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Chef shares 100 life-changing cooking hacks he learned from working in restaurants

Some of these tips are so simple but oh-so-helpful.

Photo credit: Canva

You learn a lot about cooking when you work in restaurants.

Some people love cooking, some people hate it, and some see it as something to do so they don't starve. While the art and joy of cooking may be lost on some people, those who do enjoy it tend to have some secrets up their sleeves that might help the rest of us find the kitchen a more pleasant place to work.

Joshua Weissman is one of those people who loved cooking since he began cooking alongside his mother at age 3. He has since made a name for himself as a cookbook author, fine dining chef, and food educator with a huge following on YouTube. In one of his most popular videos, he shares 100 food hacks he learned working in restaurants, and there are so many gems that can make cooking easier, faster, and more fun.

- YouTubeyoutu.be

Here are some of the highlights:

Hack #1 - Washing produce with vinegar to make it last longer

Take three parts water and one part vinegar, add produce, swish, and let sit for 2-5 minutes. Drain, rinse, pat dry, and then store in the fridge.

Hack #4 - Peeling lots of garlic

He shares the bowl trick, where you put a bunch of unpeeled garlic cloves in a bowl, place a same-sized bowl upside down on top of it and shake vigorously. Theoretically, this peels all the garlic, but inevitably, it really only peels about half. Put some warm water over the ones that haven't peeled and let them sit for two minutes—the peel should then slide off easily.

Hack #5 - Bruise those fresh herbs before cooking

Before adding fresh herbs to a soup or sauce, give them a fierce squeeze in your hand to "bruise" them. This will release twice as much flavor, especially if you add them toward the end.

Hack #13 - Perfectly peeled eggs

We've all mangled a hard-boiled egg before. Weissman says to lightly crack your boiled egg, then roll it around and around on a hard surface until there are lots of tiny cracks, then submerge the egg in a bowl of water and peel under the water.

Hack #28 - Potato masher ground beef

That's it. Use a potato masher to smoosh your ground beef to break up all the big chunks. Works way better than a spoon or fork.

Hack #33 - Season high

High as in way above. Put the seasoning (salt, pepper, whatever) in your fingers and sprinkle it from a foot or so above the meat or whatever you're seasoning. This ensures the most even, maximum surface area seasoning.

Hack #45 - Peel ginger with a spoon

Instead of a peeler, which may take more of the ginger than you want it to, scrape ginger with the curved edge of a spoon. The spoon also makes it way easier to get around the little nubs and curves of the ginger root.

Hack #60 - Extend the life of fresh herbs that are going ick

If you have fresh herbs that are starting to go, wrap some string tightly around the end of the bunch and hang it somewhere with a little draft. They'll dry out and have a much longer life.

Hack #76 - Up your cooked veggie game

People often wonder how restaurants manage to get their cooked vegetables to taste so good. Weissman says it's quite simple— salt, lemon juice, and olive oil. Toss the veggies with them. That's it. "You'd be shocked how much that changes a finished cooked vegetable," he says.

Hack #81 - Make it easier to grate soft cheeses

Soft cheese like mozzarella or gouda can be hard to grate without making a gunky mess. But if you put the into the freezer for 15-30 minutes before grating. So much easier.

Hack #97 - For fluffy biscuits, it's all about how you cut the butter

Weissman says fluffy biscuits usually come down to how big your butter chunks are, and that people usually cut their butter into too small of chunks. Big cubes before cutting them into the dough and letting it be chunky will help you get the flakiness you desire.

There are so many more in Weissman's list of 100 that are helpful and useful for home cooks to know. (Especially if you cook a lot of meat or sauces—quite a few tips for those things in there.) Hopefully these hacks will make cooking a bit easier and more enjoyable for everyone.

You can follow Joshua Weissman on YouTube.


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Ingenious new Heinz ketchup label fixes problem that has annoyed diners forever

You'll never see your ketchup bottle the same way.

Photo by Pedro Durigan on Unsplash
1869 Heinz tomato ketchup bottle close-up photography

Burger and french fry connoisseurs know: There is only one true tomato ketchup. (Fun fact: Heinz is called "tomato ketchup" because the word ketchup actually refers to a paste with a certain consistency. Ketchup can be made from lots of things, including fruits like bananas, blueberries, and cherries!)

