24 brilliant kitchen shortcuts you’ll wish you knew sooner

Got extra burger or hot dog buns? Tear into pieces and freeze in a zipper-top bag. Ten to 20 pulses in a food processor will transform them into ready-to-use bread crumbs – no thawing necessary. Follow these 5 tips to cut down on food waste.

Zap a lemon for ten seconds to break down cells and make the juice flow faster, suggests Laurent Tourondel, chef and partner at Arlington Club in New York City. This is good to remember when trying to squeeze out as much juice as possible for a vinaigrette. Find out the 10 foods you should never reheat in a microwave.

A cheese grater makes quick work of piecrusts and biscuits. Instead of cutting the butter into the flour, simply grate a stick of frozen butter, and then toss the shreds with flour until a crumbly mixture forms, says Beth Moncel, creator of budgetbytes.com. Head here for more great pastry-making tips.

Freeze leftover wine in ice cube trays (eight cubes = one cup) to add flavour to sauces and stews. White and sparkling work best in creamy or clear and brothy soups (think chowder and simple vegetable), while red wine goes well with tomato or beef-based varieties (think chili). Add a few generous splashes per portion. Head here to discover 10 foods you had no idea you could freeze.

This position allows the pool of oil near the lid to move through the rest of the jar and make the peanut butter creamier (and to skip messy stirring). Just make sure the cap is screwed on tight to avoid a greasy pantry shelf.

Smash a handful of chips, stuff into a clean pepper mill, and grind away onto everything from mac and cheese to broccoli.

Use them to chop cooked or tender raw vegetables (especially greens) right in the bowl or pan, suggests Mark Bittman in his book How to Cook Everything Fast.

Save time on your next salad: Find two similarly sized storage container lids. Place cherry tomatoes on top of one, then firmly hold the other lid on top of the tomatoes. Use a very sharp knife to slice through the entire bunch at once.

You’ll have perfectly sized pieces to bake as wedges. Discover 11 extraordinary uses for ordinary household items here.

Heat a sharp knife under warm water, then use it to make one-inch-deep cuts in a grid formation, spacing the lines about an inch apart. This increases your ice cream’s exposed surface area, speeding up the thawing process (similar to the beef trick). Run a scooper under warm water, and easily serve up each section.