Perfection is a Pursuit

Chef vs. Cook

Every aspiring chef starts as a cook. And like every child waiting to become an adult, they just can’t wait to make the jump. We know how this goes; we’ve experienced the same thing. What we hope to do here is suggest to you a different path that will help you become a better chef and in a reasonable time.

Respect the chef, until it is your circus you have no idea how many monkeys are in this one. Simply, the most important message we can give a new cook is this: You are here to make the chef’s recipe. Simple right? For those new to the 8, we speak in concepts. The chef’s recipe is symbolic for “the way”. Your position is to cut the cuts the thickness you were shown, you are to cook the onions how the chef asks. The best thing you can do for the restaurant is consistently what you are asked and to consistently produce the same dishes. We all think we know the way, a lot of us trust our judgements. That’s all great, but the importance of this first message can not be dismissed. Why? Because consistency is key in the industry. We have seen so many cooks who thought they knew better. They figured “What’s the big deal if I do the recipe differently?”. Given time and exposure any aware and diligent cook will know, 5 minutes here, a lid or not there, 350 vs 375, these differences will make a notable difference in the end product. Cooking is molecular for goodness sake! Every minute change and treatment will begin to yield different results. In a top tier environment with delicate dishes and flavors the wishy wash of these cooks can really hurt a Michelin chase, and in a less driven environment will likely lead to corners cut and laziness in general. If you indeed are in an environment where you know better than the status quo, then move on or improve the standards. To stay in a poorly managed environment as a cook will only lead to poor experience for you. Remember your time to lead and call the shots will come, for now be a sponge and absorb all you can. Take the good and leave the bad.

That being said, experience is everything. We have trained brand new, never been in a kitchen folks and had them running in circles around 26-year veterans in 3 months. Experience is everything, if you are used to 6 smoke breaks, eating on the line, minimal prep, opening cans, then you are going to be drowning in a scratch kitchen. And for the record, we believe this is the only type of kitchen that should exist. Experience is everything. Get out there, start small and close. What’s the best kitchen you can get into now? Here’s a pro tip, THE BEST KITCHENS ARE ALWAYS HIRING. Honestly, and the old school approach still holds, start working for free and you will almost always get the job. Run 2 jobs if you need to until you get in the kitchen you want. Turn over is huge in this industry and the intensity of good kitchens pushes people out a lot. But whatever you do, work at the best level you can. If a calibrated and driven kitchen doesn’t humble you then we suggest you reframe your vision. Unless you are hitting every time on your dishes, unless you crush your prep list every day, unless you have the fastest knife skills in the kitchen, until you know every recipe and every purveyor, every position and system, then you have plenty to learn. A true chef knows no one can do it all alone. The team is far more important than any one player. Be eager to learn, be eager to better your times and cleanliness. Like listening to understand vs. listening to respond, you need to be looking to grow, not looking to create.

Practice makes perfect, and practice takes practice. There’s just no way around it, you must put in the time. We suggest buying bags of onions and potatoes and dicing, slicing, and chopping away until you can do it blindfolded. And yes, most folks with good knife skills don’t need to look at what they’re cutting. Here’s a two part tip, knives cut best while moving back and forth vs up and down, and the “claw” is an absolutely crucial part of cutting, you will always have the knife against your knuckle and will be able to feel the knife more than watching it. Nothing will replace the knowledge of practice, and like your experiences, you need to be diligent about the techniques you practice. Start with cleanliness and organization. Have your station layout memorized, evaluate your practices and habits as they develop and always push for the cleanest, most efficient, and best practices you can. We have talked about knife skills here predominantly but that is a small portion of what you need to practice. You need to practice awareness of the heat in your pan, the time left on your roast in the oven, your bandwidth for more and more stimulus. Use all your senses, listen to the searing, smell for the toasting bread, see your sous chef approaching and move out of their way. There is so much to practice in the kitchen. The feeling of a medium rare vs medium steak. The practice of staying composed as your station takes on a bunch of orders. Practice makes perfect, so get out there and get the time in.

