7 Kitchen Hacks & Culinary Tips: Fantastic Feasts

Did you know that you can use a banana peel to polish tarnished silverware? After you enjoy a banana, rub the inside of the peel along the silver, and you’ll see the magic happen. Just wipe it off with a clean cloth afterward to have sparkling silverware again. This trick doesn’t work with really dark spots, but it’s great for lightly tarnished utensils.

A. Warmed dinner plates make any meal feel special. If your oven is already in use (or if any of your dishes aren’t ovensafe), you can warm all the dishes you need by running them through the dishwasher on the dry cycle.
B. It is also always nice to serve food from a warm dish, but it’s particularly nice with mashed potatoes and pasta, which otherwise cool off quickly. Warm your serving bowls for these foods by draining the water in which they’ve been cooking into the bowl and letting it warm up. Just make sure the bowl is heatproof.

It’s always nice to have help transferring food to serving bowls and platters for a large dinner party or holiday meal. But sometimes the host is busy cooking and unavailable to match the food with the serving piece of choice. To get around this situation graciously and efficiently, try labeling the serving dishes and corresponding containers of food ahead of time with small post-it notes to make it clear which foods and dishes go together.

A large fish fillet or whole fish makes an impressive presentation, but it can be a challenge to remove the delicate item from a baking sheet without it falling apart. For an easier transfer, reach for a flexible cutting board. Slide the cutting board under the fish and use it to gently transfer the fish onto a serving platter, using a spatula if necessary.

For many of us, the crispy brown skin is the most sought-after morsel of a roasted chicken or turkey. The same can be said of the crust that forms on the outside of a roast. But when the roast rests before it is carved and served, the bottom crust is often softened by the juices that accumulate in the platter. Get around this problem by letting the roast rest on a wire rack, thereby elevating the meat over the puddle of juices.

One of the most difficult parts of roasting a whole chicken is transferring the hot bird from the roasting pan to the carving board. Get a better grip with this method.
1. Insert the bowl of a long wooden spoon into the chicken’s cavity.
2. Grasp the handle of the spoon with a towel, tilt the chicken slightly toward the handle, and lift it out of the pan.

Although we usually recommend holding large wads of paper towels to turn a hot turkey during cooking, some cooks feel more secure using oven mitts. To keep the mitts from getting dirty and greasy, slip clean plastic produce bags over the mitts to protect them.