What is a chef (2)
How to become a stronger home cook through lessons from a restaurant cook.
Yeooooo
Happy Tuesday.
Today we are continuing our series of “What is a Chef”? Last week we went over the brigade system within a professional kitchen. The roles, the duties of each role, and personal experiences within those. This week I wanted to talk about takeaways from working in a professional kitchen, and how they can make you a stronger cook at home.
Home cooking versus cooking in a restaurant kitchen is incredibly different. In fact, I’d say that everything about it is different. Working in a kitchen is just another job. We go clock in, have our prep list for the day, work quickly to finish that list, work service, clean up, and then clock out. You’d be surprised how cooking is not as “creative” as it looks. When you work at a restaurant the chefs are the ones who have creative control and the cooks crank out the food. Depending on the restaurant and chef, sometimes the cooks are brought into the creative process, but the majority of restaurants don’t give cooks that privilege.
Working in restaurants is all about systems, technique, and cleanliness. The baseline of “creativity” happens in these areas. As a cook, you’re responsible for a station along with all the dishes that come out of that station. The dishes are set and the baseline of the technique needed is shown/taught by the chef to the cook who needs to cook it. Once a cook learns the dish, then creativity can be introduced. This creativity comes out in how you can set up your station in a more efficient manner, how to cook the dish at a faster rate without compromising the quality and not cutting corners, and figuring out better renditions of the original technique that was shown.
Working in restaurants is monotonous and it’s a grind. But when you cook the same dish 50 times in a night you really get your reps in and if you’re a good cook, you figure out how to work smarter and not harder. When you get creative and cook a dish better than you were shown, you free up more time to clean, re-organize your station, or even start thinking about the next day’s prep list. All the good things that will help you stand out from your co-workers and help you earn your stripes.
In a kitchen, God is really in the details. It’s all the small details that you wouldn’t think about until you do that same task multiple times a day. It could be as small as figuring out a better way to hold your spoon while you baste a steak or fish so that you use less movement for more butter movement. It could be figuring out a better angle to hold your sauté pan while you baste so your wrists aren’t destroyed by the end of the night. It could be figuring out a better place for your on-station trash bin so that you free up more space or even just make your station look cleaner. In a restaurant kitchen, all the tiny details matter.
These systems, techniques, and cleanliness standards that a cook learns in a professional kitchen, are what any home cook can adopt. When I cook at home for myself, I admit, I am completely utilitarian. I cook meals that are quick, easy, cheap, and usually a lot at once so that I can just quickly reheat, eat, then go about my day. When I have people over for meals is when all the little things learned from working at a restaurant really come in handy.
This week will be a full breakdown of how to properly do a dinner party at home for a few friends. Along with pointers from the restaurant world to incorporate at home that can help streamline your process and not leave your kitchen looking like a war zone while cooking.
When I go out to eat, I try never to eat at restaurants that offer food that I can try to tackle at home. Personally, I think most (definitely not all) Italian restaurants, especially in NYC, are a sham. Spicy rigatoni at Carbone?… I’m good. It’s a dish that cost them $1 to make, probably less, and selling for $33? I’ve talked briefly about why food costs, labor costs, rent costs, and all the other expenses that go into a restaurant force restaurants to charge what they do. But at a spot like Carbone?… you’re paying more to be seen and to be in that scene for the night.
It’s all rustic Italian food. $33 for a vodka red sauce rigatoni… $32 for fettuccine in a mushroom cream sauce?… if you want to go there and splurge on pasta, by all means - live your best life. But you better not bitch about a $12 Banh mi or a $5 taco again in your life. The white colonization of the food world is a whole other conversation that will be done later. Trust me, there’s a lot to talk about there.
I personally don’t care for Italian restaurants. I don’t want to eat at brunch spots. I don’t care for most “American” (aka white-midwest-safe-space food) restaurants. Mostly because those foods are pretty damn simple to make at home and it’s boring. I don’t care for a run-of-the-mill pasta spot. I don’t care for eggs benedict done “differently”. I don’t care for Carbone, Sunday in Brooklyn, Bernies, Rubys, etc. Oh but what about “new American”? Sure. I’ll go for a night if friends want to check it out and if the vibes are correct. But I go with very little expectation for interesting food.
