Making salads quickly is not only a skill that every housewife should have, but also a great way to save precious time before your birthday (which is especially important given the heavy workload). Novate.ru has collected for you some useful tips that will help you prepare all salads in record time, from Olivier to herring under a fur coat.
Taking these life hacks to yourself, you will feel that cooking is no longer an excruciating responsibility. It will turn into a pleasant and fun pastime. An additional bonus will be that you can quickly set the festive table even after a hard day at work, and then dance all night long without feeling even the slightest fatigue.
1. Make a menu in advance
So that you do not have to run to the store several times, draw up a menu in advance and list all the products necessary for making salads. Immediately indicate the amount of ingredients, at least an approximate one, and then go with this list to the store. Such preliminary preparation will help to reduce the cooking time by at least half, and this is the main goal of any housewife.
Think about which foods can be prepared at the same time, and which cooking steps can be combined. For example, boiled eggs are needed in many salads. In order not to warm water every half hour for a new batch, count how many eggs you need in total, and cook the required amount in advance. To make the water boil faster and the shells are easier to remove, add salt to the water as soon as you put it to boil.
2. Put all products in one place
If you watched culinary programs, you probably noticed that chefs never start cooking if absolutely all the products necessary for cooking are not present on their table. Take this habit into your arms. You have no idea how much time is wasted constantly opening / closing the refrigerator and kitchen cabinets. It also takes a lot of time to find this or that ingredient.
And although kitchens in Russian apartments are often much smaller than television ones, you can still find where to place all the necessary products. If there is not enough space on your countertop or dining table, place the ingredients on a baking sheet or large bowl and place them on the windowsill. This is a great alternative to a regular shelf.
3. Use a grater correctly
On the Internet, you can find many life hacks from housewives regarding how to use a grater. The most popular is the following advice: in order to keep the grater clean and not waste precious time on washing, you need to put a plastic bag on it, and then rub the necessary products. However, no one thinks that if you press on the grater, the bag may be damaged and its pieces will remain in the salad. We suggest you take no risks and use safer methods. For example, to prevent the cheese from sticking and clogging all the holes of the grater during chopping, lightly grease the device with oil. As a result, the product will glide more easily, and the grater will be washed off much faster.
And foods that are difficult to rub because of their softness can be pre-placed in the freezer for 20-30 minutes. This is especially true of processed cheese curds, which are the main ingredient in many salads, in particular, Jewish. By the way, when preparing salads, try to use a variety of graters - differently grated products will be an excellent decoration for dishes.
Advice: Try to wash the grater immediately after using it to prevent food leftovers from drying out. Also, keep it dry and ready to use at all times. To make the process easier, buy only those models that are equipped with silicone feet - they prevent slipping.
4. "Boil" vegetables in the microwave
So that you don't have to cook vegetables for salads for a long time, use the following life hack: cut them raw into cubes, place them in plastic bags, tie them, pierce them with a toothpick in several places to let the air out, and send them to the microwave for 10 minutes.
Instead of a bag, you can take an ordinary glass container, put chopped vegetables in it, add a few tablespoons of water to create the effect of a double boiler, and send it to the microwave for the same 10 minutes. If there are no such household appliances in the kitchen, just rinse the diced vegetables with cold water and put them in boiling water for 5 minutes. This time is quite enough for them to cook.
5. Cook the beets in an hour
One of the most favorite holiday salads, herring under a fur coat, is cooked for a long time because of … beets. If you do not cook it in advance or buy ready-made, then you will have to wait three to four hours for it to be ready. Before a birthday, this is an unacceptable luxury, so we tell you how to significantly shorten the process. There are two options here. The first is to put the vegetable in already boiling water - so it will cook in about an hour. And the second method is loved by professional chefs. First, they boil the beets in boiling water for 30 minutes, then drain the water and send the root vegetable under a stream of ice water for a quarter of an hour. Due to the sharp temperature drop, the root crop will quickly reach readiness.
6. Quickly chop the onion and remove the bitterness from it
Onions are a pretty tricky vegetable. Not only does he bring almost every person to bed, who takes on the difficult task of slicing it, he also spoils the taste of salads with his bitterness. Moreover, it does not matter at all how finely you cut it. So that you do not have to redo the salad several times because of the onions, put the chopped vegetable in a colander and pour over with boiling water. Hot water can remove all the bitterness and soften the taste of the onions.
As for the cutting process itself, there is also one trick here. So that the bow does not "run away" from you and is firmly held in your hands, leave the tails (from the side of the feathers) during cleaning. Thus, things will go much faster, because you will be holding the vegetable by these very tails. In the end, just throw them away and that's it.
You will find some more useful culinary life hacks in the article. 15 simple tricks to take cooking to the next level