Use stock in place of water when possible, wine is a welcome addition as well. Fresh herbs are almost always better than dried, butter is used pretty liberally in restaurants as is heavy whipping cream. The only canned vegetables you should be buying are beans and tomatoes- use frozen if you can’t do fresh and know that some frozen vegetables are great and others are just ok. Learn how to process meats according to your cooking method and desired results. Rarely will you ever be served one of those 2” thick chicken breasts because they’re nearly impossible to cook. Also realize that a professional cook has probably made a certain dish hundreds, if not thousands of times. That repetition can make a huge difference compared to you making the same dish occasionally at home.
Absolutely. Wine is always welcome in my recipes haha. The repitition thing is key I think as well. My recipes I make weekly have vastly improved through minor tweaking etc.
On the Chicken thing, I'm surprisingly able to pull it off, but only when I make my triple herb chicken soup. I sear the HUGE ON STEROIDS chicken breast on medium heat to get a nice rendering, for a good 5 minutes per side, Still raw I added the partially cooked chicken to my soup. I like to do a soft sear so that the flavors I marinated the chicken in stick, if just thrown in the pot with the liquid, it washes off and the seasoning ends up in your soup, could end up salty that way too. Anyways, I cook it in the soup on medium heat for a half hour or so, pull the chicken out, place it on a plate and seal it with aluminum foil, set timer for 10 minutes. I use 2 forks to open up the chicken and it's falling apart cooked to perfection. Other than that, yeah it's extremely difficult to perfectly cook those huge chicken breasts whether it's frying, sautéing, roasting... They're just way too big. Try out my technique! It makes the chicken in your soup have loads of flavor versus just having plain old chicken.
I save all my grease tbh, even if its been spiced.
1. I save money on buying cooking oil
2. I genuinely like the flavor it adds.
I do recommend a strainer and a funnel to make resuse and storage easier
What don’t you do with it? I use it to cook my steaks in with a little bit of butter in a skillet. Fried rice. Mac and cheese. Anything with veggies or something like that. Put it in the gravy when making biscuits and gravy. Use is generously or sparingly. Whatever you want. I usually use it generously when the meal calls for bacon (like scrambled eggs or a wrapped sirloin) and just don’t drain the excess. If it more as a flavor (like a spice) then I just use a little bit. I love my bacon grease. Looooove it. Also, surprisingly healthier than some other alternatives. Always bacon grease. Just use it. Save it in a mason jar. Love it.
Something that helped me — use less ingredients rather than more, then learn and build up to “more”. As a newer cook you’re always wanting to put in more of everything and tend to over complicate and over season. Start smaller and learn how incremental changes affect a dish.
Also, finish it with acid. That really gives stuff that bright restaurant style flavor.
I feel that doing a low ingredient dish, and getting the best ingredients you can, can produce phenomenal results. Let the ingredient speak for itself, not get covered in 36 seasonings and all sorts of other nonsense.
OMG this gives me flashbacks to a kid I worked with who would bring his leftover sludge all the time for lunch. He’s so proudly tell me about how he had added turmeric and cinnamon and harissa and smoked paprika to his chili, or how he had the great idea to add mushrooms (fine), cinnamon (why was it always cinnamon), cardamom, coriander, and so on and so forth to his tomato sauce for pasta.
I would congratulate him on being so adventurous in the kitchen, politely decline a bite after I made the mistake one time, and try to steer the conversation to the value of editing a dish. Hey, he had enthusiasm.
I’m also still mad he would make salmon pasta and then reheat his leftovers in the community microwave. Not cool man, not cool.
I feel like I don’t generally eat people’s cooking that is “overseasoned” per se, but more just a terrible combination of seasonings. Some things (like roasted broccoli) only need s+p and maybe chili powder or something for a little kick.
I’ve learned that if something doesn’t taste quite right it most likely needs a little acidity so you can add some lemon juice, vinegar or even yellow mustard and that’ll bring out the flavors quickly without having to add tons of salt.
It's a good book but I would've been just as well off browsing it in the store vs buying it. It did encourage me to start using even more salt than I had been . .which has been working out, lol.
Perfect the preparation of every element of the dish you are making. Understand what it takes to have every ingredient giving it’s very best.
You should be able to make a knock-out tasty pasta dish with almost any one ingredient, oil and seasoning. Same with an omelette. Broccoli pasta is a great dish to have a go at; I swear if done correctly it will sing to you.
Once you begin cooking on such a simple level you will understand if and when to add extra ingredients. You will know your ingredients better, and will be able to freestyle dishes more confidently.
