Hello chefs, This is Chef's PSA Podcast.
I'm your host, Andre Natera. On today's episode, we're going
to talk all about tips and tricks from Chef's PSA that you
can incorporate in your kitchen. Stay tuned.
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well. Culinary Leadership
Fundamentals, probably the most important book of all of them,
followed by Bad Sue, Good Chef If you're a new Sous Chef, this
is your mentorship book that you need.
Kitchen, Art of War for the Strategist, Line Cook Survival
Manual for all the new Line Cooks, and How Not to Be the
Biggest Idiot in the Kitchen. Well, basically for Idiots in
the Kitchen. Anyway, we digress.
I briefly want to talk about a podcast that I was on recently,
one of my friends podcast called Proper Thieves.
It's a great podcast. It's about an hour and a half
long. I'm going to link it in the show
notes, go listen to it or go watch it on YouTube.
Proper Thieves podcast. But half of the podcast is chef
stuff and the other half of the podcast is just random things.
Everything from UFOs to MMA fighting to creative habits to
morning routines. It's a great episode.
I really enjoyed that interview. Go give them a follow and go
listen to that one. I was happy with it.
I thought it was pretty good. I found it rather entertaining.
I put a couple of clips up on Chef's PSA Instagram so you get
an idea of where it's going. Speaking of tips, on today's
Chef's PSA Instagram post, I didn't do my typical fortune
cookie post. I did something a little bit
different. I asked for pro tips from the
industry. What are some of those little
pro tips that you guys know that everyone should know?
And I think it's a pretty good thread.
You should go look at it. There's a lot of really good
information on there. So all the people that commented
on it, thank you so much. Save that for future reference
because it's like a little hub of knowledge.
So what inspired that is that I knew I was going to record this
podcast. I want to give a shout out to
Alec Costia who inspired this podcast.
We were talking and he wanted me to do an episode on Little Tips
and Tricks in the Kitchen, things that I've shown him that
he thinks all chefs and cooks should know.
So little things sometimes make a big difference in the kitchen.
It's all about attention to detail.
And so everything I'm going to talk about today, I think are
simple things that you could incorporate into your kitchen
practice that would make your life a little bit easier, make
your food just a little bit nicer, and maybe you know some
of them, maybe you don't. I'll do my best to explain them
so you understand, but if I gloss over a topic quickly, feel
free to comment and I'll try and expand upon it.
Let's start with the first one, the cryovac machine.
Now, I think the cryovac machine is one of the most important
pieces of equipment in any kitchen, but unfortunately most
people just use it for cryo vacuum and it could do so much
more. The obvious first thing you
could use it for a sous video. Cooking, putting things under
vacuum, extending the shelf life of your product, minimizing
space in the cooler. You know, if things are nice and
neatly organized and vacuum packed bags, make sure they're
labeled and dated, you could put things away nicely.
Now, there are some safety precautions that I think people
need to be aware of when vacuum packing things.
Make sure everything's nice and clean.
Make sure you clean your cryovac machine and make sure it's
sanitary. But what are some cool things
that you could do with your cryovac machine?
One one thing that I do is I compress spinach.
Now if you've ever bought bags of spinach, you know how much
space they take up on your line. They're huge.
But if you toss the spinach with a little bit of olive oil, put
it inside the cryovac bag and cryovac it in the machine,
obviously you're going to reduce the amount of fluff in the
spinach by about 10 times, which will then take up much less
space in your reaching or you're walk in or wherever you're
storing your spinach. This is assuming that you're
going to cook it right. If it's for a spin style,
probably bad idea, don't do that.
But when the spinach gets compressed, it also kind of
gives you an idea of how much spinach you need to grab to
saute. Because everyone knows that when
you're sauteing spinach, you can start out like with a pan that's
overflowing and you end up with like a spoonful.
So cryovac in your spinach not only saves space, but also gives
you a better gauge on how much spinach you're going to need for
a specific dish. You could also cryovac,
microgreens, herbs, things like that.
What I do is I put them in containers with ice water and
then I cryovac and then that sort of quickly opens up the
cells. So if you've ever put scallions
or bell Peppers or just fresh herbs and ice water, you see how
they get crisp and firm up. Well immediately putting them in
the cryovac machine will open them up even more and allow you
to use them immediately. Now they do take on a little bit
of a translucent color as it breaks the cell walls, but the
reason I like this so much is because they last way longer.
