Top TV chefs like larger-than-life Guy Fieri and foul-mouthed Gordon Ramsay are beloved for their big personalities and passion for food. These celebrity chefs have years of cooking expertise – and over the years, they've revealed a wealth of cooking tips and tricks to home chefs around the globe. Here are our favourite TV chef–approved kitchen hacks, including pearls of wisdom from Ina Garten, Ree Drummond and even Meghan Markle.

Click or scroll through our gallery to discover the greatest culinary advice from our favourite celebrity chefs – counting down to the most genius tip of all.

According to Ina Garten, there’s one key thing you need to remember when making scrambled eggs: always cook them over a low heat. The reason is that protein gets tough on a high heat, so keeping the temperature low will help to make sure they stay tender. Also, remove the scrambled eggs from the heat just before they're done, as they'll keep cooking in the pan.

Meghan Markle's show With Love, Meghan was released on Netflix in early 2025, and it was full of tips and tricks for creating meals and gatherings fit for a queen. If the show's anything to go by, Markle loves to think carefully about how she presents every dish she serves. She decorates croissants with sprigs of mint and piles of raspberries, and she serves pastries with jams and preserves spooned into their own containers, giving them a more personal touch.

Cooking for guests (especially on special occasions like Christmas) can be stressful at the best of times, so why put more pressure on yourself? British celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay suggests keeping it simple with classic flavour combinations everyone loves (think honey-glazed carrots and parsnips). He also suggests timing lunch for 3 or 4pm to give yourself extra time to get everything on the table.

Cheeky chap Jamie Oliver has two methods of cooking crispy bacon. First off, try putting the rashers into a cold pan with a drizzle of olive oil, then bringing the pan to a medium-high heat. As the bacon starts to cook, place something heavy on top of the bacon – this way, it'll remain flat and cook evenly. Method two is probably a bit easier: get the grill really hot, then place the bacon underneath it. Cook it until beautifully crisp and curly.

Guy Fieri has a tip for mellowing out the strong flavour of raw onions and garlic. His advice is to slow roast them in the oven – that way, they'll caramelise and become sweet. He then likes to chop them up and stir them into a roux for mac ’n’ cheese, adding another layer of exquisite flavour to an already indulgent dish.

Turkey is famously dry, but UK food star Nigella Lawson has the ideal solution. “For me, the only turkey is a brined one,” she once said. “Not only does it tenderise and add subtle spiciness, but it makes carving the turkey much easier.” Lawson's approach is to fill a pan with water, add whatever spices you like, then stick the turkey into it for a few hours.

Martha Stewart has a nifty trick for getting juice out of citrus fruits such as lemons, limes, grapefruits and oranges. She suggests rolling the fruits on a work surface to break down the cells on the inside, before cutting them in half and juicing. This is especially helpful for those of us who struggle to juice a lime through sheer brute force.

When making chicken tetrazzini, a delicious pasta dish of diced chicken and peas in a creamy white wine sauce, Giada De Laurentiis says it’s fine to substitute double cream for flour, butter and stock, or milk. This is a good trick to know next time you’re halfway through preparing a savoury dish like chicken pie or pasta and realise you’ve run out of cream.

To make perfectly charred burgers, do as Bobby Flay (of Boy Meets Grill, Throwdown with Bobby Flay and Beat Bobby Flay) does. Use a meat mixture that's 80% beef, 20% fat, then give the patties a generous coating of salt and pepper. Create a small dent in the middle of each patty and fry them in a cast-iron pan. The most important thing of all is to only flip the burgers once.

A solid tip for any wannabe baker: sometimes it's just best to stick to the recipe. Mary Berry insists that full-fat cream cheese can't be substituted for low-fat cream cheese when making cream cheese icing. The reason is that icing made with low-fat cream cheese will slide off – and it isn’t as tasty. This same advice can apply to many high-fat ingredients used in baking.

Julia Child’s most important lesson is to always cook with love and laughter. As she so wisely said, “Always remember: if you’re alone in the kitchen and you drop the lamb, you can always just pick it up. Who’s going to know?" We're not sure you actually should serve lamb that's been on the floor, but you get the idea!

When it comes to making picture-perfect cinnamon rolls, Ree Drummond says that a dash of patience is required. So, before you start rolling out your dough, chill it in the fridge for at least 30 minutes – you'll be richly rewarded. Chilling makes the dough firmer and easier to roll into tight coils.

When Rachael Ray feels like cooking cannelloni but hasn’t got any tubes, she makes her own out of lasagne sheets. Cook the pasta until flexible, spoon the filling onto one end of each sheet, roll the sheets up, then place them in a baking dish, seam-side-down. Cover the makeshift cannelloni in sauce and cheese, then bake them until golden.

Barefoot Contessa star Garten swears by adding a cup of hot brewed coffee to dishes that involve chocolate, such as brownies and cakes. Declaring it her secret ingredient, she says it makes chocolate taste extra chocolatey. We've heard others say the same thing about espresso, too.

Markle came in for plenty of criticism online for her rainbow-style fruit salad, which would cost a lot of money to make. But the idea behind fashioning your food into interesting shapes using striking colours is one we can all embrace. In her show, With Love, Meghan, the Duchess encouraged everyone to 'find the fun' in food to bring more joy to every occasion.

Nobody likes dry meat, and that's where this tip from Ramsay comes in. Turkey is notoriously dry – so if you're cooking one, allow at least 45 minutes of resting time in a warm place after it comes out of the oven. This vital time lets the meat relax and helps it retain moisture, meaning it'll be lovely and tender when carved.

