100 Best Food Hacks

[00:00] I dedicated my life to giving away secrets.  Secrets that chefs have held closely to them   for generations and because people deserve the  power. I once showed you a hundred food hacks   that I specifically learned in restaurants. So,  we're back with another hundred, but with three  

[00:14] times the firepower. So, joining me today is  Chef Chris Young, Chef Christian, and combined,   we're giving you 100 more food hacks that we  learned in restaurants. Industry secrets that   you'd never know, but you can ironically do easily  at home. Starting with number one. Want to always  

[00:29] have homemade cookies ready conveniently. Here's  what you do. Plastic wrap. Make a double or triple   or quadruple batch of your favorite cookie recipe.  Dump it onto your plastic wrap. Then I want you   to form that into a log. You roll the plastic  up, tighten plastic wrap around your log. Then  

[00:43] I want you to freeze this. And then whenever you  want cookies, you pull out your frozen log. And   sharp knife and cut that into coins. Don't forget  to remove the plastic wrap. And then in like 10 to  

[00:56] 12 minutes, these will bake up beautifully on a  baking sheet instantly. No wait time. Just think   ahead. Leave it in your freezer. And obviously way  better than the pre-cut storebought ones. Let's be   real. Here's a quick hack for removing fish skin,  especially if your knife skills aren't up to the  

[01:08] job. You need some fish, obviously. A bowl. I like  to put some ice in the bottom. We'll need a tea   towel. I explained in a moment. And some boiling  water. Tea towel on the fish. Our boiling water.   We're going to pour it over the tea towel. The  ice in the bowl beneath is quenching the boiling  

[01:22] water so that it doesn't steam the fish from  the bottom. And what the boiling water is doing   is it's breaking down the collagen beneath the  fish skin that holds the skin against the flesh.   And when we've got enough water, the purpose of  the tea towel is we can remove the boiling water  

[01:36] before it overcooks the fish. And then just find  a corner and unzip your fish. There you have it,   your skinless fish fillet and some fish skin.  Enjoy. Let's talk about how to get your pasta  

[01:48] sauce as nice and emulsified as a restaurant. So,  the key starts with this slurry solution. About   two cups of water, a tablespoon of flour, mother.  You're going to add this to your water before you   even put your pasta in there. This starchy  water is key to a thicker consistency for a  

[02:01] better emulsified sauce. Struggling to get your  chicken skin crispy before it burns? Start with   a cold pan. Chicken skin dried off down in our  cold pan set over low temperature. Season with   salt and over the course of a few minutes, the fat  will slowly render out. It'll begin to crisp. And  

[02:15] Flip and look how crispy that is. Let it cook on  the other side and it'll cook through. And that   just might be the crispiest chicken skin you'll  ever have. Frying herbs seems like the kind of  

[02:27] fussy thing that fine dining restaurants would do,  which is true, but here's a technique for making   it incredibly easy that we used to use at the Fat  Duck. Just put some olive oil on a plate. Take   your herbs, in this case basil, anoint them in a  little bit of olive oil like the Pope would want,  

[02:40] and lay them out on the plate. And now for the  key step. Yes, the microwave. Give them about 2   minutes. These will be a little pliable when  they come off the plate, but they will crisp   up very quickly as they cool. Be sure to add a  little salt. Nice little beautiful basily piece  

[02:56] of stained glass that's crisp, delicate, has  that fresh flavor of basil and is perfect for   garnishing some fancy pesto pasta. Do your baked  proteins look sad, plain, a little ugly? Juju it   up with a breadcrumb crust. So, to make the herb  crust, some butter, throw in some garlic. Go ahead  

[03:12] and throw in some herbs. And finally, breadcrumbs.  Saute till nice and golden. Brush a little mayo on   your protein. Even coat. Even coat. Mayo is going  to act like a glue. Take your protein. Dip it in   your crust. Herb crust. Beautiful. Making a dough  and you want it to be easier to work with. Here,  

[03:27] they have to knead it until it's done. You  can also just stop and let it rest for like   but it also makes it easier to knead, to shape.  It loosens it up. After resting, that once very  

[03:42] sticky dough is now smooth. It's already become  elastic. I can go back into kneading it just for   another minute or so. Look at this thing, dude.  You have a beautifully smooth ball of dough and   it's stretchy and extensible. Chef secrets.  The secret to crispy flat bacon is your oven,  

[03:57] not your frying pan. Start with a sheet tray. Lay  some bacon out on some parchment. Add a little bit   of water. The humidity is going to help that bacon  stay flat as it crisps up. More parchment on top.   Weight it down and into your oven. You want to be  patient about this. 250 degrees Fahrenheit. And  

[04:11] just wait. That low temperature steaming and then  frying in its own fat is going to make it crispy.   About an hour later, look at that bacon. Look  at how flat it is. Look at how perfect. It's a   bacon emoji. It's AI generated bacon. You want to  get rid of pesky red stains from your Tupperware?  

[04:26] Here's a hack. Put a little dish soap, a sponge,  and some warm water. Close it up and shake it.   Comes right off. No red stain. You crack an egg.  Oh no. Oh dang it. Eggshell got in there. What   the? Two hacks for one. Number one, dip a finger.  two fingers really in some water and you get your  

[04:41] eggshell out much more easily. Now, another hack  for you. Another eggshell somehow has a magnetic   power. You can also get that out. I actually like  this method a little bit more using your former   eggshell that you then cracked your egg in there  with to retrieve your broken eggshell. Now you got  

[04:54] clean eggs. If you've bought some picked crab  or you're picking some crab yourself, there is   nothing worse than biting down into a crustation  shell. It can be really easy to miss those little   pieces. But there's a secret. Get yourself to  Amazon. Buy one of these blacklight flashlight.  