But that doesn't stop many restaurants looking to save a buck from trying to pull the old switcharoo: filling up empty Heinz bottles with cheap off-brand ketchup.Spoiler alert: Diners HATE this. People who like ketchup tend to be extremely passionate about it, and don't take kindly to being duped. So Heinz decided to do something about it with a brilliant and barely noticeable tweak to their label design.

A new Heinz label being tested in Turkey includes a red border that exactly matches the color of Heinz ketchup — easily exposing impostors

VML Turkey

VML, a global marketing agency, came up with the award-winning design. The end result was deliciously simple and brilliant.

In the old design, the Heinz label had a simple white border. Heinz and VML simply "identified the exact red color of Heinz Tomato Ketchup using the world's universal Pantone color scale and simply added this Pantone Red stripe to the Heinz Tomato Ketchup label," according to the agency's official case study.

Additional text at the bottom of the label reads "Is that Heinz? Check with the color of the label."

For foodies outside of Turkey, Heinz also launched an Instagram filter that allows you to easily compare the ketchup on your table to the true red to check for authenticity.

Ketchup enthusiasts are big fans of the change.

Though the campaign initially launched in 2023, the new label continues to get buzz.

Facebook user Man Behaving Dadly shared the photos with his audience, to the tune of over 3,000 comments and 14,000 shares.

For the most part, people are pumped.

YogaDiva MT wrote: I eat HEINZ ketchup only and I can tell the difference when I taste some off brand version.

Cheryl Jenkins joked: Don’t need a sticker we know when we taste it

Kate Mays said: I too, hate when they do that. Heinz forever

Thom Cousens brought up an important point: I've eaten in cafes and seen the staff "top up" Heinz bottles with value stuff. Dangerous game to play if there's allergens in one but not the other.

To be fair, plenty of users chimed in to add that they couldn't care less about ketchup brands — and some even claimed to dislike Heinz.

But the point isn't necessarily that Heinz is objectively the best ketchup on the planet. It's that diners shouldn't be deceived so restaurants can save a buck.

It's an annoying time to be a consumer of, well, anything. But especially at restaurants.

While the Heinz label campaign was concepted and rolled out in Turkey, initially, we sure could use it here in the US..

Because the numbers don't lie. People are eating out less and less.

The price of a meal out has skyrocketed and, at least anecdotally, quality has gone way down to boot. It's hard to measure for sure whether restaurants (especially corporate chains) are using lower quality ingredients, but it sure feels like it.

Service has also become a problem. Despite prices going up, servers and kitchen staff are still way underpaid, which makes it hard for establishments to attract good people.

In short, going out to eat just kind of... sucks. More and more people aren't finding the experience to be worth it, and when we do decide to open up our wallets and get served some cheapo replacement ketchup, it can feel like the last straw!

Running a restaurant is tough sledding, especially for small businesses. It can be challenging to keep the lights on in this economy.

But, please, we're begging you. At least give us good food, a fun experience, and real ketchup.

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Bored guy spent his free time building a restaurant for the squirrels in his yard

It has a menu and everything!

James Vreeland/Instagram

Two for dinner?

One man from the Detroit area put his quarantine creativity to great use. James Vreeland used his newfound free time to, as he put it on Instagram, "get into the restaurant game."

He did that, of course, by building an entire tiny restaurant in his yard specifically for squirrels. It's hilarious and also weirdly very impressive.


It's an open-air concept with communal picnic-style tables and natural grass floors, which really brings a sense of connection to the earth and the source of the squirrel food. It's a brilliant design.

It's called Maison de Noix, or "The Nut House" in English, and it's the newest, hottest neighborhood spot that all the squirrels are chattering about. If they didn't have to social distance, there would be lines out on the sidewalk every day to get a table. It's very exclusive.

communal, neighborhood, creativity

A picnic style lay out for the squirrel restaurant.

James Vreeland/Instagram

It has a tiny coat rack with wire hangers for squirrel jackets and everything! And even though the restaurant is aimed at its squirrel patrons, it's open to all sorts of creatures. James said that the blue jays in the area are also loving the new place.

Not only did James build an innovative restaurant, but his menu is like nothing I've ever seen. It's so diverse, and yet, so streamlined. And don't worry; he's printed out the menu and stationed it at the front of the restaurant for those who might be interested.

