Your Steak Gets Way More Salt Than You Think
The Maillard reaction that creates that delicious caramelized crust on steaks is enhanced and accelerated by a dry surface – best achieved with salt. You’ll need to apply a tiny bit of olive oil to the meat first, not for flavor but just for the salt to adhere to. Then sprinkle liberally and add some more. Think about what you see at fancy steakhouses: those massive salt crystals cascading down from several feet above the meat.
Many years ago, a profile of the great American chef Thomas Keller described his approach to seasoning meat from a height for even distribution. The idea being that any extra distance between your salt-distributing hand and its target will only encourage more even distribution. You may forgo the ladder, but keep the idea in mind and never get too close to what you are salting. Professional chefs understand that salt isn’t just seasoning – it’s a crucial element that transforms texture and creates the foundation for incredible flavor development.
That Butter Mountain Is Real
Restaurants typically use more butter on their dishes than you do at home. Chefs also cook many of their selections in butter instead of vegetable or olive oil. Considering how more butter equals more yummy flavor, this just makes sense. After all, they want you to keep coming back for more, right?
The idea that restaurants use a ton of butter is not necessarily true all around, but there is one place where line cooks use butter that home cooks might not. When finishing a sauce, cooks may add small cubes of chilled butter to the hot sauce and slowly swirl it in. This technique – called mounting – gives the sauce a velvety texture and glossy shine and helps mellow out strong flavors. The next time you make a sauce, try adding two tablespoons of chilled butter at the last moment to take it to the next level. It’s like the secret handshake of professional cooking.
Most Food Is Prepped Hours Before You Order
In order to get your food to you as quickly as possible, most of the dishes are prepped in advance and reheated to order. But, that doesn’t mean that you’re getting worse-quality food. In fact, preparing the food in advance actually gives the flavors a chance to mingle, making it even better. This isn’t corner-cutting – it’s smart kitchen management.
Restaurants run on precision timing, not made-to-order chaos. That beautiful risotto? The rice was partially cooked hours ago. Those perfectly glazed vegetables? They were blanched this morning and finished when your order hit the kitchen. Professional chefs have mastered the art of prep work that actually enhances flavor rather than compromising it.
Your Pan Needs to Be Screaming Hot
Part of the reason your food tastes so good is because restaurant cooks use screaming-hot pans. It’s the best way to get beautiful sear on a steak or caramelize vegetables before finishing them in the oven. From time to time, a pan gets a little too hot and catches on fire! In case you’re wondering, covering it with salt is the best way to extinguish it quickly.
A lot of restaurants store their pans in a hot oven during service so they’re piping-hot when needed. That, on top of how much stronger restaurant burners are, makes for an intense heat than most consumer ranges cannot achieve. To mimic the heat, use a heavy cast-iron skillet and let it warm up on high heat for at least a few minutes before using it. This will feel like a long time, but it will help achieve that perfectly dark sear you get at restaurants. If your smoke alarm isn’t going off, you’re probably not cooking hot enough!
Those Perfect Eggs Have an Age Secret
There are a ton of myths about poached eggs and a million strategies for peeling hard-boiled eggs. The best way to pull off either dish is to select the right egg. As eggs age, the whites loosen up, releasing their firm grip around the yolk. That’s good for peeling hard-boiled eggs but bad for making poached eggs, which need to hold their shape. Fresh eggs will help your Benedict come together lickity-split.
Professional chefs know their egg suppliers and understand exactly how fresh their eggs are on any given day. They’re not just cracking whatever’s in the walk-in cooler. The difference between a perfect poached egg and a stringy mess floating in your water often comes down to this one detail that home cooks rarely consider.
Everything Gets Seasoned in Layers
In restaurants, cooks are instructed to season a dish during every step of the cooking process – from the first stages of sweating the onions, to the final straining of the sauce. This makes sure your finished dish is layered and perfectly seasoned in every bite. It’s not about dumping salt at the end and hoping for the best.
Part of the seasoning process involves tasting the dish during each step. The first few steps of cooking will need the most attention, but once you begin layering flavors, you might not need as much salt at the end. Before seasoning, always taste your food – no matter what step of the cooking process you’re at – and assess how much (or how little) salt is needed. Think of it like building a house – you need a strong foundation at every level, not just a fancy roof.
Those Fluffy Omelets Have a Sneaky Ingredient
For a fluffy souffle-style omelet, a popular pancake chain adds a bit of pancake batter, which adds some sweetness, moisture and extra fluffiness. If you’d like to try out this omelet yourself, here’s the ratio: It’s about 2 tablespoons of pancake batter for every 3 eggs. This isn’t cheating – it’s ingenious problem-solving.
Restaurant chefs constantly think outside the box to achieve textures and flavors that seem impossible. That impossibly light omelet you can never recreate at home? It’s not just technique – it’s a completely different ingredient approach. Professional kitchens are filled with these kinds of creative shortcuts that would never occur to home cooks.
Your Seafood at Non-Seafood Places Is Sketchy
At a steakhouse, seafood dishes are often less popular than the main specialty, so the fish may sit in the kitchen longer, waiting to be ordered. The longer it sits, the more bacteria can grow. This is basic restaurant math that diners never consider.
At a steakhouse, seafood dishes are often less popular than the main specialty, so the fish may sit in the kitchen longer, waiting to be ordered. The longer it sits, the more bacteria can grow. At a (hopefully popular) seafood restaurant, most people order fish dishes, and with that high turnover rate, the fish isn’t sitting around for long between when it’s delivered and when it’s cooked. Smart diners order what the restaurant does best, not what looks appealing on a menu filled with everything.
That Perfect Pasta Water Is Liquid Gold
If you’ve ever wondered why pasta at some of the best Italian restaurants in America always seems more decadent than the stuff you make at home, the answer is very simple: pasta water. When you cook pasta, some of the starch stays behind in the water after the pasta is strained. Most restaurants finish their noodles by adding a small ladleful of starchy pasta water to the pan, and this helps to bridge the gap between pasta and sauce.
Every Italian restaurant worth its salt has a container of pasta water sitting next to the stove throughout service. It’s the secret ingredient that makes sauces cling properly and creates that glossy, restaurant-quality finish. Home cooks drain their pasta and dump this liquid gold straight down the drain, then wonder why their sauce slides right off the noodles.
Most Chefs Never Want to Eat Their Own Food
When I’m working full-time in restaurants, I don’t really want to spend a lot of time in the kitchen at home, but I still want to eat comforting and simple food that’s good for me. The great irony of being a chef is that we are surrounded by food all the time but often don’t have time to eat ourselves, with the exception of family meals. Family meals are usually comfort food, and while grilled cheese and fried rice will feed a group of cooks enough energy to get through the night, I still like to get my greens in somehow.
After spending twelve hours tasting, adjusting, and perfecting dishes for customers, the last thing most chefs want is elaborate food at home. They crave simplicity and convenience just like everyone else, which explains why so many renowned chefs have surprisingly basic home cooking habits. The magic happens at work – home is for recovery.