[05:08] Check out what happens. We're going to take these  crustations to a club. You can see under the black   light any bits of shell fluores under the black  light, making it easy for me to spot them and   pick them out so that we can enjoy our crustation  without a trip to the dentist. Our nice delicious  

[05:24] crab and the crustation shells have been picked  out. When baking, always use grams. And how   do you measure things in grams? Well, a scale  for two reasons. Number one, for accuracy. So,   I need 580 g of flour. I'm going to get exactly  580 g of flour. But the other reason and the  

[05:38] biggest part of this hack that people don't think  about, I can measure directly in the thing that   Everything can just be measured in grams in one  place. Go get a scale if you can. Nobody wants to  

[05:50] deep fry at home, but everyone loves deep fried  French fries. Here's a way to take frozen fries   and make them not suck with your microwave and  an air fryer. Start with some frozen fries. This   works best for thick steak cut fries. Add some  water just to start to thaw the surface. About  

[06:05] 30 seconds. Drain that water off. Put a lid on.  And here's the secret. This is the part you have   practically falling apart because that's what's  going to make them light and fluffy in the inside.  

[06:17] That is the secret to making them crispy in the  air fryer. Into the microwave. We're going to give   these about 5 minutes. Potatoes out. Careful.  They are hot. Got a little bit of a vacuum   there. We'll just release that. Plenty of steam.  Make sure this lid is on snug. And go to town.  

[06:31] into the air fryer basket. Do not overcrowd your  air fryer. Do not put a liner at the bottom. That   makes the air fryer not work well. Into the air  fryer, maximum temperature about 15 to 20 minutes,   shaking it every so often just to keep turning  them over so they get crisp everywhere. Fries  

[06:46] done, but not quite yet. They need to be seasoned  or they're not delicious. They need to be anointed   with the blessed beef fat. So crispy, so light  and fluffy on the inside. One of the best fries   I've ever had. Wa! This is air fried. Microwaved,  airfried. These are frozen fries. These are almost  

[07:01] as good as the triple cooked chips we made at  the Fat Duck with a fraction of the effort. I'm   actually going to use this one. Banger. Don't have  a dry aager? I got a hack for that. Fish sauce   brush and a steak and brush. Flip it. Brush. Put  it in the fridge for at least an hour. Easy funk,  

[07:17] easy hack. Got a little parmesano triangle, if  you will. But you're always left over with the   the parmesan rind. This has been cut all the way  down. You'll take the sharp end of a knife and  

[07:29] just lightly scrape the rind. I'm going to do  it just in case there's any ink on it. Pop this   onto a plate and then we're going to put them in  the microwave. So, after a beautiful two minutes,   you have a Parmesan crisp, if you will. Cheers.  It's like the ultimate cheetah. You have leftover  

[07:42] dry ice, you can turn a stand mixer into an ice  cream machine. Start by taking some dry ice and   bashing it into a powder. You want small p-sized  pieces. Stand mixer. Add our sorbet base. Start  

[07:57] on low speed. We're going to put the dry ice in.  The dry ice is going to freeze the sorbet as it   stirs. Biting down on a piece of dry ice is a  trip to the dentist. So, after you churned it,  

[08:09] put it in the freezer for 30 minutes to harden  and allow any final pieces of dry ice to finish   dissipating. We got our sorbet. You can carbonate  anything with dry ice, like fruit. You just need a   cooler. Take a container of dry ice. We're going  to put the dry ice in a corner, uncovered. Then,  

[08:23] we're going to do some fruit. We need to let the  CO2 sit in here for a couple of minutes so that it   pushes all of the air out and fills us with CO2.  Put the lid on. Leave it cracked. You can tell   it's ready. If you stick your head in and take a  breath and it feels like you're on fire, that's  

[08:36] because it's all CO2. So, wait until it's too  difficult to breathe. Then, we're going to close   this up and wrap it tight. I'm going to leave this  overnight. Wo! It's literally like a little mimosa   in your mouth. Try a banana. I don't like seeing  the inside of my banana moves, so I'm going to  

[08:50] draw the line there. This is so good. It's like  spicy fruit. The kids are going to love this one,   dude. Food science. The stuff stick to your knife  when you're cutting it. Just wet your knife before   you cut that sticky stuff. For example, cutting  sticky fruit sucks, dude. It's always stuck to  

[09:04] my knife. So, if you wet your knife, it's going  to glide right through it. Promise. Voila. Want   that don't rest their cookie dough. When you  chill it, it firms up. Right at this stage,  

[09:19] it is way too loose. But refrigerating it will  firm it up. Second, it ages and deepens the   flavor. And the third one, for fun, when it bakes  from cold instead of warm, you end up with a much   more uniform, less spread out cookie, a thicker,  fudgier cookie. Bonus hack. That's right. We have  

[09:35] a brand new website for all the recipes that we do  on the second channel, which by the way, if you're   not subscribed, you should go subscribe to it.  Recipes Only over there. Josh Weissman Recipes.   new. It has all of our recipes fully written on  there and printable. So, link in the description.  

[09:51] Does your water take forever to boil? Two things.  Quit watching it and make sure you cover it. Don't   have a lid? Use a pan. So, as long as you cover  it, it'll boil faster. There you go. Boiling. Good   steak's expensive these days, but it doesn't have  to be. You can take a chuck steak and use sousvid  

[10:07] to make it ribeye tender by cooking it overnight  at 137° F, giving it all of that time to break   down the tough connective tissue and giving you  that ribeye tenderness and all of the flavor of   a chuck steak at a fraction of the price. Just  cook it off for at least 12 hours and then sear  

[10:22] it and enjoy. Wow. Butchers love this trick.  Basically, take a cheap cut of meat, upgrade   it into something as good as ribeye. Nailed  that one. You want to cook a super thick steak,   but you don't have a sousvid. This is called the  reverse sear method. Get your thick steak, season  

[10:35] it generously with salt and pepper. Set that on a  wire rack set over a baking sheet. Regardless of   the thickness, place it in the oven at around 250  to 275 Fahrenheit until the internal temperature   reaches 125 Fahrenheit. Then you'll take it out,  let it rest for a couple minutes, get a hot pan,  

[10:49] cooked steak. Dry ice can carbonate anything  like this bottle of orange juice. You're going   to want a plastic soda bottle. The soda bottle  is designed to actually hold the pressure of the  

[11:01] carbon dioxide. Start by taking your orange juice.  This works best if everything is ice cold to begin   with. I need about a 4 g piece of dry ice. We'll  let the CO2 fizz for a little bit so that the   CO2 pushes all of the air out. Lid on tight. I'm  just going to put this in my fridge for about 30  

[11:17] minutes. It's like a mimosa without the champagne.  All done with your pickles? Have a bunch of juice?   Don't toss it. You can make a lot of things with  this. Have a marinades, even salad dressings.   Strain your pickle juice, a little bit of salt,  fresh pepper, and some olive oil. Oh, voila.  