If you've ever had some micro greens on the line, you know
that they wilt by the end of service and you got to throw
them away. Soup them in ice water will
allow them to last. The other thing is if you work
in a restaurant with heat lamps and then you garnish with micro
greens, what you'll notice is that by the time you're finished
garnishing and ready to sell the food the microgreens have
wilted. Would you compress them in ice
water? They will still remain in the
form that you want them, so they'll still have a little bit
of structure to them. Game changing tip?
Trust me, if you haven't done it before, just try it.
Everyone that I've ever showed that to that for some reason is
the thing that impressed them the most.
So anyway, that's a game changing.
Tip kraw back your herbs and ice water.
And by the way I don't mean in a bag, I mean in an open
container. So for example, you have a 9th
pan or a deli container, fill it up with ice water, put in the
cryovac machine, and then compress your herbs not in the
bag. So I want to make sure that if I
wasn't clear about that, we're clear now.
Few other things that you could use those cryovac bags for is
fermenting. So if you've ever read Noma's
book, The Guide to Fermentation, they talk about fermenting and
cryovac bags, and then you leave them out of room temperature and
you burp them every couple of days and reseal them.
Anyway, those cryovac bags come in handy for fermentation.
If you're doing like a 2% salt fermentation.
Anyway, you can read that book. It goes into it in depth.
But again, if you're using your cryovac machine, well, not only
can it increase the quality of your food, but it could extend
the shelf life of your products through fermentation and
pickling. So let's talk about pickling
too. I cryovac my Pickles all the
time, so sometimes in a bag, sometimes just in an open deli
container or a pan without the lid if I need them immediately.
But cryobacking your Pickles allows you to use them much
quicker, so you don't have to wait 24 hours or 48 hours or
whatever your pickling recipe calls for.
Sometimes you can use them immediately.
On top of that, compressing fruits and vegetables, infusing
flavors, and the list goes on and on.
I guess the point is if you have a cryobac machine, use it for
more than just sucking the air out of bags.
If you're making a fluid gel you might want to take the bubbles
out. Another little tip, sorry I
could I could talk about cryovac machines a lot.
The next thing is something I call swanier water.
So when I'm setting up my line, if I was a saute cook or even
sometimes just if I'm working the past, I always have a little
squeeze bottle of clean water, distilled filtered water.
Just something simple and the reason I have that is throughout
service things tend to split. Emulsions tend to break, fat
starts to be released, so adding a little bit of water to things
helps bring them back. So let's just use the
hollandaise sauce as an example. If your hollandaise on the line
is starting to split, you add a little bit of water and you
continue to whisk, it'll bring it back together.
If you're holding a very buttery pom puree on the line and you're
starting to get a little grease ring around it, you could put it
back in a pan out, a little bit of water, And again, I mean a
little bit of water and stir it back up and it re emulsifies the
fat back into it. Another thing I like to use that
water for is if maybe you're making a pan sauce or maybe
you're making a sauce for pasta and maybe it's split.
You can add a little bit of water if it got too thick.
Or if you need to re emulsify that pasta water and butter,
olive or whatever the case might be.
Maybe you left your little sauce pot of sauce and it reduced a
little too much or it's a little bit too thick.
Just adding a squeeze of water in there could hopefully bring
it back to life. So having a little squeeze
bottle of water goes a long way. I call it swanier water.
I don't know what you call it. Maybe you just call it water.
Anyway, that's a good little tip that I have in the kitchen.
Have a squeeze bottle of Swanee Water on your station and use it
for everything. Trust me, once you start using
it, you'll you'll wonder why you never did that before.
The next one. I want to give a shout out to
the team at the French Laundry and Per SE because I got this
idea from them chefs. Thomas Keller, David Breeda, the
whole team at those restaurants in the book, The French Laundry
per SE. There's a chapter in there on
thickening agents and they talk about pre hydrated xanthan gum.
Now this idea I had heard years ago, I think I read about it in
David Chang's Lucky Peach magazine where someone was
making xanthan water to help glaze vegetables.
I think it was Laurent Gras at L2O at the time.
I think my memory might be escaping me, but I think I read
that Laurent Gras, when he was the chef at L2O3 Michelin Stars
at that time, was putting a little bit of xanthan gum and
water and making xanthan water, keeping it a squeeze bottle and
helping it glaze vegetables. Adding a little squeeze to the
saute pan gave it a nice Sheen to the vegetable.
So anyway, in the French Laundry per SE book, the new one, they
go over creating xanthan water. So the way that it's explained
in the book, it's at 2%, so 2% for all-purpose xanthan water.
