Hello chefs, you're listening to chefs, PSA podcast.
I'm your host Entre natera. On today's episode we're going
to talk about recipes. So stay tuned.
So, I should probably start with an update.
What have I been up to this past week?
Well, I have some big news. I finally finished up the
culinary leadership. Fundamentals ecourse.
That's live. I went to different directions
with it so you could rent it or you could buy it and I wanted to
be able to reach a larger audience.
I know a lot of cooks out there or maybe Sous chefs out there, I
wanted to make it more accessible to them so you could
rent it for eight dollars or you could buy it for $48.
So you rent it. You know, you could watch it, I
think you have 72 hours before you got to complete the video.
But if you if you want to own it, you could buy it for $48.
You can take it anywhere with you.
The link is in my bio. If that's something that you
want to do on that video, I cover everything from food cost
management. Basically basically, it's about
an hour and 15 minutes of everything you need to know to
be an executive chef crash course.
I also wrapped up the culinary leadership, fundamentals,
audiobook, and that's been submitted, I submitted it on
December 13th. It could take up to 10 days for
audible to approve. Assuming there's no glitches or
errors in the audiobook should be out by next week.
I'll announce it on all social platforms when it's live.
So for those of you that have been asking the audiobook is
done, it took me a while longer than I thought but the audio
book is done. Hopefully it'll be out next week
before Christmas but I You all will enjoy it.
I worked long and hard on that project with the narrator
Gabriel, correct? So excited to bring you that and
then starting in January we will be working on the audio book for
the line, cook, survival manual, so that will be next and I'm
still unsure if I want to write an a fourth book and I talked
about writing something, you know, to pay tribute to the
chefs that I've worked for, but still unsure, let me know if
that's something that you want to read.
If it is Maybe I'll start writing it anyway.
Something funny happened this week and that was a chef friend
of mine called me up and he had a catering gig and he couldn't
do it. He was he was busy and he was
double-booked. And so he called me up and said,
hey do you want to you want to do a catering project for me?
I thought about as I had. No let me see.
If I know any chefs I don't feel like you know working a private
event but nonetheless I couldn't find any chefs.
So I said well screw it. I haven't cooked in a long time.
I'll do it. So, you know what?
I'm one of my former chefs and I we got together, we went cooked,
this five-course meal and boy, was I Rusty.
But anyway, the food came out good.
I was sore the next day. I haven't haven't worked as a
professional chef in a long time and Catering at someone's house,
is not something I typically enjoy doing, but it was fun.
I had fun doing it, it was fun to be back in the kitchen and it
does tie into this episode because as I was, Was going
through dishes that I wanted to make I needed recipes.
And I couldn't remember how to make everything off the top of
my head. So I did need to dig into my my
book of recipes and it's amazing how quickly skills a road.
And I know I've talked about this on, I think on the last
podcast I talked about how, if you don't keep your skills
sharp, you start to lose them pretty quick and I'll say that
the last thing to go for a chef as their palate.
Like everything. I made still tasted good like
the last thing. To go, when you've been out of
the kitchen for a while, will be your palate.
But the first thing to go is your back after after a couple
of hours standing up. I was like, holy shit.
My back hurts. My feet hurt.
Anyway, I knocked it out of the park.
It was a great catering but anyway, that's neither here.
Nor there. It was fun.
I had a lot of fun, doing it and let's get into recipes.
So, I did a poll today on Instagram, and I said, what do
you guys want me to talk about today?
Culinary, competitions recipes. Or Q&A so recipes.
It came, you know whose it was close.
It was culinary competition recipes with Q&A, just slightly
behind it but recipes ultimately one and not you know you guys
were voting for us because I'm not even sure if you know what I
was going to talk about with regards to recipes but I'll get
into it. So I want to be able to steal
man the the case on both sides for recipes and against recipes.
