You know, that's how we can do this is my favorite team to
throw to show chefs and they never believe it.
In that very pro, I can make risotto in 15 minutes and I only
have to stir it three times. Explain.
Hello, chefs. This is Chefs PSA, and I'm your
host, Andre Natera. Today's guest is Brandon
Harpster, certified Executive Chef, national corporate chef
for Rational USA. Brandon was named Chef of the
Year by the Nebraska Restaurant Association and currently leads
culinary training programs nationwide.
We're going to talk advanced cooking today, cooking with
connected technology, real world applications with modern cooking
equipment, how to make stocks, risotto and cook the perfect
pecking duck. Stay tuned.
Years ago, it was my first executive chef job and I was.
What was this at? In Lincoln, NE Lincoln, NE And I
was a chef at a Country Club. It was my first executive chef
job. And you know, it's a lot to do.
And we had the big Mother's Day brunch was coming up right that
they're not even going to talk about Mother's Day brunch in
general for the chefs out there, but they all know.
But we, one of the things we always featured was steamship
rounds. So we had to have to roast these
and we roasted them into this old cook and hold type.
I don't even want to call it the oven, just a cook and hold thing
right? The big red box or whatever it
was. Something like that, Yeah, We
had two of them, the steamship rounds, one in each one.
And always my concern was when you load it in there, it cooks
to a certain temp and then it goes into hold.
And you're always worried that is, it is everything to be OK in
the morning because you're kind of screwed if you don't have it
right. Yeah.
So what happened was my biggest fear.
And I always wanted to get up in the middle of night and go
check, like drive out to the club and check it wasn't that
far from where I live. But I didn't.
And I walked in and one of the cooking holds, I went down like
I just, it was just dead meat was spoiled.
Open it up and it's just horrible.
I think we probed. The meat is like a 90, you know,
So we just sat at that temperature all night.
Just fermenting. Just fermenting.
Yeah. And so we had another one and it
was fine in the other one. And then I had a backup one in
the cooler still because we had another event the next week that
also had that on the menu. So I start, we get the one we
have it ready, it's good to go. I start breaking down the second
my raw 1 into smaller pieces so I can start trying to get it
cooked for when we need it. And so luckily I've trained as a
butcher. So I it breaking it down as I
can do it pretty quick. This whole steamship and I'm
breaking it down and we're popping it in the convection
oven trying to get it cooked. You know, it's not, it's and
it's not the right way to cook it anyways, right, because you
got to cook that low and slow. And then I next thing I know is
the food starting to go out to the buffet.
These pieces, these little chunks of now broken down
individual muscles of the of the steamship round are cooking And
what my sous chef comes back and he's just like white and I was
like, what happened? He's like the steamship that we
had cooked. He's like, it just fell on the
ground like so they went to put it on the table and the bottom
knuckle hadn't been cut off. So it was rounded on there and
they sat it down standing up like weird what we always do.
And it rolled right off the table.
I mean, they're already guests coming in.
You know, they were already starting to see because they
always showed up early. So now I'm freaking out.
So now I'm we're having to serve these pieces that are, you know,
they're not cooked, You know, it wasn't definitely by far.
I just like slice it really. It's like the piece that's
cooked like well done on the outside and like raw on the
center. Still, yeah.
So it was just, it was just such a such a nightmare.
And then so I've told this story to people before and with if I
had been using one of our our icomvy pros, all right, we can
have that connected to the Internet, be connected to
connected cooking. And you could actually real time
pull it up and look and see what the cooking stage is, where it's
at, if it's in hold yet or any of those things.
So I could have been checking and monitoring that, you know,
in the middle of the night when I was laying awake, hoping that
they were going to be everything was OK.
Yeah, that would have solved my problem.
I could have got it looked at it and saying, oh, something's
wrong here. I got to, I got to get out
there, you know, and get this and get this fixed.
Yeah, the the technology is wild.
Is there an option to set like an alarm so it'll alert you at
home if there's a problem on your phone?
Through some of the settings you can do that.
It will alert you when it's done.
So that's usually what I what I recommend for people to do is it
tells you that it just sends you a note that you can, a push
notification that says cooking's ended.
And then you could go look and see if it's on hold or anything,
you know, and then you could pull it up live and see if it's
on hold. But you can set it up to get all
the notifications or you could, it'll tell you, hey, it's time
to load. If you're preheating, you going
to the other room, it'll tell you it's time to load.
You can walk back in, load and it'll tell you when it's done.
So you can set all that up through your phone.
Now, I have a lot of chefs. Their first question is how do I
turn it off? Because they're getting a
million notifications on their days off as people are cooking
all day. But it's really easy.
It's just one button. You go into the app and one
button to turn it on. Notifications on, notifications
off, just like any other app. Yeah.
So it's very, very beneficial that way that you can always
check and see where your products at and all of those
things. Yeah, it's it's wild tech.
I'm, I'm curious what got you into, because your career path
is something that a lot of chefs are interested in.
You know, they, they, they, they work the traditional kitchen,
whether it's a hotel, Country Club or, or a restaurant, which
you started as you know, working in traditional kitchens.
And then at what point, how did you end up at rationale?
Like what was that career transition like?
Well, it's a little, I always said half of my career I've,
I've been in the right place at the right time and kind of my
path to rational was like that as well.
So years ago I was teaching at a culinary school in, in Lincoln,
NE and I was, we got, we did a big kitchen renovation of all of
our spaces and I got in three rationales.
I didn't know. I knew they were the best.
And we wanted to, you know, I keep reading and staying up on
trends of combi ovens are becoming very standard in, in
kitchens and this use of technology.
After doing all the research, rational kept popping up as the
number one. So we got 3 rationals in.
And when we came to get trained on it, there's a sales manager
there at the time that said, hey, he needs a freelancer to
do. We have a large freelance
network all across the country called Rational certified Chefs.
And what they do is they when you buy one of our products, you
get a training with it. A rational certified chef comes
to your location and does a free training with you and your
staff. And so he said, hey, I'm looking
for a he knew I was really, I got because once we got the, the
rationals and I was like super geeked out on him.
And he said, Hey, you seem to be really into this.
Would you be interested in working as a freelancer for us?
And I said, yeah, I'm always, I always liked the side hustle,
you know, And so I started, I went to our headquarters just
outside of Chicago, did the training.
And then I started doing trainings in Nebraska, Iowa,
kind of all the Midwest, got very involved with Rational
state. I'd work like their trade shows
with them, do anything they would need.
I was always a yes man. If Rational asked me to do
something, I said yes because I just like doing it.
And it's what ended up that they, oh, I did that for about 5
years and then they had a expansion of their corporate
chef team. So, and the expansion happened
to be for the central region and that's the part of the country
that I lived in. So I applied they obviously I
was very, I knew, I knew a lot of the people are rational
already. And so I was lucky enough to get
the position and then six months later I was we expanded again.
I was promoted and then moved to Chicago, so.
Yeah. How many?
Because I've met some of your team.
How many people are on the corporate team as chefs?
As chefs, as. Chefs and and what does that
look like 'cause you mentioned like I don't know if you called
them ambassadors or what you just.
Are rational certified chefs. Yes, rational certified chefs,
like what does that look like? So how many are are on the
payroll, I should say, and then how many are kind of on the
periphery? Kitchens are brutal right now.
Everyone knows it, fewer people on the line, margins tighter
than ever, and somehow the expectations keep going up.
There's just no room to miss anymore.
I was talking to a chef recently who said the biggest stress
wasn't the volume, it was the mental load.
Babysitting, food, timing, everything perfectly, trying to
be everywhere at once. And that's where equipment
matters more than people want to admit.
