What Cooking Hacks Did you learn?

One of my favorite part time things I do is cooking. I love spending time in the kitchen preparing all sorts of things; cookies, cakes, and chicken among others. During this pandemic period I can say I learnt several new recipes talk about making my first Risotto, preparing my sour and sweet Pork, preparing Olive beefs and my personal favorite potato chips. I was however limited in some recipes which were a little bit foreign to me. I have read the internet and so many cooking forums have given me ideas and ways to replace these ingredients with others that were easy to find. Like while baking, I run out of flour and this was mid baking. I learned that you can make plain flour to be self raising flour by just adding baking powder. Baking powder is able to leaven out your delicious baked stuff, allowing them to have that soft spongy texture. You just need to mix it very well to get the best results. How simple is that! This saved me a whole lot of time and money. I would love to hear what other new cooking methods you learnt that save you time and money?