When you become a stronger home cook, you start to see it too. I won’t bat an eye at spending $18 for a bowl of good ramen, because to make ramen at home (good ramen) is going to take a couple of days. I’ll gladly spend money on good tacos, banh mis, pho, jerk chicken plates, etc. Food that one can make at home, but probably won’t ever be as good. Definitely not as time-consuming either.
Sorry, I digress, I’ll shut up about this and get to the meat of what we’re talking about today.
Pro kitchen to home kitchen pipeline.
To keep this concise, let’s say you’re planning a dinner party for 5 of your friends. They’re going to come over at 7 p.m. And you want to cook spicy rigatoni (lol). I see it broken down into three phases.
Plan. Prep. Execution.
Plan.
Plan for the night, plan your prep, and then plan your execution.
Before anything else, you gotta have a vision.
Is there a theme?
Carbone at home.
What are you cooking?
Spicy rigatoni, a side of broccoli rabe, and a chicken scarpariello.
Who are you cooking for?
3 of your friends.
Is it casual?
Sure.
When?
Sunday night, 7 p.m. eat by 7:30 p.m.
Your plan is set. You’re going to cook a meal that would cost $120 for food, tip, and minus any drinks at Carbone, for four people at half the cost. I did this exact plan last night to reference it here; it cost $55. Now that you know what you’re going to cook, you gotta find recipes and what ingredients you’ll need for it.
When I cook at home I never use just one recipe, but I cross-reference at least 3-5 recipes. Each recipe is going to be a bit different and if you’ve never cooked a dish before it helps to have a few recipes to bounce off of. When I do my own recipe R&D for pop-ups or brands I don’t rip off entire recipes of course. But when it comes to dinner at home, that’s what they’re there for. For this dinner, you’ll google “Spicy Rigatoni”.
Would you look at that… Looks like we’re not the first ones to think this. Take some time to plan well. Purse through some recipes and pick a few to dissect.
One recipe is going to say to just tomato paste. One will say to use a can of whole San Marzano tomatoes. Another will say to use both. One will say to brown the onions hard before adding tomatoes, another will say to cook your onions until it’s translucent but add the tomatoes before they brown.
Recipes at the end of the day are just references. If you like saucier sauces, put in a can of tomatoes. If not, opt-out. If you want a rustic and “heavier” flavor profile then brown the onions hard before adding the garlic and chilis. If you want a lighter and “delicate” sauce, gently cook the onions on low heat before adding anything else. Maybe you want more than 2 cloves of garlic, have at it. Maybe you like having a lot of fresh herbs, toss in some fresh thyme and oregano when you start your sauce. The world is yours, do as you please.
When you cook more, you find what you like and you make it your own. Start with the copycat spicy rigatoni from Carbone’s recipe. Make it a couple more times and keep tweaking it and eventually, it becomes your own and you won’t need to reference these recipes and it becomes your own.
When it comes to working at a restaurant, planning is everything. You need to plan a menu. Each dish will have its own set of necessary prep work. What can be made in bulk? What will have more delicate ingredients that need to be prepared every day? What ingredients will be needed to be used a la minute? What needs to be prepared days, even weeks ahead? Brining the proteins? Do we need to make a fermented ingredient to go with this dish? Who’s station is going to pick what dish up? How much will it all cost? How can we save money on this step? etc etc.
If you don’t plan well, it eventually just becomes money going down the drain. Order too much of something and now the ingredients are going untouched in the walk-in refrigerator? You better see if you can pickle, ferment, or whatever other preservation method to save that produce, or else that’s going to hurt your food cost. You didn’t order enough? You’ll have to 86 (not available) that dish and face an upset customer or worse an upset chef.
Restaurants live and die by their planning. For example, Sam and Robbie at Fradei are planning freaks. They have every little detail broken down to the gram. Every ingredient is used to the fullest extent. Every herb, veg, and fruit scrap turned into vinegar, pickled, or fermented. Every part of the animal is used for service, stock, jus production, or fermentation. There is no waste. This means food costs are kept low. When food costs are well controlled that means you can grow. You can bring in more interesting ingredients, you can buy new equipment eventually, you can pay your team more, and… you can stay open. A little goes a long way.
Now that you got you’ve read through a few recipes and got a gist of what you’re cooking. Write it all out.
Write down the recipe in your notes app or on a paper pad.
6 People.
Pasta*:
1# (pound) of butter
Olive oil.
2 Onions.
5 Garlic cloves.
3/4C Tomato paste.
1 can of San Marzano tomatoes.
