19 Cooking Annoyances Life Is Just Too Short For (And How To Fix Them)
1) When food gets cold before you can serve it.
Restaurants keep dishes piping hot with heat lamps. You can buy one for your kitchen for around $100.
2) When water takes *forever* to boil
Try boiling water in your saucepan—the increased surface area of the pan gets the water hotter, faster. This is ideal for pasta because then you can just go ahead and cook the sauce in the same pan.
3) Forgetting you turned a pot on and walking out of the room.
Any ideas, famed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson?
4) When oil or a messy food scrap gets on the handle of your knife while you use it, making it all gross and slippery.
Keep some wipes near your cutting board, which'll also help you quickly clean up any chopping messes or spills.
5) Inconsistent stoves or ovens.
This is a fact of life, like traffic or the Oscars being dull. The only solution is an oven thermometer. Cook's Illustrated recommends the CDN Multi-Mount Oven Thermometer, it's $10 on Amazon.
6) Pets getting all underfoot when you're cooking.
And just think about what they're doing when you're not home!
7) When the smoke alarm goes off.
"It's not you, it's me!" (Says your smoke alarm.) 90% of U.S. households have an ionization smoke alarm, which is prone to this sort of thing. Photoelectric smoke detectors like this one (about $15) are less likely to give off false alarms when cooking.
8) When you cut yourself.
Most of us get better instruction on how to hold chopsticks than we do for knives. A proper grip could keep your fingers slice-free. Serious Eats has a truly excellent guide on how to hold a knife.
9) When you burn yourself.
With silicon cooking gloves you can thrust your hands into boiling water with no consequences.
10) When you open the cereal bag and it rips down the side.
We've put 12 men on the moon, but apparently still have no solution for this. Until then, the best I can offer is the solace of commiserating with other miffed cereal fans in this Reddit post (Some NSFW language).
11) Eyes burning when you cut onions.
Some folks are simply more sensitive to onion irritants. The Kitchn has 5 good tips to help your eyes stay dry.
12) Accidentally using the wrong measuring device.
13) Hearing that bursting/popping sound while microwaving and opening the door to find sauce sprayed all over the inside.
A microwave splatter cover is about 7 bucks, and doesn't take up much storage space because it can live permanently in the microwave.
14) When you realize one of the ingredients you knew you had in the pantry is inexplicably not there, right when you need it.
This ultimate pantry checklist should help you keep track of everything you need.
15) Dull knives.
Amazon's best selling electric knife sharpener is surprisingly inexpensive.
16) The fact that making dinner means washing dishes afterwards.
Sweden's on the case with self-cleaning dishes.
17) When garlic skins don't come off easily.
Oh, there's a hack for that.
18) Spilling uncooked couscous. Almost as bad as coffee grinds.
Some of us are just messy cooks. Keep a powerful cordless Dustbuster around to fix spills before your s.o. notices.
