If you want to save time and money in the kitchen, it’s time to start thinking outside the box. Many of your kitchen items can be used for other purposes—just ask Cassy Joy of Fed & Fit. Joy knows a thing or two about how to maximize results without spending hours slaving over a stove or countertop. Here are 10 genius kitchen hacks from Joy that will change your life (or at least, dinner time).
RELATED: How to Meal Prep for the Week.
1. Use a Stand Mixer to Shred Meat
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Don’t use two forks to shred meat when a standing mixer with a paddle attachment will do the job in no time. “I use my stand mixer a hundred times more often for shredded meats than I do for baked goods,” Joy says. “It sits on the counter so I can shred meat. You might have a hand mixer, and this also works really well.”
2. Keep Salad Greens Fresh With Paper Towels
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Joy uses paper towels to keep her greens fresh in the fridge. “I get two paper towels and I fold it in half, so it’s double layered, open up my salad greens as soon as I get home from the grocery store, and I just lay this right [there], close it and then store it like that. And so the moisture will work its way down into the paper towel. And when you’re ready to eat it, you just open it up, the paper towel will be damp. Get your nice crispy dry salad greens for the next two weeks and you won’t be wasting that money anymore.”
3. Keep Herbs In Water
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Joy saves her herbs by using water. “Now what I’ve done to rework that and get way more life out of my herbs is to store them in a little jar with a little bit of water in the refrigerator,” she says. And this helps a lot. You could also keep ’em on the countertop truly, but I found that they stay a little bit more crisp if they’re in the fridge. And so all you need to do is take a mason jar or a cup, whatever you’ve got handy, fill it about halfway up with water, and then you’re going to take your herbs.”
4. Save Your Bacon (Fat)
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Joy recommends storing leftover bacon fat in a glass container. “If you’ve ever fried bacon, you know that it renders a lot of liquid fat off of the bacon, and I don’t want you to throw that away,” she says. “It’s going to not only add a whole bunch of flavor to your future meal using that bacon fat to cook other things in it, but you’re also going to save yourself some money instead of using the butter or the olive oil or the other fats that you buy from the store.”
RELATED: 36 Pantry Staples Every Home Cook Needs.
5. Leftover Vegetable Bowl
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Instead of using half a pack of vegetables and wasting the rest, Joy immediately puts the extra veggies in a bowl and adds to it throughout the week. “So on Monday, when I steam those veggies and I use half the bag, instead of just putting this other leftover bag in the veggie bowl drawer, I put ’em in the veggie bowl right there and it just sits there in the refrigerator just like that.” She then makes a soup out of the vegetables.
6. Use a Potato Masher To Crumble Meat
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Joy uses a large potato masher to crumble meat in the pan. “The beauty of this little simple tool is just a quick shake and it’s pretty much clean,” she says. “And so I will just let this meat sit here and cook, and then once it’s cooked on one side, I’ll go in and mash it again so it flips over and then you’re done so much faster.”
7. Prep Your ingredients ASAP
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Don’t wait to prep your vegetables—do it right away and store them in the fridge ready to go. “I like to do it right when I get home from the store and then put them into a mason jar,” Joys says. “And this way, when the time comes to make that dish with the carrots, you open up the bridge and they’re already chopped for you. You’re not going to talk yourself out of it. You’re going to think, oh, thank you, past me, love future me.”
8. Make a Meal Bin
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Joy puts all the ingredients she knows she will need for a specific dish in a bag in the refrigerator to make prepping and cooking easier. “We’re putting it in the refrigerator so that on Tuesday when I’m ready to make my tacos, I pull this bin out and everything’s together and ready, and it’s going to save so much time and mental energy to do just that,” she says. “So put your groceries together as meals when you get home from the store.”
9. Prep Meals When Possible
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If you have small children to feed, make it so that all you have to do is press a few buttons and the food will be cooked. “It weirds my husband out when he comes home from work because he opens up the microwave and he’s like, you have a bowl of broccoli in the microwave,” she says. “I said, yes, it’s there. Leave it there. I put it there at 3:00 PM and I needed to stay there until five 30 when I’m ready to press the number four button for four minutes.”
10. Cook For Leftovers
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Joy cooks enough—for example a whole chicken or whole salmon filet—so the remainder can be made into another meal, as per her book Cook Once: Dinner Fix. “The concept is that we make one big meal,” she says. “So let’s say we roast an entire salmon filet, and I’ll only need half of that for this first meal. My family’s only going to need half of it. The other half I’m going to repurpose into another dinner that’s even faster and easier and more delicious to pull together.”