Cooks Essentials: the Essential Guide to Being a Great Cook

Your Essential Guide to Being a Great Cook brings together everything you need to transform your kitchen skills and confidence. We've carefully curated expert advice on nutrition, essential techniques, entertaining tips, and must-have equipment so you can focus on creating delicious meals. Cooks Essentials is here to help.

Try our 5 free tools including the Recipe Unit Converter, Ingredient Substituter, Cooking Time Calculator, Kitchen Equipment Guide and Meal Planner to get instant personalised help.

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Drying Seasonal Ingredients

Throughout the year, if you enjoy cooking, you will find yourself relying more or less on staples from the store cupboard, according to what is in season at...

Caring for Your Cooking Equipment

It is most important to look after your cooking equipment as it can easily be damaged. Caring for your kitchen implements is a part of being a cook – there...

Handy Time-Saving Cooking Tips

With busy lifestyles it can be difficult to make time to provide the healthy, home-cooked food that we want to give our families. It may be difficult but is...

Little Touches to Impress Without the Stress

It’s important to show that you’ve made an effort when you entertain as it makes people feel special and we all want to get a pat on the back when we’v...

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Free Cooking Tools Basic Skills Case Studies Essential Steps to Good Nutrition Essential Entertaining Slow Cookers Building Block Recipes Essential Equipment Housekeeping Essentials

Latest Articles and Tools

Recipe Unit Converter

Convert between metric and imperial measurements, cups and grams, or oven temperatures. Takes 10 seconds.

Ingredient Substituter

Find out what to use when you are missing an ingredient. Get practical alternatives in seconds.

Five Things You Didn't Know You Could Make in a Slow Cooker

Your slow cooker is far more versatile that you may have first thought. Yes, it’s perfectly suited to soups and stews, with even the cheapest cuts of meat...

Slow Cooker Puddings

There is no reason why you should only cook soups and stews in your slow cooker. It makes delicious pudding too, including the perfect Christmas pudding, mak...

The Perfect Slow Cooker Stew

Your slow cooker is terribly versatile. It makes all sorts of delicious treats that you perhaps hadn’t thought possible in a slow cooker – chutneys, suet...

I Brought My Cooking Into the 21st Century: A Case Study

Liz had always enjoyed cooking but, now in her 50s, she was the first to admit it had all become rather monotonous. While she had always tried to keep up to...

Which Vitamins Do What for Your Body?

There are certain essential vitamins that our bodies need in order to grow and develop normally. In some cases, where a person develops a deficiency, for ins...

Homemade Food With No Special Equipment

As more of us try to adapt to a wholesome diet, with fewer refined foods, the skills which we were in danger of losing are finding favour again. Bread-making...

How I Set Up a Newly Weds' Kitchen: A Case Study

Elsa is a 27-year-old midwife who married last year. When setting up home, she found that creating the kitchen gave her the biggest problem, and the most sat...

Drying Seasonal Ingredients

Throughout the year, if you enjoy cooking, you will find yourself relying more or less on staples from the store cupboard, according to what is in season at...

Preserving and Bottling Your Produce

Only one thing is better than harvesting your own fresh vegetables from the garden, and that is finding that you can go on enjoying your produce long after t...

Creating a Window Sill Garden

Nothing compares with fresh food taken straight from the garden; and while not everyone is lucky enough to have a garden, we are almost all able to make room...

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Your Essential Guide to Being a Great Cook...