10 Retro Cooking Hacks We Rarely Use Anymore

Cooking is one of those things that’s changed a lot over time. While the basics of cooking (apply heat to food and you’ll get a different result) have remained the same, throughout the years, there have been countless variations on how we make food, and the nifty methods we employ to make our lives easier. Unfortunately, though, a lot of those methods have been lost to time or left in the generation above us. We think that’s a crying shame. Not only do you need some of these retro cooking hacks to make cooking old-school dishes both easier and a more authentic process, but by forgetting about them, we’re also wasting time doing things the hard way.

Well, we think that it’s time to bring some of these hacks back. By employing retro techniques like adding salt to coffee or adding bread to brown sugar (yep, really), you can make your kitchen staples both tastier and easier to use. Alternatively, nifty tricks like adding sour milk to chocolate cake or using old potato water can allow you to save money while making your food better. It’s time to revive some old classic hacks and make your cooking experience way easier.

Anyone who’s ever cooked with brown sugar will know how annoying it can be. As brown sugar sits in your cupboard, it will gradually dry out. When the moisture evaporates, it causes the sugar crystals to clump together, eventually turning them into one big, hard mass. For dishes that call for specific measurements of brown sugar, and there are a lot of them, this can therefore create a problem: you either have to hope that the big brick of brown sugar you’re putting in will be the right amount, or you have to pick it apart, causing it to spill everywhere.

However, one old-school technique to keep brown sugar soft will work every time. Once you’ve opened your bag of brown sugar, place a piece of fresh bread inside it. You can opt for any type of bread you like, so long as it’s soft (and not overly scented — putting a piece of onion bread in there will flavor your sugar). As the bread goes stale, it releases moisture of its own, which keeps the sugar soft. 

It’s unclear exactly where this hack came from, but we’d imagine it was born at a time before anti-caking agents kept sugar free-flowing. In our opinion, we prefer it to knowing there are loads of additives in our food. If you don’t have any bread, though, never fear: You can use an equally sweet ingredient. 

If you’ve ever made fried chicken and been disappointed by the color you’ve ended up with, this next hack is for you. One very old-school tip to make your fried chicken look as golden as possible is to mix a few drops of yellow food coloring into the oil itself. This hack, which was published in “Hints and Help from Heloise” in 1986, states that you should put the food coloring into the oil before you heat it up, to prevent it from spitting all over the place (and turning your kitchen yellow).

If you’re opting for this hack, we’d recommend using natural food coloring as opposed to an artificial one. We’d also advise you to take it very easy on the coloring used: Even a drop or two too much will turn your fried chicken a radioactive yellow, as opposed to a golden, buttery color. Alternatively, if you want to skip the food coloring entirely, you can use turmeric in your fried chicken for a similar effect. Either rub the turmeric directly into the chicken or sprinkle it over the skin before adding the starch. Alternatively, you could stir it into your flour or cornstarch mixture.

If you haven’t tried putting salt into your coffee yet, you haven’t lived. This handed-down cooking hack has been a trick shared between home cooks for generations, but it was made way more famous by none other than Alton Brown, when he shared it on his “Good Eats” show in 2009. Brown did so by framing it as a brand new recipe, calling it “man coffee,” in a slightly eyebrow-raising move that didn’t make any sense to us — but hey, it was a different time …

Regardless of what you end up calling your coffee, adding a pinch of salt to it can work wonders. Salt in coffee can have several effects, with the most obvious being that it reduces bitterness, thanks to the way that sodium chloride helps to reduce harsh notes. It’s an especially useful move for coffee that’s overbrewed and has developed too many acrid tones, or else brews that have been made with water that’s overly hot. Adding salt to coffee made in a machine can also help to diminish any stale flavors, which can develop as the water sits in the reservoir for too long.

Maple syrup is a pricey ingredient, and it’s been that way for a while. As such, it’s no wonder that people have figured out plenty of ways to make it last longer over the years, by adding some ingredients or sprucing it up to stretch out their precious supply. One of our favorite retro ways to give your maple syrup supply a longer life is to mix it with equal parts applesauce. While this can change its neutrality and texture slightly, applesauce has a surprisingly similar taste to maple syrup, and it’s a great way to give you more to work with when you’re topping your pancakes with it. You can also use jam or fruit preserves as a maple syrup extender.

Alternatively, you can opt for a starch-based addition to give your maple syrup extra life. One old-school way to bulk out syrup is to mix your maple syrup with a little water and then add some potato starch. When heated, the starch will act as a thickener, returning the maple syrup to its original consistency. Naturally, this will make it a bit less sweet, but you can also add a little sugar if you wish, to boost its taste.

Have you ever wondered how your grandma got such a spongy consistency with her cakes? The answer is ice water. This unexpected cake trick has been handed down by bakers through recipes and word of mouth for generations, and while some folks claim that it was a technique pioneered during the Great Depression to help stretch out milk, there’s not a lot of evidence for that. Instead, it may have appeared even earlier than this in cookbooks and was subsequently used throughout the years to create a delicious crumb.