[11:35] Salad dressing. Making a pizza and it sticks to  the peel? Sure, flour works, but you know what   works better? Semolina. Okay, they're like little  miniature ball bearings. This will help your pizza   slide from peel to oven. Here's how to turn your  domestic oven into a Neapolitan pizza oven with a  

[11:51] cast iron pan upside down and a broiler. And we're  going to use the broiler to create the radiant   heat that you would get from a traditional pizza  oven to quickly cook the top so that the whole   pizza cooks in under 90 seconds. It is important  that your pizza not be larger than the diameter of  

[12:05] your cast iron pan. Ask me how I know. There is a  chance you will slide the pizza off the back side.   So, I really recommend putting a baking tray  underneath it because if you miss, the pizza's   ruined, but at least you won't have to clean your  oven. 90 seconds. This is a great hack. Crispy  

[12:18] bottom, first of all. Really nice. Prism the edge.  That's a beautiful pie. And I'd have no idea it   was made on a cast iron skillet. Beautiful work.  90 seconds. Job done. Want creamier, fluffier, and   richer eggs. The key is just to add a little bit  of mayo. So, for about three eggs, 2 tsp of mayo.

[12:39] Let's start with the maybe the normal one. Still  good. Classic. Oh, I don't even taste the mayo. I   texturally though, it is very different. It hits  way better. You ever go to a restaurant, you see   those nice little cheese ribbons on salad? You  might think, oh, they take a knife and they No,  

[12:54] you can do that. But I think a lot of people  have one of these. Instead, use a vegetable   peeler on your cheese and guess what? You get  stunning, beautiful ribbons of cheese. I mean,   look at this. Any hard cheese this will work with.  Parmesano, pecorino, an aged gouda, so on and so  

[13:08] forth. Want to cook a great steak faster, more  evenly, and with an amazing crust? Flip it every   30 seconds. Boil the steak a little bit rather  than the pan. You'll get less smoke into the pan   laying it away from you. If you leave the steak  alone, the top is essentially staying cold the  

[13:22] whole time, but you reach a point where heat can't  go into the bottom of the steak any faster. So, by   flipping it every 30 seconds, we're bringing heat  to the surface of the steak as quickly as we can,   turning it over, letting this side rest while heat  still penetrates. So, we're effectively cooking  

[13:36] it from both sides at the same time. You're  going to get a lot more carryover cooking. So,   if you want a rare, medium rare steak around 130  Fahrenheit, you're going to need to pull this off   when its core temperature is 105 and let it rest  so it coasts all the way up. Don't have measuring  

[13:49] cups available? Deli cups. If you don't have  these, go get them. Half pint, one cup. Pint,   two cups. A quart, four cups. Easy. Don't have a  half pint? Fill a pint in half. Quick math. Want  

[14:01] to rise dough faster, but you don't have one of  those expensive proofers? Don't worry. Just put   it in an empty oven or even a drawer with the  light on and a mug of hot water. Close that.   Let it proof. It'll probably proof twice as fast.  Here's a way to make a slurpee without a frozen  

[14:14] carbonated beverage machine. You're just going to  need some Coca-Cola. Just take an empty bottle,   add the sugar, add the guar gum, add the pectin,  and add the yucka powder. Blend them together by   shaking. You want to add the Coke to the powders,  not the other way around. Stir that up. Pour your  

[14:30] syrup in slowly so that you don't get too much  fizzing. We've got our magic slurpee ingredients   inside our carbonated Coke. Just give that a good  shake. Gently crack it to let any air out. Tighten  

[14:42] it back down. And this just needs to go into the  freezer for a few hours. Give it a shake every   hour or so to help break up those ice crystals.  So, this has been in the freezer for about half   a day. It's nice and frozen. I'm giving it a  good shake to break up the ice. It should feel  

[14:56] like you're shaking wet sand. And just going to  crack this open. Little bit of an overflow. It's   a cornstarch slurry. It'll thicken up real quick.  Water. Corn starch. Whiskey biscuit. Drawing from  

[15:12] Asian cooking techniques. It's way easier than  making a R and it works on a variety of sauces.   I got another hack for you in the middle of this.  You ever rest your meat and it somewhat overcooks   essentially suffocating. It doesn't allow for air  flow. So, instead, rest it on a wire rack set over  

[15:28] a baking sheet. This will allow air to circulate  so it can cool a little bit and not continue to   cook. The secret to a perfect French fry is  a perfect potato. Big fast food companies can   demand their potato suppliers give them perfect  potatoes. You buy whatever potatoes are left at  

[15:42] the supermarket. What makes a potato perfect?  The right amount of dry matter content. How do   you measure it? You just need some salt brine. 120  g of salt for every liter of water. And then you   just put your potatoes into the brine. Potatoes  that sink have the right amount of dry matter  

[15:56] content. Potatoes that float are floaters and  floaters are never good. Get rid of them. Use them   for mash. Just sort your potatoes into mash and  perfect for French fries. Now take these potatoes,   slice them up, blanch them, and double fry  them because that makes for a great French  

[16:10] fry. Does your at home pasta not taste as good  as the restaurants? The key is salty water. No. How do you know if it's salted enough? You taste  it. If it's as salty as the ocean, you're good to  

[16:24] go. Before you sear your meat, always dry it off  completely with a paper towel. Then put it in the   pan. If you have a wet piece of meat, you will not  get a good sear. That layer of liquid then has to   evaporate before the heat even gets to the surface  of your meat. And by then, it's boiled the meat  

[16:38] and you'll flip it over. It'll be gray. It won't  have a great mayard or browning. Make your sorbet   fruier using fructose. Just start with about  500 g of ripe strawberries, 100 g of fructose,   5 g of malic acid to make it juicier and more  delicious. And here's my secret if you're making  

[16:54] this for adults. Some Agnesa bitters. The  alcohol in the bitters is going to make this   punchier. And the flavor is delicious. About 50  g. Blend that up. Pass it through a sie. You can   turn this into a sorbet just by freezing it in  a Ninja Creamy canister because who doesn't have  

