5 Food Hacks Everyone Should Know

(But Most Don’t)

Ashburn, VA: Here are 5 food hacks restaurant owners don’t want you to know. This is because if enough people find out, some restaurants could lose millions.

1. How To Easily Make The World’s Best Salsa

During your next get together, here is a tip you can use to impress your family or friends. One of my best friends makes some of the best salsa in Virginia. I can’t get enough of it. One day I confronted him and demanded he teach me how to make this stuff. After a laugh, he told me an interesting story. He works for a company that provides food supplies to local restaurants in Virginia. One day while going over reports, he noticed something interesting. The Mexican restaurants that had the best salsa all ordered A LOT of one ingredient. In comparison, the other Mexican restaurants with mediocre salsa did not order this one ingredient. Then it hit him like a ton of bricks. He stumbled onto the key to making great salsa. If you want to make amazing salsa, here is the trick….

Add a Few Splashes of Red or White Wine Vinegar

My friend said he first tested this theory with store bought salsa. He bought the salsa from a store, added some cilantro to freshen it up and then added a few splashes of white wine vinegar. To make it look homemade, he put it in a glass jar. He served it to his family and they went nuts. Since then, he’s graduated to making his own salsa from scratch. There are a million and one salsa recipes out there. Regardless of which one you use, be sure to implement these 2 tips my friend gave me.

Add a few splashes of red or white wine vinegar.
Use cherry tomatoes for your salsa because they provide more flavor. Also, after chopping the tomatoes, strain them. This will prevent your salsa from being watery.

2. Simple Trick for Restaurant Quality Vegetables

This tip is so easy, it’s criminal. There is a high-end restaurant in one of our big cities that makes mouth-watering vegetables. I am not a fan of veggies but…

This Restaurant Had Me Asking For
Second & Third Helpings of Brussel Sprouts.

Long story short, my wife and I learned the key to making great vegetables is easy. You need to roast them. You can season them up a bit if you want; however, all you need is salt, pepper, and olive oil. If you are cooking more than one veggie at the same time, the key is to make sure you use vegetables that have similar cooking times. Otherwise, you will end up with unevenly cooked vegetables. Here is a general guide:

Cooking Times for Roasting Vegetables at 425°F

Root vegetables (beets, potatoes, carrots): 30 to 45 minutes, depending on how small you cut them.
Winter squash (butternut squash, acorn squash): 20 to 60 minutes, depending on how small you cut them.
Crucifers (broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts): 15 to 25 minutes.
Soft vegetables (zucchini, summer squash, bell peppers): 10 to 20 minutes.
Thin vegetables (asparagus, green beans): 10 to 20 minutes.
Onions: 30 to 45 minutes, depending on how crispy you like them.
Tomatoes: 15 to 20 minutes.

3. The 2 Best Ways To Keep Guacamole Green (Backed By Science)

What is the best way to keep guacamole green? I’ve heard things like leave the seeds in, cover with saran wrap, etc. I reviewed a study on how to keep guacamole green. They tested over 15 different methods. According to the test, here are the two best ways to keep guacamole green.

Cover with saran wrap BUT press the plastic on top of the guacamole to form an airtight seal.
Cover the top of the guacamole with a thin layer of water and lemon juice.

Here is why these two methods work. Oxygen is what turns the exposed layer of guacamole brown. If you protect the guacamole from oxygen, it will stay green. I’ve tested both methods. I can confirm pressing the saran wrap on top of your guacamole so it forms an airtight seal will keep your guacamole green. As far as the thin layer of water and lemon juice goes, here are my thoughts. The water protects the guacamole from air, but the lemon juice is key here. This is because…

If you have tomatoes in your guacamole, the acid from the lemon juice keeps them nice and red. If you just use water, your guacamole will be green, but the tomatoes will look terrible.
The acid from the lemon water will give your guacamole a brighter, fresher green look than using water alone.

The saran wrap method is the easiest for me. If you decide to use the lemon water method, make sure you use a very thin layer of water, pour that water out before eating the guacamole again, dab any remaining water with a paper towel, and stir the guacamole before serving. Stirring it will mix in the tiny bit of remaining lemon water.

This was an interesting study, and I was able to confirm their results. However, my personal favorite way to keep guacamole green is to eat it all. Quick.

4. Easy-To-Eat S’mores

We take our grandkids camping often. One night, in a desperate attempt to get them off their tablets & phones, we did this. You take ice cream cones and stuff them with chocolate chips, graham crackers, and marshmallows. Wrap them in foil, put a camping grill grate over your fire, then place the foil-wrapped cones on the grill grate. After a few minutes, you will have easy-to-eat smores! You can get creative with this. We’ve tried butterscotch chips, chocolate mint, fruit, nuts, coconut flakes, etc. Here are some additional tips:

Sometimes the marshmallows just melt into liquid sugar. To stop this, stick a skewer through the bottom of the cone, fill your cone with whatever you want, wrap the cone in foil (leaving some skewer exposed at the top), then put the marshmallow on the skewer. This way you can roast the marshmallow while everything else melts together inside of the cone. When it’s all done, pull the skewer out and the roasted marshmallow will sit nicely on whatever is in your cone.
Be sure you let your cone all cool down. Biting into a cone fresh from the fire may be like eating lava.
After your cone cools down, add a scoop of ice cream on top of it if you want. It’s delicious.
You can do this in an oven as well. Cook it all at 375 for about 10 min.

5. The Best Seasoned Salt 99.7% People Don’t
Know About

My sister was hosting a brunch for her in-laws. However, in the middle of making the brunch, she ran out of salt and did not have time to go to the store. Her husband is a successful BBQ competitor. Prior to his recent competition, he tested a little-known BBQ rub called Bald Buck for smoked chicken. When he first tested the rub, he used too much and it made the chicken salty. However, the flavor was promising. On his second test, he used the right amount and she said….

The Flavor of That Chicken Was Orgasmic….

…and since then, her husband won two competitions using this little-known BBQ rub. Since she did not have salt and did not have time to go to the store, her husband suggested she use the Bald Buck rub as a make-shift seasoned salt for her food. She did not want to do it but she had no choice. She used the rub as the salt for her eggs and her hashbrowns. Things could not have gone any better. She said her in-laws went nuts over the eggs and hashbrowns. “I made this huge brunch with a couple of fancy dishes and who would have thought eggs and hashbrowns would be the stars of the show,” she said. Her in-laws said it was the best they’d ever had and kept trying to figure out why it tasted so good

After she finally told me the secret, I did some research on Bald Buck rub. I found a few youtube videos on it; however, this one seemed to be the most popular.

I bought some Bald Buck to see what the fuss was about and damn, it’s delicious. I put it on everything like roasted vegetables, eggs, meat, potatoes, in my bloody mary, etc. It’s my go-to seasoned salt. I always get compliments when I put it on my food, and nobody knows about my secret. I don’t think the makers of this rub intended it to be used this way, but oh well, the stuff is delicious, and they should consider making it a seasoned salt, in my opinion.

Learn More About Bald Buck Here