I can cook basic, everyday dishes, but until recently I never really thought about cooking in a structured or technical way.
A few weeks ago I started watching Culinary Class Wars on Netflix, and that sparked a deeper interest in cooking. It also reminded me of moments in my life where I ate dishes in restaurants, sometimes even high end ones, that genuinely blew me away.
Those dishes created a strong emotional reaction, they made me smile, got me excited, and I just wanted more.
What’s the reason behind that? And is it possible to recreate this feeling with everyday dishes, without using special or hard to find ingredients?
I would recommend reading Salt,Fat, Acid and Heat! It really explains the science behind cooking and how simple steps can transform the flavors
The author does an amazing job getting you into the mindset of thinking about food. The stories she shares about how she learned to cook are always great.
Seconded. I was a reasonably good cook before reading it, in that I could doctor a recipe to make it better. But now, I'm a really good intuitive cook: I can make a great meal with whatever I have on hand, no recipe needed.
I liked cooking before, but I enjoy it so much more now.
Came here to say this! It changed the way I think about cooking and balancing my dishes.
In my experience fantastic cooking is the accumulation of countless small steps. This applies to the food, of course, but also the entire dining experience.
Why is the restaurant better? Because you didn’t have to make the food. Literally. The first time you smell it, see it, taste it is when it’s at the perfect moment for presentation. Also, the ambiance of a restaurant is very likely much nicer than your kitchen. God knows my kitchen is a mess.
Then of course you have everything about the actual preparation of the food. They use quality ingredients. They use a lot of salt and butter. They cook in layers. They reduce the sauce. They chop everything precisely. You have a team of 2-3 guys making your meal—a meal they’d make hundreds of times a week—and of course it’s going to taste great.
From the perspective of a home cook you need to think mindfully about how your recipe is constructed and how to squeeze out extra flavor. You need to put in that extra work at EVERY small step.
Sear the meat. Use kosher salt. Grind fresh pepper. Bloom your spices. Get fresh herbs. Use a dutch oven and a thermometer for temperature control. Splurge on a local farm-raised chicken. Buy the expensive butter. Use heavy cream instead of half-and-half. Marinade for the recommended time. Use fresh garlic. Be ready to skim the fat from your soup and be prepared to reduce that sauce instead of just eating it. Fresh parsley is no longer optional.
Everything adds up. If every single one of those items was 1% of extra effort that you didn’t bother with, then you lost 12% of flavor right there. As an example.
Make sure the recipe you use is actually good.
The typical home cook experience is the exact opposite of this—put in 20% of the effort to get 80% of the value because making a meal at 6PM on a Monday is fucking messy and tiring.
There isn’t really a silver bullet solution. You just have to find some solid chefs to follow, with solid recipes, and internalize the small techniques that elevate everyday cooking. I’ve been a home cook taking it seriously for about three years now. It took two years to “get it” and have confidence in the discipline.
Perhaps the most immediate simple thing you can do is keep a clean dining table and learn some simple plating techniques. That really does elevate the experience. Your partner will certainly appreciate it, at least.
This is so much truth. I realize with every recipe I read online that they list the bare minimum ingredients and steps most of the time. Fresh garlic is key, but also, many recipes for eg soup or instant pot anything just say “add ingredients”, they don’t say saute the onions and garlic with love before adding them. Truly sear the meat, don’t just cook it till it’s gray. Taste at every addition and add a bit of salt every time you add an ingredient. Don’t over season if it’s going to reduce at all during cooking. As others mentioned, read cookbooks like salt fat acid heat that go into theory more than just following recipes, as you will learn a lot more about how to make every meal better if you understand the science and philosophy underneath it, rather than just following the steps. Bring every technique you’ve ever learned into every recipe you cook. And eventually eating out loses its charm a bit because the food you make at home is just as magical. (I still love going out for the experience!! Even though the food is about the same, it’s super nice to have someone else cooking for you and topping up your drinks)
The enormous irony of being a decent cook is that I only want to go out to eat greasy, fried food, LMAO. I cannot make fried chicken at home and I am craving it.
This is a great articulation of something I think about a lot. I seriously feel like 90% of the execution of a dish is in technique that you gather through practice and experimentation.
