The 10 Best Viral Cooking Tricks We Tried in 2023

Best Cooking Hacks of 2023

There's no doubt 2023 will go down as a big year for viral cooking hacks. People love to share their ideas online, and food tips, tricks and hacks seem to be an especially popular category for sharing. And we're not complaining. This year there certainly was no shortage of innovative tips and techniques that turned familiar culinary concepts on their head. And naturally, we ran to the kitchen to give these hacks a whirl. Some failed to deliver on their promise, but some actually worked. (And yes, we were as shocked as you were.) Here are the 10 cooking hacks we tried in 2023 that we're taking into 2024—and beyond.

Related: 90 Best TikTok Recipes and Food Trends of 2023

The 10 Best Cooking Hacks We Tried in 2023

1. Grill your eggs.

Out of all the ways to cook eggs, grilling is not the method that immediately comes to mind. But this year, Babs Costello of @brunchwithbabs fame, shared that it's her secret to making the best hard-boiled eggs and the tastiest egg salad, so we gave it a shot. We were shocked by how well this grandma-approved trick makes the perfect, never-over-cooked hard-boiled eggs.

Try it: The Grandma-Approved Trick to the Best-Ever Hard-Boiled Eggs

2. Meal prep your brown butter (yes, you read that correctly!)

Did you know that you can make a big batch of rich, nutty brown butter in less than 10 minutes and then stash it in the fridge or freezer for later? We were shocked that we hadn't thought of this sooner, but luckily the Internet provides. We've added this to our meal prep routine so we can level up our chocolate chip cookies, make our pasta better, turn frozen cooked corn into brown-butter corn or just make our morning toast a lot more fun.

Try it: Make-Ahead Brown Butter

3. Smash your baked potatoes.

Ever feel like baked potatoes are creamy, dense, and never as fluffy as you want them to be? Martha Stewart is here to put an end to your starchy woes. According to the culinary queen, smashing a baked potato against the counter fresh out of the oven is the necessary step to get the potato to be its fluffiest. "That smashing breaks up all the fibers, and makes the potato a delightful, fluffy creation," says Stewart.

Try it: Martha Stewart's Trick to the Fluffiest Baked Potatoes Ever

4. Add orange juice to banana bread.

Give your favorite banana bread or another quick bread some more personality by adding a few tablespoons of OJ to the batter. The breakfast beverage provides a bright flavor contrast against the warming spices in those easy bakes and it also makes your treat extra tender.

Try it: The Secret Ingredient for Better Banana Bread

5. Make your own brown sugar.

Never ever run out of the baking staple ingredient again! Mixing regular white sugar with molasses is all you need to do to create a fresh batch of baking-ready brown sugar.

Try it: The Two-Ingredient Trick to DIY Brown Sugar

6. Start your pasta in cold water.

Here's a trick we were sure wouldn't work: the cold water pasta cooking hack. Cooking pasta for carbonara or mac and cheese is so easy, do we really need another way to do it? Turns out, we do. Instead of heating up a huge pot of pasta water, when using this hack, you cook your noodles in a skillet full of cold water in just 20 minutes from start to finish.

Try it: A Quicker Way to Cook Pasta

7. Cut your peppers in a cool new way.

If you have to break down a bell pepper, there's a way to do it where you don't have to deal with the seeds. We came across a TikTok hack where you cut off the stem, stand the veggie stem-side down on a cutting board and make slices down the pepper that align with the sections of the veggie. Once those cuts are made you can open the pepper up like a flower, revealing seed-free segments.

Try it: Be a Better Pepper Prepper (Try Saying That Three Times!)

8. Shred your chicken in the stand mixer.

You can mix a plethora of things in the stand mixer, but one thing that might surprise even the most avid home cook is that you can (and should) use your stand mixer to shred chicken quickly and easily. Simply insert the paddle attachment in your stand mixer, add cooked chicken to the bowl, turn it on low-medium speed—and watch the magic happen. No more going at a whole bird with two forks.

Try it: The Genius Chicken-Shredding Trick You Need to Know About

9. Don't toss stale croissants.

Fight food waste and level up your lunch salads with this viral hack that shows you how to make hearty croutons with stale, day-old croissants. Simply tear the buttery pastries into bite-sized bits, arrange them in a baking dish or on a baking sheet, and bake until golden brown and crisp.

Try it: How to Turn Your Stale Croissants Into Croutons

10. Add cream cheese to your sugar cookies.

The secret to achieving perfect sugar cookies, as we found out this holiday cookie season, is to simply add a bit of cream cheese. The high fat content of cream cheese ensures that the flour in the dough doesn’t absorb too much water while baking and creates a softer, airier cookie texture. The fat also adds a tangy flavor that helps to keep the sweetness of the cookie in check.

Try it: The Secret Ingredient to the Best Sugar Cookies

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