Rationals. Technology comes up a lot in
those conversations. The Icon B Pro, the Iverio Pro
overnight roast that don't need to be checked, custom programs
for all your recipes, Consistency without hovering
completely automated cleaning, monitoring everything from your
phone, The list goes on. And what really buys you the
headspace? Less standing over pans and more
time to leave the kitchen instead of constantly putting
out tiny fires when you're down to cook.
When the prep list is rough, when the production ramps up,
think rational. So our corporate chef team is
soon to be 22 people. Wow.
We're in the interview process for an open position right now.
Oh, So what are we looking for? I'm serious.
Like people listening, Like what would you?
What's the ideal candidate? The ideal candidate for us is we
want working experienced chefs. So we want people to have a big
background that can walk into any kitchen or any customer that
we that we have and help them with buying solutions.
And to, to know how to do that, you have to be an experience,
right? If you know, having, you know,
been in those executive chef roles, CDC roles where you've
really, you've done that. And also what really helps is
having a mixed background to, you know, restaurants and hotels
or country clubs or, you know, school food service or anything
like that. You know, where you have some a
very background, not just maybe not just in restaurants or not
just in a Country Club, but having done a little bit right.
And that that's what we're kind of looking for for ideal
candidates. And then somebody that's, that's
obviously a fan of the product, somebody that's a, a user, we
want, you know, we want people that come in to already have, be
able to share their experiences that they've had using it, what
we call, you know, in the wild in the field.
So that's what we're always looking for for our candidates.
A lot of our candidates do like myself and some of the other
people that you met start off as those freelancers, you know,
because they're, they're the great feeder for our corporate
chef team because they've, we've already done, we've already done
all of their, a lot of their unit training.
And so they're already super users of the combies anyways or
the Iberio. So it really helps helps that
so. Wow.
So what is what is a day in the life for, for someone that's
like, I want, I want there's people listen, there's people
listening right now. They're like, I I want to do
that. Yeah, your job sounds fun.
And you know, I'm, I'm, I'm because everyone on the outside
looking in always think, oh, every, every job that's not mine
sounds fun. Yeah, you do it right.
But what? What does a day in the life look
like for you? Because I'm sure it's so
different, right? It's so different, you know,
from when you were chef at a Country Club to being chef at
rationale. I'm sure your day-to-day looks
completely different. Yeah.
And every day is different too. And my role is you is is a
little bit different. So we have two we have there's a
few of us that are national corporate chefs that overs that
are the managers of the of the the corporate chef team and then
we have our regional corporate chef.
So in my role, I'm based at our Home Office in just outside of
Chicago and I handle all of the training that happens for all of
those freelancers, for all of our employees, for all of our,
you know, for customers as well. I'm not out in the field as
much. Now our most of our corporate
chefs where we call regional corporate chefs and they're
spread out across the country. We have 6 regions.
There's two chefs per region. And those chefs, what they're
doing is their customer support. Most of their role is customer
facing. And it's it's customers that
have already bought products, right?
So it's just going out, helping them train, helping them get the
maximum benefit out of their out of their products.
So their day is travel. If you want to live a life on
the road, that's a that's a good role for you.
Travel is in those roles is about.
You did that role. Though I did that role, Yeah, I
did just for six months. I was in that role.
And that role is you're, you're usually leaving on a Sunday
night or Monday morning. You're getting home, you know,
on the weekends. Do you like that the, the, the,
the travel? I did it for a while.
I was a corporate chef for a while and and I I didn't like it
that that's why I didn't want to do it anymore because I don't
want the constant room service and.
It's fun at the beginning, right?
And some people like it. I did enjoy it, but then I kind
of had reasons why I wanted to be home more often, right?
So it was, it was good and bad. You know, I wore the same, I
said I wore the same clothes for like 3 months straight because I
would come home, take the clothes down, wash them and put
them right back in the suitcase to leave, you know, after the
weekend was over. So they're traveling, but
they're, you know, hitting a variety of different customers
and it's customers that, you know, want some additional
training or want some extra support.
Sometimes that is sales support of the sales team.
But most of our most of our role is as a as customer facing and
helping customers find solutions again and get that maximum
benefit out of their out of their equipment.
How much time is involved in doing research and development
as in in your role and then also in the, in in the, in the
regional chef's roles? It all kind of varies a little
bit. Most of the honestly a lot of
the research and development happens in the US does happen
with me and my team, but that's not primarily what we do.
Like I said, we we handle the training, we handle our
facility. We have a very busy facility.
We trained over 350 chefs last year came to our facility for
training and it's multiple days of training, but we do some R&D
in there. But you know, we're our Home
Office is based in Germany and we have R&D, large R&D teams
there in Germany. And then our Iberio is made in
France. And so they have they have a
very large R&D team there. I assume that.
But we're always through connected cooking all of us as
we cook, you know, we build recipes, we build cooking
processes and we could put, we put all that on to connect to
cooking all the time. So R&D is always kind of
happening, but it just kind of happens maybe more by chance
than by just now it's time to do R&D.
It's we have something or somebody gets asked something
how to do something and we haven't done it.
That's where we start to work on it.
We fit that in. As I was driving up to, you
know, to the to do this podcast, I was talking to one of my
friends on the phone. I was telling him, you know,
we're going to talk and and he was saying, oh, yeah, they do
this great thing. We'll, you know, if you have a
rationale, they'll fly you up to Chicago and do training with you
and stuff like that for chefs like, oh, that's what he's like.
Yeah, ask him about that. And as we were talking about
that, someone smacked me. I got into a car wreck.
That's what I was just saying. It'll be.
I literally got in a car wreck right before we recorded this
podcast. It's it's crazy and you're
pretty calm about it. That's what's that's very
impressive. Yeah.
But yeah, no, we have what we call a finishing and large
volume Academy or that's one of the academies that we do that we
bring chefs for training in, but we do academies all the time all
over the country and where it's just about learning, it's just
about. Chefs, is that open to basically
anyone that that buys your product or?
Yeah, the academies, we post them online when we have them.
And then a lot of times it's if it's happening out in the field,
our sales manager or corporate chefs will, you know, talk to
customers and let people know that this is this Academy is
available. You know, there's, there's, we
only can fit so many people in our kitchens.
Yeah, but we, we definitely offer that.
We we're all about education. You know, one thing with
rational is we want to educate people.
We want people to use our equipment to the Max and, and
really get that benefit of how it can, you know, using our
equipment and using it well can literally change chefs lives and
how they and how they operate and how they they do things and
give them time back into their day.
So I always say we're not trying to replace cooks, we're trying
to take the cooks that we have and make them more efficient.
And tell me that's by using technology and not having to to
monitor everything. Let that let that help you,
right? So we're all about education.
So if we do them regionally, we have several demo sites that we
have all over the country. And then we have the ones where
they come to Chicago as well. So those are all just through
the through the connections. Usually at some point during,
when you after you purchase your rational, you're going to see
one of our sales managers that they're also very customer
facing still you're going to see one of our corporate chefs or
one of our rational certified chefs.
And that's how people get invited or people know about
those things that are coming up. For for people that are thinking
about whether whether it's whether it's rational or another
similar company and they're looking to become a corporate
chef or a regional chef. If you were to sell them on it,
would you say that the you having been a chef in, in the,
in the field and they're now doing this quality of life
better, pay better? What are some of the some of the
perks that are in that role? You know, some of the perks are,
you know, really some of that quality of life is there, right?
You travel a lot in in some of the regional roles, but you're
still home on the weekends. You know, for the most part,
there's a few weekends, you know, mixed in and out of there.
But, you know, the company, NRA, it's just coming up.
That's my Super Bowl. Yeah, I have to oversee all of
our cooking that happens at that.
And it's my show. So I organized that one and it's
coming up and it's, we were talking about it before we came
in here and I'm already stressed about it.
But you do when you do those weekends, though, you get those
days back, you know, So that's, you get a lot more.
