Heidi Billotto's hacks for the kitchen

Jun 20, 2023

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CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Food Writer, Heidi Billotto, joined Charlotte Today to share her top five kitchen hacks, tips & tricks to make cooking fun and easy. The following hacks are according to Heidi's website.

Two ways to think outside the box of plastic storage bags in your kitchen drawer:

To tell if your avocado is ripe, check the stem first. You want the stem to pop off easily and the space that remains to be a light green. This indicates the fruit inside is ripe and ready to enjoy. If the stem is already gone and the oval at the stem end is dark brown, the avocado is probably over ripe.

Must of the onion oils are here. and if you don’t start by cutting the stem end, you are halfway home. Instead peel the outside of the onion from the blossom end, peeling the skin back like a banana. Then holding the still attached peeled skin back slice the onion from the blossom end to the root. When you get to the root end, toss it in the compost and continue with your recipe.

While odor isn’t a problem with bananas, sometimes snapping the stem end is difficult – especially for kiddos. Instead, simply squeeze the tip of the blossom end of the fruit. It will open up and you can easily peel from there.

When you are measuring honey or molasses into a teaspoon or tablespoon from a squeeze bottle or jar into sugar, flour or other dry ingredients, you can spray or wipe your measuring spoon with vegetable oil for easy clean up.

But, I can do you one better – you don’t really need to mess up the measuring spoon or cup at all. Just use it to create an indention in the dry ingredients. The measurement will be the same with no messy measuring spoon at the end of it all.

Arrange the bacon on the cooling rack – slices may overlap slightly so they will all fit. Then, bake in a preheat 425 degrees oven for 25 minutes. Carefully pull the pan and rack ensemble out of the oven and remove the bacon from the rack. Allow the rack and pan to cool. The parchment paper will keep the bacon grease from your pan. So when the grease has cooled and solidified, you can just fold up the parchment and toss it away along with the greasy bacon fat mess.

Blog post with all the details is up now at HeidiBillottoFood.com

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