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My sister-in-law makes pancakes with Sprite. I watched her pour it into the batter at a family breakfast and assumed she’d lost track of what she was holding. Hers were taller than mine. Noticeably taller, and lighter, and I have been quietly doing it ever since. What Happens Two things, and they both help. The bubbles lift it. Carbonated liquid brings dissolved gas into the batter. The moment it hits a hot pan that gas expands and pushes the pancake up. You get lift from the fizz on top of whatever your baking powder is doing. The acid helps too. …

Some wooden spoons have a notch cut into one side of the handle, up near the top. Others have a flat cut across one edge of the bowl. I owned several for years and assumed they were decorative, or just where the wood had been shaped. Both have a job. The Notch in the Handle Is a Pot Rest The notch sits over the rim of a pot so the spoon hangs on the edge instead of sliding down into whatever you’re cooking. It’s the answer to the thing that happens to everyone — you leave the spoon in the …

A bobby pin has one flat side and one side with waves in it. Almost everybody puts them in flat side down, and almost everybody is doing it backwards. Wavy Side Goes Against Your Head The waves are the grip. They’re what press into the hair and hold it. The flat side is the smooth outer face. Put the wavy side down against your scalp and the pin bites. Put it up and the pin has nothing to hold on to — which is why they slide out after twenty minutes and you spend the day finding them on the …

Every oven I’ve ever owned has had a drawer underneath it. For about fifteen years I kept baking trays in mine. Then a plumber who was fixing something else entirely opened it, looked at me, and asked whether I knew what it was for. I did not. It Depends What Kind of Oven You Have There are two different drawers that look identical from the outside, and which one you’ve got changes everything. 1. A Warming Drawer On most modern electric ovens, that bottom drawer is a low-temperature warming compartment. It has its own gentle heat and it’s designed to …

There’s a raised number 57 on the neck of a glass Heinz ketchup bottle. Not on the label — molded into the glass itself, up near the shoulder. I’d seen it a thousand times and filed it as branding. It is branding. It’s also the single most useful thing on the bottle. Tap the 57 When the ketchup won’t come out, you’re supposed to tap firmly on that raised 57 at about a 45 degree angle. Not the base. Not the bottom of the upturned bottle, which is what most of us do and which does almost nothing. The 57 …

I cracked an egg into a bowl on a Sunday morning and there it was — a small red speck sitting on the yolk like a full stop. My first instinct was to throw the whole thing out. My mother-in-law’s first instinct, when I showed her, was to laugh at me. She was right. Here’s what that spot actually is. It’s a Blood Spot, and It’s Harmless Those little red or brown specks are blood spots — sometimes called meat spots when they’re browner. They happen when a tiny blood vessel in the hen’s ovary ruptures as the yolk is …

Turn over a plastic tub from your cupboard and you’ll find a little triangle of arrows with a number in the middle, usually somewhere between 1 and 7. Most of us read it as a recycling instruction. It is partly that. But the number is really telling you what the plastic is made of — and that matters a lot more for the ones you keep food in. What the Number Actually Is It’s a resin identification code. It says which plastic was used, which tells you how it behaves with heat, with oil, and over time. Here’s the short …

There’s a hole in the handle of almost every frying pan in my kitchen. I spent years assuming it was for hanging the pan on a hook — which it is, but only by accident. A chef I worked next to showed me the real use in about four seconds, and I’ve done it every day since. It’s a Spoon Rest Slide the handle of your wooden spoon or spatula down through the hole, and it sits there at an angle with the business end hanging over the pan. Every drip goes back into the food instead of onto your …

There’s a row of numbers stamped on the end of every carton of eggs in the shop. Most of us have never looked at it, and the ones who have assume it’s a batch code for the factory. One of those numbers tells you the exact day the eggs were packed. Not “best by” — packed. And it is very often a different answer from the date printed on the front. The Three-Digit Number Is a Date Look for a three-digit number between 001 and 365. That’s the Julian date — the day of the year the eggs went into …