There's a lot more benefits to it, you know, all the insurances
and all of that stuff, right? 401K, etcetera, etcetera.
Yeah, you typically in in larger corporate environments, right?
Exactly, exactly. And you, you know, like most of
my days are, you know, daytime hours, you know, I'm usually,
I'm usually leaving the office, you know, between 5:00 and 5:30
every day. I get there early, but I leave
early, too. I get to leave early.
I don't have to stay and work those nights and weekends
anymore. I get, you know, we get holidays
off. It still feels weird to sit at
home on New Year's. Eve Yeah.
You're not worried about Mother's Day steamship rounds
anymore? Yeah, I don't have to worry
about that anymore. And if I do have to cook those,
which we cook a ton of things overnight, I'm always, I can
always check it at any time I want to because I can check it
from, I can roll over and check it from my phone while I'm
asleep and go back to sleep. Do you?
Do you miss it the other side? At times, at times, you know,
you know, I get to be as creative as I want to be still
and I still get a you know, I get to cook a lot.
You know, we cook along with our customers a lot.
But I like to educate. I was in corner education before
I I took in. It was one of my jobs before I
came to this one. But yeah, I missed the
day-to-day sometimes. But I think, I think if I did a,
you know, a couple couple line shifts, I would say yeah, I.
You don't miss it that much. You know, it's, you know, this
I'm, you know, getting a little older now and it's hard.
You know, this restaurant just is hard on your body, right?
It beats you up, you know, and and that's also again, another
thing by looking at equipment is not having to have have it be so
hard on your body a little more ergonomic.
You know, I you know, we talked about with our Ivario Pro.
So for people that don't know what that is, because I I think
everyone knows when you know, rational is like a it's its own
word. Everyone said, oh, put in the
rational. But it it it's not just the
rational, but people don't say put it in the Ivaria Pro is
like, that's not the common lexicon.
Yeah. So what is what is that?
It's a tilt skillet. It's a tilt skillet,
essentially. It's a tilt skillet.
It's got a very unique heating system, so it heats very
quickly. But it's your, it's a, it's a
tilt skillet that has rational technology in it, right?
So it's a product of ours and so it could do it till it could do
everything a regular Tilt skillet could do.
And then more because it also uses technology.
It's got built, it's got a built in drain, It's got a built in
water inlet. So, you know, I think about all
those times where I had to lift like those giant pots of
potatoes or pasta, you know, carry the water over to the
stove because I never worked at a place that had a pot filler,
you know, and then you got to carry it off and handle it all.
We're now we have the, our tilt skillet has settings where you
can set it to use a basket and it pulls it out when it's done.
So it's a it, it's a, it can be, it can replace your, your steam
kettles, your tilt skillets. It can be used as a deep fryer.
What what's the largest size of this?
40 gallons, 40 gallons? OK.
So, so yeah, you can make a good amount of stock in there.
Or you can make and the stock that comes out of it is, it's
crazy how the stock comes out of it because it's so clear.
Yeah. And that's the extended and
forget a thing, right. We, we put it in before we go,
it cooks the allotted, however long we set it to cook for.
And then it is goes into a hole for the next morning, come in,
open the lid. And then when you start pouring
the stock out, it's amazing to see just how clear it is.
Then you have another one correct that has microwave
technology. Yes, we have the eye hexagon.
That's our newest product. In in the chef group chat that
I'm in, they were talking about the I hexagon.
At the end of the day, they're like, oh, you got to get some
game changer. It's a, it's, it's a real, real
cool piece of equipment. So essentially it's a Icon B
Pro, everything that the Icon B Pro can do, but it has the
ability to have microwave technology added to it, adaptive
microwave technology, so. So why would I need that as a
chef? Just cook faster.
OK, so it's like. Short ribs or something like
that. No, yeah, I mean it'll cook them
faster, but for most part what it's cooking places with high
throughput. So it's, it's really, it's for
those, those quick service places, you know, you're, you're
firing quick sandwiches to order, you know, whatever you
need. Usually that's more what it's
geared towards, but you can still cook short ribs in it.
Right. OK.
Yeah. I'm just curious what the where
the benefit of the microwave technology comes in for
day-to-day applications. It's the speed, it's the speed.
But the the cool thing is, is you know, there is a lot of
speed ovens out there, but ours is still still an actual cooking
system with all the benefits of an icon B pro being able to
dehumidify the cabinet, add moisture, maintain all of that.
Plus then now it has the addition to speed.
So your food quality comes out a lot better.
So you're getting the benefits of having a combi already, but
now you have that adaptive microwave technology and it
cooks it faster with and to give you better quality food in the
end. So one.
Of the things that the last episode, I don't know if it's
the last episode because we're probably on several episodes
ahead. But I did an episode with Dan
Kennedy and we were talking about cooking duck and how most
people don't know how to cook duck because it's it's
undercooked. I mean it's, it's, it's, you
know, rare duck is really tough or medium rare duck.
Sometimes you want to get it closer to medium.
But one of the things that I know that you've been working on
this like the Peking duck thing, right?
Yeah. So for people that wanted like a
master class on how to use the rationale for for the perfect
duck, can you walk us through what that process looks like?
Yeah, You know, it's a, you know, the one that he's picking
duck is it's got a you got to give it the time that it needs.
So I have all this and I'm going to actually going to be it's
going to be available on connected cooking probably by
the end of the week. So I just got to add a couple
pictures into it and then I get it, let it go live.
So the whole process is there and but it's the, you know, the,
the first step is getting a quality duck really matters.
And I have a specific brand of duck that I work with and do a
lot of work with them and their ducks are absolutely phenomenal.
That's what got me into Peking duck anyways, was they donated a
bunch of duck to this event and said we'll say we want to see
Peking duck. I was like, OK, I better figure
out how to make Peking duck. So we go through, we hang them
in our cooler and let them dry. I even put an extra fan, a
little battery powered fan before we get that skin dry.
I dry them for two days and then it's kind of the, you know, very
similar to the traditional process of we sew them up, use a
inject them with the air, the air compressor to blow up the
skin, release that and then I use our ivory O pro to they all
get dipped back in boiling water, just tighten that skin
back up. And then I use our our two one
of our two pan models and so and the other side, other side, I
have that glaze going. It's usually, you know, vinegar,
you know, some kind of sweetener.
A lot of times maltose. I use maltose and honey.
So I like the Browning effect of it more and then some water.
So I glaze them and then they go back in the cooler for a day.
If you have the ability to have like a dry aging cabinet, that
speeds that up and really gets really helps that process happen
a little bit quicker. And then after that one day of,
you know, drying overnight, it's a really easy process because
we, we have them hanging and we load them.
We hit the paking duck button and it tells us when it's
preheated and we load them and usually they take about an hour.
Depends on the size of the unit that you're using and then how
many you have in the cavity. But I've cooked 24 picking ducks
at one time in our largest unit and they come out, they're just
perfect. They're perfect.
I had a chef that was a Chinese chef that came in earlier this
year and he's been cooking picking duck for 30 years.
And by the time he was done, he came to the test in the office
because everything about getting a combi told me they were done.
He asked me about my process. He's like, what can I have your
recipe? And so I was like, they're right
here. So so you still get the glassy
skin. And oh, yeah, the skin's like a
cracker. You know, it's just perfect.
Wow. Yeah, it's a, it's a very, you
know, and it's very consistent too, because of the the
technology in the unit. It's going to make adjustments
to climate, to the temperature, all those things based on the
readings that it takes of how much product is in there.
So sometimes at that time might change, but I'm always going to
get the same result whether I'm cooking 1 duck or 20 ducks, they
all look the same because the unit will make those adjustments
for me. So I don't have to do the
thinking. And I always say it's, you know,
everybody sometimes is afraid to use our intelligence chefs, you
know, I know how we are, right? Yeah, yeah.