And I'll start with this. I have two friends that are
extremely successful chefs that run your restaurants that are
household names, two of the best restaurants in the world, but I
don't want to use my chefs names without without their permission
anyway. Both of these chefs are amazing.
Both of these chefs are highly successful and both of these
Chef's, run. Some of the best restaurants in
the world. One of these chefs is a big
believer in recipes, everything is followed to the G and the
other Chef freestyles. It No recipes.
Everyone knows how to cook the kind of get the idea.
They understand the system, they have guidelines, but no recipes.
So it's interesting to note that you could have two very
successful restaurants and chefs on both ends of the spectrum and
there's a strong argument to be made on both sides.
Now, when I was a chef coming up in culinary school when I didn't
know how to cook, I followed recipes like yump and back, then
it was like cups and spoons. So So I followed recipes to the
team, you know, someone could be a recipe, I would follow it.
And if it wasn't in the recipe in my mind back then it wasn't
going to. I wasn't going to adjust it.
Everything was pretty much measured with the exception of
salt and pepper. If you all remember, everything
said, salt and pepper TT, salt and pepper to taste.
That was always the, the standard format and most recipes
that were written. But as I started to grow as a
chef in my skills, progressed, I started to move into.
I understand how to cook intuitively.
I cook based off taste. I understand how something
supposed to taste. I understand how to make it
taste. Good, I taste it.
I seasoned it. I adjust, I taste it.
I seasoned it, I adjust then, at the end of the day, boom, here's
something delicious for the guests to enjoy, and that worked
out great for me. So, I went through a period in
my career where there was no recipes, I would, you know, kind
of designed the dish. And some of my, some of my chefs
that used to work for me, would get so annoyed with me because
they're like, can you just give me a straight?
Right answers like, well, today, it needs this.
Like, but yesterday you said it needed.
That was like, well, yesterday, I did need that.
But today, it needs this and I lived in this gray area of
trying to teach them how to cook intuitively, you know, using
their, their senses. What I like to call the chef
for. So if you're familiar with Star
Wars, you know, they use the the force like this, this Jedi
magical. Anyway, I call it the chef
Force. It's like your intuition to know
how to do shit in the kitchen intuitively like, you know, the
chickens done. But you didn't take the temp,
you didn't touch it. You just know like based on my
intuition that tells me that chicken is done just by looking
at it. You know, you'd smell a pot.
You're like this needs this. And like how do you know you
didn't taste it. I said, trust me Chef Force.
So I used to joke around and say I had the chef Force.
So a lot of what I used to do, you know, probably for the
middle part of my career was no recipes and then towards the end
I would say probably in about 2013, there was a moment where I
had this one of my one of my chefs that used to work for me.
He had also worked for Michael Mina and he showed me the system
that Michael Mina uses where they had all these recipes and
was documented. It was on this computer intranet
that they had that they were able to share ideas and I
thought it was brilliant. And if you've ever worked for
the Michael Mina group, you know, exactly what I'm talking
about. I think they have probably the
most brilliant recipe system categorized that I've ever seen.
So, after I saw this, you know, kind of my brain explode, I was
like, I need to do that. That that seems to be the way.
And also at that time I had discovered This website,
chefsteps.com, if you're not familiar with it, it's really
great website and they put up a video.
That was the difference between weight measure and cups and
spoons. And it's a really good break
down and you can watch the video.
And, you know, obviously you start to understand, okay,
everything needs to be done by the ground versus cups and Oz,
it's just more practical and the way that they had all their
recipes always listed out by G. It made me recalibrate how I
thought about recipes and moving more towards Everything having
an exact recipe. And so, I moved towards recipes
in the latter half of my career, and I would say in my very last
job. Before I stepped away from being
a chef, it was the recipe is the recipe as the recipe, you did
not change it. You might need to adjust for
Taste and that would be, you know, salt acid heat, something
like that, but you don't adjust the recipe.
You try and keep it as true to the recipe as possible with some
slight deviations. So Towards the latter half of my
career. I was a firm believer in
recipes, but anyway, let's steal.
