5 Things You Should Shamelessly Steal From Pro Chefs

Celebrity chefs are not the people you should look up to if you want to become a great home cook.

They have more time, money, and energy to devote to food preparation than you ever will.

I’ve made my case several times on this blog why pro chefs, generally speaking, shouldn’t be role models for budding kitchen hackers.

But why throw the baby out with the bath water?

One of the central principles of kitchen hacking is that we will learn how to cook by taking advantage of many different disciplines, from science to anthropology to psychology.

And today I’m here to tell you that you can learn valuable skills from pro chefs as well.

I’m talking about things that are used in restaurant kitchens around the world to create amazing results, yet are sadly neglected in most home kitchens.

I’m talking about a few things that take just a little more effort on your part, but will make your home cooking taste far better than anyone else’s.

Here are 5 simple things you can use to make your friends and family swear you got their dinner from a nice restaurant.

1. Hot Plates, Cold Bowls

Have you ever wrapped your hands around a piping hot mug of coffee or hot chocolate while you were drinking it to help you stay warm?

Plates and bowls, like everything else, will conduct heat. And this means that it will cool down your hot foods and warm up your cold foods…

…unless you know how to beat the bastards at their own game.

Chefs have long known that serving hot food on warm plates keeps their dishes from getting lukewarm before they are finished, thus making their perceived deliciousness last longer.

This is easy for the home cook to do as well, though few bother.

When you start getting dinner ready, turn your oven onto the lowest setting and add any plates or bowls that you’ll be using into it.

If you are already using the oven for high cooking, you can either use a toaster oven for the same purpose, or, once you have finished everything in the oven, turn it off and open the door while you set the dishes on a rack for a few minutes.

The reverse is also true.

If you are serving anything cold (salad, soup, dessert), you can put the serving dishes in the refrigerator for several minutes before serving.

Serving food on dishes that are a similar temperature will keep the food at an ideal temperature for much longer, and is a simple trick to get anyone to realize that this ain’t some lame-ass microwave dinner you’re putting on the table!

2. A Blender (The Right One)

Silky smooth soups and delicious complex sauces are just a few of the things we get from restaurants but rarely make at home.

Sure, we could just make these things ourselves, but that would require breaking out a blender.

But there’s just something standing in our way.

On paper, it shouldn’t be that difficult to put food in a blender, blend it up, and transfer it back to the original vessel.

But in reality, this extra step can seem like too much.

If only there was a way to blend stuff up in the bowl it’s already in! You could cut out the middle man and save yourself the extra dishes and mental hurdle of transferring back and forth!

What would be even better is if this ideal blender was also easier to clean.

Gentlemen, I bring you the immersion blender.

Immersion blenders are handheld devices that you use to blend up food in its container instead of having to transfer it.

Pureed butternut squash soup and fresh pesto are just a few of the things now insanely simple to prepare with the addition of this simple gadget to your arsenal.

The options are limitless, yo!

3. Finishing Salt

Yeah, yeah. I know sea salt is all the rage these days, but from a culinary standpoint, most people might as well be flushing it down the toilet.

While the majority of the salt we eat consists of ionically-bonded sodium and chloride, sea salt contains trace elements of other compounds that give it more distinctive flavors.

Unfortunately, when simply mixed into a stew or sauce, these flavors tend to go unnoticed since we use salt in such small quantities.

In general, we want to use salt as an ingredient that makes the other flavors of a dish more pronounced rather than a flavor in and of itself.

If you can taste the salt, then you’ve used too much…

…unless you are using a finishing salt.

Finishing salts (of which sea salt is the most popular example) are sprinkled on top of dishes just before serving in lieu of (or as partial replacement for) the salt you would have used before and during cooking.

These salts generally come in large chunks, and have a more unique flavor than plain ol’ table salt.

Used properly, they have a characteristic texture, and give your dishes a unique balance of bites that are slightly over-seasoned with those that are slightly under-seasoned.

(Many Asian cultures do something similar by serving bland white rice along with powerfully flavored main courses.)

Having finishing salt around (and knowing how to use it properly) is one simple tactic you can steal from the pros to make your food rise above the boredom of your everyday meals.

4. Pepper (The Good Stuff)

Pepper is the most-abused spice in the Western kitchen.

We tend to think it is as essential an ingredient as salt, and no dish would be complete without it (wrong on both counts).

That being said, the world of spices, herbs, and sauces is so intimidating to budding kitchen hackers that it’s important to keep this exotic berry up on its pedestal…for starters, at least.

It goes well with a wide variety of dishes, plays as well with others as it holds it down by itself, and can be unbelievably delicious.

Emphasis on “can be.”

You see, most of the pepper we consume was ground up months, if not years, ago from inferior product, and the taste suffers as a result.

The solution is to buy whole peppercorns and grind them yourself.

You can buy peppercorns that will seriously knock your socks off, such as tellicherry, and keep them in airtight containers and grind them up just before use.

If you’re new to the cooking game, getting better peppercorns and a pepper mill will make a dramatic effect on your finished product.

(And if you’re really delving into the world of spices, you might want to ditch the pepper mill and use a coffee grinder, or, my favorite, a mortar and pestle!)

And one last thing.

You know how restaurants keep salt and pepper at the table? And most people blindly sprinkle them on? Don’t do that.

Strive to be the guy who seasons his dishes correctly before bringing them to the table.

It’s the classy thing to do.

5. Stock–A Cook’s Foundation

Stock is a kitchen miracle that most of us take for granted.

By slowly simmering bones and vegetable scraps over many hours, the flavor and body (in the form of gelatin) gets leached into the water, creating a delicious liquid that can be used in everything from sauces to soups and to baked goods.

Sure, you can get it in a box, or concentrated into powders and cubes, but it’ll never have the flavor and body of homemade stock.

And since stock couldn’t be easier to prepare, and is something you make from scraps you would otherwise throw away, adding this chef’s secret to your arsenal as a home cook is a great way to elevate the quality of your home cooking.

Creating stock requires simply:

1. Meat and bones (chicken, beef, and fish are traditional)
2. Vegetable scraps (onion skins, carrot peelings, celery tops, etc.)
3. Water
4. A stock pot, Dutch oven, or slow cooker

Simply add the meat and bones to your pot filled with water and heat at a temperature below boiling for at least 8 hours, possibly longer. (You can do this as you sleep at night, or while you are out if you have a slow cooker.)

Toss in the veggies for the last hour. (You could also add them at the beginning and be just fine.)

Many people add salt, herbs, and/or spices to their stocks. I suggest you don’t. You can add them when you use the stock without worrying that you’ll over-season.

Stealing Strategically

Trying to learn how to cook from pro chefs is a terrible idea, but it’s what most people who want to learn how to cook at home do.

Instead, you should focus more on the fundamentals of cooking and how to make the most of whatever you have on hand.

You should learn how to quickly and effectively learn new skills, and what foods are most likely to keep you healthy and strong.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t learn anything from pro chefs.

They are the ones who effectively turned cooking into an art form, and know how to make food really stand out.

Much of it is flashy, obnoxious, and difficult to pull off. But some of it has such a good return on investment that you should try to “steal” this stuff from the pros.

Upgrading your salt and pepper, making homemade stock, throwing a blender into the mix, and serving your dishes on warm and/or cool dishes are super simple ways to improve your cooking.

Just don’t tell anyone I said that! 😉