Just set it at 3:00. 50 they wanted, well, they want and they
want to be in control, right? They want to say, I want to, you
know, set it this long and then change the humidity and do all
this. And so my answer to that is I
was like, well, you do you use a a map app when you drive in a
city? You don't know and everybody
says yes, It's like, so you don't question when to make a
turn to you like no, you just turn when it tells you to turn.
So basically it's the same thing in the combi.
I want to tell it, I'm going to tell it using the intelligence
what I want it to be in the end, and then the unit's going to
take it from there. And for people that have never
worked with one day, there's a lot of pre presets that come
with it. So roasted chicken or eggs or
whatever, right? Roasting a prime rib, for
example. Yeah, it's all, it's all going
to be. You're going to have a button
for it, right? Yeah, for it, you know, it might
not say, it's not going to say prime rib per SE, but it has
those options in there. Yeah.
So it comes pre loaded with the the icon V Pro and the Ivario
pro and the I hexagon all come with preloaded cooking processes
in those. And you can during those
processes, you can make adjustments to it.
If you want a little darker, you want a little browner, you want
this temperature or that temperature have done this and
then you can save it, name it, you know, Brandon's prime rib
and you can put that in there. So then I'll next time I don't
have to think about that. I can just hit I need to go to
prime rib and and put it in there.
And then every time you get that same even result, you know, for
people that are using our equipment, like I said, all
those processes come pre built in there.
And if somebody needs to know what's the best process for
that, we also have we talked about education.
We have a chef line that you can call A-663-O6 chef.
We said all the time, right, you can call us and it rings to our
corporate chef team. And then we can, we can say,
Hey, this is the best cooking path for that, that direction.
And that's a that's a, the service is always there.
We have people signed on the nights and weekends.
So you can call and ask what's that?
You know, simply like for the prime rib, for example, let's
say prime rib, but it says low temperature roasting, right?
Where that goes into a cook and then it goes into a hold if you
wanted to. So we can, you know, tell people
that that might be the best, best setting to use for this
same thing in the Iberio Pro, you know, whether it they want
to do a braise or a sauce, we can tell them how to do that.
And a lot of times it's even got a search function.
It's got a help button all right there on the screen.
And that can can kind of send you in the right direction of
what you need. Plus we're going to be there for
training and all that. So that all comes pre built into
the unit already. So you can it has so much
capability already there, even to the point where you can set
your rationals worldwide. So we have offices like we do
here all over the country, all over the world.
So we have a lot of what we call secondary.
You can set a secondary cuisine on it.
So I can add Chinese cuisine, but it still reads in English.
And then I get extra settings aloud.
You know, somebody asked me about can I cook sushi rice in
there? So of course, like, what's the
setting for it? It's sushi rice, but you got to
bake Japan as the secondary cuisine.
And then sushi rice pops up. You know, I like to do char soup
pork. Same same thing you but then I
just save it and then it's always in my in my save.
You say char soup pork. I was doing an event in Dallas
when I was a chef and char soup pork is one of these things that
I'll, I can't eat to this day really, because I was doing an
event for like 500 people and I was serving char soup pork.
And I had an SUV at the time and I had all the char soup pork
stacked up in the back and it sloshed everywhere.
So all the sauce from the char sou and it's sticky, right, and
soaked into the carpet of my, of my car.
And so, you know, I don't know how long I kept the car, but
let's just say for the next four years, every day, no matter how
many times I cleaned it, every day was char suit pork in my car
on my hour drive to and from from.
Work. Don't even smell it.
Actually, just just talking about it, I can smell char suit
pork. I bet, I bet.
But I, I think what's interesting about, you know, for
a lot of chefs that are listening right now, there's so
much that you could do, but there's a lot that I want to ask
you to kind of geek out a little bit for, for my own
understanding, but also for the audience like I have, I have
chef questions. And I would say, OK, so if you
don't mind, I'm going to put you on the spot like, like these are
some questions I have. So if I had duck and you know,
we were talking about cooking duck properly, One of the
challenges that a lot of chefs have is they want a dry aged
duck, right? For, for a lot of reasons.
One, you're going to get that, that funk on the on on on it,
but also you're going to dry out the skin, which is going to lead
to a nicer, crispier skin. Now, I'm sure there's probably
not a specific setting for that particular instance, but I'm
sure there's a way that maybe you could, you probably can't
get the funk, but you could probably activate the dry aging
process in, in, in the, in the rational right.
Like to, to dry out the skin a little bit before you hit the
roast. Yeah, on the crown.
I'm just saying crown, not not legs.
Yeah. You know, and the easiest way to
probably do that is when you're ready to do that.
One thing that we've done is, I mean, we're not, we don't
refrigerate, so we can only go so cold, right.
And so the unit has the lowest setting in the combi of 86°.
Usually it's lower than that, but it's just that's all that's
the lowest it reads What I do with that, and I'll do the same
thing with for chicken as well, is I you know, I know I'm ready
to cook it. So I'm going to put it in and
I'm going to put it on dehydrate, you know, for 1520
minutes. And what that does that's
pulling out all that moisture and it starts to dry out that
skin a little bit. So you get a crisp like we.
Used to stand there with a blow dryer right to blow dry the
chicken or to or to blow dry the the dock or whatever because we
didn't have enough time to dry it in the cooler.
So for the people that don't have the ability to dry edge
their ducks or whatever, and they have it on the menu and
maybe it's a popular item and they, I heard an interview with
Mario Carbone the other day on one of these podcasts where he
was saying that he was dry aging ducks.
Well, I think it was ducks across the street or something
like that, or it was something that he was dry aging.
But like maybe you don't have the ability to dry aged.
So you turn on that setting that dehydrate.
Yep, just for a quick fit. And then you want to go right in
the cook afterwards, right? Yeah.
So what we do is, is we'll do that.
It'll be 1520 minutes. It dehydrates, it really pulls
out all that excess moisture right off top of that skin.
Pull it out, then go into your cooking process.
Once it's preheated, put it back in and you're going to get a
much crispier, much crispier skin.
So you. Probably won't get the funk that
you're looking for, but you'll get the crispiness of the of the
dryer skin. Yeah, that.
I mean, the funk's going to happen, you know, for dry agent.
I just, you need time for that. There's no there's no way, no
way around that one. But yeah, so it's a you can get
that crispier skin. And I think that's kind of the,
you know, that's like one of the best parts about cooking duck,
right? It's like crispy skin is the
best part. I, I love me too, but the skin
is always like, that's what you got to have that.
And I've even got it down where I tested enough duck breast for
I know how to cook a breast out of the package.
You know, where it comes out. It's perfectly done.
I got the right setting for it. Skin is crispy every time.
Another one that comes up often is like what I call Delta
cooking. I'm not sure if that's the.
Correct T. Delta T right.
So I'm just going to use a a prime rib as an example and you
want, you know, the temperatures going up while the temperatures
coming down at the same time. So eventually it meets in the
middle. So you get that perfect end to
end medium rare, medium or whatever it is, whatever
temperature you're trying to go for.
But I'm sure that's probably more advanced because I'm
thinking when I was learning this, it was 10 years ago.
So I'm sure the I'm sure the delta T is much more efficient
now. Yeah, you know, and delta T is a
is a tricky subject. Usually people start asking me a
lot about it, if they want to do it manually and they want to
choose what the delta is. I say you got to do some
research because if you say you're delta wrong, you run that
risk of having to hang out in the temperature danger zone too
long and you're going to get spoilage.
But all of our low temperature kind of long cook time processes
that we already have have a the automatic built in delta.
So you don't even have to think about it again, it's going to
make that decision and even that out.
