I have a few “tricks” in the kitchen that help me preserve food longer, clean things easier, or simply make it easier to use certain foods. Here I’ve compiled a few. Please share your own also!

Freezer Tricks

• Onions: whenever you chop onions for a recipe, simply put the extra chopped onion in a ziploc baggie and freeze them. When you need to use chopped onions next time, throw those frozen ones directly into the sauté pan or pot!
• Leeks: the same as with onions, I often freeze baggies full of extra chopped leeks.
• Ginger: Two tricks for ginger! First of all, when you buy a piece of ginger, put it in a baggie in the freezer right away (after you clean it of course!). When you need ginger for a recipe, you can grate it frozen much more easily than raw. Additionally the ginger will not go bad in the freezer! Secondly, when you need to peel ginger, use a spoon to drag along the ginger – it removes the skin quickly and easily.
• Egg Whites: sometimes you need a yolk, so what to do with the white? Freeze it! They defrost perfectly for meringues, cakes, etc.