Top 10 Food and Drink Hacks [Lifehacker Top 10]

 

 

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Top 10 Food and Drink Hacks [Lifehacker Top 10]

via Lifehacker: Lifehacker Top 10 by Gina Trapani on 11/28/07

You may not be able to power an iPod with an onion, but there are plenty of neat tricks and techniques that actually do work with everyday foods. We've posted dozens of food and beverage-related stories here at Lifehacker over the past three years, but today we've compiled the top 10 most clever, interesting, fun, and useful food hacks of them all, with video clips. Come on in to check 'em out.

10. Close chip bags without the clip

Half-eaten bag 'o chips and nary a chip clip in sight? Check out this folding technique for keeping snacks fresh and the bag closed, no hardware required.

9. Turn a CD spindle into a bagel tote

Flickr user pwka turned an optical media case into a breakfast holder. Who wants a bagel? Photo by pwka.

8. Master the art of cutting a mango

This one's more a howto than a hack, but it changed our mango-cutting lives forever. Here's a video demo on how to slice a mango and get all of its juicy goodness without any of the mess.

7. Clean ANYTHING with vinegar

Fluff your blankets, steam clean the microwave, make better tasting coffee, de-ring toilets, shine cloudy glasses, de-stinkify mildew-y towels, de-ant and de-cat the garden and more with vinegar, the duct tape of condiments.

6. Bake no-knead bread

Never baked your own loaf of bread? Using a simple, no-knead bread recipe published in the NY Times last year, you put together the ingredients and let time do the work for you.

5. Build a fire with chocolate and Coke

You're stuck at the campsite with a Hershey's bar, can of Coke, and not a lighter in sight. Instead of sweating over rubbing a few sticks together, polish the bottom of the can with the chocolate to a high shine and use it to focus the sun on your tinder to get your campfire going sugary-snack style. The Wildwood Survival site has the details on building fires with cans.

4. Make clear ice cubes

This one's not the most energy-efficient in the bunch, but who doesn't like perfectly clear, cloudless ice cubes? Here's how.

3. Avoid crying while chopping onions

The right chopping technique can reduce tears while chopping onions, as well as refrigerating or keeping the onion in ice water prior to cutting it.

2. Chill a Coke in two minutes

Turn a room-temperature can of Coke into a cold refreshment in two minutes with a bucket of salted ice water. Mythbusters television host Adam Savage explains the temperatures and science behind it on Ask MetaFilter. This technique works for that bottle of white wine you need chilled fast, too.

1. Open a beer bottle with a piece of paper

You don't need an opener to crack that bottle of beer—all you need's a regular letter-sized piece of paper. This quick video runs down how.

This trick also works using a lighter or another beer bottle.

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Like all our Top 10 lists, this one was tough to winnow down. We didn't even get to de-stemming strawberries with a straw, keeping crystals off your ice cream with plastic wrap, making omelets in a bag, or keeping cookies fresh with bread.

What are your favorite food and drink hacks? Let us know in the comments.

(For more non-techie Top 10's, check out our previously posted Top 10 Body Hacks, Top 10 Ways to Sleep Better, and Top 10 DIY Office projects.)

 

 

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