[17:08] a Ninja Creamy these days? Here's the fastest way  to clean your blender. warm water, soap, and turn   on your blender. And it cleans your blades. Air  fryers aren't known for being great at searing,   but they can be with the help of some mayo. Take  a nice pork chop, a little bit of mayo, brush that  

[17:23] over. If you just put oil on this pork chop, and  put it into a air fryer. As the juices come out   of the pork, the oil is going to run off. You're  not going to get very good heat transfer. It's not   going to brown evenly. We put mayo on because it's  emulsified. It keeps the oil in place. It also  

[17:37] helps our seasoning stick. Cook that until the  pork chop is about 135. and then and let it rest   to about 145° so that it's still slightly pink  because pink pork is actually juicy and delicious.   go one way, flip your steak and go the other  way. Create little diamond cuts. Looks like  

[17:55] this. Problem. You've got a frozen turkey breast  that you want to have for dinner. This is going   to take a couple of days to thaw in a fridge.  It'll take 6 or 7 hours to thaw in your sink.   Just cook it from frozen. It's faster, juicier,  and safer. Just put it on a roasting tray. Put  

[18:08] it into a low oven at 250 degrees. It's going to  take a couple of hours to thaw as it cooks. That's   why you don't want it too hot. You do not want to  burn the outside before the inside is thawed. Then   finish cooking this turkey breast to 155 160 so  that it's still juicy and entirely safe. And then  

[18:24] when you're ready to eat, turn the oven up to 400  450. Finish browning that off. And there you go.   Now that it's had just a couple of minutes in the  oven, it's thought out enough that it's wet on the   surface. I'm going to salt and pepper it. First,  I'm going to remove this turkeyy's hairet. Plenty  

[18:37] of salt. You can use more than you think. Some  black pepper. Back into the oven. Couple of hours   to thaw through. Finish cooking and getting up to  temperature. And then we'll crisp it. Brown under   a broiler. Now, we just need to slice. By thawing  the turkey and cooking it straight from frozen,  

[18:51] you keep about 30% more juice than if you thought  it in your fridge and then cooked it. That's about   as good as turkey gets. Having a hard time cutting  cinnamon rolls with your regular knife? Well,   you actually don't even need a knife. You just  need unflavored dental floss. You're going to wind  

[19:04] it between your fingers. Find the thickness you  want to cut it. I'll say like right around here is   now they're crossing each other. And then you're  just going to pull both sides all the way through   and across. Beautiful little cut right there. Bro,  this is by far the best method to cutting cinnamon  

[19:21] rolls I have ever found. It blows my mind every  time. See, when you use a knife, this happens,   right? You sort of squash the layers together as  opposed to keeping them nice and intact. Sure,   if your knife is really sharp, you might  be able to saw away at it, but even then,  

[19:33] you're still kind of crushing the layers. You  see how compacted the cinnamon sugar is here   versus here. You really want it to be loose. You  really want to have some breathing room. Okay, so   you're going to go to the trouble of deep frying  at home. You've got your fresh oil hot and ready.  

[19:46] The problem is fresh oil doesn't fry very well.  The best oil is oil that is somewhat broken in.   How do you break your oil in? Save some used oil  and pour a little bit of that used oil into the   fresh oil. The used oil has plenty of the natural  emulsifiers that are formed when oil is used.  

[20:01] Adding them to the fresh oil is going to help it  fry your food better, so you get a golden brown,   even crust and none of that splotchiness. And now  this oil is ready to fry some great battered fish.   Gluten is the enemy of crispy batters. Vodka is  the secret to a better batter. Here's how. 200  

[20:17] g of allpurpose flour. 200 g of rice flour makes  it crispier. A teaspoon of baking powder. So, I'm   going to stir my vodka into my dry ingredients.  Since this is going to be for fish, I'm going   to add about 300 ml of beer. This should have the  consistency of a thin pancake batter. Then into my  

[20:33] batter and into some frying oil that's been broken  in at about 400° F. Look at that. Got these extra   crispy bits here. That fish is going to be perfect  on the inside. And that is light and delicate. Not  

[20:45] going to be stodgy at all. That fish is still  juicy in the center. Perfectly cooked. And my   batter isn't doughy. It's just crisp and delicious  all the way through. You ever add tomato paste,  

[20:59] but it doesn't quite add the flavor you thought it  would? Instead, try doing this. Cook your tomato   paste first. Never just add it to a finished dish  and call it a day. But add it to an empty pan,   whatever your aromatics are. In this case, I'm  making a vodka pasta, so I've got garlic and  

[21:13] shallots. I'll add my tomato paste. And you  cook that tomato paste way down. Medium heat,   sauté, stirring often until it's deeply, deeply  caramelized, about 2 to 4 minutes. You'll know   once it starts to stick to the bottom of the pan  like this. Now you can add whatever sauce, cream,  

[21:28] broth, or whatever you're using tomato paste for.  Just make sure to cook it down first. This is what   adds the flavor to the tomato paste and you're  cooking off the water that's getting in the way of   the flavor. When you deep fry, shallow, whatever,  you will probably end up with a bunch of oil that  

[21:42] is dirty and looks like this with schmutz in it.  You probably want to throw this oil out. But don't   do that. Save this oil. You can rescue it. You  just need a little bit of this, some gelatin,   and a little bit of hot water. Dissolve the  gelatin in the hot water. Stir it into that deep  

[21:55] frying oil. Now you just let it sit. What's going  to happen is the gelatin in water is going to pull   out all of the debris, all of the dirty stuff in  the oil. It's going to settle to the bottom. You   can leave it in the fridge so that that gelatin  gels and then just pour off your perfectly clean  

[22:08] reusable oil, which will in fact actually fry  better because this oil has been slightly used.   There we go. All of the schmutz, all of that  gelatin and water has settled to the bottom,   leaving us with very clean oil on the top. I  could leave this in the fridge and let this gel  

[22:21] and solidify. But if I'm in a rush, I can just  pour the oil. Use a strainer to catch any loose   bits that happen to come through. And there we go.  Clean, refreshed oil with the help of a little bit   of gelatin. Ready to fry a second time. Don't want  to damage your nice countertops, but you got a  

[22:34] lot of crumbs. Use a squeegee. Not a scratch. Add  instant umami, more specifically flavor to things.   Either add Shiraashi soup noodle base. Just adds a  nice savory flavor to things. My favorite MSG. You  