The difference between being a cook and a chef is vast, and many chefs become directors as there are just so many moving pieces. Nothing will rustle a chef like a cocky new guy freestyling on their menu, for that matter, an experienced cook who doesn’t understand our first principle will also piss off chef. Imagine working for 15 years to become the chef of a beautiful restaurant and some arrogant “chef” comes in and undermines your recipes and systems because they “know how to do it”. It’s simple respect. There are an uncountable number of ways to cook any dish, to butcher a chicken, hell, to cut an onion. Respect chef’s way. Keep moving forward squids, keep getting up, keep moving forward.

Systematic Destruction

When it comes to prep, there’s one technique that will improve your speed and productivity above all others. Your knife skills can be less than amazing, your movement speed can be slower than it will one day be, heck, you can even look at the recipe 8 times and still get a beastly amount of work done. This technique is called, Systematic Destruction.

What is systematic destruction and how is it so powerful? The main concept of systematic destruction is: complete one motion before you begin the next. Benefits of this technique are, less chance of cross contamination, no wasted time putting a tool down just to pick it up again, and increased chance to get into a groove. Some examples are: When peeling onions, the systematic approach would be, trim the stem of all onions, then halve them all, then peel them all. Or dicing potatoes would look like this, peel all potatoes, baton all potatoes, then dice them all. In the case of the potatoes, you save time by not putting the peeler down, picking the knife up, and dicing one potato at a time. For the onions you can develop a groove by making the same cuts again and again, vs. trimming ends, halving, putting the knife down, peeling, picking the knife up and slicing. Time in prep is saved in seconds, systematic destruction saves seconds in terms of speed in prep through more groove time, and seconds lost putting down and picking up a tool.

In terms of sanitation the systematic approach helps to be sure cross contamination occurs less, whether that’s the process of prep or the cycle of flipping a station. It’s imperative that all food handlers have a strong sense of cleanliness and concern for the quality of food they are producing. The systematic destruction to flipping a station or emptying a sink is a standard that a cook is either taught or has taught themselves. Our approach would look something like this: Setting, prep task is complete, but we need a new board before we move to the next task. And because we prepped shrimp, which included deveining, we will need to be sure we sanitize the station on a whole. Remove board and towel, clean work surface and any exposed tools, replace sani towels and board. How about an example of sanitation through good prep process? Gutting and cleaning fish is a particularly messy affair and getting the nasties on the meat can be easily overlooked. This is how you might move through this preparation: Prepare your work surface with lots of towels to absorb liquids. Gut the fish, rinse fish, clean work surface, filet fish, skin fish. You might be cleaning the work surface between each fish depending on the fish as some are slimier than others. Each kitchen will have its systematic approach to cleaning at the end of the night as well. Having a system or approach to how you accomplish any task will improve your efficiency and efficacy.

Lastly, systematic destruction works in organizing your prep list as well. Generally, our rule is to have the biggest, longest tasks at the front. This allows you to multitask through long simmers or rising breads. But sometimes it is best to intermix small tasks that you can start and stop easily. For instance, if you need to flip grilling onions every 5 minutes for the next hour, you can also get some chop chop tasks done as well. Just be sure that when you are bouncing between tasks like this, that you are being conscious of cross contamination and that you are washing your hands appropriately. Master this skill and you will be so efficient that you may find yourself with an extra hour to grab prep for a teammate or time to develop the next menu, etc. 

Multitasking

Today we are going to talk about an often overlooked but terribly important skill, multitasking. Multitasking is defined by Oxford Languages as: “The performance of more than one task at the same time”. Multitasking can also be described as broadening awareness. The kitchen has many opportunities for multitasking, and you have many opportunities to receive information.

         The sense of smell is an incredibly powerful and useful sense in the kitchen. You will know the cake is ready to come out of the oven soon by scent, the nuts can be tasted before you even try one by the smell of the toast on them. Trusting your nose can be helpful for safety as well. Do you smell propane? Does the ingredient smell off to you? Does the steamer need water? Being aware of our senses collectively is tough, but the sense of smell is so important in this craft. Some studies say smell is the root of taste by as much as 95%. The nice thing about the sense of smell is, it’s like a timer. The cake won’t be smelt as strongly as when the edges are toasting and the top and bottom are browning. You won’t smell the steamer as much as when the metal is getting too hot and the bamboo starts toasting. Use this sense in multitasking and in general awareness to catch items from being lost to over cooking, or to catch an off situation.

