5 cooking tips to help you in the kitchen

Cooking tip 1 - Knife skills
This tip is all about knife skills and I think this is something really worthwhile for a home cook because pretty much every dinner you ever cook, you're going to have to chop something up and if you can do that in 10 minutes or even 15 minutes then that has to be a good thing. The first thing to start with is a decent chopping board. Something that's sturdy and thick and not warped and not going to move around on you, and not one of those chopping boards that's [that] big. Get something that's large enough that you can safely work on and the second one if having something underneath. It could be a non-slip mat like this or a cloth or a paper towel or a tea-towel. Just something to stop your board sliding around. Now, any round object - doesn't matter if it's a cucumber or a tomato or an onion - you always want to start by slicing it in half. So, make that bridge with your fingers, hold it nice and tight and run the knife through, and from here the motion - I will do this side-on so you can see nice and clearly - is tip of the knife on the board, slide forward, come back up, slide forward come back up so you're only actually cutting on the forwards motion and there's always some part of the knife, touching some part of the board. So it should be really smooth, really quite quiet and it should feel nice and easy.
So please give it a go. Practice it. If that's not what you're used to it will feel weird for a little while but I promise with time it feels normal and natural and most of all it's safe and by cutting safely, with time you can cut as fast or as slow as you like.

Cooking tip 2 - Grating parmesan
This is a really simple tip about grating parmesan in a blender because sometimes you need a lot of cheese, right, if you're going to make a mac and cheese or on top of a risotto or a pasta or something like that and you can do it in a blender in about 10 seconds what would take you five minutes to do by hand. There's no fancy tricks here, just grab your block of parmesan, break it up a couple of times just to make it slightly easier on your blender. Lid on. And now you've got the most amazing grated parmesan, ready to use.

Cooking tip 3 - Cook your own stock.
This cooking tip is all about stock and just how easy it is to make your own at home. So, the next time you're making a soup or a stew or a risotto the flavour is going to be second to none. Now, in terms of ingredients, I've got some of the classics here but it doesn't matter if you don't have all these things as long as you've got a few, you're still going to make a really delicious stock. Celery, onion, carrot, herbs - anything you've got growing in your garden at home. I've got parsley, thyme and bay leaves, peppercorns, and even one of those barbecued chickens you grab from the shops. The leftover carcass, pop that in and you've got a beautiful chicken stock.
Bring it to the simmer and cook it gently for about an hour. Look at this clear, golden stock. Use it straight away or store it in your fridge or freeze it away in little containers for the next time you need a beautiful stock.

Cooking tip 4 - Preparing citrus fruits.
Whether it's used in savoury or sweet cooking, citrus fruits have to be some of the most incredibly versatile ingredients that we have in our kitchen. So, I want to show you a couple of different ways of preparing. First, mandarins. If you want to use mandarin on top of a salad or a pavlova, if you pop a segment onto the board, get a nice sharp knife, put your fingers carefully on top and just slice into the middle. We can actually butterfly that mandarin and it's really pretty. You don't have to worry about peeling it and you can pick the seeds out as well if you need.
Next, an oldie but a goodie - segmenting oranges. So, I've just taken the skin and pith off. You can see these little layers of pith that separate the different segments. Just, turn it up and cut on the inside of one segment, the inside of the other and pop it out and you get this really beautiful segment, ready to use.
Finally, juicing limes. Once you've cut it in half give a really good squeeze, of course, as you'd expect. But then, use one half of the lime to juice out the other half, and then use this half of the lime to juice out this half and you'll find you get an extra tablespoon or two of juice.

Cooking tip 5 - Chopping large veggies.
From running cooking classes at Sprout for 10 years, one of the things I've noticed home cooks struggle with the most is chopping through those larger vegetables. Sweet potatoes, or in this case, pumpkin. So, I want to show you a tip which means you never have to worry about that again. And it couldn't be easier. We're just going to cook it whole onto a lined baking tray, no salt or seasoning or oil or anything. Into a 180 degree oven for about an hour until it's incredibly soft and golden and the exact same thing works for sweet potato. Because the pumpkin has been cooking so long it becomes incredibly sweet and the skin is so soft you can just cut right through it and look at that. So you can serve it just like this. You can totally eat the skin with crumbled goat's cheese or chopped almonds or herbs or pomegranate or scoop out the flesh and make a simple mash or a pumpkin soup. From here, the possibilities are endless.