Use a cooling rack to quickly dice hard-boiled eggs and avocados for a party-ready Cobb salad. Put the rack over a large bowl. Use a large flat metal spatula to push the food through. Perfect, uniform pieces will emerge!

Hot spots in your oven translate into singed cookies and undercooked pies, depending on where you place your pan. If you know where your hot spots are, you can then position food to avoid them, or know to rotate your pans regularly throughout cooking.

Here is how to test for hot spots: Pre-heat the oven to 400 degrees F with a rack set in the center position. Line a large baking sheet with white parchment paper and put in the oven for 20 minutes. The parchment paper will be darker in the areas where your oven has hot spots. (You can also try this with sliced bread! But be prepared to eat a lot of toast afterward.)

Here's an upgrade on the wine-bottle rolling pin hack: Use a bottle of frozen vodka to make your pie rounds in the summer (or in an overheated holiday kitchen). It keeps the dough cold — which means the butter stays solid, yielding a flakier crust. And a colder crust is less sticky and easier to roll. Roll the dough between pieces of parchment so it doesn’t absorb any condensation on the bottle.

Spray your measuring spoon with nonstick spray before measuring sticky stuff like honey or syrup — it'll slide right off into your mixing bowl.