So that's why when I we cook prime rib a lot, because it's
just so popular for so many of our customers, we pull it out,
it's evenly cooked end to end because you can, you know, we
look at the Hass of data that's on the the unit you can pull off
through connected cooking or onto a USB stick just to see
when it finishes cooking. But you could start to see that
happen where it starts to come down so that they meet.
So the cabinet temperature, I usually set mine to 131 cuz I
want to even pink all the way across.
And you can see that, you know, this goes up a degree.
This comes down a degree. And they meet right at 1:31 and
it's just like perfectly cooked, a much, much higher yield.
You know, it's, it's money in your pocket.
You know, we were talking with customers about doing Porchetta
and I was telling them that I was like, he'll get a 15% higher
yield by using that process and getting that that pre built
delta. Know that you don't have to
worry about it's going to it's going to know after it uses the
temp internal temperature and the cabbage tips risk going to
make that adjustment so that it gets that perfect result over.
Time. And does it also factor in a
resting period for for larger meat or let's say rack a lamb or
something like that? Does it factor in a resting
period so it's going to be more tender when it's time to carve
it? Yeah.
I mean it's, you know, usually when it when you're using those
intelligent processes, it goes into a product where it's called
maturing. I mean, that's essentially like
the resting period. And by the way, for the
audience, listen, I know some of this shit.
I'm just playing for dumb for you.
I'm asking the questions. Yeah, no, you're, I know all
this stuff. Yeah, exactly.
Of course, but no, so that it comes out rested, that maturing
stage is the is essentially the resting period where it's making
it more tender. And that's the other thing I
like about it. It's ready to go when it's done,
which tells you it's in hold. You can pull it out and start
cutting right away. You don't have to, you know,
whether and that be whether it's a, a brisket or a piece of prime
rib or you know, any, anything that's been cooked overnight,
it's ready to, it's ready to go. I had Jess Priles on.
She's a, she's a meat scientist basically.
And, and shoot, we, we had a good conversation about brisket.
And like what's, what's really interesting about brisket is
that the majority of the really interesting stuff, and you know,
I'm paraphrasing what she said, the really interesting stuff is
actually happening in the rest. But that's what people are not
really factoring. And everyone's so concerned
about the cook of the brisket, but everyone's kind of not
discussing the resting part, which is probably doing more for
the brisket. And in terms of a qualitative
difference, separating some of the best briskets in the world
from others, if that makes exactly Yeah.
Exactly. And you know, we have the
ability to smoke in our, in our units.
It's an accessory that you can buy to add to your unit.
It goes to almost all of our combis.
And it's I, I press people a lot with some of the brisket that we
pull out out of it. And I used to be a partner in a
BBQ restaurant. So I've cooked my fair share of
briskets over the years and it's pretty impressive how it how it
comes out in the texture of it. And, you know, it's, it has
those things, but it's never been wrapped.
You know, you don't have to do all those extra steps.
You know, you don't have to have somebody.
I always say for, you know, first, you don't have to find
that person to work overnight, you know, to make sure
everything's, you know, that the fires are still going, you know,
and, and that's the thing too is it's even if you want to have,
you know, I'm never going to take say, you know, I'm sitting
here in Texas right now and I'm never going to say you're a wood
burning pit is, you know, don't use that offset smoker because
that's what I started on, you know, just a stick burner.
But there's always that point where you wrap the brisket,
right? You're going to wrap it in the
butcher paper because when people wrap it in foil, you
know, whichever your preference is.
And I don't judge anybody on what they what they wrap in.
But having that once you, once you do the wrap and you put it
back in the smoker, you're not getting any benefit of the
smoker anymore. It's just cooking.
You're not getting any more of that.
Smoke flavor. So what I recommend for those
places to do instead of having to the cost of burning the wood
is when you're at that wrapping stage, you finish it in the
combi, you know, take it off, finish it in there.
You got all your smoke flavor on there, but then that's going to
do that stage. You don't have to take the time
to wrap. You don't have to take the time
to do any of the rest because it's going to finish cooking and
then go right into the rest. You know, that's what that's
right, it you know, that's how we that's how we did it at our
steakhouse that we also served brisket at was we finished them
all and we smoked them on the the pit and then finished them
all in the combi. But I can get a really good, you
know, my my brisket. You can you open that door, You
smell the smoke when it when I come in in the morning and I put
that in and I go home like that's the last thing I do and
it just cooks overnight and it's ready, waiting for me, ready to
carve, you know, so I don't have to wait for that resting period
either. It's just it's ready to, it's
ready to sell and ready to eat so.
So in most of the larger meat roasting formats, is that
maturing phase already? Built.
In interesting, one of the other things that's that's on my mind
when it comes to using the rational is sous video cooking.
So everyone right now, you know, sets up their their immersion
circulator, they bag it, you know, they waste too much
plastic. And that immersion circulator is
great, but you know, it goes in a plastic like sand that's too
small, especially when you're a busy restaurant and then the
temperature drops because you have too much, too many pork
chops in there or whatever the case.
May be uneven cooking because it doesn't get it takes too long to
get back out of here, yeah. Right, right, right, right.
But that process can be simplified in the rational.
And I, and I think a lot of people don't understand that it
was one of those things that, you know, had this big
beautiful, I was the chef of this place and we had this big,
beautiful, rational. And I remember next to it, I'd
have my circulator set up. And then one day someone said,
why don't you just circulated? And there's like, wait, you
could do that. Like, I don't know why.
Too intuitive. Yeah, it didn't.
Click Same thing for me. It didn't click, but yeah, just
you could, you could do the same thing, right?
You could, you could load up the whole, the entire, the entire
rational. And Chef David Breeden was on
here and he was talking about how he does, you know, his whole
thing is time, precision time and temperature cooking, you
know, at the at the perfect temperature for the right amount
of time that you're going to get the perfect result.
And then you're just going to go through the Browning process.
But you could do that. You could, I mean, you could
literally load up your your rational with lamb racks, steam
it right, Eliminate the bags. You don't, you could eliminate
that labor step and set it for that precise amount of time for
and temperature. Are those settings already built
in? A lot of that A.
Lot of those are already built in there in, you know, and
sometimes the settings are that's where I, I mentioned the
chef line is give us a call because like when we do beans,
we do them and using a meat setting, like we take dried
beans out of water to them, put them in the combi, set the
setting and go home. They're perfect the next day.
But you know, for that case, for the, the proteins, yes, it's
there, you know, there, it's going to be in there somewhere.
And I use steamed fish for that one because I could use the
probe and got great results because I listened to that
episode and I had never thought about that of trying that, that
technique where you you low temperature steam it and then
pull it out, caramelize and sell.
So it gives great results. You know, and if people still
want to sous video, you know, traditionally with in a bag
because maybe they want to put herbs or, you know, other
flavorings that they want to infuse some of that flavor in
there, then yeah, you can just put it right on right in the
combi. That's the other thing with our
Ivario Pro also, as you can use that as a sous video, it has the
heating elements on the bottom, so it has a rack that gets
inserted and you just pop your bags in there.
It's got sous video settings already.
Built into it so you could take the Ivario Pro, set the temp to
I'm just making this up 135 Fahrenheit and then just just
throw it in there and it's going to just keep that water
temperature exactly the same for how?
For extended period of time yeah.
And it still, you know, some people.
Talk about that and they're worried about, well, there's no
water movement, right? And it there's water movement
there, you just can't see it because the way our heating
system works, it's got heating tiles in there and those all act
independently from each other. So it almost kind of creates a
wave effect. You know, that's how we can do
this is my favorite thing to throw to show chefs and they
never believe me. In the Ivaria Pro, I can make
risotto in 15 minutes and I only have to stir it three times.
Explain. You know, explain this
blasphemy, right? Now I know, I know.
I hope David Chang's not listening.
Yeah, I had to explain this to two Italian chefs late last year
and I got I got them to to believe.
But also it has that we have a process in there.