Oliver has an easy recipe for perfectly poached eggs. Bring a pan of water to the boil, then reduce the heat (to avoid boiling the egg). Oliver suggests you crack an egg into a bowl first, then gently drop it into the hot water to keep it intact. Leave the egg to poach for three minutes for a soft, squidgy centre.

He’s eaten a lot of good meat on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, so it’s safe to say Fieri knows how to cook steak. When frying up your favourite cut, the Mayor of Flavortown suggests using olive oil and butter. He says this way, you'll get the lovely, rich flavour from the butter, and the oil will stop it from burning.

Lawson recommends using blazingly hot fat (preferably goose fat) and smallish potatoes to guarantee crunchy roast potatoes that have fluffy insides. But her top tip is to first dredge the parboiled potatoes in semolina and rattle them around in a pan to rough them up on the outside. This makes them the perfect vessel for that deliciously hot fat.

Domestic superstar Stewart has plenty of cooking tips up her sleeve – and one of her best pieces of advice is all about how to make the perfect baked cheesecake. To keep the consistency creamy and prevent cracks from forming, Stewart slow cooks her cheesecakes in a bain-marie (a water bath), then leaves them to cool in the oven with the door ajar.

Everyone’s favourite Food Network chef De Laurentiis is an expert at Italian cooking. When the Giada at Home star makes a classic lasagne, she takes it to the next level by adding a layer of chopped frozen spinach and ricotta – but she squeezes all the excess moisture out of the spinach first, so it doesn’t dilute the flavour.

Iron Chef's Flay has a nifty trick to nail perfectly done steak: remove the guesswork by checking the temperature with a meat thermometer. He says a medium rare steak should read 51°C (125°F) and that a medium steak should be 60°C (140°F). Take the steak out from under the grill or pan before it reaches the desired temperature, as the meat will continue to cook while resting. And yes, Flay also allows his steaks to rest before serving.

A fan of seasonal cooking, Berry considers what produce is at its best and readily available when planning what to cook. In some instances, recipes can be adapted; Berry will, for example, use asparagus in her chicken pot pies in spring, then switch to kale or leeks in winter.

The star of The French Chef, Cooking with Master Chefs and more, Child hated the idea of overcooked chicken and had a fool-proof test for telling when it was cooked. If cooked chicken is pierced with a fork or sharp knife, the juices will run clear yellow, not pink.

For ribs that fall off the bone in a sweet, sticky sauce, Drummond warns against making a common mistake. Slow cook them first, then smother them in glaze – not the other way around. This way, your sauce will stick to the meat instead of being diluted by the cooking juices.

Having racked up 30 seasons of 30 Minute Meals on Food Network, Rachael Ray knows what she’s doing. Her trick for using up garlic and onions is to roast the garlic and caramelise the onions, then pack them into ice cube trays to store in the freezer. Whenever you have a sauce or soup that needs a little something extra, add one of these flavour bombs.

When making chocolate and pecan scones, Garten coats the chopped chocolate and pecans in flour before adding them to the dough to ensure they distribute evenly. This tip also applies when adding fillings such as nuts and dried fruit to bread doughs and cake mixtures.

Fieri has a tactic for layering flavour into family-favourite dishes that require a roux, such as mac ’n’ cheese. Fieri suggests that you fry bacon and use the fat as the base for the white sauce. Then, after assembling all the ingredients for your meal, use that crunchy bacon you cooked earlier as a topping – genius!

Lawson suggests that using chicken wings to make soup is one of the best – and least expensive – ways to deliver oodles of flavour. She says they're especially good in her 'special chicken soup', for which she also freezes extra matzo balls (fluffy dumplings) to create a quick midweek dinner with rice, toasted pine nuts and fresh parsley.

Martha Stewart's family mac ’n’ cheese recipe is far from boring. She adds tomato paste to the mix, followed by a healthy dose of cayenne pepper and black pepper to give it a punchy edge. Martha's mother also sometimes substituted the tomato paste for tomato soup. Whichever ingredient you use, be sure to serve this spicy dish with sour cream – you're going to need it!

A former judge on The Great British Bake Off and a British national treasure, Berry has a wealth of knowledge when it comes to baking, cooking and hosting. When holding a dinner party, she suggests impressing guests with a menu full of different textures and colours. She also warns against repetition – so don't go using cream in every course.

Flay has a clever method for melting cheese onto burgers. While the patty is still cooking, he adds two slices of American cheese on top and a dash of water to the pan, then covers the whole thing with a metal burger lid. The trapped steam melts the cheese onto the burger perfectly.

Stewart has a top tip for getting your baked potatoes looking just like something you'd order from a steakhouse. Once the potatoes have come out of the oven (after an hour or so of baking), pop them in a kitchen towel and bash them onto your kitchen worktop. Then, when you cut them open, you'll reveal perfectly fluffy insides, ready to be loaded with toppings.

Known as Food Network's Pioneer Woman, Drummond has turned her passion for blogging and baking into a successful career. And if soft and gooey chocolate cookies make you melt, listen up. Drummond removes them from the oven just before baking time is up, so they don't overcook. After all, they'll continue to cook while resting on the kitchen counter.

The trick to crispy potatoes is to increase the spuds’ surface area. When you make the surface area larger, more potato goodness gets exposed to the heat. To do this, Ray squashes her potatoes lightly with a fork partway through cooking. This technique works whether you're frying or baking your potatoes.

Food Network chef Fieri is known for his love of Tex-Mex cuisine, and he has some great advice for slow-cooked chilli. His top tip is to brown off the meat in batches before piling all the ingredients into the pot. This method gives the meat space in the pan to get a nice, tasty char; if the pan is overcrowded, the meat will steam instead.

Now discover the really bad kitchen habits you need to stop now

Last updated by Luke Paton.