Medium boiled :

Hard boiled :

When you need to peel a boiled egg, cover them in cold water, this will cool down the shell. It is best to crack and peel them under cold running water as this will loosen the egg white from the shell. It is always best to start peeling from the thicker end first, as gaps usually form between the egg white and the shell, here.

This is a handy cooking schools tip. Have you ever cooked gammon or pork and found the edges can start curl up? Well if you have, read on. To reduce the chances of this happening then make light score marks along the length of the meat with a sharp knife. Not only will this stop your meat from curling it will also help to tenderize, as well as make it easier to absorb any rubs.

There are three main cooking school techniques to stop this from happening. Firstly, make sure you use plenty of water; this will give your pasta more room to float about. Secondly, don’t over cook it, this can make your pasta more rubbery making it stick together easier, it will also cause more of the water to evaporate than is necessary. Finally, if you are going to leave the pasta in the water after boiling, it’ll still be cooking so add cold water to it to stop it from happening.

A good cooking school tip here is to add a couple of teaspoons of olive oil to the water before it starts to boil. This will add a pretty flexible film to the surface of the water, making it less likely to spill over

To make perfect fluffy roast potatoes then you’ll need to par boil them and pop them into a colander and give them a good shake, this will fluff them up. The best oil to cook them in is goose fat, this makes for a deliciously crisp roasters.

Pour the oil into a baking pan and heat it, then place the potatoes into the heated oil and pop it in a preheated oven of 200 degrees C (400 degrees F).and allow to cook for roughly 60 minutes, turning them once. Hey presto!! You should have perfect roast potatoes.

We’ve all been there, cutting up onion and are eyes start to sting and run, then we rub our eyes to make it better, only to make them worse. Well, a good cooking tip to stop this from happening is to store them in the fridge beforehand, as this will make the vapour which is released less affective.

A good cooking school tip is when you go to cut them up give them a quick wash under cold water, then chop both ends off the onion and begin to cut. You should find that all the tears will have disappeared.

To make it easier to peel a clove of garlic, cut the stumpy end of it and give it a slice with a knife. It should then peel as easy as a banana.

If you want stop the garlic from getting stuck to the knife, rub it with salt, you should that it shall no longer stick.

Have you ever made bacon and found you have made too much, and then worry about the problems of microwaving it i.e. the bacon going hard and rubbery? Well, this is your lucky day. A good cooking tip, to stop this from happening is to add a little bit of water to the plate in which the bacon or sausages are lying on. This trick will stop the food from drying out, which is the prime cause to the rubbery affect.

To stop the dough from sticking to your hands when you are kneading it, which we all know is a nightmare. Pour flour over them. This will also work if you want to stop it from sticking to rolling boards and work surfaces. If after a while, it starts to stick again just add some more flour to your hands and work surfaces.

Thanks for checking out our OPH Good Housekeeping cooking school, we are adding tips and techniques all the time so why not click on to check them out?

In the meantime why don’t you check out our cookware cooking utensils glossary or our recipes?