Surprise! Although I use this title with the word “hacks” for every entry regarding my kitchen, I don’t always have actual hacks to offer to you. But I actually do want to share some things which have been tested and used which are, indeed, actual hacks.

I want to start these hacks by talking about brown flour. Don’t furrow your eyebrows and think to yourself, “Whachu talkin’ ’bout, Willis? Flour is white, always white!” I won’t disagree, but I’m using the word “brown” as an action verb, not as an adjective. I am referring to the fact that white flour can be browned. If you only ever use jarred/canned gravy and never make anything with a sauce that requires thickening, you can move on to the next paragraph. Whether you make a flour slurry or a roux with flour to make a sauce thicker, the white of the flour will lighten whatever you are going to use it for. Now, for poultry or things like sausage gravy, that’s no big deal. But if you want to make a beef gravy, or thicken a darker type of broth, browning will darken the flour so that it isn’t so evident when mixing it in. I learned this trick in my grandma’s kitchen – she always made a flour slurry for her gravies, and she used browned flour even for her poultry gravies. My mom used a corn starch slurry, which I think is easier in determining when the liquid is thick enough. I did that as well, until making a roux became popular on all of the cooking shows. Now I do that, mostly because I feel like I have more control over adding liquid to the thickener than adding thickener to the liquid. Living alone, I only want gravy if I’ve got a little bit of chicken or beef leftovers, and then I make a small amount of gravy (using stock, if necessary) and add the meat so it gets hot. Over mashed potatoes, noodles of some kind, or even rice, this is like a comfort meal without a lot of stress. Anyhow, to brown flour, simply toss flour into a non-stick pan, turn the heat on to medium and stir casually. It will take a while to begin to brown, and you don’t want to always be stirring because the flour needs to be in contact with the pan in order to get browned. Whenever I make my brown flour, I always make enough to use with several meals and broths and keep it in an airtight plastic container.

Moving on, let me ask this. Do you prefer to make your own ground beef patties instead of purchasing the pre-made ones? (I know I do, especially considering the difference in price between a pound of beef and a package of a pound of premade patties!). Rather than have a variety of weights when forming your patties, or paying for a plastic patty press, just save the lid from your (regular sized) peanut butter jar before tossing the empty jar! This lid will hold 4 ounces (a quarter pound) of ground beef pressed into the top. Make your job even easier by placing a piece of parchment or waxed paper just slightly larger than the lid inside before pressing the meat in, and you’ll be able to easily lift the patty out. I never know when I’m going to be hungry for a good (as in non-fast food) burger, so I buy a pound of ground beef and make 4 equally-sized patties and then flash freeze them. Once frozen enough, I stack them up with a piece of wax paper between and freeze them in a zippered bag. When I want a burger, I can easily remove a single patty, let it thaw and then cook it up!

I recently bought myself a silicone cupcake pan, again, seeing silicone products being used often on cooking shows. I liked the idea of an easy cleanup when a recipe calls for making something in the tins without cupcake papers and saving a few pennies on cupcake papers as well. I tried it out recently on one of the new recipes I’ll be passing off to you. I found that I had to bake past the time that the recipe called for, but maybe my oven temperature is off.

Most food products we buy today are marked with an “expiration date”. Well, that’s what we think those dates mean, but that’s not necessarily true! Products will have a “best by” or “best before” or “sell by” or “use by”. However, only “use by” products are subject to truly expiring. “Sell by” products means that the product will begin to deteriorate after that date. Milk containers are “sell by” items that will slowly sour in a week or so. The remaining two, especially on shelf stable products, are dates that are the manufacturers’ estimate of when the product will begin to lose its peak quality. This means that even after the date has passed, if stored correctly in an undamaged can in a cool, dry place away from direct heat, some items may be safe to consume for up to two years past that date. Use your eyes and your nose to judge any changes in odor, texture and appearance of the item. The rule is “When it doubt, throw it out.” But with the price of groceries these days, none of us want to throw out food that is still edible!

If the major big meals (think Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, etc.) are always held in your home with you doing all of the cooking, before you start putting pans on your cooktop, get out your aluminum foil. Cover your entire cooktop with the foil, then carefully cut out where your burners are. When it’s time to do the clean-up, carefully ball up and remove the foil cover. You will be surprised what splatters have occurred while you’re cooking once you lift off the aluminum foil and discover how much cleaning you WON’T have to do on your stovetop! Now if we only had a solution for all of the other clean-up involved after we’ve stuffed our bellies!

Last, but not least, there are always “hints” about ways to store certain foods to help keep them fresh longer. One I keep hearing about is turning your jar of peanut butter upside down so that the oil that usually appears on the top when opening the jar, will use gravity to move to the bottom. I don’t eat a lot of peanut butter, but there are occasions when peanut butter toast or a peanut butter and banana sandwich (also on toast) make my taste buds smile. A small jar of peanut butter lasts me a while therefore! And peanut butter is one of the few products I purchase by brand name because the generic product doesn’t have the same fresh peanut taste. So, I decided to give this hint a try. And since I mentioned bananas, which I buy for cereal, a sandwich or sometimes just a snack, often brown for me because I don’t eat them every day. I end up grabbing a very ripe banana and just peeling it and eating it because I don’t want to waste it (and no, I’m not freezing it to make banana bread in the future!). So, I keep hearing about keeping the tops of your bananas covered because the air reaching into the pores at the top of the stem that make the banana ripen so quickly. I thought I’d give that a try.

Were they both good hints? Were they both myths that didn’t work? Was one good and one bad? You be the judge:

Obviously, wrapping the stems of bananas does give them a longer time to avoid rotting.

Obviously, turning a peanut butter jar may or may not work out. (NOTE: This jar has remained the same way for over two months whether it sits right-side up or upside down – and there was a small amount of the oil when I last opened the lid.)