5 tips to change every home cook’s life

We asked Coles ambassador Courtney Roulston to share her top kitchen tips. These five ideas will save you money and make your cooking life easier!

1. Freeze things flat and stack them

Whether it’s soups, stews, sauces or purées you are freezing, place them into heavy-duty zip-lock bags and push all the air out before sealing, then get them as flat as possible. This makes it easy to stack multiple bags in the freezer and much quicker freezing or defrosting times compared to large containers. Most foods also maintain better quality the faster they can be frozen.

2. Use an ice cream scoop for even portions in baking

Use an ice cream scoop to evenly portion out muffin batter or biscuit dough so they are all the same size and cook evenly in the oven. Ice cream scoops with the trigger handle make it super easy to transfer the batter to the muffin tin without any mess. 

3. Store herbs in damp paper towel

There’s nothing worse than seeing bunches of slimy green herbs in plastic bags in the bottom of your crisper. You can extend the life of herbs and greens by washing them and wrapping them in damp paper towel.

This also works for chopped herbs: just store them in a sealed container lined with paper towel. 

4. Freeze liquids in usable portions

Freeze leftover wine in an ice cube tray and store in the freezer ready to be used one or two at a time. This saves you from having to open a whole bottle every time a recipe calls for a splash of wine. 

5. Measure sticky stuff without the mess

Instead of getting measuring spoons sticky or greasy with ingredients such as honey, olive oil or vanilla paste, simply invert a measuring spoon into the flour in your mixing bowl. This will form the same size hole in the flour as the measuring spoon. You can then just pour your liquid straight into the hole for the exact measurement, without any of your ingredients sticking to the inside of the spoon – and there’s less washing up! 

This is ideal when making breads, pizza dough and cakes.