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12 Cooking Hacks Culinary School Students Swear By

Consider this your culinary schooling.

We recently asked members of the BuzzFeed Community to share their best cooking tips they learned in culinary school.

Here are a few of their best tips — along with some of our own tricks from BuzzFeed writers and producers who attended culinary school — to help you cook like a pro:

1. To keep your greens fresh, store them in a container with a paper towel to absorb excess moisture.

2. Don't be afraid to generously salt your food...

3. And remember to season with acid, too.

4. To prevent your cutting board for sliding around, place a damp paper towel underneath it.

5. Quickly crush nuts, peppercorns, or other whole spices by gently smashing them underneath a saucepan in either a bag or skillet.

6. Brining is the secret to making the juiciest steaks, pork chops, and chicken.

7. Instead of throwing away fresh vanilla beans after scraping out the seeds, stash them in a container filled with sugar.

8. Pat your proteins dry before searing them...

9. And let your pan heat up for at least five minutes before adding your meat to it.

10. Keep your mixing bowls in place by setting them in a cake pan or nestling them in a rolled up towel.

11. Save all of your usable veggie and meat scraps in Ziploc baggies stashed in the freezer. This way, when you have enough saved up, you can make homemade stocks and soups.

12. Find a restaurant supply store near your house and invest in professional tools.

Responses have been lightly edited for length/clarity.

Looking for more genius cooking hacks? Check out these posts:

26 Cooking Hacks Everyone Should Know About

16 Time-Saving Cooking Hacks That Actually Work

21 Kitchen Hacks That Will Make Your Life Easier