The following cooking tips are brought to you by Fresh with the Australian Women's Weekly, weekdays at 11.30am on the Nine Network.
• Adding bread soaked in milk to sausage roll or meatball mixtures makes for a much lighter and more tender texture.
• If a recipe calls for straining through muslin, and it is not available, you can use a clean damp cloth.
• Before using dry ingredients, smell and taste them for freshness as 'dry' doesn't mean they have an indefinite shelf life.
• The colour of gills on a mushroom are an indication of the age of the mushroom. Pink gills generally mean a young mushroom, dark gills are an older mushroom. The darker the gills, the darker the sauce and the stronger the flavours.
• Marinating meat for a short time with soy sauce adds flavour and helps to tenderise the meat.
• When baking biscuits, don't place biscuits in an even row. place them diagonally on the tray so air circulates better and enhances the cooking.
• Hotdogs or hamburgers: cut a groove into the bun and squeeze tomato sauce and/or mustard into the groove to prevent the sauce from running out of the bun when eating.
• When using fillo pastry, keep at room temperature and keep the pastry covered with a wet cloth to keep it malleable.
• Grilling salmon: place baking paper onto flat plate grill; lightly oil the paper and cook salmon — this prevents sticking and any old flavours coming through on the grill plate.
• Try eschalots instead of onions if a milder flavour is desired, for example to complement a delicate salmon sauce.
• Add a little water when frying onions and garlic to ensure the mixture 'sweats' rather than fries. This also prevents any browning. Water from cooked pasta (if you're using it) is great for adding more flavour to your sauce bases.
• Wine is used in a lot of cooking because it adds flavour, without making the sauce too runny. During the cooking process the alcohol evaporates, therefore there's no need to worry about any alcohol content. Cooking also removes some of the harsh 'hot' alcohol fumes.
• Crème fraiche is slightly sour and thick — but the beauty of this product is that it doesn't curdle like other dairy products, so it's perfect for sauces.
• Ideally, pasta sauces should be slightly runny. The theory is the pasta will continue to absorb some of the water content of the pasta sauce as it rests.
• Chilled cream whips better and gives a better result to your cooking.

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