It's the risotto button, right? Could you use the intelligent
process for risotto? And this, it starts off very
similarly, right? You toast your, if you're having
shallows of garlic or whatever your any vegetables in there.
And then you're toasting your rice and with the ivory pro
cooks with you along the way. So it's at there's a little
question mark. It's saying are you fully
seared? Which means are you fully
toasted? You hit yes, it prompts you to
deglaze. So then you deglaze.
Yes, I've yes, I've deglazed. Then you Add all of your stock
cold. That's what throws people off
1st when they see me dump all the stock and they're cold.
Put the core temperature probe in there so it has a second
sensor to monitor it. And then you walk away and then
it will start beeping and you come over there and you give it
a stir. You walk away and it'll beep
again and you usually stir it. And then the last stir is also
when you calls refine, which is when you add your butter, cheese
or any of your other things that you're added to at the end.
But because of our heating system and those tiles acting
independently, they almost create like a wave effect that
pulls out the starch of the from the arboreal rice and gives it
that creaminess. Like it's 100%.
And you know, if anybody's ever tried to do risotto and volume,
you know, it's, it's horrible to do in volume because you got all
these rondos or whatever you however you're trying to cook it
on. And this one, I get the same
result every time. And I can do it, you know,
depending on what size of model I have depends on how much I can
make. But you can do it so easily,
right? And consistently every time.
Because you know, if I'm standing here making risotto and
you're standing there making risotto next to me, ours are
probably going to look a little bit different in hand.
You know, how much we added, how quickly we had our stock,
etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. We're now you can get it the
same every single time because it's not it's it's cooking with
you and interesting. So a lot of restaurants.
Will take the risotto, let's say 8090% and then chill it and then
put it in kits and on on the pickup.
You know they're just they're just adding it, finishing it
with whatever they choose to finish it with cheese, butter,
whatever whatever is the is the ability with the Ivario pro.
You could still do that. You can take to the 80% without
it becoming too without it becoming too starchy where it's
still going to pick up nicely. Yeah, yeah.
You know it's a, it's a time based.
Setting so it you, you could cook for as long as you tell it
to. So yeah, all you'd have to do to
do it that way would be cook it a little bit less time wise.
And then also, you know, adjust if you're worried about the, you
know, too much charge coming out of her.
And I just maybe your your liquid ratio a little bit.
So yeah, that can definitely been done.
We've had customers do that. You know, the Ivario is it's one
of the most versatile piece of equipment I've ever seen because
it can just do so many different things.
And it's all these solutions that you didn't think you had.
I worked at a. It'll still burn shit, right?
If you wanted to, yeah. Yeah, if you wanted to, you
could. Burn Oh yeah, of course, but you
know we had a customer that makes works for an athletic
dining and made queso right that was a big pot.
They made a big batches of queso all the time.
They'd always burn half because they were using it in a manual
function, just turning it on to pan fry and going.
And I said use the sauce button and then check back in and how
is the best case we've ever made didn't have any burn, you know,
so using those processes because yeah, you can turn it into a
what we call a flamethrower if you want to and you can burn
anything. But if you use it correctly when
it how it's designed to be used, you're not going to have that.
You're not going to have that waste.
And then it is a hell of a lot easier to clean up too, you
know, are the way it heats in because it's not a non stick
bottom, but because of how precise the heat is.
You don't have that that stickiness scorching, that
scalding when you it's amazing to dump, you know, however many
pounds of beef in there for beef Stew and that sear stays the
same the whole time or usually it dips down, right.
We have always had power on demand.
So you put that meat in there as senses that tile senses that is
cold and kicks up the heat, right, right.
You know, you could, even if you're making a reducing a stock
down for a Demi, you can even turn off some of those tiles so
that all your impurities go to that corner and they're really
easy to scoop out. You know, that's because you
could turn it to set it in different zones so you can do up
to 4 zones. You don't have to put the pot a
little bit off. Off the off the burner anymore
That's that's exactly what you're you're doing or.
I can turn off the back burner or the back burner, the back
tiles. And if I am, you know,
rendering, you know, like when I make like clam chowder, I always
render some pork product in there, right?
And you always got to take that out while you.
Saute all the other. Ingredients.
Well, now I can just push that bacon to the back.
It's that heats not on and I could just keep cooking in the
front. But they do the same thing with
jambalaya. You could see if you divide it,
you know the pans by however many towels it has depend on the
size. If I know where the line is,
like on this table, if I crack an egg right on that line where
those two towels meet and this tiles on this towels off, only
this half of the egg is really going to cook.
This one will get a little bit of residual heat, but it's
pretty much a raw egg. So it's very, very precise.
And that's what makes it so much different than all the other
tilt skillets on the market because you're getting that,
that technology in there. Interesting one one of the other
questions I have. It's it's one of my least
favorite subjects is brunch or I don't I, you know, I haven't met
too many. Chefs that say, oh, I love
cooked brunch, by the way, It's a good business model, like I
understand. Why people do?
I understand why people do brunch.
My problem with brunch stems from the fact that you're
usually cooking dinner and then opening and cooking brunch if
you have two separate teams. Yeah, right.
Do all the brunch you want. Oh, it's exactly, exactly nobody
nobody wants. To be there doing brunch, right?
And it's just, and you know, it's on Sunday and usually
everybody had a good time on Saturday, right, right, right,
right. But but if you have an AM.
Team that's strictly focused on AM services.
Hey, more power to you set up your business.
I like brunch. I just.
Yeah, yeah, I love it. I love it as long as I'm off.
Right. Yeah, exactly.
But one of the, one of the, the frustrating things with brunch
is in, in most places, you know they have a ton of poachers,
right? So it's the, it's the, it's the
salmon Benedict, it's the spinach Benedict, it's the, the
smoked with, with eggs on top or whatever.
And I know, you know, places that I've run before, we would
circulate the eggs in an immersion circulator and then,
you know, get that, that, that, that onsen egg texture.
And then we just crack it, firm up the white and some, you know,
dip it really quickly into poaching water and then serve
it. But I don't know why I never
thought, well, can't you just do it in the in the rational?
Yeah, you can't. You know, it's just.
It's, it's, we have a, there's a poached egg setting on there and
essentially that's what it's designed for is to give you that
getting that egg to that texture where you're going to, you can
take it out, chill it and it'll be perfect on pickup and you can
do that. We just run it a lot of times we
crack it through a spoon in case there's any of that little bit
uncooked, kind of whitish, you know, on the outside.
Or a lot of times what we're doing, if we're doing it more a
la carte style because we have both products sitting there is
we just finished the eggs right in the Berio really quick just
to dip them because we have you can, and one of our, our two
smaller 2 band models we have you can have Porsche baskets in
it. So you can dump it in there real
quick and go. So someone could could set the
poach. Setting on the rationale keep
the eggs in the shell, right? So we're not, we're not removing
them from the shell. We're, we're putting them in the
shell. You're, you're cooking them for
the required amount of time that comes out.
You're chilling them if necessary.
And then for service, all you're doing is cracking that egg,
firming the white, selling it. Exactly, exactly.
Or some people will even just dip.
The whole egg in the shell still in there to firm up from that,
up a little bit, pull it out and go, you know, so there's, you
know, everybody has their own techniques for it.
But, you know, that was always the thing, yeah.
Getting, you know, poaching an egg, you don't think it's that
hard, but when you got to do it 200 times, right, you're going
to screw up some eggs and you have to change the water and all
of that. And I saw, you know, I've seen
videos of people poaching all these eggs on the stove and
there's a rational comedy tonight there, you know, where
they can be doing that. Yeah.
Well, it's one of these things
that's like. You have this, this impressive
technology and and you just don't know everything that it
can do. And so so we just say, yeah,
we'll just poach it this way because I know how to do that.
Yeah, right. Exactly.