[22:48] can apply this to literally everything. Let's say  you're making a nice little sauce for a sandwich.   too. That's pretty common, right? Mix it together.  Oh, yeah. It tastes all right. It tastes pretty   good, but it could be better. Instead, you could  add a pinch of MSG. Or you could add a little  

[23:03] squirt of shiashi. You know, about a teaspoon. And  then, if you're making a little sandwich, guess   what you do with the sauce? You put the sauce on  the sandwich. Maybe add a little turkey to the   sandwich. Add a nice little piece of lettuce. Bada  bing, bada boom. You got a quick little sandwich  

[23:15] with a little extra flavor. The secret to nacho  cheese that melts like the store-bought stuff   but tastes like real cheese because it's made with  real cheese is Alka-Seltzer. Get the stuff without   the aspirin in it or if it's Cinco de Mayo, get  the stuff with the aspirin in it. You will need  

[23:28] three Alka-Seltzer tablets, six teaspoons  of vinegar. This reaction is going to create   sodium citrate. Sodium citrate is the secret  ingredient that makes melt so well, and it's   what's going to make our nacho cheese sauce uber  melty. Let this react. Once it's fully reacted,  

[23:42] we just add it to a sauce pot over low heat. We  add 6 ounces of cheese a little bit at a time,   just like you're making fondue. Let that melt  slowly. Water, add enough to the consistency   you like. You can make it as thin or as thick  as you want just by adding more or less liquid.  

[23:58] Cheese doesn't melt like that without sodium  citrate. And you can either buy sodium citrate   or you can make it with Alka-Seltzer. There is  your own nacho cheese sauce that tastes like   real cheese with a little help from Alka-Seltzer.  Groceries are getting expensive, so this is how  

[24:11] you keep your food costs low at home. You could  take your leftover scraps, put them in a jar,   and save them for soup or stock. All these scraps  are going to add a huge depth of flavor to your   stock. Dredging chicken and your hands get all  clumped up and messy, and it's just gets harder  

[24:23] and harder to dredge. The hack is use one hand  for dry stuff and the other hand for wet stuff.   Never mix the two. So, I'll take my wet chicken  and put it in my dry batter. Then, I'll swap   to my dry hand, coat the chicken with flour, and  then toss it to coat fully and beautifully. Then,  

[24:38] I have a nice coated piece of fried chicken.  Now, if you mix the two, if I decided to dredge   and then go back over here, and then dredge again  with yet again the same hand, look what happens.  

[24:51] sweet and sour candy? Of course you do. It's  delicious. The secret is to mix a fruit acid   with your sugar. Malic acid is a naturally  occurring sugar found in apples, cherries,  

[25:03] and other delicious fruits. Just mix it with a  couple of tablespoons of sugar. You can do this to   taste. You can make it as sour or as sweet as you  like. It's going to make these berries juicy and   delicious like candy. Just over my strawberries.  Give them a toss. Better than sweet and sour  

[25:19] candy. Take that malic acid and combine them with  sweet summer fruit to make them like candy. So,   of limp. Here's how to bring them back to life.  Ice water. Herbs in the ice water. Let them sit  

[25:32] for a few seconds. Spread them out and then remove  them and drain on a paper towel. Good as new. Is   your ice cream hard to scoop? Dip your ice cream  scoop in warm water for a few minutes, then give   it a go. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Look at that. Hack. You  want to maximize your flavor of herbs? Add it at  

[25:48] the very end. Add your herbs later. So my stock  is done. I've turned off the heat, but it's still   very hot. I take my fresh herbs, bruise them or  crack them open, put them in the stock, let the   stock rest for about 10 minutes. That will be the  most amount of flavor you get out of those herbs.  

[26:02] If you can whisk eggs and boil water, you can  make a perfect Parisian omelette. This is going   to look crazy. Three eggs. Boiling water. Pour  it in. It's going to look like a mess. Cover it.   The omelette rises to the top. We're just going  to decant off some of the water. Sie, clean tea  

[26:19] towel. Just shape it with the tea towel. And I'm  just going to roll that out onto the plate. Some   butter. A little bit of flaky salt. That is light,  fluffy, perfectly cooked all the way through. Oo,  

[26:33] that is a delicious Parisian style omelette made  by poaching. the easiest herb oil. Now, you want a   nice little green herb oil. Very simple, right?  Pick your green herbs, something tender, like   parsley, for example. Maybe you want some chives.  Add some chives in there, too. Now, you'll see  

[26:47] all be done in a blender. Top that off with some  neutral tasting oil. And then all you're going to   do is blend that on high, letting it run and run  and run until it reaches a temperature of around  

[27:00] 149° Fahrenheit. Take it out, strain through a  fine mesh strainer with a cheesecloth set into it.   And that's herb oil. Ever feel like your cutting  takes forever? A chef once told me, "The less you   lot of something, repeat the same motion before  you move on to the next step. Finish it all,  

[27:17] then put your knife down. So, for example, cutting  onions, instead of cutting both ends of one onion   and then peeling it, see how I put my knife down?  No. Cut all the ends, then put your knife down,  

[27:29] then you do the next motion. It's more efficient.  Trust me. Don't want to deal with chopping onions,   put them in a food processor. Nobody cares  about knife cuts in a meatball or a sauce.

[27:41] Have you ever wondered how they take mandarins  that look like this and turn them these perfectly   pith-free jewel like mandarins in a can? The  secret is a helper enzyme, pectinex. Let me show   you the trick. Start by peeling the skin off your  citrus fruit. You can leave them whole or break  

[27:56] them down into individual segments. I'm going to  add just enough water to cover while weighing the   amount of water I added. In this case, 400 g.  And I'm going to add 1% of pectinex by weight.  

[28:08] So that's 4 g. Cover that with a lid. Give it a  swirl to stir the enzyme around into the water.   Leave this in your fridge overnight. And let me  show you what you get. After an overnight soak,   all of the pith has been broken down by the  enzyme and you're left with clean mandarins.  

