In The Kitchen With Dan

Hey there. Welcome to in the kitchen with Dan right here in Cadre. Today. I have a bunch of fun stuff planned. At least it's fun for me. I hope it will be for you. So I put together a list of the top ten tips and tricks, my favorites that I'm going to pass along to you guys so soon. We've got some projects in the works and these tips will be a part of that project, but you will have them ahead of time. Junk food junkie, hello. It's so good to see you. Always good to see you on. We're doing this live.

For those of you who are catching this on recorded, you're welcome to leave comments here too, and interact with us on the forum and let us know what you're looking for here in Cadre and all right, so I'm going to get rolling and share some of my tips and tricks with you guys in the kitchen. And before I get going, I want to mention that next Sunday, instead of being in the kitchen, I'm doing live from the grocery store. And we're going to go through the produce section. We're going to talk about all the different options, the best way to pick fresh produce, the best way to store that produce after you have chosen it at the store and brought it home.

And I'm looking forward to that. So I love food shopping. It's just something that I've always loved to do and I know so many people that don't. So hopefully I can share some information with you to make it a little bit more enjoyable. Okay, so here we go. I'm going to start with the first tip. How many are there? One, two, three. I think there's 1010 tips. All right. So stay till the end. It's the 10th tip. The 10th tip, most of you have already heard if you watch me before, but I'll show you again.

Okay, so tip number one. To slice cherry tomatoes or grapes, anything small and round. Mostly those two things. Cherry tomatoes, grape tomatoes, two deli lids, right? And deli lids have this little lip, right? So I put the lip down on the counter and I load it up with grapes or cherry tomatoes, and then I mirror them. So I put the lip end down and then take a knife like this. Edgy. If you run across a knife and it's edgy, it's serrated. Use the serrated knife. Put your hand down and run your knife all the way through, and you'll cut a whole tray right in half like that.

It's really, really good for tomato feta salad. Or, you know, fruit salad when you're doing a bunch. Really good idea. It saves a lot of time. I see so many people who are food creators and they are slicing their tomatoes one at a time and I want to jump in the screen and say, no, you can do it another way. Although, you know, hey, everybody's got their own. Some people might like the process of doing the, doing the slow, the slow go. Storing pears in a paper brown bag. Yes, if you. Great. Great tip, junk food junkie.

A way to ripen produce much faster is to put it in a paper bag. If you get it, you don't find there's avocados that are ready to eat or pears or, you know, pear is a tough one, really. So a lot of times they're just too firm when you buy them. So anyway, yeah, pop them in the, the brown bag and sometimes they'll ripen overnight. This is great for tomatoes, bananas, a whole slew of produce. Alright, we covered our sliced cherries. Alright, now this is one that one of my videos that got tons and tons of views.

I have silicone muffin pans. I use these so, so much in the, in the kitchen. It's always in use, always in the dishwasher. I love to use these for my leftovers. So if I make a batch of mashed potatoes and we have a bunch left over or just a few, I will take the muffin tin and I will divvy up the leftovers, cover them, freeze them when they're frozen. I'll take these, pop the portions out, put them in a ziploc bag and mark mashed potatoes and when I made them and throw them in the freezer back in.

So say I made meatloaf, mashed potatoes and green beans. I could do the meatloaf in two, mashed potatoes in two, green beans in two. They're all frozen. Pop them out when you're ready. You have individual, what we call in this house, food bombs. And you can pull them out of the bags in any combination you'd like. One night I had meatballs and curried vegetables, the next I had rice and roast beef. I mean, it is so much fun to mess around with your leftovers. Actually make more than you need and freeze them in these.

And it's a great time saver for busy people. It's really perfect for families with children who are picky and have different likes. They can actually build their own meal out of things that they enjoy. So keep that in mind as a way to save your leftovers. Save some money and also save some time. You're already cooking it, so why not make a little extra freeze some have them available to make throughout the week or weeks later. So the next is how to cut down on plastic food storage, bulk waste. I mean, it just wastes so much space in so many kitchens.

All the projects I've done organizing kitchens, I've seen it. And everyone large or small, tons and tons of tupperware and lids and things that don't match and multiples. So it is one of my favorites to go through and clear out every cabinet in the kitchen and do a clean sweep. And what I do recommend. And if you hate plastic, I get it. I understand it don't come for me. There's a lot, there's so many people passionate about plastic, but these are BPA free and they're deli containers that you can freeze in.