But we don't ever think like, oh, we have this.
Yeah. And that's what we're always
trying to share and we're always trying to.
Tell like let us let let this up.
It's just getting people the, you know, you guys need to start
like a rational TikTok page where.
You just do little. Well, we have a.
We have a a. Content page that's coming.
Actually, it's not. It's actually live now.
As soon as gets aren't promoted real quickly where we have
content. Yeah, do like here's 100 of
things you didn't know. The rational could do, and
that's through we have actually. We have a training app for that.
Yeah, we do have. It's called Rational Global.
If you type in rational into your search system, no matter
what you're on, you're going to get two things connected cooking
and you're going to get the training app.
And that training app takes you, it pulls up literally the
screen, the display, and you push on it and you push on that
button. It takes you to a video that
shows best practices for that on how to use it and or it explains
the settings kind of in a format.
So there's lots of options for that.
And it's just it's getting people to think differently.
Yeah, You know, like I said, chefs gets it in their ways.
And it's just like, it's differently.
It's efficient. It's efficient like in today's.
Day and age where where everyone's complaining that they
don't have enough staff, they don't have enough cooks, you
know, and it's like, hey, you have this piece of technology
that can alleviate a lot of stress from your day-to-day.
Yeah, it's use it exactly. We had one of my favorite
stories. Speaking of brunch again.
My, our vice president of culinary was working with the
customer and I showed them how we do our breakfast and he says
I can get, I can get rid of 2 cooks on my, on my for, for
brunch. And he's like, hey, we're not
trying to take anybody's job. He's like, no, they don't want
to be there anyways, you know, so it's just like that, right?
You're taking it you don't have enough people anymore.
You're reallocating your resources, right?
So you. Say, hey, you don't need them to
sit there in front of the eggs anymore.
You can now put on the poach setting and now they could be
doing some of the other things that are more important that are
going to really affect, you know, your outcome in the
restaurant. One last question I have when it
comes to cooking because I think this is an important one and
it's something that I heard recently but I haven't seen.
But when I heard, I was like, OK, that's interesting.
Someone said that they no longer make their stocks the
traditional way in a pot. They only do it in the overnight
in the combi oven. And I was like, OK, explain this
black magic because I really don't get it.
Yeah, it's, you know, it's. It's bulletproof right now.
I always say, people ask me what's the best way to cook
stock. I say which piece of equipment
do you have? Because they both do the same.
They both can make great stocks. But in the combi and there's a
lot of combis out there, right? A lot of our combis we push, we
put a lot about a lot of them in the market every year.
But yeah, we have a setting that we use.
It does, it's not called stock, it's called soft cooking.
But yeah, it basically gets the so people are just putting like
everything in a hotel. Pan basically, yeah, I used to
do that where I would. You know, and this was even
this, I was like, stock was one of my turning points because I,
you know, it was very trained, very classically, right by a
couple really good chefs that knew all the classical
techniques and all that stuff. And you know, the day I started
cooking, the first time I cook stock in a in a combi, I thought
this is OK, This is my world's changed now because I never
thought if you'd asked me two years ago if I was going to make
stock in a combat. I told you you're crazy.
This is like 8 years ago now. But yeah, I didn't even do my
brown stocks in there. I do it all in the same pan.
I would start off by roasting the bones and then I would add
the vegetables and roast those longer, caramelize those it
caramelize my tomato paste and then just add the water and my
aromatics to it, cover the bones and put them back in there on
that setting and wait, we'll go home, come in the next day.
My stock is done. And it's so clear because what
it does is it gets to whatever temperature you tell it you want
to get to, and then it holds at that temperature.
So if I want my stock to get to 206 and hold it, that
temperature, now I'm like, it's like steeping tea in there.
So you're just extracting all that flavor and you just get
amazing results. And I even, I always brown the
bones in those hotel pans because then I get all the,
yeah, all the fond, all the fond in there as well.
So you're not losing any of that.
So, yeah. So it's, it's a it's a crazy way
to do it. And it was something that I
never thought I would could be done.
And and you get a much more clear product.
Much more clear. Flavor significantly more
intense. Yeah.
I mean, I don't know necessarily more intense.
It depends on how good you were. Make a stock before.
Yeah, you get like, I don't notice any, like it's lacking
any flavor. Some people will take them and
cook them down just a little bit afterwards because the only
thing that happens is you don't have any loss.
Same amount of water that was in there at the beginning is going
to be in there at the end. Some people account for that,
right, right. That little bit of evaporation.
But I always like if you, especially if you're doing it in
the Ivario Pro, there's a boil down button so you can cook it
down just a little bit if you wanted to, to strengthen that
back up cuz you don't have the loss.
So your yield's much better. And my thing was I always had in
the restaurants, you know, we, you only have so much range
space. So like 1 restaurant is only on
the line. So we'd every night we'd have to
put up these big pots of stock on at the end after service.
Are you putting the whole stock pot in there or you putting no?
Are you putting hotel fence? Yeah.
But I, you know, I think of the how many times I walked in and
we had a big pot of water on there and the cooks either
turned it down too much or turned it or forgot to turn it
down. And I'm coming in at the
restaurant smells like carbon because it's basically what's
left or the stock smells like a swamp, you know, because it's
just, it didn't ever really cook.
So I don't have that loss anymore either.
So again, it's about making it be more efficient.
So that, and also you're going to have less waste.
And you know, I know, I said. You talk about the the swamp and
the smell of, of sometimes with sous video you got that too.
Like when you put like, you know, protein or whatever and
it's not seared or anything. It's and you're going a very low
temperature for a very low long time.
So short ribs is a good example. You're doing a 48 hour short rib
or something like that. And then when you finally open
it up, yeah, it's cooked right. But it has a smell to it.
Yeah, it has a little. Funk to it.
I've talked to chefs that, you know, they'll blast it with an
initial high heat to, to, to sanitize it, to pasteurize it.
So that way when they do open it up, it doesn't have that, that,
that funk. So, you know, maybe the 1st 5
minutes of the, of the, of the long temperature cooking is at,
you know, 190 or 212 or whatever, right?
So you're killing any bacteria on the surface.
So when you do open up the bag, you're not going to have that
smell, that purge, right? Yeah.
Exactly. Yeah.
And you could you could program that.
But we have a brace setting in the in the icon V.
Pro where it, it basically does that.
You put your short ribs in a pan and it's the first step is
searing them. So it's cleaning off all the
bacteria. It sears them for our you know,
you set how dark you want that sear to go and it tells you when
to add your liquids. You add your liquids and then
shut the door and it goes from there.
You know, and that's, we always get those it goes over.
We always recommend doing that overnight, and the only reason
we say go overnight is because let your third shift do the work
for you, right? We call the overnight cooking
the 3rd shift because then you have the equipment for available
use the rest of the day. You know, you can come in, take
those short ribs out, do whatever you need with them, and
then you have the combi still active the rest of the day.
Or you could be cooking so many other things instead of having
to be wrapped up just cooking one product all day.
Yeah. I mean, I mean a smart operation
one. Of the smartest operations that
I've ever popped into you know they had a that a time schedule
on their combi like OK from 3:00 to 5:00 at this soon as 5:00
opens up five to seven it's this and every every for the entire
week their prep schedule was in front of the combi so they knew
OK so it's 5:00 we got to we got to jump into you know eggs or
whatever the case may be it's like it was just always always
going yeah if you deep dive into it you can actually.
Program all that in now, Yeah, it's called a plan and you can
program that all in there. And this is where usually when
you want to do something at that level, that's where it's really
great to reach out to our corporate chef team, you know,
because we can come help you with that.
And you can have that plan where it tells you at this time you
want to start cooking this thing, it's going to alert you
that it's going to start. It'll be preheated and ready for
you to go at that time, you know, so you could build all
that in there. You know, the schedule way works
really well too. A lot of people have to do that.