2T (tablespoons) Calabrian chilis.
1/3C Vodka.
1C Heavy cream.
1C Parmesan cheese.
2# Rigatoni.
Salt, sugar, and pepper to taste.
2# of broccoli rabe.
2 Garlic cloves.
Olive oil.
Chili flakes.
Lemon.
Olive oil
4 links of sweet Italian sausage.
6 chicken thighs.
2 onions.
1 Bell pepper.
6 Garlic cloves
1C White wine.
1C Chicken stock.
2-3T Sweet pickled peppers + brine
Parsley.
Look at that. Your recipe is now also your shopping list.
* I’ve linked the recipes I based this dinner on.
Your planning is almost done. Next is timing it all out. I like to work backward.
Since dinner is at 7:30 p.m. I want everything to be done and ready by then. The chicken scarpariello will take the longest to cook - about an hour, so ideally I will want to start prepping around 5 p.m. An hour to prep everything, then start cooking everything else at 6.
If I start prepping at 5, I will want to go grocery shopping around 2-3 p.m. so that I’ll have plenty of time to get everything I need for the dinner.
I always want to have a schedule to do everything to ensure that the food will be out on the table by 7:30 at the latest. I’ve cooked so many dinners for friends where I mistimed it and eventually served dinner at 9 p.m. or later. When you cook for friends, they’re usually very forgiving about eating dinner way later than expected; it is a treat at least to be able to come and have a home-cooked meal.
I decided very last minute around… 4 p.m. to cook this dinner. Invited some friends who live close and come over often for dinner and they were all free to come through. I went grocery shopping closer to 5 p.m. and my cooking time was pushed back. Luckily people came a little later so it worked, but I didn’t listen to my own advice… so food wasn’t served until 8:20 p.m. Not as bad as 9 p.m. but still late.
Now onto the next.
Prep.
Planning is done, groceries have been bought, and now we are ready to start ramping up for dinner.
I think prep work is where most home cooks and professional cooks differ the most. In a restaurant kitchen, you need to work quickly, efficiently, and clean. Time is your greatest enemy in a restaurant. You have X number of hours every day to make sure all of your mise en place (prepped ingredients) is ready and in place before service because once you’re in service you don’t have the time and space to prep.
At home, it’s so easy to start cooking and quickly realize that your kitchen has become a shit show. The sink piles up quickly with dishes, space starts to get taken up, dribbles and spills from various cooking liquids, etc. The goal when prepping and cooking is to always be ahead of these issues.
Planning is necessary for smooth prepping. Once you have an overview of what needs to be done, you can work smarter. Have all the ingredients you need in front of you and take inventory. For this dinner, the pasta and chicken dishes need a bit of knife work.
Chop all the onions, garlic, bell pepper, and broccolini up. Also brunoise your parsley that will be a garnish on the chicken dish.
While you cut make sure to always have a waste bin on the table so that all the scraps from the vegetables are consolidated.
My chefs in the past would always scold me if I had to make multiple trips to the main trash can for small things. It’s always better to have a smaller container for waste so that you can make one trip instead of 6-8 smaller trips.
Make sure to have smaller bowls/plates nearby so that once you’re done chopping an ingredient, it has a home. Its home is not the corner of your cutting board, keep that cutting board clean at all times.
Open up the cans of tomato paste and whole tomatoes.
Have your pasta, butter, olive oil, heavy cream, vodka, chili peppers, pickled peppers, chicken stock, and wine all visible and within reach.
It always helps to have a well/container of salt open and ready close by.
I keep a deli container for salt, sugar, and most of my spices so that when I need them, I won’t have to shake them out of their tiny containers but I can have full control of how much to grab.
Have your chicken on a plate or rack and season them with salt before searing anything. Have your sausages close by as well.
Always keep your proteins (meats) separated from your vegetable prep.
Always keep towels/paper towels close by.
You know you’re going to need to blanch the broccolini for this recipe, so since it takes time for water to boil, have a pot of water boiling while you prep.
Once it comes to a boil, add some salt and have an ice bath ready. If you throw in your broccolini before an ice bath is ready, you’ll scramble while they’re blanching, causing you to easily overcook the broccolini.
When all this is ready, your station is ready.
The vegetables that will be cooked are processed and ready to cook, your chicken is out and seasoned, and your cooking condiments are visible and within reach. You have to visualize your prep process. You want to minimize any last-minute scrambling. When everything is laid out in front of you and you can see what you’re working with, the cooking process will be more streamlined, clean, and efficient - and when it is, you can focus on the cooking.