So 1000 grams of water, 20 grams of xanthan gum.
Put the water in the blender, turn it on, shear in the xanthan
gum and you'll have this pre hydrated xanthan come that kind
of looks goopy what they advise in the book and this is what I
do. Also I took the advice is you
put in the cryo vac machine to bring the bubbles out which I
talked about earlier or something that you could do.
What you end up with is a very clear liquid almost looks like
it almost has the look of glucose syrup.
Anyway you put that in a squeeze bottle or a container how
whatever you use it for in the kitchen and it becomes an
all-purpose thickening agent for a lot of things.
So what do I use it for? I put it in purees to help them
from splitting. So if you've made vegetable
purees, fruit purees, you know that sometimes when you put it
on the plate it leaves a very thin water ring around it if it
sits for too long. So putting a little bit of that
pre hydrated xanthan gum in there will help the water from
leaching out. It adds a little bit of
structure to your purees. It helps emulsify things.
It could help with stabilizing foams if you're putting things
in an ISI canister or Izzy. I don't know Izzy or is it ISI?
I've heard, I've heard chefs call it both things.
They don't sponsor the show, so maybe if they did I would know
how I would know what the name is.
But anyway, Pre High, as it's called in the book coined by the
French Laundry team, is basically pre hydrated xanthib
gum at 2% Goes a long way. Full credit to those guys when I
read it, I definitely incorporated it into my kitchen
repertoire when I was a chef. It is a game changer.
It's one of those things, like I said, the bottle of water bottle
of Pre High goes a long way. It'll change the game.
It'll make your sauces shinier, smoother with a more beautiful
texture, assuming that you're using a nice Vita mix blender to
make sure everything's nice and smooth.
Anyway, we digress. And by the way, there's a lot of
really good tips in that French Laundry Per SE book.
One of the things that they talk about is the 211 Pickles SO2
parts water, one part vinegar, one part sugar, and they make
the pickling brine and they use it for pretty much everything.
So I I love that idea. I love simple ratios in the
kitchen, things that it doesn't matter what it is.
The 211 is the ratio. Got it.
So we could change the arrow mats that are in there.
We could flavor it differently, but that becomes the all-purpose
Pickling brine for a kitchen. So what I do if I'm the chef is
I will make 10 gallons or five gallons of all-purpose pickling
brine. And then as we're making
Pickles, we might just infuse it with some different arrow mats
depending on what we're doing. But the pickling brine remains
the same for pretty much everything.
So again, ratios are a good thing to know. 2112 parts water,
one part vinegar, one part sugar.
That's the French Laundry per SE recipe in that book, which I
love. They also get into their vet
Blanc, which is a combination of so ascorbic acid, sugar and
salt. And then they rehydrate it with
water at 6% and they use it as an all-purpose croissant for
everything that they're cooking. Maybe it's vegetables, maybe
it's you're cleaning artichokes and the artichokes are going in
there so they don't oxidize. Maybe it's simply for
compressing some lettuces or some cucumbers before you put
them on a crudite or something like that.
Anyway, endless possibilities with that, but I love those
ratios and those little things are great tips.
So shout out to those guys. Like I said, full credit to
them. It's something that I read and
then I incorporated into my kitchen.
I think they're good ideas and I think you should incorporate
them too. Next tip I have for chefs and
cooks is to have a finishing station.
And what I mean by that is just you just have a couple of things
on your station that are intended to finish the dish.
So what do I have on my finishing station?
I'll talk about it. I always have some sort of acid
and that acid comes in different forms.
It might be a good quality Sherry vinegar or a baniels
vinegar or a champagne vinegar or something like that.
It might be simply just some lemon cheeks.
So if I just need a squeeze of lemon on top to to bring some
acidity or some brightness to the dish.
But there is some finishing acid on my station to adjust the
seasoning of whatever it is that I happen to be serving at the
moment. There's also a high quality
olive oil, something extra virgin, something flavorful,
something that I know is high quality.
I'm not talking about the stuff that you typically saute with.
I'm talking about spending a little bit of money getting a
good quality olive oil, having a nice little squeeze bottle on
your station, and maybe you're using it to brighten things up
before it goes out. You're drizzling it on some
steak, on some pasta, it adds a little bit of Sheen, it adds a
little bit of fat, and obviously if it tastes good, it adds a ton
of flavor. Maybe olive oil is not your
thing, but a finishing oil on the line goes a long way to
brighten up your dishes. The next thing I have on my
finishing station is some sort of salt.
