Kitchen and Other Tips

You know how every person has their own tips and tricks how to make life better or how to avoid some great problem or simply how to do things faster. In the last couple of years I've found out so many things that I decided to share them. Some of them make me wonder how it was possible to live so old without hearing about them.

First of all, vinegar is so cool. You and everyone else knows that vinegar dissolves lime scale, but did you know that vinegar also takes care of burnt food? I had a constant problem with burnt milk. I had to deal with it nearly every morning and sometimes it's so bad that the pot is covered with a thick black crust. There's no scratching through that. Finally I Google'd it and found out that vinegar helps. I cover the crust with vinegar, put the lid on to avoid the smell in the kitchen and I leave it for a few hours. After a while the black stone-hard crust has become spongy and soft and comes right off when I wash it. Sometimes I have to repeat the process but at least I don't have to spend an hour scrubbing.

Second, baking soda should be renamed "magic powder". Did you know that soda absorbs smell? Small cup of baking soda removes refrigerator smell in half an hour. When it doesn't help, throw out that 2-week old lasagna hidden in the back of the refrigerator. I've also tried putting half a lemon in the refrigerator... Don't try this at home. The refrigerator was just as smelly except for the pungent smell of lemon trying to hide everything else. It smelled like a bad taxi with too many scented trees. Eventually defrosting rescued us from the smell.

The next time you're cleaning your stove, try using baking soda as a scrubbing powder. I really dislike the smell of household chemicals so I tend to wash surfaces with only water. Baking soda doesn't smell at all and it just removes ancient dark areas from the stove like magic. It's really nice plus it's really cheap and it's even edible in small doses so it's perfect for use in the kitchen.

Weighing salt can make life easier and cooking less stressful. I hate guessing when I can just calculate and measure. When I boil water for pasta, there's no reason to either add a random amount of salt, sometimes too much sometimes too little, and ruin a meal. There's also no reason to add a little, then stir and wait, then taste, add a little more salt, stir and wait... It's much more simple to pour two liters of water in a pot, take a bowl and a regular kitchen scale and weigh 12 grams of salt (you might prefer 14 grams). Pour salt in water and forget about it. Weighing salt is even more convenient when you're adding it to something you can't taste - like a large chunk of raw meat. Eighteen to twenty grams per kilo is appropriate for most meat. If you're adding cheese or salted bacon, or if half of the meat is just bone, adjust the amount of salt accordingly.

It's very likely that there's cyanide in your table salt. It's used as an anticaking agent so the salt doesn't get lumpy with air humidity. Sure it's in the form of sodium ferrocyanide or potassium ferrocyanide which has been shown not to be hazardous to rats until the ingested long-term amount was 0.5% of dietary intake. In salt it can be up to 20 mg/kg, so if a person eats 1 kg of food per day, they can handle 5g of potassium ferrocyanide, which can be found in uhmm 250 kg of salt?! That can't be right. Okay, maybe E535 and E536 ferrocyanide salts aren't that bad. You'll die of sodium poisoning long before you even start feeling the minor long-term side effects of ferrocyanide salts.

But still, always read the food labels at least once to see what horrible additives they have put in your food. Avoid the following food colorings: E102, E104, E122, E123, E124, E128, E129, E131, E151, E154, E155 and E180. You might wonder, if they're bad, why aren't they disallowed. Well, almost all of these are forbidden in some country, mostly in USA. If it's too dangerous for people in the USA, known for their great health , are you sure you want to be eating it? Did I mention it causes hyper-activity in children? Siiri won't be tasting much of those. When I discover that a product I've bought is laced with those azo compounds, I throw it in the trash and I boycott the company in the future for trying to profit at the expense of my health. Also avoid E621 whenever possible. A study in China showed that people who use a lot of sodium glutamate (E621, MSG) are 3 times more likely to be overweight compared to people who use very small amounts of sodium glutamate. Have fun trying to avoid it since it's even in most spice mixes sold in the store, not to mention all meat products and much else.

Corn starch is NOT the same thing as corn flour. I kept using corn flour in stead of corn starch for way too long and I wondered why the texture is not very nice. Eventually Erkki got real corn starch from the store and it's quite a different story.

Avoid buying margarine. It tastes awful. Besides, don't choose a product that vaguely reminds you of real food (butter), it sends the wrong signal to food companies.

Don't blindly prefer Estonian food. Estonian companies have sold their souls and mix all sorts of foul additives in your food for easy money. They'll literally add 5 dangerous additives to save 5% of production costs. Some companies are excellent but those you have to find yourself.

Darn... It seems many of the "most important" stuff that I've found in the recent years has to do with food additives. I know most people don't even read the tiny labels and don't care what is in the food as long as it doesn't kill immediately. I guess I'm just obsessed with food but that won't surprise anyone.

One last tip - get a dishwasher if it's at all possible and if you don't own one already. It really is a life changing gadget.

I bet I'll remember all the other tips when I'm nearly asleep but I don't remember any others now so it'll have to be enough.