[28:22] You can just give them a little rinse off to make  them perfect. This works for any citrus fruit.   you could sauté, you could boil with broth,  whatever. Find a way to cook your vegetables way,  

[28:35] way, way, way, way softer. I've got tomatoes. I've  got some red bell pepper that's been simmering in   the pot. If you have a stick blender, just give  that a quick run through. Now, at this point,   touch of olive oil. That's just going to make it a  little bit richer, a little bit creamier, a little  

[28:52] smoother. You have a beautifully smooth, delicious  instant soup. Shout out to restaurants for that   one. Now, I might not be a vegan or a vegetarian.  But if you are or you like to cook tofu, always do   this first. Dry and press it. One paper towel, set  your tofu on top, place another on top of that,  

[29:09] and put any weight directly over it. Ideally, this  is a chef's press. Could be a container of heavy   berries. But you dry it and press it in the fridge  overnight before you cook it, sear it, fry it.   Otherwise, I'll show you the difference. So you  end up with a much better product here because on  

[29:23] one end the drained and pressed one has a lot less  moisture on the surface and on the inside. So it's   one that hasn't been drained as well. It doesn't  get enough color and browning. Try and press your  

[29:35] tofu. When you're making pio, you got to cut the  butter into little even pieces. It's never even.   It's inconsistent. So take your butter, put it  in the freezer, then grate it. You get consistent   little butter pieces. Consistent. Don't have a  piping bag? Okay. Well, what about just a regular  

[29:49] plastic bag? Take a Ziploc bag, plastic bag of  some sort. A storage ziplo really. Fill it up with   whatever batter or whatever you need a piping bag  for. And now you cut that tip and you essentially   have a piping bag right here. Which brings me to  the next one. Everybody loves a perfectly circular  

[30:03] pancake. But what could make that? Well, actually  a piping bag or our makeshift one. Cut the tip,   hot pan, and just pipe it in. It's so circular.  Sousid has a reputation for being too slow. These  

[30:16] chicken breasts take over an hour. way too long  for a quick meal on a Tuesday night. Not anymore.   Not with this simple technique. If you want your  chicken breast a nice, juicy, delicious at 155°,   start with your water bath 20° hotter, 175. Drop  your chicken breasts in. Don't worry, they're not  

[30:32] to that sousvid temperature without having to  wait around forever. When the timer goes off,   just turn the bath down to a couple degrees above  your target temperature and add some ice to get  

[30:45] that bath down to that temperature so that you  don't overcook your breast. By starting hotter,   temperature faster, saving you all that time  and getting these chicken breasts done in half  

[30:57] the time of traditional sousie. And there you  go. Sousie chicken breast done in 30 minutes,   not an hour. And all these need now is a quick  sear off on the grill. These are two hacks for   one. caramelizing onions significantly faster.  If you're doing a caramelized onion, normally  

[31:10] they take about an hour to do. So instead,  here's what you do to kickstart it. Hot pan,   little bit of oil or butter, your onion. A lot  of the time people would salt it and you cook it   down. You let the natural sugars caramelize. But  if you add a touch more sugar to those onions,  

[31:23] not much, just a pinch, okay? Just a pinch along  with your salt. Stir that together. That little   speed up the process of caramelization. Second  hack to caramelizing onions faster. You could  

[31:37] leave this on a low heat and then just let it  slowly caramelize. Instead of it taking an hour,   it might take 45, maybe 30. But what if you  wanted to take 15 minutes? Turn the heat up to   medium medium high. Let them sit for a couple of  minutes and they'll start to look like this. Okay,  

[31:50] pan of fawn. Add a touch of water. Just a splash,  like a tablespoon. And delaze that. Let the water   evaporate. And then let that cook down again and  let it burn again. Then a few minutes later starts  

[32:04] to burn again. And guess what? You're going to  delaze again. Reduce all that water out. Scrape   up the brown bits on the bottom. And you can  see we're already like halfway to a caramelized   look in like 5 minutes. Rinse and repeat that for  another 5 or so minutes. And in 10 to 15 minutes  

[32:16] total, you have essentially a caramelized onion.  Similar flavor, but a little bit less cooked. It   works if you're in a rush. I've got a bonus hack  for you. I'm wearing something different. It says   team water. The hack is if you donate $1, you  give one person water for a year. 100% of the  

[32:32] water to communities around the world for decades.  The goal is to raise $40 million. So, if you want   to help out, if you want to participate in this,  all you got to do is donate. Donate $1, give one  

[32:46] water. Want to vacuum seal a steak but don't have  any fancy equipment? Ziploc bag, add some fat,   add some herbs because it's more delicious this  way. And then use the Archimedes principle. and  

[32:58] some water. Crack a corner. Push that bag all  the way down to squeeze out the air using the   water to displace it. Make sure it's closed. And  there you go. Vacuum sealed without any fancy   equipment. This is great for sousvid or if you  just want something to stay fresher in the fridge  

[33:13] for longer. Hollands has a reputation for being  incredibly finicky. You just need to stand at   the stove stirring and if you look at it wrong, it  breaks. Not anymore. At least if you have sousvid   ziplockc style bag, plenty of butter. Add your egg  yolks. salt because seasoning is delicious. Shout  

[33:28] and vinegar reduction that of course you've  prepped out in advance and a squeeze of lemon   juice. Just put that all into a sousie water bath  at 165° Fahrenheit. The sousvid is going to melt   the butter. It's going to dene the proteins in  the egg yolk so that it is primed to just emulsify  

[33:44] perfectly when you take the next step which is  dump it all in a blender and just blend. Then you   have bulk Holland days on demand that is perfectly  silky smooth every time without any worry. Perfect   for those of you who work brunch. Coaching an egg  and it falls to pieces. Here's a key. Two things.  