         Ears are one of our favorite senses to use in the kitchen. How high is the heat in this pan, is the team chopping with enthusiasm, are their knives sharp? Did the spinach just get fired? I heard the steak hit the pan, time to fire the gratin. Hearing is more than taking in the order from the chef. Your ears can tell you what’s going on around the corner, who is calling for what, etc. On the floor you can gain a ton of information from the guests directly, catching info about expectations they have or items they are displeased with. When your mom said she had eyes in the back of her head, ears are what she meant. We could all listen to our friends and family better. But let’s also remember to listen to our ingredients. We think you’ll find, they have a lot to say.

         I know we touched on scent before taste, and we did talk about listening with our mouths before we told you anything about tasting with them. So let’s set it straight, taste, taste, taste! You have to taste your food, scent can almost even give you the sense of how seasoned something is, but you must taste to know. Our tongue has a lot of specific receptors that pull specific tastes. Sweet, salty, sour, and bitter are the predominant sensors and they can be played with. Taste doesn’t necessarily help with multitasking, but we can’t talk about broadening awareness without mentioning taste. You might want to have certain tastes with certain courses or, before or after a course. Tasting is a multitasking sense in that, you need to pay attention to the balance and layers of the taste that is present. Is the vinegar bringing a lift at the back of the tongue, is the flavor up front or does it develop later? Furthermore when you are making a sauce or are tasting a dish, you want to be looking for certain combinations and flavors, an overall balance or spike. Whatever your end goal, make sure it tastes great and is something you want to stand behind.

         Sight is an obviously essential sense for many of us, and for those of us who don’t have this sense we have had to adapt through incredible obstacles. Sight is how we receive our first bits of information so often. Sight tells us the color of the cantaloupe is too green, the strawberries are perfectly red. Sight helps us grab our tool and to place it in the right spot. Sight helps us move around the kitchen freely and quickly. Sight helps us organize a list or a space for efficiency. Sight helps you multitask by allowing you to watch a roast cook over time, to notice the water has begun to boil, to see your fellow cook flip the filet that triggers your spinach pick up. Sight is very powerful, but once you get really good, you start to blur sight, like a road trip, where you’ve been driving and you’ve been seeing the road, but if you were asked to describe the last mile you might not have seen a thing. Like the sixth sense, you begin to cut with a sense of feel and intuition, like when you snap catch something you never saw falling. You begin to reach for your spoon baine out of muscle memory more than sight.

         A perfect segway into touch, the minute details our fingers can tell us, the power in our legs, the strength in our arms. Touch allows us to do things our eyes can’t see. Like a mechanic feeling the bolt around the frame, a cook knows the thickness they’re cutting off even when they can’t actually see. Touch tells you how done the meat is, or if the potatoes are done through. Touch coupled with experience becomes a direct tap to the sixth sense, a way to apply the theoretical mind’s eye with the real world present. Touch moves our bodies and aside from a few involuntary actions, keeps us alive. Touch allows us to multitask in the sense of literally stirring multiple pots, open or close doors with our legs when our hands are full, and as a variety of tools. Once muscle memory is set on a station or a dish pick-up, the cook begins to really dance. If they can get into a flow, a cook with an organized station and strong muscle memory will appear to cook faster, cleaner, more elegantly, than a cook who is not. Open your awareness to touch and begin to experience some of the best tools in creation.

         Embrace all your senses and utilize the power that lies within them. Take care of your body to keep your receptors receiving. Be sure to listen to what each sense is telling you in the moment. When multitasking try picking up one long task and one quick task. Start the long task and try to knock out a small task or two at the same time. Working your way up, you might find you are able to balance 3 to 4 prep tasks at a time. Generally, we think this is a good standard number of tasks, but depending on the situation you could probably manage as many as 6 items before things got a bit too wild.

Identifying Doughs and Batters

When it comes to baking, one of the most important skills you can have is knowing how wet or dry and what texture your dough should be. When we think of baking we think of exact measurements and sensitive products. But in reality, baking and doughs are almost as free form as cooking in a pan. Here are some things to consider when making various doughs and tips on how to make them successful.