Let's take a closer look, shall we?

menus, nuts, comedy, nut house

What’s on the menu?

James Vreeland/Instagram

So simple, yet so sophisticated, you know? A mixed seed trio! How intriguing. And you can't go wrong with stale bread or pizza crust. I appreciate that the chef leads with what he has on hand and fresh (I mean, stale) that day, instead of shoehorning out-of-season ingredients into a year-round menu.

Raw peanuts on the shell are a known squirrel favorite, and counter-softened apples, well, that's an application you don't see very often, mainly because they're so hard to get just right. But I have faith in the kitchen staff of Maison de Noix.

peanuts, Facebook Live, shaky cam, streaming

Business is nutty.

James Vreeland/Instagram

For a brand new restaurant that opened during a global pandemic, Maison de Noix is doing very well. It helps when you are the only restaurant that caters to squirrels in the whole United States. They really cornered the market.

He has even started doing Facebook Live videos that are just a live stream of the restaurant. You can tune in each day to see the animals stop by. At one point during the last live stream, James commented, "Sorry for the shaky cam — there is a bluejay sitting on the camera."

A time-lapse of the "brunch rush" can be found on his Instagram, and it's just delightful. This whole venture is just entirely lovely, and I thank James for his efforts. I hope things like squirrel restaurants don't go away once the pandemic ends. We need them now, and we'll need them then.


This article originally appeared on 4.5.20

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Celebrity chef shares the one big red flag that shows a restaurant is bad news

It says a lot about the establishment.

via Jim Greenhill/Wikimedia Commons

Chef Robert Irvine addresses the 2016 USO Gala, Washington, D.C., Oct. 20, 2016.

A restaurant can have a charming exterior and a cozy dining area, but you never really know what’s happening behind the scenes. From the customer’s vantage point, things may look OK, but that alone won’t tell you about the restaurant’s dedication to cleanliness, ingredient quality and culinary best practices.

Many things can go wrong in the kitchen that could turn your nice dinner into a night laying in bed holding your stomach.

Even though culinary standards have been improving in the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that nearly 48 million people get sick from a foodborne illness each year. Of that number, 128,000 are hospitalized and 3,000 die.

Celebrity Chef Robert Irvine has a shorthand that helps him determine if a restaurant will provide a healthy, botulism-free meal: He checks the bathrooms. Irvine is an English celebrity chef and talk show host who has appeared on and hosted a variety of Food Network programs, including "Restaurant: Impossible,” “Worst Cooks in America,” and “Chopped: Impossible.”

"Well, the first thing I look for is, are the bathrooms clean?" he told Business Insider, adding, "Because if the bathrooms are clean, the kitchen's clean, everything else is clean."

Irvine believes the bathroom is an excellent indicator of what the standards are like in the establishment. Irvine says that he keeps his home immaculate, starting with the restrooms, "So that's what I look for when I go to a restaurant."

The Food Network star also added that he also looks to see if the staff are happy while on the job.

Irvine isn’t the only restaurant expert checking the bathroom before ordering a meal. Liz Weiss, host of Liz's Healthy Table podcast and blog, does the same. "My biggest red flag when dining out at a restaurant is a dirty bathroom," Weiss told Food Network. "If the bathroom is a mess, it makes me think twice about the cleanliness and overall condition of the kitchen."

To further drive home the point, a food inspector went viral last year on TikTok for a video where they share the four places they won’t eat. “I’ve seen a lot,” TikTok user @toofar_north captioned their video, saying they won’t eat at buffets or places with extensive menus, unhappy employees and dirty bathrooms.

I've seen a lot. 

@toofar_north

Visit TikTok to discover videos!

Why is a large menu a red flag? If a restaurant has a large menu, it could mean that some dishes don’t have a lot of turnover, so they are made with older ingredients that may be unsafe. If there are 100 dishes on the menu, what are the chances that your order hasn’t been cooked in quite some time?

Further, restaurants with large menus may not have the tastiest food because it’s hard to perfect many different types of food. So, it’s probably better to go to a place that does a few things well than 100 things that are just okay. Just makes sure that it has a clean bathroom and that the employees appear to be happy.

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