[33:59] Number one, salt. Number two, a splash of vinegar  helps the whites congeal. Cracked egg. Give it a   stir and drop your egg in. There you go. Perfectly  poached egg. Do you have a stained and smelly   cutting board? Use lemon and salt to make a scrub  to refresh and clean it. So, throw some salt on  

[34:13] your cutting board. Squeeze a little bit of lemon  juice. Open up your lemon. Just go to just go to   town. The salt works as an abrasion. The lemon  works as a refresher. clean and fresh. This is  

[34:25] a big one. Whenever you're cooking, always have a  dry towel and a wet towel. Why? Maybe your knife   is a little dirty. Wet towel to clean it off. Dry  towel to dry it off. You always are prepared for   any situation. Dry towel for dry ingredients like  breadcrumbs. And a wet towel for wet ingredients  

[34:40] like umami sauce. Shout out to Kimono Mom. Wipe  that up. Oh no, this is dirty. And now it's not.   Here's a quick hack for making some. Rather than  rolling it out and cutting them down by hand, just   get yourself a piping bag and some string. Check  this out. So, I'm just piping these out to length  

[34:53] using the string to cut them off right into the  simmering water. And I will strain them out onto   an oiled sheet tray. Keep them from sticking. And  then quickly cook them off in some brown butter to   halfway through, oh snap, I'm missing something?  Let's prevent that by melass. Put everything in  

[35:12] its place. For example, here I have a recipe for  vodka pasta. Have everything already measured out.   There's no need for me to stop halfway through  and be like, "Oh, snap. Let me grab a teaspoon. Oh   snap, where's the garlic? With everything in front  of me, I can cook without stopping. Efficiency.  

[35:26] Here's how to char peppers quickly. You could use  a broiler. You could just kind of bake them in a   be a campfire or on a grill or directly over your  kitchen stove. Turn your kitchen burner on maximum  

[35:41] heat and place your pepper directly on top of  the grates. Want to speed that up even more? You   could even add a blowtorrch in the equation if you  have one. This will char your pepper much faster.   Bonus hack. Don't wash the skins off your charred  peppers. Instead, take a damp paper towel and then  

[35:55] just wipe the char off. You see, if you wash  it off, you're washing all those nice pepper   flavors off. Now, you're left with a pepper with  maximum flavor. Nobody likes a cold steak or a   warm salad. So, to solve that, put your hot food  on hot plates, put your cold food on cold plates.  

[36:09] Let's maximize your eating experience. Throw your  plates in the oven. The hotter your oven is, the   less time you want to put it in there for. About  5 minutes or so, give or take. For cold plates,   here's a problem. You wrap it in plastic wrap,  right? Or you put it in a plastic baggie. It molds  

[36:25] faster that way. You want to store it longer, all  you got to do is take a block of cheese, place it   in some parchment paper, fold the sides over to  then enase the cheese. Now, you could leave it   like this, but just to keep it extra airtight, you  can also put it in a layer of foil. This will keep  

[36:40] it better for longer in your refrigerator. So,  you're grating a little bit of parmesano, maybe   some pecarino, and you got this down to the nub.  Don't throw this away. First of all, save it in   a bag. Leave it in your fridge. If you're making  some chicken stock, snap it, throw it in there,  

[36:52] rich umami, a little bit of cheesiness, and just  some general overall depth. And for example, this   would be a great stock to use in a risoto. Brazed  vegetables can be delicious, but way too often  

[37:05] they just have this stewed texture and no flavor.  There's actually a secret for getting that melt   inyou mouth texture, but keeping all of the fresh  flavor of that vegetable. Take something like   finel. The trick is to just microwave it and let  it steam in its own juices. I'm add just a little  

[37:19] bit of water. Plenty of Evo. A little bit of salt  because it makes everything taste better. Covered   in a microwave safe container into the microwave.  Everybody's microwave is a little bit different,   so your exact time may vary, but I'm going to  start with about 4 minutes. And then after that,  

[37:35] I'll check the texture and give it 30 second  bursts until it gets that melt inyou mouth texture   while keeping all of the fresh anesy flavor of  this bulb of fennel. Careful when opening. It is a   little steamy. Still got that vibrant spring green  flavor. Hasn't broken down to brown, but I can  

[37:49] just see by poking at this, even the root bulb is  nice and tender. It's soft. It's still slightly al   dente. Has that really fresh flavor. And it took  about 4 minutes in the microwave. Want to blanch a   small amount of vegetables, but don't want to deal  with the pot, the strainer, this, this, that bowl?  

[38:04] You can do it all in one bowl with a water kettle.  This only works with a small amount of vegetables,   but let's say you've got enough green beans for  two to four people, or any vegetable really. Large   bowl, tea kettle, boiling water. Take it off.  Pour just enough boiling water on top to cover the  

[38:16] vegetables. Cover with plastic wrap. And then let  that sit for about 3 to 5 minutes. Now after that,   take the plastic wrap off. You already got a  bowl. You already got water in it. Just dump   ice directly over it. Toss. And now you have  ice water. Let those cool down. And in about 30  

[38:31] seconds, you have a beautiful ice cold blanched,  tender, still retaining crunch vegetable. Wrapping   celery in paper towels or plastic, make it  flimsy. Wrap it in foil. The foil helps retain the  

[38:43] moisture, allowing your celery to stay crispy. You  ever make a cucumber salad and you let it sit and   it just becomes a watery mess? Do this first. Once  you've cut your cucumbers, before you dress them,   first season them lightly with salt and then toss  them together. Let them sit for about 5 minutes.  

[38:58] Then squeeze them and that'll drain them of their  excess water. Then dress them. Don't know when to   throw away your food? Before you put your stuff  away, label it with the date you're going to   throw it away. Less thinking. Bread stails  as it sits around. Stale bread sucks. It's  

[39:10] easy to fix. When bread sits around, it actually  gets heavier. It absorbs water out of the air,   and it tastes dry because the starch granules  crystallize. We can undo that process, and it's   easy. Just take your stale bread, wrap it in some  foil, put it into an oven at about 300° F or so,  

[39:28] just long enough to warm the bread through.  It will drive off the excess moisture. It will   melt those starch crystals, and it will make this  bread not suck. Into the oven. It's going to take   about an hour. The bread's a foam. doesn't heat  quickly. Oh, nice and soft. Take the foil off.  

