In order to make your food taste good, your favorite restaurant is most likely using way more salt than you think they are (among other pro secrets). Which is why when you ask just about any professional cook what the biggest problem with most home-cooked meals are, they almost always answer that they're "undersalted" or "underseasoned." (In cooking lingo, to "season" food means to salt it.)
Fall is my favorite time of year, yet I cringe every time it begins. Why? Because it seems like every business is in a frenzy to start the Christmas shopping season the day after Halloween ends. For those of us who are fans of pumpkins, that's a buzzkill.
Coffee! It's so amazing that J.S. Bach wrote a comic opera about caffeine addiction. Meanwhile, more than half of Americans 18 years or older start their day with a cup of the hot stuff. Most of us take coffee for granted, but it's a bean that can surprise you. Read on to understand more about coffee and how to take advantage of all that it offers.
Eggs are incredibly important to cooks, and not just because they're tasty and a complete protein (many erratic genius/artist types make a point of eating an egg or two for breakfast). Yes, they are great when perfectly poached, scrambled, hard-boiled, and even scram-boiled, but they serve literally dozens of functions when used in recipes, especially baked goods.
The paper towel is a wondrous invention. It allows cooks to wipe up really gross stuff without having to constantly do laundry and drain fried foods so they're crunchy and crispy instead of oily and heavy. But did you know that your humble paper towel has several other uses besides the obvious ones? Read on to find out these essential hacks.
If you've been to a farmer's market during tomato season, chances are you know that heirloom tomatoes are pricier (and funnier-looking) than their hybrid counterparts.
Two slices of whole-wheat toast with lots of butter. Two eggs, poached to a firm yet custardy texture. The yolks should absolutely not be hard-cooked and the whites should be tender, not rubbery. That's my idea of the perfect breakfast.
Foodies and big-time chefs like Thomas Keller go crazy for fleur de sel. This finishing salt appears in fancy eateries and cookbooks the world over, and in the early 2000s, it was not uncommon to see diners in a high-end restaurant sprinkle a pinch of fleur de sel on their plates from their own personal stash.
Whisking liquids seems somehow quaint, especially since there are good, cheap devices out there like immersion blenders and hand mixers that can whip cream, turn egg whites into meringue, and mix batters for you.
Brining is magic. All you have to do is make a mild saline solution, toss in your protein of choice, let it soak, and cook. You end up with incredibly tender, flavorful meat or tofu for very little effort. So why aren't more of us doing it?
Many of the beauty products you buy at drug and department stores are loaded with potentially toxic ingredients like parabens, while their active ingredients are made of things like glycolic, lactic, malic, and alpha hydroxy acids and retinoids, which are all derived from foods.
Marinades are among my all-time favorite tricks as a cook for several reasons. They're easy like Sunday morning, they let time do what it's supposed to, which is work for you, and you get a huge return for relatively little effort on your part.
As a species, our cells are designed to use sugar for energy. Is it any wonder that as humans evolved, we grew to love the taste of sugar?
About ten years ago, Western research figured out that green tea was a nutritional powerhouse. After all, in Asian countries where green tea is consumed throughout the day, cancer rates tend to be much lower, although there are probably other factors contributing to that fact, like less processed food and red meat in the standard Asian diet.
Living in Los Angeles has given me the opportunity to attend a bunch of really cool events. I've been to Dodgers, Lakers, and Clippers games, a few concerts at the Staples Center, and a plethora of smaller joints.
Thought I would cross-post a piece I did a while ago.
A typical resistance spot welder can range in price from about $200-$800, but with a little resourcefulness and a bit of free time, you can make one like this for about $10 or less.
Learn how to separate two glasses that are stuck together with this Howcast video tutorial. You nested two glasses when you put them away — and now they're stuck! Gently pry them apart with this system.
Google Photos is not only an exceptional cross-platform app for photo storage but also a handy tool for generating and creating collages, movies, and animations from your photos and videos. When it comes to collages, you can now customize them and dress them up with vibrant templates.
If you have a screen recording with distracting UI elements, black borders, and other unneeded visuals, Google Photos can help you crop out all the junk from the video, leaving you with only the important stuff.
The Lens Studio community, now made up of more than 200,000 creators, has generated some impressive augmented reality effects in the last few years. Amazingly, the groundbreaking Lenses for Snapchat continue to come, often from the internal AR team at Snap.
Android has not had the best reputation for privacy and security, though Google has made strides in those departments in recent years.