You can microwave in them. Microwave haters, I'm sorry, too. And there's a lot out there in microwaves right now, too. So anyway, three plastic deli sized containers and 30, 216 and eight. And they all take the same lid, the ones I was just using for the tomatoes. Okay. And these stack, they take up very little space. And you just reuse and reuse and reuse and reuse. They're great for sending people home with leftovers or packing stuff up that you want to, you want to take to the mother in laws or to the neighbors next door if they love something that you make.

Breakfast bites. Yes. Yes. In fact, you're ahead of me here. You're getting ahead of me. Junk food junkie. I love seeing you on. All right, so the deli containers, if you can minimize, get three different sizes. com, shop theorganizerman, and you can find all of the recommended products that I recommend there. Okay, so freezing leftover herbs. All right, this is a really good one and you might have heard it. But if you've got leftover herbs that you buy fresh herbs before you pitch them, chop them up and put them in these little ice cube trays.

They make them for the small ice cubes. These are great. And they, you know, also make the standard still. So use ice cube trays to freeze pesto, you know, different sauces, freezing broth, really think about the different things you use in the kitchen and how you can use the ice cube trays to save money and freeze the different things that you have that you can use later. Herbs is fantastic thing to freeze. And you can freeze them with olive oil or water so you can already have little oil bombs.

Some people poo poo that, but I do it. It works. I recommend it. So either oil, water, these are great little herb bombs. You can drop them in soups or saute pans and really cut down on food waste and also time. They're ready to go. You just throw them right in already diced up. And anything you can do to save time and do in bulk, like we do in the commercial kitchen, cook little things on. We do a big batch of. Or, you know, we're gonna, if we're gonna dice celery, we dice all the celery that we need for the recipe.

So think more in batches and in bulk when you're prepping stuff. If you're prepping a pepper, why not prep three? Freeze a bag of them, use a bag of them, what have you. All right, moving on. This is a great money saver you can go through. I mean, these are crazy expensive. It's paper. I can't believe how expensive paper towels and paper products are in general at the store. So one thing I recommend is using coffee filters. Now, the best thing to do is have rags and use them and wash them and have a basket for them.

I think that's fantastic. A little in between is coffee filters. They're so inexpensive. There's so many in a pack, like a thousand or, you know, tons. And you can tear them, you know, off and just use them for the smaller spills. They're great for sandwiches and chips to pass to the kids. They're just fantastic, even for us, you know, to make a sandwich and just throw it in the. In the coffee filter. It makes it easier to handle. If you've got a breakfast sandwich you want to run to the car with in the morning.

Perfect for that. You can use it for a napkin after. Keep a batch in the car. The thing that's great about them is they stay. They're so packed in that little stack that they're really good for the glovebox or the console. You know, in a pinch, they're great for wipe ups. You can even, like, you know, if you're having a breakdown, you can wipe a tear, blow your nose. Don't forget about coffee filters. When you've wasted so much money, you crying, you probably gonna grab for a coffee filter before you would a paper towel.

Cause these are expensive. Okay, next one. Vegetable scraps. I learned this the first day in culinary school when we were prepping vegetables. William, chef William, he made a very, very firm point of letting us all know that nothing in the kitchen was wasted ever. And so if we were prepping vegetables, all of the scraps went into a scrap pot, and the vegetable scrap put in the scrap pot once it was full, was filled with water and boiled and turned into vegetable stock, which is absolutely delicious.

You can do this with chicken bones. You can do this with chicken breasts. You know, think stock when you're making food. And again, if you want to freeze stock in cubes, then you can use stock instead of fat when you're sauteing. That's one thing I recommend, too. If you're cleaning up your diet using chicken stock frozen and toss that in. It doesn't have to be frozen, but using a little bit of chicken stock instead of oil to keep things from sticking while you're using a saute pan, that's a really good method.

And junk food junkie, that one's for you. Okay, now we did the scraps. Oh. So when you're saving your scraps, put them in a ziploc or whatever container that you want to fill. Once it's filled, do the same thing. Throw it in a pan, fill the pan with water, simmer it, strain out all of the solids, and you'll have a beautiful, rich vegetable broth that you can use in a lot of recipes. Freeze it for sure because, you know, it'll take a while sometimes for you to go through it or maybe even remember that you have it in the fridge.