Man, the case on both sides. Let's first, let's start out
with why you need recipes. Well, I'll tell you this, that
the end of the day, you guys need to decide, it's your
kitchen. I'm going to present both sides
of the argument as to why you need recipes or why you don't
need recipes. But let me start out with why I
believe that you do need recipes.
And as a head, chef If you want to build a consistent restaurant
and you want guests to come back and experience the same thing
over and over again based on your vision, then you need to
have that documented somewhere. So people understand how to
prepare it, the argument could be made that something needs to
be made per taste and the cooks taste should be the metric on
which recipes are measured on. But the problem with that
becomes that Your palate as a chef.
That's been doing it for x amount of time versus an
entry-level Cooks palette, who's fresh out of culinary school?
Or maybe it's their first job are completely different, right?
I'll cook hasn't fully developed their palate yet in there in the
beginning of their career as much as amateur chef and I'll
give you some examples of things that when I say this, you'll
know if you've been cooking long enough, you'll know these these
taste and one is the flavor of a scorched pot.
When you're cooking something over the Heat and it was too hot
and you forgot to stir it and it Scorch the bottom and then you
taste in your like, what's that taste?
Oh, it's scorched pot, like that flavor is Unforgettable or
another one is rancid nuts. When nuts, go rancid.
They have a an off flavor rancid oil or fryer oil, that's too
old, right? All these things have a very
unique specific flavor that you know, you could, you could taste
any like oh this went wrong in the, in the process.
And the reason I bring that up is because many times throughout
my career, I've had people bring me things and say taste this and
I'll taste it. I'll say you scorched, the pot
and the black. What are you talking about?
Tastes fine. Is like, nope, you scorched, the
pot and then they check the like, oh, I did Scorch.
The pot. How did you know?
It was like? Well, because I know what Scorch
pot taste, like, I've Scorch pots or I'll taste something
made with nuts and I'll say, the nuts are rancid, and there would
be like, really, I didn't noticeably.
Yep. Your nuts are rancid.
Now, that is because I've developed my palate, so, and
again, I'm speaking about ingredients, but this should
reinforce the fact that just assuming you're leaving it up to
someone's taste. You really can't do that.
You have to have some Guidelines for people to follow when it
comes to recipes. Now from a business standpoint
recipes are good business practices because everything
will be costed on the recipe. Everything is measured and
assuming that you're costing your recipes and measuring them
correctly, it gives you a better understanding of what your food
cost is what your theoretical food cost us.
So it's it's it's a good business practice to have
recipes. And it's a good business
practice to also have to have those recipes cost.
It on top of that, again, we're talking about Cooks developing
their palate when you give them recipes, then you say, okay,
make the recipe now taste it. Okay, now, make the recipe
again. Now taste it.
And after they've done that multiple times, they'll
understand okay, I've made the recipe exactly multiple times
but there's some there's some Nuance within the recipe.
What changed? Well, what changed is, you know,
what type of oil were using what type of produce?
We're using, was it in season? Was it not?
Was it fresh was, it was the product rancid.
So a lot of these things, then you start to understand the
subtle variance between the recipe over the course of time.
So having recipes in place also, helps train the cook on how to
build something when ever I'm writing recipes.
Now, my recommendation is, I always go and kilos and G.
It's much more specific. So, all the cooks that work for
me, part of their uniform. Merc toolkit was to always bring
a digital scale because all our recipes were written in grams.
And then, the kitchen also had heavy duty digital scales.
If you need to make something in bulk, we'd have digital skills
for that, but I recommend doing that getting out of cups.
Announces like I said, go watch the chefsteps video, they do a
great job of breaking down. Why you should use ounces, I'm
sorry. Why you should use grams and
kilos versus ounces and cups and spoons and things like that.
I don't use that and I haven't used it for more than almost 15
years. I don't I've used that.
