13 EVERYDAY THINGS YOU'RE DOING WRONG THAT WILL SHOCK YOU!
# Everyday Kitchen Hacks You Might Be Missing Out On
Welcome back to another video in my series of everyday things you may be doing wrong—kitchen edition! The alternate title for this video is "Everyday Things You Are Probably Doing Just Fine, But There May Be a More Efficient and Better Way of Doing Them That You Don’t Know Yet." Since that was too long to put in the title, here we are!
In this video, I’m doing another big giveaway. The prize? $500 cash or an Amazon gift card. All you have to do is subscribe to this channel and share the video. There’s a share button down below. Leave a comment letting me know you’ve entered, and that’s it!
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## French Fries Hacked
If you’re like myself and love french fries, there’s a good chance you’ve been slicing your potatoes on the cutting board all wrong. The easier way to do this is by using your apple slicer. Better yet, this is my favorite one because it actually has slightly smaller slices to it. All you have to do is cut a little end off of the potato so it will stand nicely and then push your apple slicer on top of that potato. Voilà! You’ll have perfectly even, perfectly cut steak fries with minimal to no effort at all.
Also, if you’re not making your fries in the air fryer, you must try it. This next one is one of my favorites—I saw it on TikTok. If you were baking and the recipe calls for a sticky ingredient like honey or maple syrup, instead of pouring it into your measuring spoon like this and making a big mess and having to clean off the measuring spoon, press the measuring spoon into the dry ingredients. It becomes a little crevice with the exact measurement you need. Then pour it right into there, and you have your measurement with no mess at all.
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## Kitchen Organization Tips
From this point, when you’re mixing those ingredients together in your mixing bowl, they’re kind of going everywhere—or if you’re chopping something and your cutting board is moving all around—what the pro chefs do is so easy. Get a damp kitchen towel or paper towel and put that under your mixing bowl or your cutting board. It’s not going to move; it’s going to stay in place.
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## Keeping Baked Goods Fresh
If you’ve made fresh baked, homemade cookies and you’re just storing them in a Tupperware container with foil over it, leaving it out—there’s a better way. What you should do instead is put a piece of bread in there with it. This will keep your fresh baked goods softer and fresher longer, and it’s so easy to do. Most of us have bread in our house, so why not use it for this?
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## Fresh Herbs Storage
When you get your fresh herbs, don’t just throw them in the fridge and hope for the best. There’s a strategy here to keep them fresh longer. What you want to do is get a damp paper towel, wrap up the herbs in that damp paper towel, put it in a bag, and then put that in the fridge. They’ll stay fresh and crisp so much longer.
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## Choosing the Right Oil for Cooking
When you’re cooking in the kitchen and using oil, what’s your go-to oil? I know a lot of people out there use olive oil, but what you may not realize is that olive oil isn’t designed to be used at high heat. It has a relatively low smoke point. So the switch that we’ve made in this household is avocado oil. It also has a lot of those good healthy fats and antioxidants like olive oil does, but it has a higher smoke point.
I actually just get it on an auto-subscription every month through **Thrive Market**. At this point, we get most of our household staples through Thrive Market because it’s so convenient—you save money, and the shipping is really fast. Big thank you to Thrive Market for partnering with me on today’s video again and giving you an amazing deal to try them out and save 40% off your first order!
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## Nut Pods: A New Obsession
If you haven’t heard of Thrive Market, think of it like Whole Foods—but everything is on sale. Everything is at a discount because it’s a membership-based market. You become a member, get locked into the savings, and save significant amounts. You don’t have to go anywhere—you can shop from your phone, which is so much more convenient. I have all of my favorite things within the app now, and I just either reorder or do auto-ship. When you do auto-ship, you can save even more!
My new obsession—if you guys haven’t tried these yet—**Nut Pods**. These are non-dairy creamers for my iced coffee, and they taste incredible. But if you get them on Thrive Market, they’re 25% less than if you get them from your regular grocery store. They also make it really easy to shop. You can filter by dietary preference—like keto or food allergies—and see reviews before buying. You don’t get that at the regular grocery store, so it helps prevent me from getting stuff I don’t end up liking.
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## Keeping Cold Appetizers Fresh
If you’re hosting a party and have a cold appetizer sitting out, getting warm—that’s not good. Here’s what you do: Take your ice, put it in a large Ziploc bag, and put that into a bowl. Then, on top of that, get your large pieces of butter lettuce to line the top so you can’t see it. Put your cold appetizers on top of that, and they’re going to stay nice and cool. You can’t see the ice below it; there’s no moisture coming through, and they’re gonna stay fresh and cool much longer. It’s also just better from a food safety point of view.