All right, so here's another. When you're cooking a meal. Hey, bry, welcome. When you're cooking a meal and you can make double, just do it, man. When you're cooking one meal, make two. It doesn't take much time at all to just make a little extra then. And this is especially great with lasagna or spaghetti. You know, italian food is so much better after it's married together, either, you know, in the fridge overnight, or even in the freezer. So make two and then you'll have an extra. And it's a great way to save time.

So, I mean, then, you know, the next week you can, you've got one night that you don't have to worry about. You can grab the casserole out of the freezer and throw it in the oven or whatever cooking device you're into that night and get it going. I love that tip. It's great for busy people. Make two or extra. And also, don't forget about the food bombs. I've made extra double batches just specifically to put in these. And also, there's a product that we have, that we use, a silicone food storage product that's really, really cool, too.

And you can find that on my storefront. Okay, so we talked about cooking a meal in double batches. Let's talk about bulk poaching eggs. So when you bulk poach, same deal, right? You make one, you've got a ton. So muffin pans are fantastic for poaching eggs. Crack an egg into each one. The secret, not so much in the silicone because these pop out easier. But the regular muffin pans, make sure you spray them really well before you crack the egg in that way they'll come out easier. So, hey, Cadre. So poaching eggs, muffins, tins, pans, silicone, whatever, make sure you're spraying your pan and make sure that the eggs will be able to pop out.

But here's the deal. You can have them fresh. These are great for when you have a crowd over and you're making a bunch or of, you can use some of them or all of them for breakfast sandwiches made ahead. Refrigerate them. You've got healthy McMuffin type breakfast sandwich deals ready to go. Whatever you like on them, make them how you like them, keep them in the fridge, pop them in the microwave, or warm them up real quick before you leave. Throw them in a coffee filter and head to the cat. All right, we're getting there.

The next one is prepping vegetables in batches. So like we talked about before, you know, if you're making a pepper, if you're dicing pepper, dice two, freeze one, refrigerate one. We do this a lot in this house. The things that I like to freeze the most are celery, carrots, peppers, and onions. Those four things I love to dice in bulk. We'll dice a bunch of them, bag them up, and keep them in the freezer. So many times, recipes call for one of those or multiples. And to have them already prepped makes things so much easier.

It's so much quicker when you think about, all right, I need to dice, you know, this much onion and celery. I mean, think about how much time it takes to pull that stuff out, to get it on the cutting board, set everything up, to clean the produce, to slice it and dice it. And that takes a lot of time. If you do that one time, make one day of the week, dicing night or whatever. And when you do it once, it makes things so much easier when you're cooking and you're much more apt to go healthy if you have things ready to roll.

Now, this is taking this step a little bit further even. But if you have a recipe and, you know, you need celery, onion, that stuff that you've already diced, throw together a recipe packet, go in there, pull out what you need, and mark, this is for my lasagna or this is for my, you know, my soup, whatever. Throw it back in, and you've got it, like, ready to go. You just dump it in the mix, and you're golden. So thinking ahead can really save you a lot of time. The last tip I talk about so much, and it's just one of those safety tips, and it makes things a lot easier.

When you're using a cutting board, put a damp cloth underneath it unless it has rubber pegs that or little, you know, little feet that prevent it from sliding around. A damp paper towel or washcloth or kitchen towel under a cutting board will keep it anchored, and it'll keep your fingers safe, and you'll be much more organized and not have your board sliding around everywhere. All right, that's everything for night for tonight. What did we get? One more from junk food junkie. I do all those, but also cut up two heads each of broccoli and cauliflower.

Right on. We have some broccoli. Anything frozen in there. Awesome. Thank you so much for your comments. Junk food junkie, it's so good to see you in here tonight. And Brian, great to see you, as always, Cadre, my Cadre family. Thank you so much, Luke. Thank you, Luke. So look, next Sunday, don't forget, I'm gonna be back on my normal time or my normal night. And we're gonna go grocery shopping. We're gonna talk about how to pick out produce, what organic is really important, and we're gonna have a blast.

It's a lot of great information that'll help save you time and money at the grocery store. I love you guys. Thanks for checking in. Great to see you all tonight. And we'll see you on Sunday and throughout the week on Codre. We have tons of lives coming, so don't forget to check in for health and wellness right here on Codrick. See you guys later.