25 Useful Tips for Easy cooking

Here are few tips for easy and smart cooking...

1. Whenever you want to peel pearl onions, soak them into water for some time and then peel. It will easier when they are wet. 

2. Before cutting big onions, remove the skin and put them in water and then cut, you wont get tears in your eyes. 

3. Always have corn flour in your kitchen. Whenever you do any fry, you can add this at the end. It will suck out all the oil and increase the crispiness. 

4. When you do bindi fry, add some curd instead of water and close with the lid. This vapour plus curd alone is enough for cooking bindi, at the same time it will seperate the pieces.

5. When you prepare the dough for poori, add some rava (Sooji) to it. This will increase the crispiness and also it will take less oil.

6. Whenever you fry pappads, friyums, vathal etc, fry more and store it in a air tight container. This will reduce the reheating of oil all the time. 

7. Whenever you get curry leaves, coriander leaves or pudhina,  sort them out and store in separate containers in fridge. This will keep them so fresh and we can use it whenever we want. 

8. Stick a paper in your kitchen door and write what are all things that have got over everyday in your storeroom. This one you can verify when you go out for shopping. you can strike out when it is refilled. 

9. When you grind idly batter, store some part of batter in a container before fermenting. This one you can use it with too sour batter or you can ferment it in the middle of the week. 

10. When you prepare bindi fry add some bread crumps at the end. This will increase the taste and remove the extra oil as well. 

11. When your idly sambar becomes more watery, add some idly batter to it. This will make it thick without affecting the taste. 

12. When you want to make instant idly upma, keep the idlies in freezer for half an hour and then crush the idlies. It will be crushed properly when you do like this. 

13. Whenever you cook thuar dhal for sambar, add 1 tsp of gingelly oil to it and cook. This will cook the dhal fine and there will be no need to smash. 

14. Cut a lime, squeeze half of it and put the lime inside the cooker bottom, while cooking. This will keep the bottom of the cooker white and clean for several years. 

15. When you prepare any gravy, and you find it too salty, you can recover the taste by adding a tomato. 

16. Add salt while sauting onions, this will make the onions to get cooked soon. 

17. When you clean yam, Colocasia etc, use turmeric and salt with water and then clean. This will decrease the itching. 

18. while cleaning the greens, put the greens in a deep bowl containing water. Take out the floating greens. Do this process 3 times, this will clean the greens better. The sand will settle down in the bottom and the clean greens will come up. 

19. Mix Mustard seeds, Urad dhal broken and jeera(cumin seeds) and store it in a container. This combination will always be used for seasoning. 

20. While preparing chappathi dough, add 2 tsp of gingelly oil and use hot water. This is helpful for making soft chappathis. 

21. Instead of adding kesari powder, you can heat sugar in 1 tsp oil. You can add this to the kesari, this is a natural coloring. 

22. Dry roast the fenugreek seeds, powder it and store it. You can add this powder at the end while preparing sambar, kulambu etc. This will increase the flavour and at the same time good for health.

23. While preparing pongal, add ghee while cooking it in pressure cooker. This will make the pongal so soft. 

24. While preparing urad vada, when the dough becomes watery, you can add sooji and grind it once. This will not affect the exact taste and you will get crispy taste.

25. While preparing Pakoras, use corn flour which will make the pakoras crispy.