8 Chef’s Secrets

Television shows featuring chefs, as well as the blogs that some of them host, give us a little insight into the art of cooking, but still, you can only understand how food is cooked in a restaurant by getting into its kitchen. Now there’s a shorter way: you can learn the techniques of chefs to cook faster, tastier and with less effort with a book.

What don’t chefs order in restaurants?

When visiting restaurants and reading menus, some items chefs usually bypass. The most common are:

• Chicken and pasta dishes: the cost of the products from which they are made is low, and the price on the menu corresponds to the average price of the main dishes, so the markup on them is maximum. In addition, these are often the least interesting dishes that the restaurant offers.
• Salmon dishes: this is a standard product in many restaurants and there is very little chance that you will be served something memorable.
• Vegetarian or vegan dishes in general restaurants: All are prepared in the same kitchen, and often have animal ingredients.
• Homemade wine: Under this name is often a cheap table wine with a huge markup. For those who do not know about wines, professional sommeliers recommend choosing not the cheapest but the second most expensive wine on the wine list, as it often has the best price to quality ratio.

If a restaurant has a dirty toilet, it is better not to eat in it at all: as a rule, it means that the kitchen is even dirtier.

Why save the water in which the pasta was cooked?

In restaurants, where pasta is often ordered, it is cooked in the same water – and this not only saves time, energy and water, but also makes it an important ingredient in sauce preparation. The fact is that properly cooked pasta will absorb some of the liquid in the sauce, making it thicker. In addition, when heated, the sauce will boil away, and it is impossible to trace its consistency accurately. It is in such cases that water comes to the rescue.

The secret is that while the pasta is cooking, some of the starch in it goes into the water, and the more portions of pasta you boil in water, the thicker it becomes. Being added to the pasta sauce, such water not only allows you to adjust its consistency, making it less thick if necessary, but also makes it more silky, makes it envelope the pasta and enhances its flavor in the process.

To enhance the effect, you can deviate from the classic ratio of 1 liter water – 100 g of pasta – 10 g of salt and boil the pasta in a small amount of water, putting it in a saucepan and pouring boiling water so that it only covers it: scientist and food writer Harold McGee proved that with constant stirring the pasta will cook in a small amount of water no worse than in a large pot, and water will naturally get very starch-rich.

But even if you’re used to cooking pasta the old-fashioned way, don’t be in a hurry to pour the water out right away: save a scoop of this water before you put the pasta in a colander, and if you need to make the sauce more liquid, stir in a few spoons of this very water.

Why don’t cooks clean their pans after grilling meat?

After frying meat and some other foods, small pieces remain in the pan, sticking to the bottom of the pan. They contain the flavor of the original product in a highly concentrated form, and cooks have figured out how to take advantage of that. So, with these tiny “flavor capsules,” you can make a simple sauce for steak or medallions of meat in the same pan on which you fried them.

Without removing the pan from the heat and adding a little more oil if necessary, fry in it the finely chopped shallots and thyme leaves. Pour in a glass of red wine and deglaze the pan – bring the wine to the boil, then rub the bottom of the pan with a wooden spatula to wipe away any bits of meat that have stuck to it. Allow the wine to double in volume, then turn down the heat so that the sauce is no longer simmering, and add the butter, a few at a time, whisking vigorously with the same spatula until the sauce has thickened. This sauce can be served immediately or kept warm without bringing it to a boil, which could destroy the emulsion you have created.

Why don’t restaurants use non-stick pans?

They do, but rarely, only when it is really justified – for example, when frying eggs or omelets, fish, pancakes or cheesecakes, and then not always.

No matter how strong this coating is, active use in any case reduces its life to a minimum, after which the use of nonstick pans becomes simply dangerous to health.

The cost of such pans also does not make their use economically justified, but the point here is not even the money. Simply, a nonstick frying pan often does not distribute the heat evenly enough, and the coating itself does not allow to achieve a quality frying crust.

Are there paper towels in the restaurant kitchen?

Paper towels should be available at all times and in sufficient quantity. Their main purpose is to blot the food that you are going to roast, bake or simply marinate, because if the meat or fish is covered with a thin layer of moisture, neither marinade nor spices will adhere to their surface.

Paper towels are especially useful when it comes to frying or grilling. The thing is that the Maillard reaction, which is responsible for the golden crust on fried foods, begins at temperatures from 140 ° C and above. But if there is moisture on their surface, the temperature will not rise above 100 ° C until the moisture evaporates.

To make frying go faster and for foods to absorb less oil, always wipe their surface dry before frying. Also, paper towels should be used to get rid of excess oil when frying foods that have already been fried.

How do chefs peel and crush garlic?

A garlic press can be found quite often in home kitchens, but professional chefs hardly ever use it, as is the case with most other tools designed for one-size-fits-all tasks. The famous American chef and showman Anthony Bourdain, for example, even claimed: what comes out of the press is anything but garlic.

To quickly peel a garlic clove, simply lay it on a board and press it with a flat knife, after which the skin cracks and it is easy to separate it from the flesh. In this case it is often recommended to remove the core, as it has a somewhat bitter taste, especially if it differs in color from the rest of the clove. The garlic, which has been peeled in this way, can be chopped into smaller or larger pieces, or made into a paste using a mortar, a pestle and an abrasive such as a pinch of salt.

Is it true that chefs freeze foods to slice them?

Freezing is not just a way to store food, but a chef’s technique that some chefs use to make slicing meat and fish easier. It’s not universal, of course, but it helps a lot in certain cases: if you need to cut bacon or bacon into nice, regular cubes, for example, the best idea is to freeze it in the freezer first: the fat freezes, stops sliding, and it’s easy to slice it evenly.

With fish, this method works a little differently. You probably shouldn’t freeze the fish specially to slice it, but if you’ve already bought it frozen and are going to fillet it, it’s best to do it before the fish is completely defrosted. This way all the cuts will be straight and the fillet will look neat and tidy, and then it can be fried or salted.

If you are going to use this advice, you must remember that the food should not be completely frozen, but in an intermediate state – the one when the meat is still quite hard, but already amenable to the knife.

How do restaurants store their food?

The secret to the success of many restaurant meals is the large number of preparations made in advance and allowing a guest to be served a dish that would take several hours to prepare from scratch. All of this has to be stored somewhere, and space in a restaurant is always limited, whether in the kitchen or the refrigerator. Isn’t that a familiar picture? Many home cooks also often face this situation, especially when cooking for a few days in advance or for the holiday table.

Dmitry Blinov, chef of St. Petersburg restaurants Duo, Tartarbar and Duo. Asia, recommends getting rid of the habit of storing food in pots or round containers. Transparent plastic containers with airtight lids, square or rectangular in shape, are an important part of proper food storage organization.

It is important that the containers match each other in shape and size, so it makes sense to buy containers of the same manufacturer. If you store food and ready meals in such containers, there will be more space and order in the refrigerator.

Creams and creamy sauces, on the other hand, are convenient to store in a disposable pastry bag without cutting it and transferring the cream or sauce into it immediately after cooking. When you need it, take a second bag, notch it, insert the nozzle, notch the first bag and insert it into the second bag.

Also, many foods are not meant to be stored in the package you purchased them in. For example, salad leaves and greens in general will keep longer if you wash them, dry them properly, and store them in a tightly closed container. At the same time the cheese, which you brought home in a plastic wrap or in film, it is better to wrap in wax paper and store away from products that have a strong odor, otherwise the cheese will absorb it immediately.

Sometimes, on the contrary – some types of cheese have such a strong smell that it literally fills the entire volume of the refrigerator, in which case the same containers with a tightly closed lid can help.