A few handy cooking tips

Important words have been bolded for your reading ease & pleasure. If you've got any great tips, share them in the comments. Soon we will have a veritable army of tips, and we will be unstoppable.

---

- To remove excess fat from chunky broth or stew, just place a lettuce leaf or two on the surface... and the fat will be absorbed.

- To hull strawberries without a huller (holla!), find a sturdy plastic drinking straw and push it through the bottom of the berry and up through the leafy end.

- To help keep your stovetop clean, place an overturned baking sheet over the unused burners. The baking pan will catch much of the grease and splatter and is much easier to clean. 

- Bonus oil tip! If you spill oil on the ground, sprinkle some flour over it, wait a few minutes, and it will be much easier to clean.

- To unscrew a small cap that just won't unscrew, grip a nutcracker around it and turn with that. Of course, you have to have a nutcracker for that.

- To make frothy milk without an espresso machine, just use an electric egg beater.

- When you have a party, and want to serve a lot of cool tasty beverages, simply fill your washing machine with ice and drinks. When the party's over, run the machine's spin cycle to remove the water.

- To cut very crusty bread, turn it on its side - easier to cut that way.

- To store bacon - roll up the bacon strips tightly in twos or threes or fours, and store them in a ziplock bag. This avoids the issues of frozen strips being impossible to thaw later.