Are you fed up with the usual boring dishes? Give your meals a restaurant-grade twist with these can’t-miss hacks for adding flavor to your food. After reading this list, you’ll never want to order takeout again.
1. Cook Grilled Cheese With Mayonnaise Instead of Butter
Move over, butter: Coating the outside of your grilled cheese bread with mayonnaise beforehand is the best way to get a crunchy texture that’s lighter than air and infused with even more flavor than before. yum.
2. Use an electric mixer for a creamier mashed potatoes.
Lumpy mashed potatoes have become the norm for most of us. Even when your hands and arms get tired from endless stirring, you can never seem to get that effortless creamy texture. The solution? Use an electric hand mixer, for zero hand pain and lump-free purees. If you don’t have a mixer, use a mixer before mashing for similar results.
3. Add Soy Sauce to Buttered Popcorn
This weird trick sounds disgusting to some, but believe us, it’s not! Adding the umami from soy sauce to creamy buttered popcorn will bring out the nutty, cheesy, and salty flavors.
4. Add coffee to brownie butter
This will not be an espresso flavored dessert. Instead, the complex flavor profile of coffee brings out the natural flavor of chocolate. Instead of making a mocha brownie, it balances out the overly sweet richness that boxed mixes can be guilty of.
5. Get crispier bacon by turning it
Take a piece of bacon, flip it over, and place these skinny rolls on a foil-lined baking sheet. Then, season your bacon and place it in a 400 degree oven for about a half hour.
6. Add mustard to macaroni and cheese.
There’s no world in which macaroni and cheese tastes bad, but for an amazing dish Chef Ramsey would be proud of, throw in any kind of mustard. It balances the strongly creamy flavors of dairy, adding a bit of tartness, like pickles for a cheeseburger.
7. Add applesauce to meatballs
Meatballs are the best comfort food, but sometimes they turn out to be mushy or dry. To ensure the meatballs are always moist, add some applesauce! It makes them lighter with a subtle hint of irresistible sweetness.
8. Save the water from your pasta
Instead of letting all that liquid gold drip out of the strainer, save the starchy pasta water and mix it into the sauce over low heat. This will not only make the texture richer and silkier, but it will help the sauce adhere better to the pasta.
9. Make a strong bondsman
Grilling or browning proteins for a couple of minutes before baking is the best way to get that restaurant-quality vibe that combines crispy on the outside with tender on the inside. You can even dust it with flour or breadcrumbs before cooking.
10. Use orange juice for the marinade.
You don’t have to buy an expensive marinade to make your meat and seafood taste better. Just pour some orange juice in there! This works best with flavors like ginger and honey.
11. Hash browns in a waffle iron
Homemade waffles are one of the top choices for many home chefs, but waffle-shaped hash browns are even better! They guarantee a crisp finish every time, so you can say goodbye to soggy hash browns with your eggs. Just make sure you oil your griddle first.
12. Use only freshly squeezed citrus
While bottles of concentrate are cheap and convenient, steer clear of bottled options, because when the citrus juice sits, all that zingy, spicy flavor turns cloudy and gross.
13. Use the bark
You can make your soups and broths more flavorful by adding the supposedly inedible and hard Parmesan rind. However, in dishes that simmer for a long time, such as soup, beans, or polenta, this is perfect for adding flavor.
14. Soak onion before adding to salad or vinaigrette
Onions taste delicious in a salad, but they can have an intense flavor that overwhelms a dish. Instead, mash them up and soak them in vinegar for 10 minutes. Resting in vinegar will help soften the flavor and texture.
15. Add seltzer to pancakes
Getting fluffier pancakes is as easy as adding a little sparkling water to the batter. The extra bubbles will help it rise and give you a final result that makes you feel like you’re eating at a five-star brunch restaurant.
