Every home cook should know these 8 kitchen hacks

Say wine, snacks or haute cuisine and the gourmands at online food magazine FavorFlav know where to drink, how to eat it and what to cook. This time our cheffies serve you: every home cook should know these 8 kitchen hacks.

Peeling ginger in no time, making mayonnaise, squeezing a lemon, or separating an egg, then you really feel like a handy Harry, right? With these super smart kitchen tips, you'll be a real kitchen ninja in no time.

Peel ginger with a spoon
Such a knobby ginger root is difficult to peel, due to those bumps and lumps. How do you do that? Take an ice spoon or a teaspoon and scrape the skin off the ginger. Or maybe you don't even need to peel the ginger at all, for example, if you're grating it?

Buy an immersion blender
Making mayonnaise yourself, chopping garlic, chili, and ginger, making guacamole, pureeing soup, grinding lumps out of sauce... No, we don't have shares, but: buy an immersion blender and you'll do all these tasks in a flash.

Use a tea strainer when juicing citrus
Keep a tea strainer or a fine kitchen sieve handy, for example, in that handy jar with spoons and spatulas on the counter or on the rack by the stove, and use it when you squeeze a lemon. Hold the strainer underneath, so you don't have to fish the seeds out of the sauce. Super handy.

Use that strainer to poach eggs too
Want to quickly poach an egg? Grab that same sieve, break the egg over the sieve, let the watery bit of egg white drain away by gently wobbling the sieve, and what you have left is firm egg white around a yolk. Much easier to poach.

Clean up your mess and work neatly
Just pretend you're working in a restaurant. Do you need to chop four onions? Then cut the skin off all four onions and chop them finely, instead of working onion by onion. Faster and cleaner. Throw skins and trimmings away immediately, put the cutting board in the dishwasher, and wash your knife. Done! Even if there's no chef screaming in your ears that it needs to be faster, FASTER, you still don't have to fumble around in your kitchen like a fool.

Use a separate bowl for waste
Cutting a lot of vegetables? Then place a bowl where you can throw all the peels and skins in. That way, you can go to the green bin in one go. Saves endless opening and closing of the lid.

Grab the scale when baking
Many recipes (especially American recipes) list the ingredients in cups. It seems like it doesn't matter how much flour, butter, or sugar you use exactly, because one cup is not the same as another, so a little freestyle can't hurt. Wrong! Convert the recipes and weigh everything you're going to bake to the gram accurately.

Buy an expensive grater
You can grate garlic, you can grate lemon peel, and you can also grate ginger. Parmesan? Truffle? Nutmeg? You guessed it: don't pull a grater out of a discount bin, but buy the real deal. Again, no shares, but you'll really enjoy such a good thing for years.

Source: Serious Eats