Fat makes food taste good, but greasy food has a way of lingering in the air - and on the dishes - long after a meal has ended. If you're sick of finding oil slicks on dishes you could have sworn were clean, you owe it to yourself to fill a spray bottle with vinegar and keep it near your kitchen sink.

There are many ways to make a sandwich, and many ways to wrap one. But which sandwich swaddling does the best job of keeping your brown-bagged lunch fresh? And does the wrapping material really matter that much?

I have good news and I have bad news. The bad news is that you've been buying hot chocolate mixes unnecessarily, but the good news is that you're going to learn two different methods for making rich, drinkable chocolate for cosy cold days and you're going to do it with stuff you probably already have in your kitchen.

I like to wash dishes. It's one of my few responsibilities that doesn't require any mental effort. You might not like washing dishes. You might try soaking them in a bad-faith act of procrastination. Here's an idea: Pick one of your favourite podcasts, and only listen to it when you wash the dishes.

You wake up in the morning, groggily go to pour some coffee, and that's when the smell hits you. It's robust, wretched, and it's coming from your sink - dirty dishes. The night before you filled some crusty bowls and pans with water under the pretense of cleaning them later on, but you forgot and now you're regretting it. It's time to stop lying to yourself - it's time to stop soaking.

Organic peanut butter is tasty stuff, and it can even be part of a healthy diet as long as you don't eat too much. But when you store it for a while (or in some cases, when you first buy it), the oils separate from the rest of the butter and rise to the top, which requires a vigorous stirring before you can spread the goodness. A quick flip can fix that.

Most of us have a knife block in our kitchen, but not everyone has the knowledge of a master chef. When you need to peel, chop or serate something, it pays to use a knife that was designed for the task at hand. This graphic explains the proper use of the nine main types of kitchen knife, along with a few useful tips.

Magnetic knife holders are a great way to keep your knives at the ready, sure, but they're also useful for keeping other household items organised and easy to grab. (That is, provided they're a good amount of metal in them, such as drill bits or paperclips.) Below, other strategies for putting a magnetic knife strip to use in your bathroom, office, workshop and kitchen.

As a meat-eating human, I always try to eat as much of any given animal as I can, even if that means removing its face from its skull. As such, I'm a big fan of offal-centric applications, particularly the surprisingly cheap and easily-executed chicken liver mousse.

The recipe for McDonald's Big Mac sauce was allegedly leaked online last year. It is - as most mass-produced sauces are - a long list of oil, corn syrup, stabilisers, emulsifiers, flavourings and preservatives. It's (kind of) interesting, but not exactly helpful for those who want to replicate the sweet and tangy special sauce for their burgers at home.

If you want the juiciest, most flavourful steak you can cook, look for plenty of fat throughout the meat. Serious Eat's guide to grilling steak says marbling is a more important quality to look for than just the grade of the beef.

If you've ever seen a bright yellow bottle with two happy-looking old people on it, you've probably wondered exactly what are Bragg's Liquid Aminos. Basically, it's an unfermented, soy sauce-like product made completely from soy beans and water (meaning it's wheat free), and it is delicious.

Out of all the trash I've eaten, pineapple peels might be my favourite. Not only can you use them to make an ice cold glass of tea or a decidedly tropical infused gin, but it has come to my attention that there is yet another fantastic beverage this noble scrap can be used for: Chicha de arroz con piña.

Scrambled eggs are easy to make, but they're kind of difficult to make perfectly. Rubbery, dry curds are no good, but runny scrambles can be just as offensive. Don't worry though, we're going to show you how to make perfect scrambled eggs every time, no matter how you like 'em.

Poached eggs are the super stars of brunch and the heroes of salads that eat like a meal, but many a home cook is put off by the process of cooking one. If you are skittish about dropping a raw egg into simmering water, relax, it's not as hard as it's cracked up to be.

For better or worse, cooking will always involve a certain amount of measuring. Usually these measurements are either by mass or volume, but sometimes dimensions come into play, and I am terrible at estimating dimensions.

If you've happened to visit Pinterest in the last five years or so, you have no doubt seen a recipe or 10 for some iteration of three-ingredient, no-knead bread. These recipes are popular for good reason. Not only are these loaves extremely impressive for the amount of work they demand, they are excellent vehicles for any odds and ends you wish to rid your fridge of, from a handful of cheese to lonely fruits and vegetables.

In an attempt to consider the lobster and its welfare, Switzerland has banned the practice of boiling them alive. According to USA Today, the new law stems from research indicating lobsters do feel pain, which makes death by boiling especially cruel. (This is a fair take.)

Tips and tricks come at you when you least at expect them. Just last week, I was unwinding from a hard day of hacking food with an episode of the new Queer Eye, when food expert/T-shirt aficionado/new Ted Allen Antoni Porowski told whatever straight dude he was working on (they all blend together) that a little coconut oil would de-stink even the most garlicky hands.