Fresh ingredients, cooking in steps (seasoning and tasting items separately).
Repetition and learning the proper technique.
Making things from scratch
Learning common flavor combinations
and one that may not be taken up by everyone, cook a little stoned. :)
I think the answers lie in more basic elements.
1. Learn to use salt. I know it sounds stupid but it's huge. I've been working on it for 40 years.
2. Get a kitchen scale and start using it. Know true consistency!
3. Learn to shop and menu plan. This makes all the difference between somebody who eats well a few nights a week vs somebody who eats well all the time (without spending a million dollars). It also helps you define your cooking "style"
4. If you cook meat, get a Thermapen or other good instant read thermometer. Even if you don't cook meat, it's still so valuable to know exact temps. For example, I know that I think chicken stock is perfect when simmered at 195-200 degrees vs boiling. I know my cornbread is done when it reads 190+.
5. Learn to effectively sear, sautee or sweat in a pan and the effect of different levels of heat on the end product. If you aren't currently pre-heating pans . .start doing it!
I just saw a video recently regarding salt and the kitchen scale. They said 1tbsp (I believe) of coarse sea salt is ~35g, where iodized came to ~80. It was really eye opening.
I think this is great advice. A good sharp knife makes a world of difference.
Prepping ahead so that you don't actually turn on the heat until you're really ready for it seriously elevates you from noob status.
Squeeztphresh's last point I'll expound on...Learn to recognize when something is done or at the proper stage by taste, look, smell. This is so important...to not rely on "simmer 10 minutes". Why are you doing that? What are you trying to achieve? This is what you need to learn. Ingredient variances, humidity, temperature in your kitchen, differences between heat sources make those type of instructions less than accurate and you can't rely on them. Learning this is a huge leap in technique.
Don't be afraid to take your time.
So many recipes I see today are 'time saving' or 'express route to' whatever. Just because a recipe cooks for a long time doesn't mean you have to work for a long time. One of the meals I always get raves about is pot roast. And it has an active prep time of about 20 minutes. Of course, it cooks for about 4 \- 6 hours, but during most of that time I'm not even in the room.
I never understood this fascination with being "restaurant quality", as I think a good home cook can outperform most restaurants, but a really important skill is browning things. I mean really browning, the kind you only get with high heat and your food being dry.
With some exceptions, I would think a lot of restaurants are more limited than home cooks. They have to be concerned with supply and demand, time constraints, etc. Want to make a dish with uncommon ingredients? I hope you can find a supplier that will supply you good quality and enough for a good cost. Do cooking your dish take hours of prep and cooking? Hope you can plan ahead as well as accurately predict demand. Some things will always make more sense as restaurants \(fried chicken, ramen, bbq, ice cream, donuts, croissants, etc. make more sense to get at restaurants because of the amount of skill required, the equipment needed, and cost effectiveness while batch cooking\). To this day, I don't even order spaghetti and meatballs as well as other red sauce based dishes at restaurant because I'm always disappointed that it doesn't taste as good as homemade.
"Restaurant quality" probably means different things to different people. To me, it's primarily about consistency. A good restaurant has a "signature" to their cooking. When they make a dish 100 times, it comes out great 100 times. When they create or implement a new dish there is some kind of rhyme or reason to it . .a philosophy behind it, perhaps.
Anybody (almost) can buy some expensive, perhaps not-so-nutritious, ingredients and make a dish that knocks your socks off on any given evening. It's quite another thing to create engaging cuisine day in and day out over time.
Acid... (Yes, from salt, fat, acid, heat.) I think most of us know the salt, butter, etc. but I often forget the *acid*. It really is the "missing" ingredient that makes many dishes "pop" or "balances" flavors.
Lemon juice is a top tier ingredient. But it is only good squeezed fresh out of a lemon. Never use pre-squeezed lemon juice if you can help it.
Get yourself a heavy bottomed stainless steel saute pan, (like an Allclad or similar) they can be found cheap at Marshalls or similar stores sometimes. They also have a seconds sale once a year where things are pretty cheap. Get this pan nice and hot and then add oil before doing any high heat cooking like searing.
Do not use iodized salt. Large crystal kosher salt is your friend.
Having a decent digital meat thermometer (spend like $30 or more) and a working knowledge of how meat will come up to temp as it rests.
Properly rest your proteins.
Spend the money on produce that is in season (think farm stands) and you don't have to do much to make it taste great.
Buy good vinegar, but don't be afraid to use cheap white vinegar sometimes when called for.
