Budget

If you’ve ever caught even a glimpse of the pricing signs while browsing the produce section, it’s pretty likely you’ve noticed the big price difference between different colors of bell peppers. Why are green peppers always so much less expensive than the other colors? No matter where you shop, there’s a common theme with the pricing of bell peppers; the green variety are priced significantly lower than the red, yellow, and orange counterparts.

If there’s one thing we can all agree on when it comes to summertime and fruit, it’s that summer is not complete without watermelon. Lots and lots of watermelon. What’s not to love about a snack that’s sweet, refreshing, and healthy? But watermelon isn’t just about the sweet, pink flesh. There’s one part of this fruit you’re probably ignoring (but shouldn’t be): the rind!

A while ago, I wrote a post about how to ventilate a kitchen when you don’t have a range hood or vent. A number of Kitchn readers recommended installing a reversible window fan which, when put on the exhaust setting, can effectively draw smells, steam, and smoke out of your kitchen. I don’t have a hood in my rental kitchen, and for a long time I just ran the ceiling fans in other rooms when I cooked something particularly smelly or smoky. It worked okay, but wasn’t ideal.

Pickles come in jars filled with briny liquid. After the last dill gets eaten, that liquid usually gets tossed, and the can or jar gets recycled. But, lo and behold, someone genius once saved that leftover briny pickle liquid and used it to make (gasp) more pickles, as well as cocktails, salad dressings, and even pickle-flavored bread. That’s the story of pickle juice.

For the last couple of weeks we’ve been rounding up all the amazing ways you can clean the kitchen with just three things: lemons, baking soda, and today, vinegar! This amazing cleaning trifecta can handle most kitchen jobs, and the ingredients are cheap and gentler than traditional cleaners. White distilled vinegar is an excellent thing to keep around the kitchen.

Among the constant food staples in my kitchen is bread. You’ll rarely find me without a hearty loaf of multigrain (homemade, on really good weeks), and a fresh baguette. But, as much as I love carbs, it’s sometimes tough to eat my way through without facing stale slices or dry heels. Though I’d like to use the stale leftovers for croutons or bread crumbs, there’s never quite enough to make a worthwhile amount, or other times it doesn’t fit into my cooking plans.

Saving money on food isn’t always about what you do at the grocery store and how much cash you hand over to the clerk. It’s often also determined by what goes into the trash can at home. Some statistics say that Americans waste up to 25% of the food they buy. If that’s true, then we can reduce our grocery bill by a fourth by not throwing away food. There are lots of ways to reduce waste at home, such as not overbuying and doing an occasional pantry challenge.

While I love cooking with fresh vegetables whenever possible, there are times when relying on frozen vegetables just makes more sense. Whether it’s because of availability, budget, seasonality, or just simply convenience, frozen vegetables are a staple I’ve come to rely on throughout the year. While the selection tends to rotate, there are five favorites that I always have on hand.

Wondering what to do about those long, fibrous stalks once you’ve used the bulb of fennel? It’s a shame that more recipes don’t incorporate them into the same dish you’re making with the bulb. But alas, if that’s your fate, then don’t “discard,” but hang onto those fennel stalks. They’re handy in many ways, especially if you’re fond of making soups or just stock.

Do you find yourself buying bunches of fresh parsley that you never seem to use up? Well, here’s a handy substitute: carrot tops. Buying carrots with the tops still on at the grocery store or farmers market will give you a two-for-one bonus — sweet carrots and flavorful tops. No joke, carrots and parsley are botanically related, and their leaves have a similarly sweet, refreshing flavor. (And should you find them, parsley roots are great for roasting or cooking much like parsnips.

On our first official date, I cooked a simple meal for the man I would marry: Chicken Parmesan over spaghetti. I used canned sauce, and, like my mother before me, I broke the spaghetti. It was the first test of our relationship. My mom always broke the spaghetti because that’s the way my dad liked it. I didn’t know that. I thought that was how you were supposed to make it. I couldn’t understand why this cute guy’s jaw dropped open as I split the handful of noodles in two.

Who: Charlie Marshall of The Marshal Where: Manhattan, New York See his kitchen: Chef Charlie Marshall’s Tiny, Well-Ordered New York City Kitchen A couple weeks ago, when we peeked into Chef Charlie Marshall’s small New York City kitchen, we couldn’t help but notice what he had stashed in his freezer. In fact, it’s something he believes all cooks should have in their freezers, at all times. Can you guess what it is?

You know the folk tale of the three hungry soldiers returning from war? After years of hardship, the villagers in the town they come upon are reticent to share any food with them. The soldiers end up tricking the townspeople into contributing a bounty to their Stone Soup. One man brings a hunk of beef while another brings some carrots. A woman and her child contribute potatoes and onions that they “happen” to find in the cellar. The resulting meal is a feast for all to partake of.

Twice a year, I unplug my deep freeze for a few weeks. It gets a chance to thaw, the ice melting off the sides. I wipe it down, and I save a few kilowatts in energy rather than running an empty freezer. Why do I have an empty freezer? In January and July, I do what I call the Pantry Challenge. I focus on using up what we have rather than buying more. I work with my most perishable items, those in the fridge and freezer, before moving to my canned goods.

Meal planning is such a great tool to help you shop smarter, cook smarter, eat smarter, and even spend less on groceries. But even in the best of times, it can be tough to stay on top of keeping it organized. Now add the busy holiday season to the mix, and all of a sudden keeping your meal plan on track is a whole lot harder. We want to help you stick with it, so we’re sharing 10 tips to keep your meal planning going strong during the holiday season.

