars.
Just place a rubber band
around the lid; you can
double it if it is too large.
The rubber band provides
the friction you need to
twist off the lid.
If you’re boiling some-
thing and it threatens to
boil up and spill out of of
your pot, place a wooden
spoon across the top. That
should keep the liquid
where it belongs and make
your cleanup easier.
Honey moves at its own
pace, and there is nothing
slower than when you are
trying to pour it out of a
measuring cup. To speed
up the process consider-
ably, simply spray the mea-
suring cup with nonstick
spray before adding the
honey. The honey slides
right out.
To be honest, not all
of the article’s hacks are
helpful or even accurate.
One says that to soften
butter instantly, place cubes
of it inside an upside-
down drinking glass. “The
heat trapped inside the
glass instantly softens the
butter,” it says.
Nonsense. The tempera-
ture inside the glass is the
same as the temperature
outside the glass. I tested
my hypothesis with butter
and a glass, and the butter
did not soften any faster
than it would have without
a glass.
The article also suggests
placing an ice cube on top
of a hamburger as it cooks
to keep it from getting dry.
That’s not how meat works.
Then the article halfheart-
edly mentions that butter or
other fat would achieve the
same eff ect, which is how
meat works, but at the cost
of additional calories.
And the article even
off ers a hack for cooking
grilled cheese sandwiches,
which it says “is harder
to perfect than one might
think.” Instead of grid-
dling grilled cheese sand-
wiches in a pan with butter,
it suggests putting them on
a greased baking sheet and
cooking them in the oven.
Oh, my good heavens no.
That’s the problem with
these listicles. Some of their
hacks are just hackneyed.
The truth about egg cartons, and other egg secrets
By DANIEL NEMAN
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
You can’t tell, just by
looking at it, how old an
egg is. So when you’re
buying eggs at a store, how
can you tell which cartons
have the freshest eggs?
You look at the carton.
Cartons have a three-
digit number printed on
the side, from 001 to 365
— or 366 in leap years. As
you have already cleverly
intuited, the number corre-
sponds with the number of
days that have passed since
the beginning of the year.
A carton with the number
054 on the side, therefore,
would have been packaged
on Feb. 23.
These facts, and many
more, come courtesy of
a brand-new cookbook
devoted entirely to eggs,
“The Fresh Eggs Daily”
cookbook by Lisa Steele.
Steele raises chickens in
her backyard, so she knows
a great deal about eggs,
which she happily imparts
in the beginning section of
her cookbook.
You know that part of a
cookbook that no one ever
reads? Sometimes it can
be worth reading. Steele’s
introductory section
includes such interesting
information as:
• Chickens are omni-
vores; they will eat any-
thing. They don’t just
eat plants, they eat bugs,
worms, lizards and even
frogs. If an egg carton is
labeled “vegetarian fed,”
it necessarily means the
chickens were kept indoors.
Otherwise, they would eat
bugs, worms, lizards and
frogs.
• Similarly, the phrases
Alyssa Pointer/Chicago Tribune-TNS
Moah’s Ark urban farm owner Mo Cahill shows off the eggs her chickens have laid at her house in the
Rogers Park neighborhood in Chicago, Illinois.
“hormone-free” and “anti-
biotics-free” on cartons are
essentially useless terms.
In the United States, it is
against the law to give hor-
mones to laying chickens,
and very few commercial
farms use antibiotics.
• If the carton says
“cage-free,” it could con-
ceivably mean that the
chickens are kept in a large
warehouse, with their beaks
fi led to keep them from
pecking one another. Even
“free-range” could mean
they are kept in a large
warehouse with an open
door to the outside that
some of the chickens may
never use.
• You can freeze eggs,
but not in the shell (the
liquid inside will expand,
cracking the shell). To
freeze, whisk eggs until
they are well beaten, then
pour them into ice-cube
trays coated with nonstick
spray (silicone trays work
best). Store the frozen egg
cubes in a freezer bag for
up to six months. Defrost
overnight before using.
• Refrigerated eggs
will last for three to four
months. If kept unrefriger-
ated, they will be good for
two weeks or more. (The
book does not say it, but do
not leave eggs out for more
than an hour if they have
ever been refrigerated; bac-
teria can enter the porous
shell when it goes from cold
to warm).
• Most supermarket eggs
are white because they are
laid by Leghorn chickens,
which lay white eggs. Leg-
horns are favored by com-
mercial farmers because
they can produce eggs on
less feed than many other
breeds.
• Chicken eggs can be
white, blue, green or tan,
and there is absolutely no
diff erence in their nutri-
tional value or taste.
• Eggs are stored
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pointy-end down because
that makes it harder for
bacteria to get through the
slightly alkaline white to
the more vulnerable yolk.
It also centers the yolk,
resulting in prettier hard-
cooked or deviled eggs.
• Although eggs are
graded by size, they are
sold by weight. One dozen
large eggs weighs 24
ounces. The eggs inside
the carton can be diff erent
sizes, as long as they add up
to that weight.
• You can separate cold
eggs more easily than
room-temperature ones. So,
separate eggs fresh out of
the refrigerator. But then let
the whites sit for 30 min-
utes before whipping them,
because:
• Room-temperature egg
whites whip better than cold
ones. The opposite, inci-
dentally, is true of cream —
chilled cream whips faster.
• Anything more than
the slightest drop of fat
— including yolk — will
keep egg whites from whip-
ping into a stiff , airy struc-
ture. Before whipping egg
whites, make sure there is
no yolk (or very, very little),
and that the bowl and whisk
or beaters are perfectly
clean.
• To bring chilled eggs
to room temperature, either
leave them on the counter
for 30 minutes or cover
them in tepid water for 10
minutes. (I have had suc-
cess using lukewarm water
for fi ve minutes.)
• If you like scrambled
eggs to be soft and dry, salt
them before cooking. If you
like them to be fi rm and
moist, salt them after they
are cooked.
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