5 Tricks To Save Time In Kitchen

From creative solutions for leftovers to a quick fix for too-salty soup, these helpful tips and tricks can save you time and money.

# Peel Ginger with a Spoon

Ginger can be tricky to peel with all its bumps and irregularities. Rather than using a paring knife or vegetable peeler, reach for the spoon. Scrape it against the skin and it'll come right off, following every contour and minimizing waste.

# Immersion Blender

I use my immersion blender more than any other electric tool in the kitchen by a long shot. Whether it's puréeing soups directly in the pot, getting rid of ugly lumps in my cheese sauce, or making mayonnaise or hollandaise in under two minutes, the immersion blender is the tool for the job.

# Work Clean

When working with beginning cooks, the most common inefficiency I see is in task planning. Say you've got four onions that need to be peeled, finely diced, and transferred to a large bowl. If you do each of these steps to each onion one at a time, you spend a lot of time moving back and forth between the board, the compost bin, and the bowl, picking up and putting down your knife, and mentally preparing yourself for the next task.

# Use a Garbage Bowl

Not having to walk back and forth to the garbage every few minutes can take a lot of drudgery our of your prep, and nothing's better than a bench scraper for moving large quantities of fiddly ingredients or scraps from point A to point B.

# Freeze as Flat as Possible

One more freezer trick: freeze things flat and stack them. Whether it's soups, stews, or ground meat, the flatter and wider you can get them, the faster they'll freeze and defrost, which not only makes you more efficient, it also improves the quality of the food (the longer something takes to freeze, the more cellular damage it will suffer). When freezing raw meat, soups, and stews, if you have a vacuum sealer, use it! Otherwise, place foods in heavy-duty freezer bags, squeeze out all the air, lay the bag flat, and use your hands to work the contents into as flat and even a shape as possible.