Kitchen Hacks: Preventing Splashes And Splatters
Scanning the stovetop, you may see sauce on the backsplash, oil on the countertop and grease on nearby appliances. Simple meals can evolve into a scrubbing nightmare without quick action or prior planning. It seems impossible to fry without splashing the oil and without dirtying the kitchen tiles but, with this simple hacks, I want to convince you that it is possible to cook without splashes and splatters. In fact, there are some really simple and helpful tips that will leave your kitchen stainless. Try these tips to avoid or reduce splattering.
Splash-free pouring.
Tired of the splashes that occur when transferring tomato sauce, soup, or stew from a pot to a storage container? With the help of a spoon, the mess can be averted. Place the backside of a large wooden or metal spoon under the pouring stream to deflect the liquid into the container.
Stopping hot splashes.
An immersion blender creates a one-pot solution for pureeing ingredients into smooth soups. However, unlike a traditional blender with an airtight top, the handy tool is little more than a stick with a blade and the hot contents can splatter out when it’s in use. For an easy solution, cut a hole in a disposable aluminum pie plate, invert it on top of the pot, and insert the immersion blender in the hole to prevent any mess.
Saucepan splash guard.
To keep simmering sauces from splattering onto the stovetop, fashion a splash guard from a disposable aluminum pie plate.
1. Using a metal skewer, poke at least a dozen holes in the pie plate.
2. Using tongs, invert the pie plate onto the pan. The holes allow the steam—not the splatters—to escape.
Minimizing sauté splatter.
When you are browning meat for a soup or stew, grease splatters on the stovetop and burners make for a nasty mess and an unpleasant cleanup job. The stovetop is easy enough to wipe off, but cleaning the burners and burner plates is more involved. To keep unused burners from getting dirty in the first place, position inverted disposable aluminum pie plates over them. The pie plates can be wiped clean and used again. You can also use a large cookie sheet to cover more than one burner at a time.
Preventing boilovers.
Most cooks with electric stoves who need to quickly cool down a hot pot move it to another burner. Instead of risking a burn while trying to move a large pot of angrily bubbling water, toss in one or two ice cubes. This brings down the temperature quickly and takes up the slack while the stove slowly cools down.
A stovetop kettle grill.
A grill pan is a good alternative when outdoor grilling is not an option, but it tends to create messy grease splatters and imparts minimal smoke flavor to food. Try inverting a disposable aluminum roasting pan over the top of your grill pan to catch splatters. This also concentrates smoky flavor in whatever food you are grilling, much like the closed lid of a kettle grill.
Mess-free broiling.
When you’re broiling greasy meats such as ground beef, the fat often produces smoke and is hard to clean up. Lining the broiler pan with aluminum foil helps, but you can take this method one step further.
1. Line the bottom of the broiler pan with foil and cover it with a few slices of bread to soak up the grease. Cover with the perforated broiler pan top and proceed to broil the meat.
2. When it comes time to clean up, simply gather the foil and grease-soaked bread together and discard.
Tongs caddy.
Tongs are the tool of choice for a wide range of cooking projects. When cooking with tongs, try keeping them at the ready by resting them in a heavy beer or coffee mug. This way, any juices on the tongs drip into the mug, keeping your counters mess-free and simplifying cleanup.
Better blending.
Oil or melted butter added to dressings or sauces in a whirring blender can splatter back up through the opening in the lid and make a mess. Eliminate this problem by placing a small funnel in the opening and pouring the liquid through it slowly and steadily.