So now you have a firm understanding of parameters.
You're able to hold people accountable when something's
wrong, I've made recipes throughout my career dozens of
times. And then someone will present
that recipe to me. And I'll say it's wrong.
I'm just looking at it like that recipes wrong.
They're like, how do you know? It's like I fucking know,
because I've made it a hundred times, that's how I know because
I it's my recipe. I know it's wrong.
I could look at it and know that something's different about it.
So recipes do allow you to have accountability and then the last
point I'll make Ache when it comes to recipes is that if
someone doesn't understand the type of Cuisine, and in my case,
I've worked with a lot of culinarians that have come from
International. And so they may be from India or
they're from the Philippines or they're from wherever.
And so I'm introducing them to flavors that are completely
foreign to them and if I say just make it taste good, I don't
know if their frame of reference is what it's supposed to be
like. That would be like, you know, if
I went to a foreign country And they said make this, you know,
kind of is like this. Like I have no frame of
reference of how that's supposed to taste.
I don't understand the heat levels.
I don't understand the acid levels, Etc.
So I could be making something completely wrong and then they
come up to me and say it's completely wrong.
So recipes provide good structure.
Well anyway, that's my Steel, Man case for recipes.
Now, what I want to do is I want to steal, man the case for no
recipes If you work in a place where creativity is Paramount
and there's a lot of restaurants out there that their menu
evolves right? The chef is free-style in their
creative their cooking on the Fly today at the end of the day,
we look at what we have and we create a new menu Tomorrow.
Based on the ingredients that we have.
Everyone's cooking at a very high level, everyone understands
how to cook and you start to develop a certain level of
confidence in the system. For those places.
I'm not sure if you truly I need recipes because you might have
some systems in place that we know here.
This is how we do it. So if I say do this, this and
this you know, exactly what I'm talking about because we've
worked together for years and we're all developing the same
flavors because we have the same frame of reference because we
have a good team that's been working together.
Also, when you're working in places that the the skill level
is very high and people could cook in - Lee, you know, they
could just taste something like notepad this at that.
And I've talked about this before, at least, maybe not on
the podcast. But I know I've talked about
this maybe on social media, is the way I look at flavor and
salt and acid is, whenever I would do a tasting with chefs, I
would say think about seasoning as the dial on a radio.
So the volume dial and it would be if it's too loud, you can't
hear the song, it's almost, you know, obnoxious It's so loud,
it's obnoxious you can't hear. And if it's too low you can't
you can't hear it so you can't even enjoy it.
And there's a sweet spot on the volume where you're going to
enjoy it. And I would teach Cooks, like,
there's flavor enhancers so it'd be like, salt is like the, the
dial. So you adjust the seasoning,
you're turning up the music if it's too salty, that's like,
having the volume all the way up.
If there's no salt. It's like having the volume all
the way down. So finding that sweet spot of
salt of acid, Of heat, Etc. So learning how to balance those
flavors and when chefs would bring me dishes to taste, it's a
chef. What do you think about this?
I'd say, okay, the salts like a seven, turn it down to a six or
lets punch up the acid. It's right outside of six.
Let's take it up to an eight, whatever the case may be and you
start to develop your palate and developed palette.
I will say might be one of the most important things you know I
kind of joked around at the last thing to go for a chef is their
palette and a developed palette might be one of the most
Important things to Chef, can can develop on their own because
you know, all the skills that you get, you know, bracelet a
etcetera etcetera. Like, you can have all the
skills, but it doesn't mean your food is going to taste good,
right? You could, you could, you could
know how to cut very well and you could know how to braise
very well, but it does not mean that the food is going to taste
good. But if you have a good palate,
you understand, add a little of this, take this away.
You understand how to combine flavors and you understand the
Nuance of adding this will lift that up.
You start to also build flavor memory Is in your mind if you
try a lot of food and you have a lot of experience tasting things
when you have this, like this database, this data Bank, of
flavor memories in your mind when your start to create
dishes. You start say oh this will taste
good with that. And have you tried it before?