         The most important thing to recognize is what texture and moisture you want from your dough. For an 80% hydrated Sourdough you expect a wet dough that will need a slap fold or a stretch fold. Where as for muffin batter you want something that is not able to hold a shape, barely mixed, and will need to be scooped. In general a dough starts to become a batter at around 90% hydration, where as a batter might be 150-4/500% water to flour. What is this percentage? In baking it is more accurate to measure by weight as impacted measuring cups hold varying amounts of the ingredient. So when building a recipe it’s common to use the weight of flour as 100% and measure everything else to that weight. For example a dough may need a hydration of 75% on warm days and 72% on rainy days. So per 100g of flour you would need 75-70g of water. The other ingredients can also have a percentage attached to them, particularly fats or flavors and leavening agents. This system helps to create a consistent product and allows for a chef to scale a dough up or down depending on the guest count. Generally a wetter dough will have larger air pockets and an irregular crumb. But once the dough becomes a batter the crumb may go back to being tight and uniform but will not usually develop gluten. Gluten development is kept to a minimum in most batters, in the case of crepes you do want some gluten so the crepes have bounce, but in a cake overworking will produce a dense or tight cake. Likewise, it’s important not to under knead a dough. Pastry dough for example, will be crispy and layered if underdeveloped, but it will be almost too light. You want some gluten to allow the dough to expand when cooked and to hold clean layers between the butter. With a biscuit dough, under developing is the name of the game. If you over mix a biscuit dough, you will get dense, chewy biscuits. Usually, dough can be handled on a lightly floured table, and kneaded until it is smooth and elastic. Ultimately nothing beats experience when understanding dough, make sure to practice and listen to your mix.  

         Believe it when we say, you can be as free form with baking as you can with the hot line. With some standard recipes to get you to the desired texture, or shape, you can make modifications all over the board. Whether changing the flour or substituting a yam puree for some of the water, a recipe is totally adaptable. Like the aforementioned ratios, every recipe can be broken down into percentages. But some percentages are present that we take for granted. Like: the percentage of protein in the flour, the percentage and type of fats used, moisture in the air, etc. If you want to substitute buckwheat for flour for a different and fun pasta dough, the ratio of flour to egg will be different and the kneading time changes dramatically. Likewise changing from bread flour to all purpose will give you a much softer bread with much less chew. Or adding butter in place of olive oil, the flavor and texture will be different and for instance if you add olive oil in place of butter, the flavor of olive oil might surprise you. And yes, even moisture in the air will have a profound effect on your dough. You may need to reduce the moisture in a dough on a rainy day as much as 15%. In the summer you might want to add water similarly, however most recipes won’t suffer on a hot day as much as on a wet one. Generally speaking though, you can add flavors at will, if you want to make chocolate bread add cocoa powder. How about a pumpkin puree to your cinnamon roll, why not! Just keep in mind the effects the flavors are going to have. Cocoa powder will replace a little of the flour, but not much, you may need to add some water. As for the pumpkin puree, it may not have too much of an effect in this form, you’ll likely bake longer, but if you wanted to fold pumpkin into a sweet bread, you will have to consider the water in the puree, etc. Likewise oven temperature, humidity, vessel, all of these will have a specific difference. Play with your food and enjoy what comes out, most of the time it’s edible at least!

         Doughs and batters make up a large percentage of the foods we eat. With a little practice you can be comfortable making your own breads and desserts. Remember, nothing replaces practice and hands on experience. Try to remember how wet or dry the dough was before it was baked, try adding more or less moisture, maybe more butter will make it better! A nice way to know how much you can modify each ingredient is to look at the amount in the recipe compared to the remaining ingredients. If the ingredient has a large percentage you can play with that one more than say salt, which is generally low by percentage and if you added 20 grams when the recipe asks for 5 you might have ruined your batch. Or you’re making a 4x batch. Whatever it is, use awareness and concentration when making new recipes until you become comfortable with the right moisture and texture. 

