Everyone has their favorite little tricks that they use on a regular basis, or they heard them from their mother/grandmother/dad/whatever, what are yours?

I've found one of my own, really no secret. I use my vacu-sealer for marinating meat. I am rather forgetful, so I generally forget to start marinating the meat for a barbecue in time to get good flavor doing it the old-fashioned way, so I use a large jar, with the vacu-seal top and hose attachment. I squeeze the steaks into it, and pour my marinade over the top, then use the vacu-sealer. This pulls all the air out of the jar, and pulls the marinade into the meat. Takes about 1/4 the time of a regular marinade. I've even gotten decent results with just an hour in the refrigerator using this method.

Here is a tip that some people might want to keep in mind:

ALWAYS KEEP A FIRE EXTINGUISHER OR BAKING SODA HANDY!!!!

Okay, maybe one that's not really specific to your kitchen.

running cold water over your wrist helps with the crying when cutting up an onion.

I oughta keep that one in mind. I have such a horrible time with cutting onions....

I guess I'm lucky. Never had the problem for some reason.

Good Teriaki like sauce.

1/3rd of a good soy sauce (NOT Kikkoman or Lachoy)
1/3rd Sake (white wine if you don't have it, but sake is better)
1/3rd water.
little bit of oil
little bit of sugar
salt/pepper
If you want, chop up some ginger and toss it in as well as garlic.

Makes an excellent chicken marinade and if you add some corn starch it makes a good stir fry sauce.

Oh yeah, one other tip. If you use a Wok get it SMOKING before you add oil and what you are cooking. The hotter the better.