An Easier Way to Crack An Egg: Blunt Force Trauma

Today's post is a quick tip that completely revolutionized how I deal with eggs.

When you crack an egg, don't crack it on the edge of a pan or bowl. Instead, crack it on a totally flat surface, like your counter top.

Cracking an egg on a sharp edge increases the odds that you'll get eggshell fragments in your food. But cracking an egg on a flat surface keeps the shell fragments attached to the shell's inner lining, so no fragments get shaken loose.

Think of it like blunt force trauma. You'll do plenty of damage to the shell, but you won't get pieces of it into your food.

Not only that, but cracking an egg on a flat surface also creates a handy indentation, showing you exactly where to put your thumbs to break open the shell. Here, take a look in the photos below:





Look, I was totally suspicious of this tip when I first heard about it. And because I'm an insanely habit-based person in every area of my life, I treat any tip contrary to my habits with absolute paranoia. Plus, it sounded like it might make a mess.

But one day I took a chance, defied my paranoid nature, and used this egg-cracking method for a batch of laughably cheap homemade fried rice. And what do you know, it worked! It was easier to break the egg open, the inner lining of the egg held, there was absolutely no mess, and there was zero chance that any eggshells would get into the food.

Consider me converted. I've been using this method ever since.

Readers, what's your take?


How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

Retro Sundays

I created the Retro Sundays series to help newer readers easily navigate the very best of this blog's enormous back catalog of content. Each Retro Sundays column serves up a selection of the best articles from this week in history here at Casual Kitchen.

As always, please feel free to explore CK's Recipe Index, the Best Of Casual Kitchen page and my full Index of Posts. You can also receive my updates at Twitter.
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This Week in History at Casual Kitchen:

Corned Beef and Cabbage (March 2007)
As we approach St. Patrick's Day, here's a recipe for all the Irish (and the Irish-at-heart) that's amazingly delicious, amazingly easy--and shockingly unhealthy. Yep, it'll cancel out a full month's worth of healthy eating, and I can't recommend it highly enough.

The Crockpot: A Siren Call for Single People (March 2008)
Worn down by long hours at work, yet you still want to enjoy healthy home-cooked meals? I have the perfect cooking tool for you that will change everything about how you cook and eat.

How to Start a Casual and Inexpensive Wine Tasting Club (March 2009)
Forming your own wine tasting club is easily the most cost-effective and time-efficient way to learn about wines. This post contains everything you need to know to get started.

Quick Scalloped Potatoes (March 2010)
A healthy and delicious side dish that feeds six. Better yet, you can make it in less than 25 minutes.

The Worst Lie of the Food Blogosphere (March 2010)
Possibly the most controversial and hotly debated post I've ever written here at Casual Kitchen. In about two sentences you'll see why.


How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

CK Friday Links--Friday March 11, 2011

Here's yet another selection of interesting links from around the internet. As always, I welcome your thoughts and your feedback.

PS: Follow me on Twitter!
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The three rules of leftovers. (Cheap Healthy Good) Bonus post: 15 time saving food prep tips.

Wondering what to give up for Lent? Here's a highly original idea for you. (Cook, Pray, Love)

Intriguing thoughts on the best way to give up caffeine. PS: I should tell her about my Speed-Weaning technique, which works in just three days! (Blonde & Balanced)

Only a fool pays hard-earned money for overpriced, store-bought spice blends. (Dad Cooks Dinner)

Recipe Links:
Filling, nutritious and easy: Quick Roasted Chicken with White Beans and Chard. (Cafe Johnsonia)

Not exactly a 30-minute meal, but an absolutely fascinating way to prepare a roast chicken: Chicken in a Bread Crust. (Chocolate & Zucchini)

Visually striking and delicious: Roasted Red Pepper and Feta Fritters. (Closet Cooking)

Off-Topic Links:
If you only watch 10 ads this year, make them these. (Social Times)

Want to improve your speaking and presentation skills? Watch this exceptional 7-minute video. (Youtube, via The Simple Dollar)

Getting loved ones to understand your decisions. (The Change Blog)


Do you have an interesting article or recipe that you'd like to see featured in Casual Kitchen's Food Links? Send me an email!