[39:43] Let that cool a little bit before eating it. But  there's your refreshed, no longer stale bread. You   want to keep your mushrooms from being moldy and  slimy? Store them in a paper bag cuz plastic bags   trap the moisture and they get all sticky. Paper  allows the mushrooms to breathe, allowing a little  

[39:57] bit more shelf life. Storing homemade sauces is  messy and inefficient. I love my deli containers,   but instead store them in squirt bottles. If  you store them in squirt bottles, it's the same   concept. I mean, they're going to stay completely  airtight. You can leave them in the fridge. Now,  

[40:10] they store easily and they're immediately ready  to use whenever you need to. I spilled, but it   it is ready. But it doesn't stop there. You can  also do this with the things that you regularly   use every day, like oils. That way, anytime you go  to cook, ready to go. You don't need to unscrew a  

[40:24] bottle. You just squirt it in. You're good to go.  This is what restaurants do. Once you've finished   your delicious rotisserie chicken, here's how you  turn it into a restaurantw worthy chicken stock   in under an hour with your Instant Pot. Yes, an  Instant Pot. chicken carcass in. If you got some  

[40:38] remnants, scrape them in, too. Don't worry if  it's been in people's mouths. You're going to   pressure cook this. It's going to be sterile. Add  just enough water. You don't want to quite cover   it. There you go. Lid on. Pressure cook for about  1 hour. 1 hour later. Strain that off. M. That is  

[40:54] and make it a cheffy cons, all you need to do is  freeze it. Get yourself an ice cube tray. Pour   the chicken stock into the ice cube tray. We're  going to freeze this. I'm going to show you how  

[41:07] we ice filter this to get a cons so clear you'd  think it's chicken bourbon. Now that you've frozen   your chicken stock, just demold them. Pile these  into an appropriate device with a coffee filter.   There you go. Just stack them up. This is going  to go into the fridge overnight. As the ice thaws,  

[41:22] it's going to self-filter, self-clarify,  self-conentrate into chickeny clarified   deliciousness. You want clear and better tasting  stock, you have to skid the impurities. So,   right off the top, all those impurities suck up  your flavor that you want to keep. You're looking  

[41:36] for that scum, cloudy, nasty stuff off the top.  All you got to do is just skim it with a little   strainer. Do this throughout your whole cooking  process. You'll have a clear, flavorful broth.   I'm a firm believer that a rice cooker is the end  all be all of great rice. But what if you don't  

[41:49] Rice into your pot. We're going to fill this with  water. Going to get in there, agitate your rice,   carefully drain off the water not to get any of  the rice out. Fill it up again. And then just   repeat that process until your rice water runs  clear. Here's the real key. You're going to then  

[42:04] spread your rice out into an even layer that coats  the bottom of the pan. And then from there, you're   going to add just enough water until when you  touch the rice with your finger, that water comes   just up to your first knuckle. Now take that to  the stove, cover with a lid, bring it up to heat,  

[42:17] medium high, and then bring it to a boil. And now  once that comes to a boil, you're going to take a   lid, place the lid directly on top, and then cut  your heat off, and let it steam for around 20   to 25 minutes, depending on how much rice is in  there. Then you can take the lid off, check it,  

[42:31] through. Then once that timer is up, open up the  lid. Looks like the rice is cooked. But first,   you always want to check. So fluff it, and always  have a little taste. Make sure that it's cooked  

[42:43] but it is pretty darn close. So, you make a  beautiful lasagna, you take it out of the oven,   you immediately cut into it and serve it, and  it just kind of falls flat all over the plate.   It almost unravels. That's because you're doing it  wrong. You have to let it rest for about 10 to 15,  

[43:00] sometimes up to 20 minutes if it's really thick  before you cut into it. Here's what it looks like   cut into fresh. Now, we've let this rest a little  bit, and I can already tell just by cutting it   that it's going to hold nicely together. And look  at that. You can see all the layers. It's still  

[43:12] nice and hot. Set it on a plate. Is this like a  mindbending hack? No. But if you want to serve   people a really nice even slice of lasagna,  this is the only way to do it. You must rest   it. Otherwise, yeah, if it's really saucy, it's  going to be even worse than this. It's going to  

[43:25] fall all over the place. Here's how to remove the  pulp from any juice. You just need the help of   a naturally occurring enzyme, pectinise, often  sold as pectinex. You can find this on Amazon.   Start with about half a liter of juice. About  half a teaspoon of the pectin enzyme into the  

[43:39] juice. Swirl that around. Then put this in the  fridge and wait. The enzyme is going to break   down the pectin. That's the pulp that's making the  juice cloudy and we're going to be able to strain   this out and get clarified juice. Here you go, a  day later. You can see the juice is very clear,  

[43:52] still tinted orange on top. All the pulp has  settled to the bottom. We just need to strain   this through a coffee filter to finish catching  any of the pulp to get our clarified juice. And   since it's Sunday somewhere, some champagne, my  clarified orange juice mimosa. Delicious. Pickling  

[44:09] something taking too long. Here's how restaurants  do it instantly. If you have a vacuum sealer,   fill a vac bag with your cucumbers that are  sliced. Add in a splash of pickling liquid. Open   up a vac sealer and give them a good oldfashioned  suck. Not only do they look cool, but they're now  

[44:24] instantly pickled. Cutting desserts can be really  messy. To solve that, run your knife through some   warm water and give it a wipe before each slice.  Cuts like butter. Clean cut. For precision plating   or precision anything in the kitchen, I get  made fun of for this, but honestly, I got chunky  

[44:38] fingers. Sometimes with all the caffeine I drink,  I'm a little shaky. So, culinary tweezers very   underrated. So, in the case of let's say you're  plating a basic crudeo, you've got your nice herb   oil on there and that looks all nice and pretty.  What about all the little things like carefully  

[44:52] daintily placing some jalapeno or some dainty  herbs? All that is done much more effectively when   you're using tweezers versus when I'm grabbing  this and pinching this and trying to lay it ever   so perfectly. The precise movements can be done  with something much more precise. For easier meat  

[45:08] grinding and to prevent the fat from emulsifying  and melting, make sure your meat is cold and your   grinder parts are cold. I put the grinder parts  in the freezer. As you can see, the fat still   in pieces and not melted all over the place. If  you're measuring sticky ingredients like honey,  

[45:21] a little bit of cooking spray and just lightly  spray the inside. Add said sticky ingredient.   And when you measure it and you pour it out into a  container, it comes out significantly cleaner. So  

[45:35] there's all the honey. Here's how much was left.  Almost nothing. If you did it without greasing it,   this is what happens. That's how much was left  behind without the spray. This is how much is   left behind with the spray. It's a hack, not  a necessity, but might save you some fingering  

[45:48] time. Yeah, that's a hundred more chef hacks.  And I'm sure there are many, many, many, many,   the best ones that we think are out there. And you  have them now. Love you so much. Subscribe. Bye.