Knife Skills

When we think of the skills in a chef’s repertoire, few seem as impressive as knife skills. Chef’s cut at an incredible speed with impressive accuracy. Knife skills are an absolutely essential skill in any kitchen. Whether you’re cutting 20# of onions, or a clove of garlic, knife skills will be necessary.

         There are a few tips we have when it comes to cutting with a knife, predominately the chef’s knife, classically 8” and with a curve through much of the blade. A few rules first, always hold the knife down by your side when moving about the kitchen, making sure everyone knows you have something sharp. Never try to catch a falling knife, ever. Don’t cut on metal, there may be a few situations where you might feel comfortable doing so, but we don’t know many. When it comes to your cutting board, always place a damp towel under the board to prevent it from sliding around under you. We will cover knife sharpening another time, but do be sure your knife is sharp, it will make a big difference and is just safe. When you hold your knife, your thumb and pointer finger will be the main points of contact. You want to pinch the blade above the handle firmly but not with a death grip. Your remaining fingers wrap around the handle and for the most part, the blade is moving after your wrist, meanwhile your hand holds the blade with however much pressure is necessary. Generally, you don’t want to put a lot of pressure behind the blade as force is not often how a knife works best. Lastly, the hand holding the ingredients has a shape we call The Claw! If you will, make your non-dominant hand into a claw please. It should look something like “The Thing” walking on a table. Your fingertips are on the ingredient with enough force to hold the produce in place. Your Middle finger is the main point of contact for the blade, then on either side, your pointer and ring finger are slightly behind your middle. Lastly your pinky and thumb hold the sides of the ingredient firmly and behind the other fingers. The pinky and thumb will remain in place as you move down the ingredient, your claw fingers will shrink back as you move down. The side of the blade will ride along your first knuckles as you slice, lifting just enough to come over the ingredient before the next cut. Once you get this flow down you will cut much faster and with confidence as your fingers remain safe.

         Now that we are clear for take-off, the best way to cut with a blade is to pull or push it across the ingredient intended to cut. You do also need to apply downward pressure, but do not push down through ingredients. Many people cut this way, deftly pressing a usually dull blade through ingredients. If you ever look at your prep and wonder why your many cuts are chained together, or why you feel like you’re putting a lot of pressure into your cuts, you might not be moving your blade back and forth correctly. In sushi the chef draws a long and crazy sharp blade across a fish filet with minimal pressure to ensure a clean and smooth cut. Everything you cut will have this principle, you want to cut through most ingredients in one swoop without smashing them. A classic ingredient that is contrary is slicing bread. Because of bread’s delicate crumb and airy texture, you use a saw-like blade to saw back and forth with little pressure to achieve a nice even cut. That being said, there are also times when you want to push through an ingredient. When cutting a butternut squash or other hard squashes for that matter, there are times when halving them that you may need to rock the blade back and forth to get through the dense vegetable. Instead of rocking through the squash though, get the blade on track and gently rock the squash under the blade while you apply pressure. This will keep you from sliding on the board in the squash and allows for less pressure to be applied. So, moving in a direction across your food, forward or backward, is how we will try to cut.

         There are two common ways of cutting, push cutting, and rocking. The classic French blade we referred to earlier has that curve to assist in rocking. While many Japanese knives have a flatter profile that works well with push cutting. Likely you’ll find you use both depending on the situation, or knife. The rock technique can be very fast and is great for mincing, chiffonade, and lower profile ingredients. The push cut technique is great for larger items, julienne, and taller produce. Even if you start in a push cut you might end up riding the knife’s profile to a rock. Either way, you’ll usually end the cut before you run out of blade. Mincing and chopping is a time when you’ll just rock back and forth, or lift up and down. It can still be beneficial to move the blade across the ingredients but it is trickier. In the case of rocking it’s a little easier to push the blade while you mince. Play with each technique and see which fits the produce, knife, or you, best.

         Ultimately time behind the blade is the true teacher. Make yourself or someone you love something that uses lots of knife cuts. Do be careful though! Knives are beautiful and once they become your best friend in the kitchen you might play around with different steel mixtures and grinds. It can become quite a collection, but they also make great gifts! Used or not! Stay sharp squids!