Since the Razer Phone's announcement in 2017, we've seen a new subgroup of phones emerge. Gaming phones are now a thing, leading to companies like ASUS creating phones that are thoroughly optimized for the mobile gaming experience. And with their second iteration, they perfected it.
OnePlus will be releasing a new phone in the second half of 2018, specifically, an upgrade to their T-series. Over the past two years, #T versions have come out about five months after their predecessors and have included small updates that fix any problems from the previous OnePlus device. While we do know a bit about OnePlus 6T, what it could be is much more exciting.
Russian cyber disinformation campaigns have many missions, but one of particular interest is using technology to monitor, influence, and disrupt online communications surrounding culturally sensitive topics or protests. The ability to watch these events, and even filter positive or negative tweets to amplify, gives rise to the ability to execute a number of disinformation campaigns.
Hackers can be notoriously difficult to buy gifts for, so we've curated a list of the top 20 most popular items Null Byte readers are buying during their ethical-hacking studies. Whether you're buying a gift for a friend or have been dying to share this list with someone shopping for you, we've got you covered with our 2017 selection of hacker holiday gifts — just in time for Christmas.
Since its debut, retro thriller Stranger Things and its characters have become ingrained in our popular culture — especially the telekinetic Eleven. For cosplayers, it didn't take long before they grabbed their boxes of frozen Eggo waffles, blonde wigs (or bald caps), and pink smocked dresses to transform into El herself.
As unappealing as it sounds, transplants with fecal material from healthy donors help treat tough Clostridium difficile gastrointestinal infections. Researchers credit the treatment's success to its ability to restore a healthy bacterial balance to the bowels, and new research has shown that the transplanted bacteria doesn't just do its job and leave. The good fecal bacteria and its benefits can persist for years.
Your smartphone stays with you everywhere you go, so it's only a matter of time before you spill coffee all over it or drop it on the ground. For some of you, it has already happened, perhaps even multiple times. That's why we thought it was important to find out which flagship phones are the most life-proof.
All fields of study have their own language. For people interested in learning about microbes, the language can sometimes be downright difficult — but it doesn't need to be. From antibiotics to xerophiles, we have you covered in an easy-to-understand glossary.
Video chatting has become an important factor in the overall smartphone experience. Even just a few years ago, 37% of teens were making video calls on a regular basis, and that number has surely grown. 85% of households with infants have used video chat apps to call relatives in other cities, and it's been shown that toddlers can create bonds and learn from visual cues in video calls.
What happens when a entrepeneur/theme park creator and special effects artist/magician team up? You get a team crazy enough to create the first true virtual reality theme park (sorry, Six Flags). They only have a single experience so far, but it's already taken a giant leap beyond the wonders we've seen in today's consumer virtual reality headsets.
When shopping for a new smartphone, you'll encounter comparisons and spec sheets that are filled to the brim with values like mAh, GB, and GHz. To the average consumer, however, these values are meaningless, so we end up looking at which device has the specs with the highest actual numbers.
Straight out of the box, the Nexus 5 is an awesome device, but even it can be faster with better battery life. Luckily, one of the things that makes it so awesome is that there are tons of developers creating mods for it, since it runs stock Android by default. When it comes to gaining speed and better battery life, flashing a custom kernel is the way to go.
A spare key is one of those things that never seems like a huge deal until you need it. If you've ever lost your keys, had them stolen, or locked yourself out of your house or car, you know how difficult and embarrassing it can be trying to get your door open.
First off, don't be frustrated. YOU CAN DO IT! Contrary to the message in the image above, it's NOT over. It's just beginning. And when it comes to solving the New York Times crossword puzzle, the old cliche does apply: practice makes perfect.
How would you like to make your own lip balm/chapstick? It's easy to do with a few simple products. One way to do it includes beeswax, coconut oil, olive oil, raw honey, peppermint oil (for scent), and mineral powders (for colors). The tubes to put the lip balm in are available online if you want to use those instead of another container.
The new iPhone 16, 16 Plus, 16 Pro, and 16 Pro Max are worth upgrading to, but if you want more advanced features, especially for the camera, you may want to take a closer look at the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max.
Apple just announced its new iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Plus, iPhone 15 Pro, and iPhone 15 Pro Max models. This year, the 15 and 15 Plus models have a lot in common with the 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max, but there are still some pretty incredible features that the Pro lineup sports that the regular lineup doesn't.
Magic Eraser was one of Google's big selling points for the Pixel 6 and 7 series smartphones, and it's finally made its way to other Android devices. It's even available on iPhone and iPad with the latest Google Photos app.