Adding ice water to cake helps improve its texture thanks to the drop in temperature, which then helps to keep the batter solid and dense. By reducing the temperature of the batter, the fat melts less quickly — and this helps the cake to rise more effectively, creating more space inside the crumb and adding to its bounciness. You just need to make sure your water is super chilled, not just a little cold: Add plenty of ice cubes to it beforehand to drop its temperature enough for it to have a proper impact.

The question of how to get the crispiest bacon is one that’s been debated hotly throughout the years. Back in the day, though, the answer was simple: you just needed flour. Forget draining your bacon or slowly rendering it. All this old-school trick requires is for you to dredge your bacon in all-purpose flour before throwing it into the pan and allowing it to sizzle up. You don’t have to do this straight away, though: You can prep your bacon the day before and leave it to rest overnight in the fridge before cooking it.

When you coat bacon in flour, you create an extra layer that absorbs fat and crisps up as it cooks, while sealing the moisture into the bacon itself. It’s exactly the same principle as covering pieces of fried chicken or steak in flour before cooking them in piping hot oil. The difference here, though, is that there’s no need to deep-fry the bacon. As bacon slices are flat, you can shallow-fry them in a relatively small amount of oil. Draining the bacon on paper towel after it’s cooked will help it crisp up even more.

Are you fed up with your milk jugs leaving drops of liquid all over your coffee table? Of course you are, it’s super annoying, right? Well, you may not know this, but you can stop them from happening entirely with a vintage hack that’s been long forgotten. Simply take a small amount of butter (you can also use margarine) and wipe it just underneath the spout, where the milk would normally collect and drip. You should find that when you pour your milk next, there will be no drips whatsoever.

Although no one has done specific research into this milk jug trick and why it works, it’s likely that it does so because fats like butter are hydrophobic. They therefore repel the water within the milk, pushing it back from the end of the jug and stopping it from dripping over the edge. It appears that this hack, like so many, is a handed-down secret with no one source, but instead is something swapped between friends and told to acquaintances. All the best hacks are, though, right?

We’re all about kitchen hacks that both make our food better and save us money. We especially like them when they work not just for one food, but for a whole load of them. Well, the hack that covers all those bases is right here, and all you have to do is save your old potato water. After you boil potatoes, instead of pouring the water away, decant it into a jug and keep it to one side. This water is full of flavor, nutrients, and starch, and can be used in a host of different meals and dishes.

One of our favorite ways to use it is as a soup base. The starches in the water give your soup a natural bulk, while the flavor of it creates way more fullness than if you used water alone. Old potato water can also be added to sauces to thin them out without losing too much taste. Plus, you can even add it to bread or baked goods, to give them a slight nuttiness. Just make sure you use your potato water within a few days; otherwise, it’ll get a little tacky and weird-looking.

Most of us throw away our milk the moment it gets sour, which makes total sense. After all, once it’s past its prime, it’s hard to think of a circumstance in which you could use that milk. Well, we’ve got one. Instead of throwing out that sour milk, you can make a delectable chocolate cake with it and repurpose a liquid that’s about to go straight down the drain.

Using sour milk in cake was likely a handed-down tip shared between cooks for years, but when it appeared in 1878’s “Housekeeping in Old Virginia,” it was set in stone forever. The cookbook featured a recipe for sour milk cakes, which instructed the cook to use a pint of sour milk with a pint of flour, along with some butter, sugar, and baking soda. Later recipes added sour milk to chocolate cake, balancing its bitterness with a deeper flavor. Doing this may seem strange, but the logic behind it is pretty simple. Sour milk acts just like buttermilk or sour cream would, allowing you to moisten your cake while also giving it a sour edge that balances out the sweetness. It was likely particularly useful in the days before refrigerator technology, as a way for folks to use up their old milk before it became inedible.

Are you fed up with food sticking to your grill? What if we told you that you didn’t have to reach for the oil or cooking spray, and that there was an easier way to create a non-stick surface — using just a potato? That’s right, people, one of our favorite old-fashioned cooking hacks is to wipe a potato on the surface of your grill to keep your food from attaching itself. Just slice a potato in half and then rub the exposed edge all over your grill or griddle. When you put your food on the hot surface, it should brown easily and come away with no trouble.

Doing this harnesses the power of your potato’s starch. The starch acts as a lubricant for your food, with the layer created between the grub and the metal stopping it from adhering. Although it’s not clear exactly where this trick comes from, we can guess that it’s been passed down by a lot of grandpas who want to share their grilling expertise with the new school. If you’re doing this for the first time, though, just remember one thing: You’ll want to put your potato on the end of a fork or hold it with some tongs, or otherwise you’ll end up burning your hands.