No, I have not, but I know intuitively that this will taste
good together. An argument can be made that a
chef doesn't need to be the best cook in the kitchen, but they
need to be the best taster and have the most Find palette
because they should be able to taste things especially you
know, in a larger operation. You know, if you think of a chef
that might have four or five restaurants, the truth is,
they're not behind the line probably ever, but they're
meeting with their chef de cuisine and they're saying,
okay, let me taste this, let me taste that, you know, adjust
this, that the other, they're able to adjust the, the dishes
that are being put forward based on their experience and their
refined palate and the fact that they're exposed to so much where
you maybe those Chef De Cuisine, is of those restaurants are so
hyper focused just on. What they're doing, you know,
they can't see the forest through the through the trees.
So having a very refined palate is very important for Chef in
the only way that you're gonna be able to do that is by tasting
everything. So a case can be made that you
don't need recipes. If you're working in the
environment where you're constantly developing and
refining your palate, And you have a strong team around you
where there's minimal mistakes. Of course, there's always going
to steaks. Even if you do have recipes, but
if you have a strong team around, you might not need as
many recipes because everyone understands what the other
person is thinking when they say do this, you know, if I go to
like, I did, like, I said, it did this catering with one of my
chefs that I've known for, over 13, 14 years.
And if I said, hey do this. He knows exactly what I mean.
I don't need to explain it to him.
I said, hey, can you make a call if Our puree and he's like, yep,
I got it. Because we've made it together
so many times. I don't need to hand him a
recipe, but as I was saying, I was doing this catering event
and I couldn't remember something.
I was like, I want to make this recipe and I couldn't remember
exactly what it was and I was like, okay let me let me stop
and let me look up my old recipe database because I want to make
sure it was accurate and it tasted good.
So like I said an argument could be made either way.
But if I had to choose, I would say I would err on the side of
recipes. I do think These are important
and I think, like I said, if you want to have a kitchen that is
responsible in terms of profit margins and cost you need to
know what your recipes are in. You understand how much they
cost and if you want to minimize the amount of mistakes and if
you have a large operation in the last kitchen, I had was
like, 120 employees. So I couldn't just trust
everyone to just make everything to my palate because they were
from all over the world and they had all different levels of
cooking experience. So having recipes established
guidelines and parameters. Is to minimize the amount of
error. And deviation away from what I
wanted. So an argument could be made of
either way the larger the operation, I think, the more
important, the recipes, the smaller, the operation smaller
at the team. Maybe it's not as important.
In like, also in a lot of catering operations, you know,
the menu changes so much yo day-to-day, maybe you don't need
recipes. But again, fact of the matter
is, it's not my kitchen. It's your kitchen and whatever
your chef says is Right. Assuming that you're not the
chef, if you are the chef, whatever you say is right?
It doesn't matter what I say. It's what you think.
I'm just My case. And I'm I want to make sure I'm
able to steal man both sides of the argument but it was
interesting. So I put up a poll and I asked
the question. I said, chefs, do you all use
recipes? And this was a couple of weeks
back, and it was interesting because I didn't realize that
people were so passionate one side or the other, and that's
actually why I put up the poll because, you know, sometimes in
my world I live in an echo chamber.
Meaning that everyone that I talk to always has the same
ideas and kind of thinks the same.
We all will have the same beliefs when it comes to how
kitchen should be. Be run.
And it's interesting for me to hear other perspectives that I
don't hear every day because they're not in my general circle
of influence. So, anyway, That's basically
going to wrap up the show next week.
We will talk culinary competitions.
I'm excited about that one. I'm actually, and I'll save this
for the next episode, but I'm tomorrow.
I'm going to go talk to two people.
That are very much involved in competitions to pick their brain
before I record next week's podcast.
So come back next week. You'll enjoy that one.
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