30 People Who Cook Smarter, Not Harder, Share Their Favorite Kitchen Cheats

(Not sure if it qualifies as a method but) using MSG to season savoury dishes. I do it all the time and still feel weird telling people when they compliment my food and ask me about the ingredients I used. Nobody cares about salt, but glutamate is expected to only be added by using foods where it's found naturally.

Cooking beans in a pressure cooker in 20-30 minutes feels like hard-core cheating to me, in reality tons of people do it every day in India and south/central america.

Food processor for chopping and shredding. I’m never chopping an onion again.

Throwing a whole stick of butter in something to make it taste better. Obviously there's stuff this won't work for but plenty of stuff where, to a home cook, an insane amount of butter improves things.

Throwing everything in the oven salted and oiled and coming back to roast dinner.

Butane torch to finish melting cheese when I put a sandwich in the broiler but it's taking too long.

Been my favorite xmas present so far, I'm just looking for excuses to use it.

Flan in the pressure cooker. It takes just 4 minutes and there's no fiddling with the temperature in the oven. It comes out with a smooth texture, no holes and very creamy.

Making pie dough with the food processor instead of by hand.

Sous vide

Really the only ways you can screw it up are if you set your machine incorrectly or you leave the food in too long. Or if the bag leaks I suppose.

Eating chocolate and fruit instead of making chocolate fondue...