We all love meat, but let’s face it, not all of us are master chefs. We do need a bit of help in the kitchen sometimes. Whether to get things going faster, or to fix things after minor disasters with ingredients or the cooking process.

Here are some excellent hacks for cooking meat. Shhhhh. Keep these secret. Don’t let on how you know so much. You can thank us later.

1. Cook me Tender:If your meat isn’t as tender as you’d like it, soak it in lemon for 30 minutes before cooking. As a really quick fix, you could even use a carbonated drink. Soak it in the soda for 10 minutes, and cook with pepper.
2. Too hot, too hot!:It’s the colour and smell of dinner disaster. Does your meat have a charred coat on top, and undercooked meat inside? Just cut away the coat, and continue to simmer the dish with oil, water, or broth. Wrap the meat in a damp cloth for a few minutes. Finally, some hot milk added to the dish should remove any leftover burnt flavours.
3. Watch the salt: If it is too salty, you could add sour cream to the dish to balance things out. Or adding a raw, peeled potato to the dish. If you’re cooking ground meat, add finely chopped cabbage or grated potato to absorb the salt.
4. Pressing concerns: If you don’t have a sandwich press, use one frying pan as your cooking base and a heavy frying pan as your ‘press’ or weight. A light layer of butter will help caramelisation. The meat will cook better, too.
5. Even field: To evenly cook chicken/turkey. When you cook the whole bird, ice the breast. The thigh meat needs more time to cook than the tender breast, so if you ice it, you can even out the cooking time for both.
6. Combat contamination: To avoid cross-contamination, vessels, tools and utensils used to marinate or store or process meat should be kept exclusive from other perishables in the kitchen. Don’t use the same cutting boards for vegetables that you use for meat.
7. Eggy hack: Make sure you peel the boiled eggs with wet fingers. Water gives you a better grip on the eggs and you won’t have to chase them around anymore. Extra tip – for particularly small pieces, use one of the bigger pieces to prise them out.
8. A whole fish and nothing but: To cook a whole fish, follow this tip. First, use slow and even heat. Make sure that the thinner parts are better insulted by seasoning or other ingredients than the thicker parts. One indicator to check if the fish is cooked is to check behind the gills, where it is the thickest. If that part is cooked, the rest of the fish will be, too.