Help support Casual Kitchen by buying Jules Clancy's exceptional new e-cookbook 5 Ingredients, 10 Minutes (see my rabidly positive review here). Or, support CK by buying Everett Bogue's revolutionary book The Art of Being Minimalist. (These are both affiliate links, so if you decide to make a purchase, you'll help fund all of the free content here at CK!)


How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

Hilariously Easy Chicken Soup

This chicken soup recipe is so easy and so laughably cheap that... well, it just makes me laugh out loud.

The direct prep and labor time is well under 30 minutes, and the rest of the time you can let this soup simmer on the stove while you do other things. Not bad. And, at well less than a dollar a serving, it's yet more proof that healthy food absolutely does not have to be expensive.

It's simply amazing to us here at CK that a soup this simple could be this good. I hope you enjoy it as much as we do.

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Hilariously Easy Chicken Soup
(modified and adapted from Allrecipes.com)

Ingredients:
1 small whole uncooked chicken (3-4 pounds)
6-8 carrots, in all, peeled and cut up into 3-4 large pieces each
6-8 celery stalks, in all, chopped coarsely
3 onions, in all, quartered
Water, enough to cover everything
2-3 teaspoons black pepper, more or less to taste
2-3 cubes chicken bouillon, optional

Directions:
1) Place whole chicken and half of the carrots, celery and onions into a large stock pot (save back the remaining half of the carrots, celery and onions until step 2, below). Cover with cold water. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer for about two and a half hours, or until the meat falls off the bones of the chicken.

2) Remove the chicken from the pot, pick all the meat from the bones, discard the remaining bones. Add the meat and the remaining half of the carrots, celery and onions back to the pot. Add black pepper and optional bouillon cubes, and simmer for another 20-30 minutes, or until the newly added veggies are cooked to your liking.

Serves 10.
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A few recipe notes:
1) If you have a stock pot with a large pasta strainer insert in your kitchen, I recommend using it for this recipe. It will make things a lot easier. Instead of having to lift a boiling hot whole chicken out of a pot of boiling hot broth--and risk burning various body parts in the process--you can just lift up the stock pot strainer, let it drain and cool over another pan, and then go to work on picking apart the chicken. This is an instance where the right tools can make a recipe a heck of a lot easier.

2) The first time we made this we were wondering how long would it take for the meat to "fall off the bone?" How would we know it was ready? And after the first hour of simmering, we worriedly poked and prodded the chicken expectantly nearly every 10 minutes. ("Is it falling off the bone yet? How about now? ...Now? What about now?" and so on).

We needn't have worried. After the two and a half hour mark, the meat really did start falling off the bone--it was painfully obvious when it was time to pull the chicken out of the pot. Thus there's no need for you to repeat our worried poking and prodding. You'll know when it's time.

3) A quick note on why I divide the carrots, celery and onions in half, adding half at the beginning and half later. The veggies play an important role in forming the taste of the base broth, but after spending more than two hours boiling, these guys are going to get pretty mushy. But by adding another half-portion of veggies for the last 30 minutes, you'll get a rich flavorful broth and some bite to your vegetables too. Try it and you'll see what I mean.

4) Finally, the laughable cheapness of this recipe is, well, laughable:

Chicken: ~$5-6
Carrots: $1.00
Celery: $1.00
Onions: 50c
Bouillon/spices: 15c

Total: $7.65-$8.65, or about 77c-87c per serving.


Related Posts:
How to Tell if a Recipe is Worth Cooking With Five Easy Questions
Cooking With Love: Farfalle with Mushrooms and Gorgonzola Cheese
How to Handle Raw Chicken So That You'll NEVER Get Food Poisoning
Quite Possibly the Easiest Lentil Soup Recipe You’ll Find Anywhere





How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

Retro Sundays

I created the Retro Sundays series to help newer readers easily navigate the very best of this blog's enormous back catalog of content. Each Retro Sundays column serves up a selection of the best articles from this week in history here at Casual Kitchen.

As always, please feel free to explore CK's Recipe Index, the Best Of Casual Kitchen page and my full Index of Posts. You can also receive my updates at Twitter.
******************************
This Week in History at Casual Kitchen:

Six Secrets to Save You from Cooking Burnout (March 2007)
Even food bloggers get totally sick of cooking from time to time. Here are the tricks I use to help myself get back in the mood.