Typically I use like a Maldon flaky salt or something like
that. A little goes a long way to add
some crunch. I enjoy finishing meat with it.
Sprinkling a little bit of Maldon salt on a sliced steak or
a piece of duck breast or something like that goes a long
way. It enhances the flavor.
It adds a little bit of texture when you get into that crunch.
And then of course freshly ground black pepper.
About every dish needs pepper, but for those dishes that do
need pepper, freshly ground goes a long way.
I use a pujo pepper mill because I'm a pepper mill snob.
You use whatever you want, but I'm a big believer in the
freshly ground black pepper, not to the stuff that comes in a
container. That's table grind, and the
reason I I'm not a big believer in that is because I think you
lose some of the flavor. In my experience, some of the
essential oils get lost. You don't know how long that's
been sitting on the shelf. So I like grinding my pepper for
finishing right out of the pepper mill on the steak or the
chicken or the duck or the meat or salad, whatever it is, I like
to finish my food with that. So that's on my finishing
station. Some sort of acid, vinegar,
lemons, olive oil, finishing salt, pepper, and then obviously
plate wipes, which, while we're on the subject of plate wipes,
everyone does their plate wipes differently.
I like mine made out of torque towels or chick towels.
Some people use a, you know, big cloth.
Other people I've seen get sponges and cut them up.
I soak mine, typically in vodka. Some people like to use vinegar.
Some people just use water. Whatever it is, use a plate wipe
because dirty plates are gross. Roll them up nice and tight.
Don't serve food on a dirty plate.
Chefs, come on, you know better. My next little tip is everyone
should have a caviar key on their keychain one because it's
badass. I have a caviar key on my key
chain. You never know when you need it.
Doesn't take up much space. But when you do need it and
someone says who has a caviar key and you pull it out and you
have one on your key, it's like, that's badass.
I don't really know if it's badass, but it sounds badass.
But anyway, if you're in a restaurant that use a lot of
caviar, whoever you're buying your caviar from, most likely
they could give you a little caviar key for your key chain.
It's a good thing to have because nothing's worse than
struggling to open up a tenant caviar when you need it.
Having that caviar key on your key chain makes things easy.
Smooth. Pop it open, no fuss.
Makes it easy. Nice and smooth.
Get yourself a caviar key on your keychain.
You'll thank me later. Even if it only comes in handy
once in your life. You'll thank me the next tip.
This is my green oil tip so everyone has a different way to
make green oil. Some people will tell you got to
cook it. Other people will tell you you
have to blanch it, whatever it is that you do.
Here's my secret. I go 212 parts oil, one part
green. So for example, if you have 500
grams of the green chives, basil, spinach, whatever it is
that you're making the green oil out of, you will have 1000 grams
of oil, grapeseed, olive oil, whatever it is that you're
making your green oil out of. So two to 1/2 parts oil, one
part green. Don't forget that.
That's the ratio. Put it in the Vitamix, turn it
on high, set the timer for 5 minutes.
It gets hot. When the 5 minutes are done,
stop the beeping, turn off the blender, strain it through a
coffee filter, cheesecloth. Something to make sure that you
get all the impurities out. And what you'll notice is that
the heat from the blender cooks the oil and it makes it super
green. So that's my tip, 2 to one, 5
minutes super green oil, strain it and then some people like to
hang their green oil up in a in a pastry bag so the water
collects in the corner. That's up to you, depending on
if you have the time or not. Another thing you can do if you
make a lot of green oil is you could freeze them in cryovac
bags when they cool down so that way they're ready to go in the
freezer. So again, that cryovac machine
comes in handy again, but that's my tip.
Super green oil if you use that method, tag me.
It's something that I learned from a chef that I had worked
with years ago. Shout out to Alice Gonzalez, who
taught me that recipe and it's stuck with me ever since.
The next one is if you're making stock and you're roasting bones,
and if you have a rationale oven or a combi oven of some sort.
A good tip is after you put your bones in the stock pot, you want
to save that fond that's on the pan, and sometimes it's very
difficult to scrape the fond off.
So if you have a combi oven, put your pans in the combi oven on
steam and what you'll end up doing is it'll soften the fond.
So then it makes it very easy to scrape off and put into the
stock so you don't lose the fond.
So if you got a rationale, shout out to rationale or an
Electrolux or an Alto sham, whatever you got.
As long as you have a combi oven, turn it on, steam scrape
the pans. It'll go a long way, it'll save
you some time and you won't lose that fond.