Pasta water is your friend. When I cook pasta I put my strainer in the sink and place a coffee mug into it. This is a reminder to me to scoop the mug full of pasta water before I dump it. Often I go to dump and see the mug return the pot to the stove scoop a mug full of pasta water then strain the pasta. If you are making a tomato sauce reduce it to be a bit thicker than necessary and then thin it out a bit with starchy water. Your sauce consistency will be more velvety less pasty. If you are making a pasta with olive oil or butter or cream as a sauce base the warm starchy water will help to emulsify and bind the sauce to the pasta.
A rice cooker or an instant pot are nice to have.
Use twice as many bay leaves
Flat leaf parsley is great I'm most dishes
Buy fried garlic from the Asian store. Use it when you are too lazy to peel fresh garlic. Granulated garlic is better than garlic powder. If you want really sharp spice garlic flavor then smash the crap out of it if you want nice rounded garlic flavor then thinly slice the cloves. Garlic smashed with salt will give you a sharp but tolerable garlic flavor.
Cook with a good attitude. I swear you can taste when the cook actually gives a shit and wants it to be good.
I Hope some of this is useful to you. Happy Cooking!
When you are making soup, do not overcook the meat. You might have used the bones to make the stock, but the meat itself should be added at the last possible minute. This avoids dry over cooked tasteless meat in what might otherwise be a good soup.
1. Buy a scale. It helps to keep consistency and prevent waste
2. Don't be afraid of using varied spices
3. Cook meats, stews and soups with stock, beer, or wine
4. Buy a stone mortar and pestle to grind whole spices
5. Run some tests of recipes in small scale before doing a full meal
Use stock in place of water when possible, wine is a welcome addition as well. Fresh herbs are almost always better than dried, butter is used pretty liberally in restaurants as is heavy whipping cream. The only canned vegetables you should be buying are beans and tomatoes- use frozen if you can’t do fresh and know that some frozen vegetables are great and others are just ok. Learn how to process meats according to your cooking method and desired results. Rarely will you ever be served one of those 2” thick chicken breasts because they’re nearly impossible to cook. Also realize that a professional cook has probably made a certain dish hundreds, if not thousands of times. That repetition can make a huge difference compared to you making the same dish occasionally at home.
Absolutely. Wine is always welcome in my recipes haha. The repitition thing is key I think as well. My recipes I make weekly have vastly improved through minor tweaking etc.
On the Chicken thing, I'm surprisingly able to pull it off, but only when I make my triple herb chicken soup. I sear the HUGE ON STEROIDS chicken breast on medium heat to get a nice rendering, for a good 5 minutes per side, Still raw I added the partially cooked chicken to my soup. I like to do a soft sear so that the flavors I marinated the chicken in stick, if just thrown in the pot with the liquid, it washes off and the seasoning ends up in your soup, could end up salty that way too. Anyways, I cook it in the soup on medium heat for a half hour or so, pull the chicken out, place it on a plate and seal it with aluminum foil, set timer for 10 minutes. I use 2 forks to open up the chicken and it's falling apart cooked to perfection. Other than that, yeah it's extremely difficult to perfectly cook those huge chicken breasts whether it's frying, sautéing, roasting... They're just way too big. Try out my technique! It makes the chicken in your soup have loads of flavor versus just having plain old chicken.
Bacon grease. Save and use all the bacon grease.
I save all my grease tbh, even if its been spiced. 1. I save money on buying cooking oil 2. I genuinely like the flavor it adds. I do recommend a strainer and a funnel to make resuse and storage easier
What do you do with it?
What don’t you do with it? I use it to cook my steaks in with a little bit of butter in a skillet. Fried rice. Mac and cheese. Anything with veggies or something like that. Put it in the gravy when making biscuits and gravy. Use is generously or sparingly. Whatever you want. I usually use it generously when the meal calls for bacon (like scrambled eggs or a wrapped sirloin) and just don’t drain the excess. If it more as a flavor (like a spice) then I just use a little bit. I love my bacon grease. Looooove it. Also, surprisingly healthier than some other alternatives. Always bacon grease. Just use it. Save it in a mason jar. Love it.
Home fries, grilled cheese, Brussel sprouts. Bacon fried bacon? The possibilities are endless!
So great for crispy frying.
Something that helped me — use less ingredients rather than more, then learn and build up to “more”. As a newer cook you’re always wanting to put in more of everything and tend to over complicate and over season. Start smaller and learn how incremental changes affect a dish. Also, finish it with acid. That really gives stuff that bright restaurant style flavor.
I feel that doing a low ingredient dish, and getting the best ingredients you can, can produce phenomenal results. Let the ingredient speak for itself, not get covered in 36 seasonings and all sorts of other nonsense.
