10 Things to Know About Cooking and Kitchen

1. Store your red spices (chili powder, cayenne pepper, paprika) in the refrigerator. They're perishable!
2. Do not store spices, oils (or really any food) in the cabinets right next to the stove or in the cabinet above the stove. The heat from your stove will shorten the life of those items.
3. Olive oil is perishable. If you put olive oil in a clear oil bottle that you keep on your counter, then only fill it with as much oil as you will use in a week. If you use a dark bottle or keep the oil in a dark, cool cabinet, you can fill it with a month's supply. Any more than that? Refrigerate!
4. Whole wheat flour and corn meal are also perishable. 
5. Liquid measuring cups and dry measuring cups are NOT interchangeable. 
6. If you are adding nuts or berries to a recipe for muffins or cake, stir them into the dry ingredients before adding the liquid. A coating of flour keeps them evenly distributed in the batter, rather than sinking or floating while it bakes.
7. Cutting out biscuits with a biscuit cutter? Push straight down without twisting. Your biscuits will rise higher.
8. No matter what the recipe says, you really don't need to sift all-purpose flour. Sifting is a holdover from the days when you needed to sift out any weevils or foreign objects, and when flour wasn't as light and pre-sifted as what we buy now. If you're making biscuits, bread, regular cakes, cookies, etc., you can skip the sifting. Stir the salt and baking powder or baking soda and spices in with the same spoon you're going to mix with. One less thing to wash! If you are baking with whole grain flour and want to sift out some of the bran, that is an entirely different story...
9. Cutting up fruit or veggies for a recipe? Do that the easy way. Instead of cutting the core out of the apple or pepper, cut the fruit away from the core. Strips of pepper on a pizza are every bit as good as rings of pepper and prep time is much less!
10. Use the right kind of salt at the right time. Salt meat liberally well before you cook it. Overnight is great. But if you're roasting veggies, salt those near the very end. If you're making bread with commercial yeast, add salt in the beginning of the mixing to help govern the action of the yeast. If you're making bread with real sourdough, salt at the end of the dough preparation, after the flour is fully hydrated.  And don't skip the salt in desserts! A little salt to support the sweet will enhance the flavor without tasting salty.