The next tip is around my favorite vegetable, the
artichoke. By the way, artichokes are like
the final boss of vegetables because they're so difficult to
clean. Talked about this before.
When I give cooking interviews for chefs, I always give them an
artichoke because most chefs, it's like their Achilles heel.
They've avoided artichokes or they bought them in the can
because they're difficult. And if you're not used to
cleaning artichokes, it's one of those vegetables that you don't
have a frame of reference, really.
With any other vegetables, you can't.
You could like, cut a lot of potatoes and then understand how
to cut other things that are shaped like that, but there's
nothing else like an artichoke. It's so unique that knowing how
to cut an artichoke, you have to know how to cut an artichoke.
There's no way around it. So here's a tip that I like for
artichokes when you have to do a lot of them, and what I mean a
lot of them. Like I worked in a place where
you had to do like 500 a day and you had other shit to do, so you
had to get them done quick. And artichokes are difficult to
clean. So what I like to do, and it
doesn't yield to the best artichoke, but it does yield a
quicker product is if you're not going to go the traditional
method of cleaning them, putting them in acidulated water or veg
Blanc like we talked about earlier and cooking them in some
sort of cooking medium with acid or maybe making bar goal or
whatever. If you need them done right
away, you could cook them in advance in that same acidulated
water whole. And the reason you cook them
whole is they are much easier to clean after they're cooked.
So then the leaves just come right off.
It's easy to trim up the choke and the Copa on the bottom and
you end up with a nice looking artichoke.
So again, that's not A1 size fits all answer.
Sometimes you don't want to do that, but if you're in a place
that has to do a lot of artichokes, that's a good little
trick is to cook them before you clean them and it makes cleaning
them much easier. The next one I want to talk
about is a simple trick. But when I show people, their
mind seems to be blown, and that's how to properly use a
scale. So I'm talking about the larger
scales, not the small personal scales that a lot of cooks have.
But in a lot of kitchens, you have larger digital scales and
you use them to weigh things. So you're weighing lots of
different portions. So let's just use this as an
example. You're portioning individual
kits of tomatoes, let's say in little deli cups, and each one
needs to be 3 oz or whatever, right?
150 grams. What I see a lot of cooks do is
they put one thing on, they put the tomatoes in and then they
take it off done. And then they put the next one
on. They put the tomatoes in, they
they take it off, done. A faster way to do that is put a
tray on the scale, tear it so it goes to zero, and then put all
your deli cups. So let's just say you're using a
half sheet pan. Maybe you get AI, don't know. 10
deli cups on there, 10 portion cups.
And then instead of taking one off every single time, you just
three oz, 3 oz, 3 oz, 3 oz, 3 oz, 3 oz.
And you minimize the amount of steps of going back and forth
and resetting every single time. So I don't know why people think
they have to do one thing at a time.
But if you're if you're busy and you need to work efficiently,
weigh multiple things at once, Just put a sheet pan, put a lot
of deli cups on there and just add 3 oz or add 150 or whatever
the case may be. Or if you have time, hit the
tear button every single time you do that.
But no sense in taking it on and off every single time.
So anyway, that's a little tip that'll save you time if you're
working in a kitchen that has to weigh things on a scale and
portion them out for kids. All right, this is the last tip
I'm going to talk about today. But if you have a meat grinder
in your kitchen, it can be used for things other than meat.
And one thing I like to use meat grinders for is vegetables.
So you could put your Maripois through the meat grinder to
grind your onions, your carrots, your celery.
If you're making a bolognese and you need that ground up very
fine, so it basically disintegrates in the sauce.
If you're making a consomme and you need to grind up your
Maripois, same same thing applies.
You could grind it right through the meat grinder if you're
making a mushroom stock. One thing that I like to do is
put the mushrooms through the meat grinder so it releases the
flavor in the liquid much quicker.
So that's a very quick way to make a vegetable stock.
Put all your vegetables through the meat grinder, cover it in
water, put a cartouche on top. Let it simmer.
It'll extract the flavor much more rapidly than if you chop
everything up and just throw it in a pot.
So that's a little pro tip. Grind your vegetables in advance
before you use it for sauce or stocks or something like that.
Like I said, you make mushroom stock that way you can make
vegetable stock, That way you can make the grind for your
bolognese that way much faster. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed those
kitchen tips and tricks pro tips.
Just the tips. If I forgot something, make sure
you leave a comment below. Tell us what you're doing in
your kitchen. If you ask for the show, make
sure you leave five stars. Nothing less than five stars.
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