Heating Oil Until It Smokes and Other Common Cooking Mistakes You Should Stop Making [Cooking]

 A while back we looked at a great list of common cooking mistakes that many people—myself included—are guilty of committing from time to time, but this list from the folks at EatingWell hits on a few other common errors that many of us make, like heating oil until it starts to smoke. Instead, they suggest, resist the urge to put some oil in a pan, turn it on, and turn your back on it—the flavor and healthy properties of some cooking oils will be better off if you keep an eye on it.

Overheating oils is a pretty common cooking issue that many of us run into, but the rest of the list is just as interesting. They also address why you should avoid putting Pyrex baking dishes under a broiler (they can't withstand the direct heat and may shatter), and the ever-popular but oh-so-messy turning on the blender with hot liquids inside before removing the stopper. If you've ever had to clean up a kitchen after someone's made that mistake, it's one you'll never make again.

Check out the whole list at the link below, and let us know some of your common cooking mistakes you've learned to stop making—or wish you could quit—in the comments below.

10 Bad Cooking Habits You Should Break | Kitchen Daily

When To Use Different Types of Salt for Barbecue and Other Cooking [Crash Course]

Table salt, kosher salt, and fancy sea salt are the most common types of salt we can use to enhance our food. If you want to know more about this magical rock for cooking, The Virtual Weber Bullet is your guide.

The site offers an overview of different types of edible salts, including the three mentioned above, and, more importantly, when to best use them. For barbecue cooking, for example, table salt in a rub is good for uniform distribution especially if you have other finely ground ingredients. For coarse rubs, use kosher salt: a coarse, flaky salt that is easier to pick up and sprinkle with greater control.

Just as Cooks Illustrated previously suggested, The Virtual Weber Bullet says table salt is good for everyday cooking and baking. It adds that fancy sea salt is a good "finishing salt" on cooked dishes.

A very useful chart in this article is the salt equivalent measures. If you're going to brine a turkey or other meat with salt, know that table salt and kosher salt don't have the same saltiness, so you have to measure them differently by volume to get the same effect. Use the chart to adjust accordingly.

Deliver Shares Messages and Files Between Your Macs and iPhones (or Other iDevices) Almost Instantly [Downloads]

OS X and iOS: Deliver does what the name suggests—it delivers messages and files from one Mac or iDevice to another over the local network. It does this with absolutely no configuration and it is super fast. All you have to do is download, install, and launch the app on any computer or device on your local network and you'll be ready to go.

When you launch the app, it'll teach you how to use it but here's the gist. You'll see a little bubble icon. Click or tap it (depending on the platform you're on) and it'll bring up a list of other devices running Deliver. Choose the one you want to send a file or message to and then click/tap the text button (looks like a rectangle with three lines) or the plus button. The text button is for sending a text message and the plus button is for sending a file. Choose what you want and then Deliver will transport it in an instant. I was surprised by how fast a 4MB image made it from my iPhone to my laptop.

On the downside of things, Deliver for Mac is a little buggy. It doesn't always work as expected and it crashed a few times when I tried to drag transfered files away. It also took me awhile to get a feel for the interface which was somehow less obvious than the iOS version (despite being similar). The iOS version, on the other hand, worked perfectly so here's hoping the Mac app will catch up in stability soon. Either way, all versions of Deliver. It is a very useful app, so go check it out.

Deliver for Mac (Free) / Deliver for iOS (Free) | Mac App Store / iTunes App Store

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Repurpose an Old Cellphone as an Emergency Phone for your Car, Other Strategic Locations [Clever Uses]

We recently shared a number of things you can do with an old smartphone, but Redditor hepdd remind us that we left out one of the most obvious uses: any cellphone, activated or not, can still make emergency calls.

When you activate a new phone (or slip your SIM card into a new phone), your old phone ceases to have cell and data access—though it can still make emergency calls. So, if you have an old phone that's sitting around doing nothing, you might as well stash it in your glove box, the pocket of your big winter jacket, or wherever else you can think of. That way, if you get into a situation and you've lost your phone, left it somewhere else, or it's just plain run out of battery, you can still make a 911 call if you need to. Heck, you can even use this if you've repurposed your phone as, say, a music player for your car—just remember that no matter what you've repurposed it to do, it can always be an emergency phone as well.

LPT Need an Emergency Phone for Your Car/Boat/etc? | Reddit

Photo by Cord Woodruff.

Right Click Tweaker Adds "Move To", "Encrypt", and Lots of Other Useful Features to Windows' Right-Click Menu [Context Menu]

Windows: We've shared countless ways to clean up Windows' context menu, but you can actually add some pretty neat stuff too. Free app Right Click Tweaker adds up to 14 useful features with just a few clicks of your mouse.

Right Click Tweaker doesn't require much explanation. Just start up the portable app, check the boxes next to the functions you want to add. and press Apply Tweaks. You'll see those options in Windows' right-click menu from there on out. The menu items it can add range from handy shortcuts to really useful functions, including:

Copy To FolderMove To FolderOpen in NotepadAdministrator Command PromptEncryptCreate File ListPrint File ListSearch and ReplaceCopy Content To ClipboardGod ModeProblem Steps RecorderTake OwnershipSystem Configuration UtilityControl Panel

Right Click Tweaker is a free download for Windows only. For more info on what each function does, check out their homepage below.