Chef and TV host Prue Leith may be an exacting judge with contestants on The Great British Baking Show. But when it comes to the rest of us, she thinks we could all cut ourselves a bit of slack.
That's the idea behind her new cookbook published in October, Life's Too Short to Stuff a Mushroom. The book offers 80 globally inspired recipes (think masala poppadom nachos and avocado and wasabi dip) that don't require any complicated or fussy techniques.
It also comes with a big bonus: dozens of "Prue's Handy Hacks," tips and shortcuts that Leith has learned in her 65-year culinary career. That includes how to rescue over-whipped cream (a common Baking Show dilemma), peel ginger with a spoon and easily peel a pineapple.
When cooks don't have the right food prep skills, they feel "anxious and think, 'why should I bother?' " says Leith. But if you have a little know-how, cooking "is actually quite a pleasure."
Leith shares a few tricks from her book to help you reduce waste and prepare tricky foods with ease.
Level up your cooking game with "Prue's Handy Hacks"
๐ Use a lemon to rescue hardened brown sugar. Put the brown sugar in an airtight container with a whole lemon. Close the lid, wait a couple days and it will be soft again.
๐ง Smash a clove of garlic to peel it more quickly. Cut the root end and tip end off, then take "a jam jar or the flat blade of a knife and just squash it," says Leith. "As soon as you hear the skin breaking with a crack," you should easily find the peel and remove it.
๐Take the rind off a whole pineapple in just six slices. Grab a big knife and cut the top and bottom of the pineapple off. Then stand it up "and just slice down the sides straight down to get the four cheeks off," says Leith. The fruit is ready to cut any way you like.
๐ซ Use a spoon to peel your ginger. "Ginger is so difficult to peel because it's a funny, odd shape," says Leith. To make it easier, grab an ordinary teaspoon, stick it under the skin of the ginger and start scraping. When you get to the nubby bits, just use a little more elbow grease. (Watch the video above to see how Leith does it!)
Leith loves to use ginger in drinks "to give it a bit of a kick," especially ginger beer with a little lime juice.
๐ฆBring back over-whipped cream with a bit of cream. If you see that your cream has started to go grainy and "suddenly gets a bit too stiff," stop whisking and add in a little cream to try and rescue it, she says.
If your over-whipped cream has "lumps of what is in fact butter," she says, the trick won't work. But don't throw it away. Keep whisking to turn the rest of the cream into butter, then add herbs โ "and you've made a sort of maitre d'hotel butter." It's perfect on top of steak.
๐ง Prevent your cupcake and muffin liners from getting greasy with a little bit of uncooked rice. "Just put one teaspoon of dry, uncooked rice in between the muffin liner and the tin. It will absorb any kind of grease or fat," she says. It also makes the baked muffin easy to pull out of the tray.
๐ Turn your overripe banana (even its skin) into a smoothie. Instead of chucking that banana into the compost bin, wash it, cut the two hard ends off and "liquidize the whole thing, including the skin" in a blender, says Leith. The black skin of a banana has loads of good stuff in it: fiber, polyunsaturated fats and amino acids. As you whizz it up, add milk and lots of cinnamon. "If you really want a treat, put a blob of vanilla ice cream."
๐ง Keep opened feta cheese from going rancid by storing it in salted water. "Feta needs to be kept under salted water if it's to be kept for a long time," says Leith. "Either that, or eat it straight away." Place the feta in a lidded container, submerge it in water with a tablespoon of salt and store it in the fridge. It'll last for weeks.
Find more "Prue's Handy Hacks" in Leith's cookbook, Life's Too Short to Stuff A Mushroom, along with QR codes to video demonstrations.
This digital story was written by Malaka Gharib. It was edited by Meghan Keane. The visual editor is Beck Harlan.
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