How to Be a Satisficer (March 2008)
How to grapple with one of the strangely counterintuitive truths of modern life: Having a lot of choices actually makes you less happy.

Our New Zealand Travel Blog (March 2009)
In 2008, I left the corporate world (a decision that is looking more and more permanent these days), and in early 2009, Laura and I spent an amazing month driving around both islands of New Zealand. This (admittedly off-topic) post shares the high points from that trip. Enjoy!

Thoughts on the Media Coverage of Santiago Earthquake (March 2010)
When you're in an 8.8 Richter earthquake, one of the biggest and baddest in recorded history, you'd hope the media might report what happened with at least some degree of accuracy. Wrong, wrong, wrongity wrong.

The "It's Too Expensive to Eat Healthy Food" Debate (March 2010)
In which I hammer 9-inch nails into my head at the close-mindedness and condescending ignorance of a certain New York Times food journalist. A tip for new readers: never criticize lentils here at Casual Kitchen.


How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

CK Friday Links--Friday March 4, 2011

Here's yet another selection of interesting links from around the internet. As always, I welcome your thoughts and your feedback.

PS: Follow me on Twitter!
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I'm happy to see I'm not the only person who's perplexed by the chemical ingredients in Aunt Jemima Syrup! (Fooducate)

All of the secrets you'll ever need to know about cooking beans. (Beyond Salmon)

If you've ever wondered what it might be like to have an eating disorder, read this article. (Choosing Raw)

What kind of weirdo makes her own toothpaste? (The Simple Dollar)

Recipe Links:
Yes, you can make perfect Italian-Style Pizza at home--without a wood-fired oven. (stonesoup)

A delicious, quick and healthy Indian recipe from the new cookbook Bal's Quick and Healthy Indian: Ginger and Coconut Chicken. (Christie's Corner)

Spectacular, and ready in under 30 minutes: Pasta with Shimp and Cilantro-Lime Pesto. (Bibberche)

Off-Topic Links:
The ignominious defeat of Super Mom. (Erin Pavlina)

The only chart you need to understand why the USA is totally screwed. (Business Insider)

Everything you'll ever need to know about inflation. (A Dash of Insight)




Do you have an interesting article or recipe that you'd like to see featured in Casual Kitchen's Food Links? Send me an email!


Help support Casual Kitchen by buying Jules Clancy's exceptional new e-cookbook 5 Ingredients, 10 Minutes (see my rabidly positive review here). Or, support CK by buying Everett Bogue's revolutionary book The Art of Being Minimalist. (These are both affiliate links, so if you decide to make a purchase, you'll help fund all of the free content here at CK!)


How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

What's Your Favorite Consumer Empowerment Tip?

One of our favorite themes at Casual Kitchen is consumer empowerment, and it's a fundamental article of faith here that consumers have far more power over big companies than they think.

After all, companies that make overpriced, unhealthy foods absolutely cannot sell them without our consent. We consumers, by our very act of consumption, are the ones who complete the circle.

Long-time Casual Kitchen readers intuitively understand this, but there are many consumers out there who struggle to grasp this important concept. As a result, they simply give their power away.

We can't have that. So today I'm sharing my favorite consumer empowerment tips, and at the end of this post I'll open it up to you, dear readers, to join in and share your favorites with all the readers here at Casual Kitchen.

CK's Top Five Consumer Empowerment Tips:

1) Be a contrarian: stock up on things when they're unwanted, out of season, or in oversupply.

2) Never be an early adopter.

3) Avoid TV and other media, and respond to media-based advertising with deep and open cynicism.

4) When you see any product being heavily advertised, think about the enormous cost of that advertising, and then think of yourself paying for that advertising when you buy that product. Before long, you'll see heavily advertised products for what they are: destroyers of consumer value.

5) Recognize that no company forces anyone to buy anything. Even the most evil or greedy company relies on us to consent to buy their products. We consumers complete the circle.

Readers, what's your favorite piece of pro-consumer advice? Share your thoughts in the comments!


How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!