13 Household Items To Use Instead Of Kitchen Tools

As Southerners, it’s in our mother nature to shell out a good deal of time in the kitchen, no matter whether it’s cooking for our very own family members or baking a pie for a helpful neighbor. As an avid cook and baker myself, I have a comfortable place for a lot of of my kitchen area tools—my preferred chef’s knife, the passed-down food stuff processor and KitchenAid stand mixer that are heading on 20 yrs, and my Le Creuset Dutch oven. But when it will come to matters like rolling pins and biscuit cutters, they have not at any time landed in my kitchen area. 

It’s straightforward to eat up valuable kitchen space with little-utilized or unwanted kitchen gizmos. So instead than getting yet yet another resource to rattle close to in the back again of your cabinets and be introduced out the moment a year, we have some Grandma-permitted, resourceful tricks and strategies that use present domestic goods to save you area in your kitchen area and improve in your pocket.

A Cup Or Jelly Jar

“I in no way noticed my grandmother use a biscuit cutter! She generally grabbed jelly jars or a compact glass,” says senior social media editor Brennan Extensive. No need to have to have a drawer full of circular cookie and biscuit cutters when some thing presently in your kitchen will do. Just dig into your glassware cabinet to obtain a vessel with the diameter of your liking. For smaller sized styles, use a shot glass, and for best success, use a skinny-edged cup. “My great-grandmother applied an old orange juice can (not a jar), and I however use the similar one particular today,” says senior electronic foodstuff editor Kimberly Holland.

Parchment Paper

All set to ice the best cake or cookie, but never have any piping bags? No concerns: Cut a square of parchment paper and roll it into a cone to generate your own. Reward, if you have a metal tip, drop it into the bottom of the cone. No muffin papers both? Build your have liners by chopping 5×5 inch squares of parchment paper and press them into the muffin pan utilizing a smaller cup. For ideal benefits, use cooking spray or butter the pan in advance of including the papers so that they will stay in position.

A Trousers Hanger

If you are minimal on counter room, as an alternative of a cookbook stand, try this place-saving hack and prevent obtaining your cookbooks or Southern Dwelling magazines coated in meals. Assistant food editor Alana Al-Hatlani says to dangle them from a pants hanger on your cupboard knob. “A chef taught me this trick and it is nice mainly because the recipe is also appropriate in entrance of your experience the complete time you’re cooking,” claims Al-Hatlani. “But it does not truly get the job done with super significant cookbooks,” she cautions. 

A Shower Cap

Skip fiddling with the plastic wrap that inevitably will get mangled and use a shower cap as an alternative. “My grandmother employed shower caps to include bowls. She utilized it typically for proofing dough,” says senior news editor Megan Overdeep. So, on your next lodge keep, snag the freebie shower cap for baking your subsequent loaf. 

A Wine Bottle

From cookie dough and pie crust to pizza dough, a wine bottle (empty or complete) can do the job magic as a rolling pin. My favourite ones for the activity are skinny, lengthy-necked bottles like my Dr. Loosen Riesling white wine bottle earlier mentioned. “I am for good guilty of applying a wine bottle to roll out pizza dough,” claims Very long. But its abilities do not quit at rolling. I’ve been acknowledged to use a good ole wine bottle in lieu of a meat tenderizer as nicely. Term of warning, although: You have to have some accuracy with this so you really don’t shatter the bottle versus your countertop. 

A Mesh Strainer

Forgo your large colander for this multi-reason tool. A wire, good-mesh strainer’s skillset goes beyond just draining pasta drinking water. Instead of buying a bulky flour sifter that you only break out at the time in a blue moon or just forgoing the action when identified as for in a recipe completely, use your mesh strainer to develop great flour and accomplish the finest baking results. It’s also great for sifting powdered sugar in excess of finished desserts. And if you’re generating a cocktail that demands straining, instead than attempting the seldom effective act of not permitting nearly anything tumble out of the shaker, just pour it by means of the similar strainer for a debris-totally free drink. 

A Mason Jar

Whilst the tubular, silicone garlic peelers are uncomplicated to use and get up fairly minor house, they’re not important. In its place of a dedicated resource, just toss your cloves of garlic into any jar with a lid and shake right up until the peel releases from the garlic.

Sheet Trays

The stack of baking sheets you use for roasting veggies and baking cookies are far more handy than you may feel. You can use them to make layer cakes. Whether or not you simply never have a cake pan or just not the right sized just one, you can hand slash exclusive layers from the sheet cake. This trick provides you regulate around the form and sizing of your cake’s layers. Just trace your condition on parchment paper, lay it on the sheet cake and cut around the paper, then repeat.

Solid Iron Skillet

Craving a panini, but you don’t have a panini press? No stress. Use a smaller forged iron skillet (seriously, any skillet will do) and spot it on top of the sandwich in a bigger skillet. Press down until eventually smooshed to your liking.

Scissors

I stand by the point that pizza cutters in no way perform as perfectly as a extensive, sharp knife or greater yet—scissors. Handy-dandy kitchen scissors will glide via even the crustiest of crusts. Now, let’s not go opening our Amazon bundle with the exact scissors, but which is a further subject.

A Grater

In its place of a garlic push, which does a mediocre occupation or practically leads to you to chop off a finger to realize finely chopped or minced garlic, use the tiny side of your cheese grater or a microplane to do the occupation.

The Trusty Butter Knife

“Instead of receiving one particular of people rubber grippy pads or fancy jar openers to assistance open up tricky jars, I use the deal with of a butter knife to tap all the way all around the top of the lid a several instances, and it commonly performs like a charm,” states travel and tradition editor Tara Massouleh McCay of the trick she figured out from her mother.

Warmth-Evidence Bowl

If a recipe calls for a double boiler and you really do not have a single, don’t stress. This method is largely made use of for melting chocolate and you really don’t want a clunky, specified pot to do so. Somewhat, use a saucepan and a slightly smaller heat-evidence bowl. Fill the pot with an inch or two of water and nestle the smaller sized bowl on top rated with the desired melting ingredient.