Cooking can be a chore so useful tricks that can make your life easier in the kitchen are always welcome.
And these tips from kitchen experts may be the most useful ever as they solve a handful of small problems cooks can encounter when trying to make a meal.
These simple but effective hacks include using a beer bottle to easily remove cherry stones, and keeping vegetables fresher for longer by storing them in a glass of water.
These tricks may not be revolutionary but they are so quietly ingenious that you'll wonder why you never thought of them before.
Removing Cherry Stones
Place a cherry on top of an empty beer bottle, and push a chopstick through the middle, say the experts at knife company Kitchen Knives.
The stone will pop out into the empty beer bottle below.
Keep Vegetables Fresh
If certain vegetables have gone limp and lifeless, such as celery, broccoli or asparagus, you can freshen them up again. Just store them in a glass of cold water in the fridge and this should make them crisp again.
Ripen Fruit Quicker
If you want your banana or any other piece of fruit to ripen a bit quicker, store it in a paper bag.
This apparently allows the ethylene gas that fruit releases that ripens the produce to become more concentrated.
Bananas and apples release more of this gas than other fruit so you can also store one of them with other fruit if you are trying to get something to ripen more quickly.
Wet Fingers To Remove Egg Shells
Peeling eggshell with your fingers can be frustratingly fiddly. But apparently if you wet your fingers first, it becomes much easier, as the shell will easily come off and be stuck on your fingers instead.
Freeze Ginger Before Grating
Ginger is a welcome addition to many dishes, but it can be fiddly to peel it before you grate it. But the experts say if you freeze it first, you can then grate it with the skin on so you don't have to peel it first.
Apparently the skin becomes much finer so that you won't notice it in your gratings.
Use Leftover Water To Remove Germs
Most of us boil more water than we need to if we've switched on the kettle.
But don't just pour the hot water away. Use any leftover water to instantly kill germs on your kitchen sponge, which is always the most germ-ridden surface in anyone's cooking space.
Scoop Squash
Getting the seeds and pulp out of a butternut squash can be a chore. Make it an easy job by using an ice cream scoop to take out all the seeds.