Become a Better Cook

A Culinarian's Relationship to Food

Why do you cook? Is it to feed people healthy and fun food? Is it for the art, the chemistry, or do you just like making sauces? Whatever draws a cook to cook, it is imperative that they have a strong relationship with food. If a cook isn’t eating breakfast, or misses lunch to push through prep, they need to restructure their time allocation. Food is fuel, nutrients, and the basic building blocks of every cell in your body. A cook who doesn’t eat well, doesn’t think well. We won’t touch on prep and organization here but all pros schedule time to relax and take care of themselves. 

We hear it all the time, “I cook for a living, the last thing I want to do in my free time is cook.” Maybe you shouldn’t be cooking for money. To be a Culinarian is to be in love with the craft and dance that is food service. Now we don’t mean you need to cook your every meal. But if you regularly visit the Mc D’s by your house on the way home from work each night, you need to stop. There are much better options out there, and honestly if you have a few basics at home you can rip out a meal in 30 minutes or less. If you’re a new cook and it takes you an hour to cook a meal for one, good, sounds like you could use the practice. 😉 But honestly, most of us can improve the quality of food we eat. Farmers markets are all around you and cooking for yourself is the cheapest way to eat by far. Save your going out money for that epic tasting menu or to scope out the competition. Furthermore, we always say, “A meal cooked for you is the best meal.” Have a loved one or friend make you a meal once a week to give you a break, and try your best to eat veggies that are just a day or two out of the ground whenever you can. Veggies lose an estimated 30% of their nutrients in the first 3 days of harvest. Eating higher quality foods will fuel you better, and with better fuel you will perform better. Give it a shot and make sure to eat your veggies, you’re going to like the way you feel, we guarantee it!

Maybe you love making beautiful food with lots of exciting techniques. The art and design of a plated dish is one of the most fun and dynamic food service aspects, and one that is present in all great kitchens. Being that chemistry is involved, food can do all kinds of things you might not expect, and while you can give your customers a protein that makes lemons taste sweet, should you? Remember that food service on a whole is the ambiance, the service, the drink, and the food. While we can make some wild and fun dishes, keep in mind how they work together in a menu. Remember your clientele and what their expectations are, then use food science in ways that will push them enough, but not out the door. And lastly, when it comes to a cool tuile, or a fancy half liquid gel, remember that taste is the winner on all counts when it comes to enjoying a dish. Never sacrifice flavor and taste for flair.

In the end, a culinarian must enjoy the act of preparing food consciously and with love. They must enjoy feeding this wholesome and flavorful food to guests. Then, the culinarian, must have a good sense of experience and how to give that to the guest. The guest experience is often thought of as the front of house’s responsibility, the chef of many great restaurants is very much concerned with guest experience. While we may not get to interact with the guest in a direct manner often, we may have control over the ambiance, the flow of the menu, the construction and edibility of the dishes. And when it’s all said and done, the chef is often the spirit of the restaurant. Many of the greatest restaurants start as one person’s vision, however, the best of the best share this vision and work with reality to create something that is truly unique and entertaining. No one person can feed 30 people a 12 course menu day after day within reason. We need preppers, dishies, line cooks, sous, managers, somms, servers, hosts, and chefs. A true culinarian is a leader, a follower, a problem solver, and a giver of health, spiritually and physically. “Cooking is like love- it should be entered into with abandon or not at all.” Harriet Van Horne.

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!

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 and root of all onions, then halve them all, then peel them all. Or dicing potatoes would look like this, peel all potatoes, plank 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 stays down, 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. Systematic destruction of 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 fresh 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 it’s 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 segue 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 cooked 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. Get wild Squids!