I found people have to do that with the combi because they it's
in such high demand. You know, that was, I got asked
a question one time. I was doing a presentation and
this was when I was still a freelancer or rational certified
chef. I would do sales presentations
too and for them as a contractor and they would ask me like,
what's your problem with your copy?
I was like, the only problem I have is I only have one.
That's my problem. Because we had people waiting
like because we started using it so much that was always seem
like somebody, somebody's jostling to get into it to get
their work done. It's funny because.
One of my very first experiences with a with a rational were for
wreath. I know you don't like the term
wreath there. What do you?
This is what we call it for ours
is. Finishing, finishing, that's our
our term for we would do large banquets.
So you know, we can do. 1000 people, I don't remember what
the time was. I think it was like every 8
minutes you could put a whole rack in and out of of plates and
then it's just sauce garnish and go.
And it was just a major labor savings, time savings, stress
savings. It was always cooked perfect.
Plates were always hot. Put in the Pizza Hut bag
afterwards, right? Yeah, over the over thermal
cover goes on thermal cover to to make sure everything stays
hot. But yeah, it's, it's a game
changer. It's it's separating your
production from. Service, right, and you can do
the the work when you have time to do it instead of and you know
those big plate UPS like that and you're pulling, you know,
the valet drivers and the front desk people and none of them
want to be doing that right. So the place they start to look
kind of sloppy really quick and so, you know, and then you don't
have to sit in the hot box either because you know it.
And and not only that, but you don't have to like wait around.
Hey, they the the contact said to give it another hour.
They're still doing more speeches.
And it's like exactly exactly. You know, so there's lots of
options for too. You know, the other thing is, is
too is I don't have food that's, you know, plated.
I don't have a, you know, a wedding party for 400 people and
only 300 people show up, you know, So if I'm, you know,
you're talking to your banquet captain and they're saying, hey,
they don't have near as many people here.
You pull some plates back. That food is still perfect.
There's nothing wrong with it, right?
And you can reuse it for something else, right?
Instead of it going into the hot box to die and you know, because
then at the end of the night, nobody wants to eat it because
it's been sitting in a hot box for two hours.
You know, you can still serve it for staff and you can still do
whatever you want to it, but it's still perfectly good
because it's been properly cooked and chilled.
It just wasn't finished yet. So it's a great system.
So wrapping up, I. I want to ask you this question.
So if if this is your chefy question, if you had four chefs
that should be on Mount Rushmore for you.
OK, who are those 4 chefs that that you think are the are the
are the top four that influenced you as a chef?
OK, so including me. Never really.
Worked with any of these people, but these are the ones that I.
Always think had a big impact and that were ones that kind of
changed my the way I thought. One was Fergus Henderson from
St. John's Inn.
Most a tail pioneer, right? Yep, and once.
I read a article that was. On him in some magazine and then
just took this deep dive in the way he thinks in his
philosophies and all that was just so different, right.
And so then I started testing all of those bits and pieces and
found that I love to cook that cook those products.
So he's one probably Elaine Pasard, you know, just his
again, like reading his books and, you know, researching him
and seeing everything that he's done.
And, you know, I'm a a meat guy and for like, I just was shocked
at his restaurant, you know, and he took vegetables, right and
made it all about that. I have to say Marco pure white
because when I chef I was working for brought in a copy of
white heat and I was like, this looks like us.
You know, this is this is in the 90s, you know, and it was just
that book was also really again, just had a big a big influence
me and the way I thought. And then probably a standard
answer for my area would be Thomas Keller.
You know, when I first really got into this, he was setting
this new standard, you know, in the US for first chefs and how
restaurants could be. And, you know, I like the story,
you know, because he had, he ended up creating this, you
know, Landmark restaurant, but failed first, you know, but
stuck with it. And so I always thought that was
a great a great influence as well, You know, and everybody
has that book. You know, we went to we've been
visiting some restaurants around Austin and everybody has their
books out on their shelves. And you see that one and every,
everyone, everyone. And if you don't, you should.
Like exactly. Yeah, exactly.
Get the French Laundry Cookbook. What's wrong with you the new?
One's really good. The French Laundry, per SE.
I don't know if you've seen that.
I haven't. I've I've given that one to a
gift. To somebody, but I haven't
gotten it my myself. It's just I buy a lot of books
and I have a book storage problem right now so I haven't
bought that one. That one I would say is probably
my. It's, it's basically, I mean, it
obviously literally, right. I'm, I'm going to sound stupid
saying this, but it's basically the French Laundry version of
today, right? Because they've updated so much
of, you know, the, the, the big pot blanching and, you know, the
way that they're, you know, the way that they're brining fish
now or whatever the case may be. Like all all the things that you
were doing in French Laundry, you know, 2000 are now like, OK,
now we have the, the updated version and the new way that
we're doing things. So it's a great book.
I highly. Yeah, no, it's, it's great.
He's a A. Great guy and in all of his
kitchens guess what he uses for instead of ovens all of our
equipment so is a good we have a good relationship with with
history yeah last. Question if, if there's
something like if if you had like the the one secret that
everyone should know, like the one secret setting or the one
thing that not everyone thinks about that that you could cook
in the rationale that would blow people's mind.
What is it that is a that's that's a tough?
One, I'm going to give you a minute to think I could cut out.
I was thinking it's a. You know, there's so many
there's. So many different things for
that and a lot of it's pretty, you know, pretty simple.
But the things that throw people the most are simple things like
the octopus that we just put in there and don't have to check.
And it's comes out perfect texture every time.
But what's what's your octopus is is I guess it's an.
Octopus setting, right? Yeah, it's called Octopus.
It takes. It takes.
It through you pull it out, you chill it, carve it sear it and
it's you get that great char on it it's great.
You know, a lot of times mine is the is the simple things like
that blow people away are the we talked about earlier, braising
the all of those type of things that people don't think it's
going to turn out. Probably a crazy one that I
didn't think was going to work when I first heard about it.
And this is really this was the go to for for family meal at
places was we have a setting called pasta in sauce.
And this one throws you both people away where you put in
dried pasta water and your sauce and you stir it all together.
And it's one of the two things that has to get covered in the
combi. And you put the probe in, put
the lid on and put it in there and set it for the amount of
time that the pasta is supposed to cook for.
And it comes out and you stir it and you have this ready to go
pasta. And I, I was like, there's no
way this is going to work when I, I was in my initial training.
Yeah, it's great. You know, it's, it's perfect for
that, you know, for the, for the buffets, for the family meals,
You know, I, we show school food service as a big customer of
ours, right. And it's great for Mac and
cheese, right? Your Mac and cheese goes in and
you don't have to stir it, you know, So things along that all
you have to do is just take a little bit of R&D because every
sauce is different every, you know, to get your pasta and your
ratios figured out. But that's one thing that blows.
It shocked me when it came out, and it shocks a lot of people
because nobody ever thinks it's going to work.
Yeah, yeah, I got to see this in action.
As long as you do the ratios. Correct.
Yeah, and the, you know, people. Like how do I find out the
ratios? And it's like if you're on that
setting, hit the question mark and it tells you those ratios
right there. I want, I want you to send me.
The the social media page with all the 101.
I I want to see the pasta on there soon.
I like prove it. Prove it.
Yeah. Well, chef, if people want to
find you, where can they follow? Follow along and give you a
follow and see what you're up to.
Typically Instagram, which is my name.
Brandon dot Harpster And then it's, you know, rational USA is
the on on social media is where we put all of our a lot of our
content for for the US and then yeah, those are that's the best
place to the best place to find me.
Let's let's, let's, let's go cook some pasta, chef.
Let's do it. I'm always down.
Thank you. Thank you.
All right, that's the show. If you liked it, make sure you
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