The Rachael Ray garbage bowl

Adam Roberts over at The Amateur Gourmet reminded us recently of one of the best tips we ever learned in culinary school – the garbage bowl. He calls it the Rachael Ray garbage bowl, as he first learned the tip from her cooking show (and she apparently sells one through Target). As he describes it, “Simply take a large bowl and put your garbage in it. I went one extra step and lined the garbage bowl with a plastic bag so I could just throw the bag away without having to clean the bowl.”

Whether you add the bag or not, it will save you numerous steps from going back and forth to the waste basket.  And we’ll add one more tip — make it a large bowl and one that’s very different from your regular mixing bowls so contamination is never an issue. Ours is green plastic.

And congratulations to Adam on his new cookbook, Secrets of the Best Chefs. Here’s how he describes it, “The idea was this: I would cook shoulder-to-shoulder with the nation’s best chefs, learning three recipes from each of them which I would then take home and recreate in my own kitchen.” Sounds very interesting!