15 Different Buying and Cooking Tips

1. Buy ground beef and store in refrigerator. Ground beef can be stretched not only into one dish but into several meals.

2. Don't buy beef that is already ground. It is best to buy whole beef cuts before grinding them. This way, you can be assured that you are getting the choice cut.

3. Be a smart consumer. When you buy beef, go for a choice cut such as chuck. It has a sliver of white cartilage blade bone meat near the top of the steak.

4. Meat prices have gone up lately. To save, try replacing meat with beans and peas in your dishes. They still provide the same nutrients with lower fat and they cost less.

5. When thawing meat inside the refrigerator, place raw meat on bottom shelf of the fridge to avoid the juices from dripping onto other foods.

6. Don't throw away the meat with freezer burn. Just trim the area with freezer burn and the meat will be safe to cook and eat.

7. For healthy cooking and eating, use herbs instead of salt in your recipes. They're not only healthy, they also add flavor and aroma to the dish.

8. When a meat dish recipe calls for sugar, use refined white sugar. Brown sugar, when cooked at low temperature, caramelizes that makes meat to become dark.

9. For a more tender meatball, use half ground pork. Then mix ground beef and pork with chopped onion, milk and season with salt and pepper. Fry until cooked.

10. Experiment with your adobo dish. Use green mango or tamarind juice instead of vinegar to give adobo a more "natural" sour taste.

11. Don't discard that sticky, crusty leftover in the bottom of the pan after browning the meat. You may use it to thicken the sauce when making meat stew.

12. To prevent the juices of meat from dripping  out while grilling, do not pierce it. Piercing while grilling makes meat dry and not juicy.

13. Grilling toughens pork because it uses direct heat and cooking time is short. It is best to buy the tender cuts of meat for grilling. To keep pork moist when grilling or roasting, coat it with oil or baste with marinade.

14. Don't discard that marinade. Boil the marinade for a few minutes and use it for basting meat when grilling. Less effort and saves your money, too.

15. If you prefer to make your own "longganisa" or other cured meat, use refined salt. Refined salt has less impurities than rock salt.