Cooking with fresh ingredients is the first step to cooking like a chef.
You don't have to spend years in culinary school to learn cook like a professional chef. Practice fundamental culinary techniques and knife skills, then cook with the confidence of a seasoned kitchen veteran. There is a universal premise that chefs follow: Use fresh ingredients and prepare recipes from scratch, whenever possible. Celebrity Chef, Rocco DiSpirito says, "It is important to experiment and endlessly seek the best possible flavors when preparing food. That means not being afraid to experiment with various ingredients." Add this to my Recipe Box.
Mise en Place
There is a certain rhythm and cadence --- a work flow --- in the professional kitchen, that begins with mise en place, a french term for "everything in place." A chef gathers, preps and stages ingredients in advance. To cook like a chef, bring ingredients to your work area and prepare them so they are ready to incorporate into the recipe right when you need them. Stage the ingredients near you, in the order they are listed in the recipe. Have tools and utensils cleaned and assembled, ready to go.
Knife Skills --- Protein
To cut meat, poultry and fish, use a good quality, sharp, well-balanced knife. Learn to trim, bone and butterfly raw meat and poultry. Practice carving, cutting and slicing cooked meat. Cooked meat is most tender when you slice it against the natural grain of the cut. Use your knife to fillet fish or french-cut a rib.
Knife Skills --- Vegetables
Prepare vegetables with a variety of knife cuts, depending on the cooking time required in the recipe. Rough-cut or chop vegetables when size doesn't matter. Dice vegetables into many different cube-shaped sizes depending on your recipe. Cut them on a bias or diagonal when high-heat is needed. Use a thin julienne or matchstick cut for garnishes or when a fast cook time is required. Chiffonade is a delicate cut that looks like threads and is used in salads and as garnish. Mincing, the finest cut of all, is used for herbs, shallots, onions and garlic.
Mother Sauces
All sauces are derived from the five base sauces, known as the mother sauces. Bechamel sauce has a milk or cream base and is thickened with white roux. Bechamel complements poultry, fish and pasta. Veloute is a stock-based white sauce that is thickened with a blonde roux. Veloute goes well with veal and vegetables. Espagnole, or brown sauce, is classically served with roast duck, lamb and veal. It is a base sauce for demi-glace and bordelaise and is thickened with a brown roux. Hollandaise is made with egg yolks and clarified butter. It's most popular as the sauce for eggs benedict and over asparagus. Sauce Tomat relies on a tomato base and has many uses in contemporary Italian cooking.
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