When making kachumbari (tomato and onion salsa), or other dish in which onions remain raw, soak your chopped or sliced onions in a basin or pot of cold water and add a tablespoon of salt. Allow to stand in water for at least 15 minutes before draining with a sieve. After draining, rinse onions in sieve under running water and allow excess water to drain from sieve. Mix onions with remaining ingredients for the relish. This reduces the pungency of raw onions.

Save water that you have used for boiling potatoes as this can be used to thicken stews and sauces.

Submerge plantains in basin with salty water before peeling and then submerge in basin with vinegar added to water after peeling. This stops them from turning an un-sightly grey colour. Pears, pototoes and apples should also be kept in vinegar water after peeling to retain white colour.

To get nice fluffy rice, once you have sorted the rice, wash thoroughly in a basin or large pot by adding water and swilling the rice around with your hand. As water becomes white from starches, drain the water and repeat the process, about three or four times until water is clear when you swill the rice. This means rice is clean. Allow rice to soak in the clear water for at least 30 minutes. Drain rice through a sieve and stand sieve over a pot or saucepan for at least 10 minutes to drain thoroughly. Cook rice as normal.

When defrosting cooked maize to use in githeri or mukimu dishes, boil the frozen maize in salted water for about 20 minutes or until soft. You will end up with hard maize in your meal if you defrost by soaking in cold or tepid water, or with your microwave.

Salt should not be added to meat before it is put on the stove for roasting (nyama choma) as this will cause it to toughen. Instead, keep a dish of well salted water next to your charcoal grill, place the joint or cut of meat on the grill and as it begins to brown, dip your hands into the salted water and splash a little salted water over the meat with your hand before turning over and doing the same on the other side. Do this at frequent intervals for the first 30 minutes and then as heat of coals reduces, allow meat to roast, only turning over and splashing after every 10 or 15 minutes. Being careful to turn meat regularly and salting using this method will prevent it from toughening and give it wonderful flavour.

Our local free-range chicken (kiyenyeji chicken) can often have very tough meat and need to be boiled for a long time in order to soften, before adding ingredients to make a stew or grilling. Boil kiyenyeji chicken in a large pot of water that has salt, onions and any other flavouring ingredients of your choice. Only allow the water to reach moderate heat so that it is simmering, not boiling very hard. Allow chicken to simmer for at least three hours or until you test a piece and find it soft enough. Remove chicken from water but do not discard the soup, as this is great for cooking flavoursome rice instead of plain water. Allow chicken to cool slightly, about ten minutes, then proceed to cook as desired

Invest in a few charcoal stoves; small, medium and large, or let your large barbecue grill double as an extra cooker. This is a great way of saving on energy bills and for those times when you're preparing a large meal and your ordinary stove just can't accommodate all the pots. You can have other pots simmering away on the jiko's making for faster cooking time of your meal.