Tips N' Tricks Tuesday: Kitchen Ideas

Some more tips found in an old cookbook!!  My other posts about these Tips N' Tricks can be found here, and here!

*Potatoes soaked in salt water for 20 minutes before baking will bake more rapidly.*

*Sweet potatoes will not turn dark if put in salted water (five teaspoons to one quart of water) immediately after peeling.  ((edited to add!  This also works with regular potatoes!!))*

*Let raw potatoes stand in cold water for at least half an hour before frying to improve the crispness of french fried potatoes.*

*Use a strawberry huller to peel potatoes which have been boiled in their "jackets".*

*Use greased muffin tins as molds when baking stuffed green peppers.*

*A few drops of lemon juice in the water will whiten boiled potatoes.*

*The skins will remain tender if you wrap potatoes in aluminum foil to bake them.  They are attractively served in the foil, too.*

*If you add a little milk to water in which cauliflower is cooking, the cauliflower will remain attractively white.*

*When cooking cabbage, place a small tin cup or can half full of vinegar on the stove near the cabbage, and it will absorb all odor from it.*

*It is important when and how you add salt in cooking.  To blend with soups and sauces, put it in early, but add it to meats just before taking from the stove.  In cake ingredients, salt can be mixed with the eggs.  When cooking vegetables always salt the water in which they are cooked.  Put salt in the pan when frying fish.*

*It is easy to remove the white membrane from oranges--for fancy desserts or salads--by soaking them in boiling water for five minutes before you peel them.*

*You can get more juice from a dried up lemon if you heat it for five minutes in boiling water before you squeeze it.*

*If it's important to you to get walnut meats out whole, soak the nuts overnight in salt water before you crack them.*

*If the whipping cream looks as though it's not going to whip, add three or four drops of lemon juice or a bit of plain gelatin powder to it and it probably will.*

*For quick and handy seasoning while cooking, keep on hand a large shaker containing six parts of salt and one of pepper.*

*Dip your bananas in lemon juice right after they are peeled.  They will not turn dark and the faint flavor of lemon really adds quite a bit.  The same may be done with apples.*