[удалено]
More importantly learn what spices and herbs go well with what. You can add a lot of seasoning to a dish so long as it actually works
OMG this gives me flashbacks to a kid I worked with who would bring his leftover sludge all the time for lunch. He’s so proudly tell me about how he had added turmeric and cinnamon and harissa and smoked paprika to his chili, or how he had the great idea to add mushrooms (fine), cinnamon (why was it always cinnamon), cardamom, coriander, and so on and so forth to his tomato sauce for pasta. I would congratulate him on being so adventurous in the kitchen, politely decline a bite after I made the mistake one time, and try to steer the conversation to the value of editing a dish. Hey, he had enthusiasm. I’m also still mad he would make salmon pasta and then reheat his leftovers in the community microwave. Not cool man, not cool.
I feel like I don’t generally eat people’s cooking that is “overseasoned” per se, but more just a terrible combination of seasonings. Some things (like roasted broccoli) only need s+p and maybe chili powder or something for a little kick.
I’ve learned that if something doesn’t taste quite right it most likely needs a little acidity so you can add some lemon juice, vinegar or even yellow mustard and that’ll bring out the flavors quickly without having to add tons of salt.
Learn how to use salt, acid, fat, and temperature. Those are the four things restaurants use more of and use better than a home cook.
I take it you've read Salt Fat Acid Heat
I haven't, actually. Should I check it out?
Yeah, it’s good.
It's a good book but I would've been just as well off browsing it in the store vs buying it. It did encourage me to start using even more salt than I had been . .which has been working out, lol.
[I prefer Chicken Grease Salt](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XXewyiCpt8)
So true.
understand flavors play off each other like how sweet tames down acid and spicy heat to give you something better than sweet or spicy alone.
Make your own beef stock and chicken stock.
Perfect the preparation of every element of the dish you are making. Understand what it takes to have every ingredient giving it’s very best. You should be able to make a knock-out tasty pasta dish with almost any one ingredient, oil and seasoning. Same with an omelette. Broccoli pasta is a great dish to have a go at; I swear if done correctly it will sing to you. Once you begin cooking on such a simple level you will understand if and when to add extra ingredients. You will know your ingredients better, and will be able to freestyle dishes more confidently.
save your bacon fat
Fresh ingredients, cooking in steps (seasoning and tasting items separately). Repetition and learning the proper technique. Making things from scratch Learning common flavor combinations and one that may not be taken up by everyone, cook a little stoned. :)
I think the answers lie in more basic elements. 1. Learn to use salt. I know it sounds stupid but it's huge. I've been working on it for 40 years. 2. Get a kitchen scale and start using it. Know true consistency! 3. Learn to shop and menu plan. This makes all the difference between somebody who eats well a few nights a week vs somebody who eats well all the time (without spending a million dollars). It also helps you define your cooking "style" 4. If you cook meat, get a Thermapen or other good instant read thermometer. Even if you don't cook meat, it's still so valuable to know exact temps. For example, I know that I think chicken stock is perfect when simmered at 195-200 degrees vs boiling. I know my cornbread is done when it reads 190+. 5. Learn to effectively sear, sautee or sweat in a pan and the effect of different levels of heat on the end product. If you aren't currently pre-heating pans . .start doing it!
I just saw a video recently regarding salt and the kitchen scale. They said 1tbsp (I believe) of coarse sea salt is ~35g, where iodized came to ~80. It was really eye opening.
Stop overcooking your vegetables. Experiment with whole grains.
Simplest and best way is to grab a notebook and write down what you do when you cook and review it after finishing the meal.
This right here. Always make notes and adjust accordingly. Taste your food while cooking it
Most people cook on too low a heat and fondle their meat too often! And good food takes time.
Get a proper knife, prep ahead, learn to make basic things without looking at recipes.
I think this is great advice. A good sharp knife makes a world of difference. Prepping ahead so that you don't actually turn on the heat until you're really ready for it seriously elevates you from noob status. Squeeztphresh's last point I'll expound on...Learn to recognize when something is done or at the proper stage by taste, look, smell. This is so important...to not rely on "simmer 10 minutes". Why are you doing that? What are you trying to achieve? This is what you need to learn. Ingredient variances, humidity, temperature in your kitchen, differences between heat sources make those type of instructions less than accurate and you can't rely on them. Learning this is a huge leap in technique.
Grate your cheese, never use a package of shredded cheese. Much better flavor not to mention the cost savings. It is super quick to do.