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## Shredding Chicken Made Easy
If you’re making shredded chicken and you’re shredding it like this—you’re trying to use two forks? That’s kind of a nightmare and takes a lot of effort. Instead, here’s my little trick: Use these kitchen scissors that have the double blades. It just makes it so easy to shred your meat. Also, this makes it really easy to make a chopped salad—just go in there, start cutting your salad into smaller bite sizes. I also use this for chopping my herbs, my chives, whatever it may be. So much easier to use this guy!
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## Softening Butter Quickly
If you’re baking something and need to use softened butter but don’t have time, the easiest way to get it to soften up quick is to cut it into little cubes, sit that out, and it will soften right up.
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## Scrambled Eggs Made Perfect
I think a lot of us love scrambled eggs—it’s a classic. Most of us are just scrambling up our eggs, cooking it on our saute pan. But you’re doing it wrong! There’s a better way—there’s a secret ingredient and that is sour cream. Just add a tablespoon or two of sour cream in with your scrambled eggs, mix it all up. Another little hack: If you need to scoop out something that sticks to the spoon, just spray a little oil onto the spoon, and then it will drop very easily. Also, the key to cooking good scrambled eggs is to cook them low and slow—it makes them more fluffy, gives them added flavor, and depth.
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## Cooking Meat Perfectly Every Time
I will admit to you: I used to be a really bad chef and I would ruin everything. My big thing was overcooking or undercooking the meat. The better way to do it is if you don’t already have this—if you don’t already do this—get a kitchen thermometer, specifically one with temperature measurements right on there so you don’t have to look it up, think about it, or memorize it. It’s right on there; just put it in, and you’ll know exactly how done your chicken is. You don’t want to be serving undercooked chicken Brittany for the third time in a row!
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## Reducing Moisture in Ground Meat
Have you ever been cooking ground meat and looked in your pan, only to see it’s a soggy mess with so much moisture? What you can do here is add a little dash of baking soda in the pan with the meat. This will absorb some of that excess moisture. Added benefit: It allows your meat to brown better—this is what they teach in cooking school! I just didn’t get the memo until I was *today* years old.
Also, similar to that, you can speed up the time it takes to caramelize your onions by adding a little pinch of baking soda in there as well.
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## Sauteing Vegetables: When to Season
Another thing when you’re sautéing your vegetables—let’s say mushrooms, zucchini, anything that you’re putting on your saute pan—don’t season the vegetables until after they’ve browned. If you add your salt and seasoning too early, it’s going to draw out the moisture and then it’s going to become a soggy mess. So wait to the end to add your salt and seasoning.
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## Instant Pot Lid Holder Trick
If you have an instant pot, did you know there’s a built-in lid holder just right there in the side of the pot? Yeah, you can free up some counter space by putting it right there!
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## Pancake Batter Hacks
We make a lot of pancakes in this household because I have two young kids. A mistake that I was making without realizing it is—I was over-mixing the batter. Your pancakes will turn out fluffier and better if you don’t over-mix them. So, you want to just barely mix your pancake batter, and you actually want there to be lumps in it.
So here’s side by side: On the left is the pancake that I fully mixed the batter, and on the right is my lumpy pancake batter.
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## Sharpening Knives for Safer Cutting
I follow a lot of professional chefs over on TikTok, and here’s the number one thing that I was doing wrong in the kitchen—just wasn’t doing enough of it: sharpening your knives. It makes it safer to cut and easier to cut. When is the last time you sharpened your knives?
I have this five-dollar knife sharpener, and now I just make it a point to use it more often instead.
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## Storing Nut Butter Properly
Instead of keeping your nut butter in your pantry upright like this, it’s better to store it upside down so those oils have a chance to be distributed and you don’t have that thick layer of oil on the top here.
Here’s the better idea: Switch from your jarred nut butters to your nut butter in a squeezy tube. Once you go squeezy tube, you will never go back—you literally just squeeze it, no spoon needed. All you have to do is kind of just knead it up a little bit first, and you have perfectly smooth squeezable nut butter.
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## Thrive Market Products: A Game-Changer
I get my nut butter in the squeezy tube from **Thrive Market**—we were doing almond butter, but now they have peanut butter in the squeezy tube, and my new favorite is cashew butter. Again, you can use my link down in the description box at Thrive Market to save 40% on your nut butter or whatever else you need for your household. They have a huge selection there—check them out!
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## Final Thoughts
And with all of that said, thank you as always so much for watching. Don’t forget to share this video if you want to be entered in the giveaway. All the details are going to be in the description box. I will see you soon for a new video—bye!