It can take time to perfect your freezer game, but a freezer can be a budget shopper’s best friend. Nix the three-year old meat at the back behind the blueberries, wrapped in layers of frost. Outlaw everything haphazard, everything unlabeled. The goal, rather than a very cold version of the very forgotten back corner of your pantry, is to create a perfect array of entrees, sides, and kitchen staples that save you time, effort, and money.

Look inside my pantry and you’ll find a tower of canned tomatoes at all times; they are one of my favorite pantry staples. Canned tomatoes are really versatile and work well in so many different dishes. Here are five of our favorite ways to use canned tomatoes for easy weeknight dinners. A simple can of tomatoes gives you the power to take your mid-week dinner in a lot of delicious directions.

One year, when I was in college, my dorm roommate and I decided to save money by not signing up for a dining plan. Instead we each pitched in about $20 a week, and my remarkably frugal roommate found a way to stretch that to a week of meals for two. But there wasn’t a lot of cooking going on. I look back at that time and laugh a bit ruefully about all the Hot Pockets and Pop-Tarts I ate, and wish I would have known a little more about making smart, cheap meals right there in my dorm room.

It’s always a gamble when you undertake a new project, and that was no different with my kitchen pot rail project this month. I’d long thought a pot rail would work somewhere in my kitchen, and I was right; I found an area with plenty of empty space and adequate studs, and the two rails were installed without any drama. Now that I’ve lived with this new system for a little over a week, you may be wondering how I like it.

If you’ve ever been interested in making your own sausage, but put off by the equipment needed to do it, Bon Appetit has a smart method that uses just one low-tech tool: a Chinese soup spoon. In the video above, Chef Kris Yenbamroong demonstrates how to stuff sausages with a spoon, using the narrow end to gather the casing and the wide end as a sort of funnel to more easily stuff in the sausage mixture.

Do you dream of churning out charred chicken skewers or blackened shishito peppers just like a Japanese yakitori restaurant? If you don’t have the funds or the space for a specialized Japanese grill, there is an easy and inexpensive way to rig up a DIY yakitori grill.Setting two foil-covered bricks on the grates of any type of grill will give you an elevated surface that mimics the steady, indirect heat of a traditional Japanese grill.

Vacuum sealing is a great way to extend the shelf life of dry goods and to prevent frozen foods from developing freezer burn, but buying a vacuum sealing machine can get expensive. Here’s a way to do it on the cheap – all you need is a zip-top bag and a straw.Vacuum sealers remove air from packaging, thus eliminating the effects of oxidation, which can cause foods to degrade. From beans in the pantry to vegetables in the freezer, vacuum-sealed foods can stay fresher longer.

Happy New Year! The holidays are over. It is January, a month much associated with cutting back and shopping more wisely. Still love your wine? Read on for some great wine shopping tips to help you find the best deals, and save a few dollars.Tip #1 – Buy By the Case and Not By the BottleI have mentioned this a number of times in previous posts. While it might seem extravagant to order a case of wine, you generally get a discount of anything between 10% and 15% by doing so.

When it’s time to make a batch of stock, I don’t head to the grocery store. I just open the freezer. Inside I keep freezer bags full of scraps that by themselves are inedible, but when simmered slowly for hours, transform into the magical elixir that is from-scratch stock. So what should you be saving instead of tossing in the trash? • Bones and carcasses: Whenever I roast a chicken, I wrap up the carcass in foil and store it in the freezer a freezer bag.

Have you ever come across those onion-y greens growing among the grasses in springtime? Ever wonder if you could pick them and bring them into your kitchen?Well, the answer is maybe. What you’re seeing in the lawn is possibly a member of the Allium genus. That’s the same genus that brings us the onion family: garlics, leeks, shallots, onions, chives…And, from Wild Food Foragers, “According to Peterson’s Field Guide, all species of Allium are edible.

One of our New Year’s resolutions is to find more ways to use kitchen scraps, and with all the Cara Cara oranges, Kishu mandarins, and other citrus fruits we’ve been eating, we now have plenty of dried peels saved. Here are some of the ways we use them. Let us know if you have any tips, too.Last winter, we made a list of 5 Good Uses for Your Citrus Peels, which included both fresh and dried peels.

Remember how we were gathering essential cookware for a month away from our kitchen? Well, we completely forgot about potentially needing a cooling rack and a thorough search of the cupboards in our temporary housing turned up nothing. But look at our make-shift solution!First, we found an extra oven rack in one of the cupboards, but it was too flat to really lift baked goods off the counter. Looking around for something to set it on, our eye fell on our cast-iron skillet. Perfect.

This is one practice we think all of our grandmothers probably did that’s fallen by the wayside in our generation.

It really is so very very tempting to keep opening the oven door to check how a dish is coming along, isn’t it? Unfortunately, this is one lesson we’ve definitely learned the hard way…For the longest time we’d check the temperature on a roast by opening the oven door, sticking the thermometer in, and waiting…waiting…for the internal temperature to appear. All while leaving the oven door open. And we wondered why the roast was taking so long to cook!Shirley O.

There’s been a lot of talk lately about buying cheaper cuts of meat to save money. We’ve told youhow to cook themmake good braisesBut even if you want to keep buying chicken breasts and pork chops (rather than shanks and flanks and butts), buy them with their bones still attached. They’re cheaper, but you actually get more for your money. It’s a win-win…Boneless, skinless chicken breasts are great when you need clean, neat chunks for a stir-fry.

Before we could start appreciating ham steak as an ingredient in our cooking, we had to first get over childhood memories of thick slabs of oddly pink meat with dry, curling edges plonked directly from the frying pan onto our plate. Shudder. Luckily, quick dinners aren’t all that ham steaks are good for…A ham steak is really just a slice of ham from a whole ham roast.