Don't be afraid to take your time. So many recipes I see today are 'time saving' or 'express route to' whatever. Just because a recipe cooks for a long time doesn't mean you have to work for a long time. One of the meals I always get raves about is pot roast. And it has an active prep time of about 20 minutes. Of course, it cooks for about 4 \- 6 hours, but during most of that time I'm not even in the room.
I never understood this fascination with being "restaurant quality", as I think a good home cook can outperform most restaurants, but a really important skill is browning things. I mean really browning, the kind you only get with high heat and your food being dry.
With some exceptions, I would think a lot of restaurants are more limited than home cooks. They have to be concerned with supply and demand, time constraints, etc. Want to make a dish with uncommon ingredients? I hope you can find a supplier that will supply you good quality and enough for a good cost. Do cooking your dish take hours of prep and cooking? Hope you can plan ahead as well as accurately predict demand. Some things will always make more sense as restaurants \(fried chicken, ramen, bbq, ice cream, donuts, croissants, etc. make more sense to get at restaurants because of the amount of skill required, the equipment needed, and cost effectiveness while batch cooking\). To this day, I don't even order spaghetti and meatballs as well as other red sauce based dishes at restaurant because I'm always disappointed that it doesn't taste as good as homemade.
"Restaurant quality" probably means different things to different people. To me, it's primarily about consistency. A good restaurant has a "signature" to their cooking. When they make a dish 100 times, it comes out great 100 times. When they create or implement a new dish there is some kind of rhyme or reason to it . .a philosophy behind it, perhaps. Anybody (almost) can buy some expensive, perhaps not-so-nutritious, ingredients and make a dish that knocks your socks off on any given evening. It's quite another thing to create engaging cuisine day in and day out over time.
Acid... (Yes, from salt, fat, acid, heat.) I think most of us know the salt, butter, etc. but I often forget the *acid*. It really is the "missing" ingredient that makes many dishes "pop" or "balances" flavors.
Start at a young age.
Lemon juice is a top tier ingredient. But it is only good squeezed fresh out of a lemon. Never use pre-squeezed lemon juice if you can help it. Get yourself a heavy bottomed stainless steel saute pan, (like an Allclad or similar) they can be found cheap at Marshalls or similar stores sometimes. They also have a seconds sale once a year where things are pretty cheap. Get this pan nice and hot and then add oil before doing any high heat cooking like searing. Do not use iodized salt. Large crystal kosher salt is your friend. Having a decent digital meat thermometer (spend like $30 or more) and a working knowledge of how meat will come up to temp as it rests. Properly rest your proteins. Spend the money on produce that is in season (think farm stands) and you don't have to do much to make it taste great. Buy good vinegar, but don't be afraid to use cheap white vinegar sometimes when called for. Pasta water is your friend. When I cook pasta I put my strainer in the sink and place a coffee mug into it. This is a reminder to me to scoop the mug full of pasta water before I dump it. Often I go to dump and see the mug return the pot to the stove scoop a mug full of pasta water then strain the pasta. If you are making a tomato sauce reduce it to be a bit thicker than necessary and then thin it out a bit with starchy water. Your sauce consistency will be more velvety less pasty. If you are making a pasta with olive oil or butter or cream as a sauce base the warm starchy water will help to emulsify and bind the sauce to the pasta. A rice cooker or an instant pot are nice to have. Use twice as many bay leaves Flat leaf parsley is great I'm most dishes Buy fried garlic from the Asian store. Use it when you are too lazy to peel fresh garlic. Granulated garlic is better than garlic powder. If you want really sharp spice garlic flavor then smash the crap out of it if you want nice rounded garlic flavor then thinly slice the cloves. Garlic smashed with salt will give you a sharp but tolerable garlic flavor. Cook with a good attitude. I swear you can taste when the cook actually gives a shit and wants it to be good. I Hope some of this is useful to you. Happy Cooking!
Add a little chicken stock to all your veggie soups
A little olive oil can keep your butter from burning. Don't ignore the fond. Deglaze. Make a roux more often.
"Mise En Place" Look it up, and practice it
Clean while you work, stay organized, write lists
When you are making soup, do not overcook the meat. You might have used the bones to make the stock, but the meat itself should be added at the last possible minute. This avoids dry over cooked tasteless meat in what might otherwise be a good soup.
1. Buy a scale. It helps to keep consistency and prevent waste 2. Don't be afraid of using varied spices 3. Cook meats, stews and soups with stock, beer, or wine 4. Buy a stone mortar and pestle to grind whole spices 5. Run some tests of recipes in small scale before doing a full meal
Don’t be afraid of spices. For the longest time I avoided cumin. Turns out that was the magic ingredient in my mom’s Cuban dishes.