Make sure to clean as you go. Never let your sink start piling with dirty dishes. Take time in between prepping things to clean dishes. Once you’re done prepping, make sure your sink is clear as well. This will help save you from a long cleaning process at the end of the dinner if you stay ahead of it.
Now that all of your mise en place is ready, it should be about 6 p.m. and time to cook.
Execute.
Have a plan and stick to it. We’re cooking spicy rigatoni, broccoli rabe, and chicken scarpariello. So think of the cooking timings before you start.
My plan was:
Get water boiling for broccolini blanch. Pre-heat the oven to 350F for the chicken.
Blanch the broccolini, ice them, strain, and let it sit on a rack to air dry before cooking.
Start the pasta sauce.
As the pasta sauce is cooking, start searing the chickens and then the sausages.
Once the proteins are seared, cook the rest of the ingredients, add the proteins back into the ingredients once they are sautéed, add the wine (pour yourself a glass if you haven’t already) and chicken stock, and then throw it into the oven.
It goes into the oven at 6:30 p.m. so that it’ll be ready by 7:30 p.m.
Since it’s a braise you don’t have to think about it until it’s ready.
Once it goes into the oven, I take the pasta sauce and it into a blender and blend it to its proper smooth consistency, then add it into another pot.
At this point, it’s 6:45 p.m.
Your sauce is ready. Your chicken is in the oven. Your broccolini is blanched. You’re on course for serving food by 7:30.
Take this time to clean and get ready for the pasta and broccolini cooking.
Once it’s clean, set the table with the necessary plates, utensils, and hot pads for the pasta and chicken.
Once it hits around 7 p.m. I’ll put on a pot of salted water to boil the pasta.
Once the water is boiling, I’ll add the pasta at 7:15 so that it’ll be al dente by 7:25.
As the pasta is cooking, put a large sauté pan on medium heat to get ready for the broccolini. Also, start a small flame under the pasta sauce to make sure it’s warm, and double-check to make sure that the seasoning is on point.
Once the sauté pan is warm, add the garlic and start the broccolini dish.
It’s a quick pick-up on this one so work fast. If it was timed well it’ll be ready to serve once the pasta is al dente.
Plate up the broccolini and keep it in a microwave (that is off of course) to keep warm until the pasta is ready.
Bring another large skillet or pot and warm it up on a medium to high flame.
Add a few ladles of pasta sauce into this pot and start adding the pasta into the new pot. It’s best if you have a spider strainer so that you can directly put the pasta into the pot, but you can also strain the pasta fully while reserving a couple of cups of pasta water.
Keep adding sauce into the new pot, add a 1/2 cup of pasta water at a time until the sauce is velvety smooth. Stir and incorporate the sauce and pasta well.
Once the pasta is done, take out the chicken scarpariello from the oven, double-check the seasoning before you serve, finish with the parsley garnish, and then place it on the table.
When you’re hosting a dinner, you want to make sure everything comes out hot and at the same time. Unless you’re coursing things out, in this case, we are not - all family style.
We made a plan and stuck to it. Again, because I shopped for ingredients later than I expected, it all got pushed back a bit. But in an ideal world, you planned this dinner ahead of time instead of a few hours in advance. So if you stuck to your plan (and if everyone comes on time) you can enjoy your dinner at the time you set.
If you’re lucky and have an ex-sommelier as your roommate you can pair a crazy bottle that he’s been saving in his wine fridge with your dinner… Thanks for sharing Simon <3.
Plan - Prepare - Execute.
Why go to Carbone when you can do Carbone at home? Sure, there’s a time and a place for everything. My dining room is not nearly as sexy as theirs and you’ve got a lot of work ahead of you to make it happen. But we still ate well, drank well, and were able to drink, linger, and chat for hours without worrying about having the waiter try to push us out so they can flip that table for the next guest. All for half the cost.
I hope this week’s newsletter was informative and helpful, if you did please consider becoming a supporter and sharing! If you’ve read this far, thank you as always. Please let me know what you’ve thought about this week’s Substack and I would love any feedback.
Much love,
Edmond
Awesome article and super informative! I really enjoyed reading!
Ayo love everything about this, especially your take on the "American" style food spots. It's probably gotta be the worst thing about having a lot of sun dodger friends.