There's no way to capture all the little tips and techniques you gather through years of trying stuff out and deciding what to keep or drop. I can say I'm following this recipe, but you better believe I'm always doing little stuff I've learned over the years to round it out.
I remember asking some restaurants how they make something and getting an ingredient list or whatever, but it seriously all comes down to practice. And when you're making the same thing dozens of times per night for years it's just not a thing you can capture in a blog post.
In restaurants, it often boils down to disgraceful amounts of oil/fat.
Yeah, sure, we use more salt and fat in restaurants. But it also is hey we make this dish 50 times a night so it's down to a science. I hate this "restaurants use more salt and fat so of course it's better" trend, like yeah that's true, but it's also people trained by a head chef to recreate this specific dish over and over so yeah it's gonna be better than whatever Becky whips up at home that she cooks once every two months. Also very small things like the brightness of the broccolini while you're blanching it, the shimmering of the oil to sense the temp, feeling a protein to know how dense it is, hearing the changes in a sizzle from "cooking" to "gonna burn soon", doing things over and over until they become muscle memory... It's kinda fucking crazy to see people be like "add more salt and fat and your cooking will taste like a restaurant!" There's so much more that goes into it.
You leave Becky out of this.
You're right, sorry Becky! I meant Stacy 😝
No wonder that’s a factor too, but on the other hand, we have plenty of restaurants where people do the same sh 50 times per night and it remains mediocre.
We didn’t mention skill and practice because that’s an obvious requirement, but you are right.
My answer was gonna be “salt and fat.”
And sometimes a little more acid, like lemon or vinegar.
And of course the proper application of heat
My secret is love. And since I'm fat, my love is fat.
And acid
And high heat
And salt. (And acid)
And MSG.
I think there are two extremes to restaurant food that makes people love it.
On one side, you have the heavily salted, heavily fat dishes with more fat and salt than you'd use in a week if you're cooking at home.
On the other hand, you have the really fresh ingredients that are very simply prepared, where the taste of the main ingredient is 90+% of the dish. Most of my favorite meals fall into this category. Fresh oysters on a French pier, lobster rolls in Maine, the simplest poached shrimp dipped in garlicky soy sauce in Hainan.
Or tomato sandwiches made from tomatoes that I grew myself. Dishes made with the freshest ingredients are in a world of their own.
Like you said, you never really thought about cooking in a structured or technical way. There are people that dedicate a lot of time to getting better at cooking, both professionals and home cooks.
Add together a bunch of little technical improvements that have been learned over time, and you get some pretty good food. There’s not one secret, it’s thousands of bits of knowledge that can improve your cooking. Even with the most basic ingredients.
It sounds so basic, but it's just that you're seasoning at every single step.
Maybe it's just a little bit of extra salt in stage one. Maybe It's just a bit of basil in stage two. Maybe you need a fresh crack of black pepper in stage three. Perhaps it's some MSG to really seal the deal.
Seasoning as you go is probably the most fun part of the process.
Six rules make you good cook:
Make your own stock. Infuse and reduce as needed.
Makes sauces from scratch. Use stock as needed.
Strain sauces as needed.
Use a temperature probe for everything you can.
Don’t under salt or under season.
Cut everything to the right size consistently. Don’t be afraid to square things off to get equal sized cuts and use the trimmings for rule 1.
It’s not just salt and fat and it’s not just a restaurant kitchen. If you’ve ever been lucky enough to have a friend who is a great home cook you know this. Some people just have a fantastic instinct for exactly the right way to apply heat to an ingredient, exactly the right mix of flavors to use, etc. It’s a gift
Everyone is discussing the technical way of achieving restaurant dishes, but you're specifically describing an experience related to eating.
It's like a mix of discovering something new and unique, The magic of a perfectly balanced flavor/texture combination, The delight of being unexpectedly surprised by what your senses are experiencing, and the ambiance/company of people you're with, and a bit of nostalgia that makes an overall impact to the meal.
Much of this magic is something you can only realistically once per dish. It's like re-hearing a really good joke. Once you experience it and have it again, suddenly it's not as good as the first time because you know what to expect.
So say you absolutely nail a perfect steak that absolutely blows your mind. The next time you make it you're going to try and chase that high and start to become super critical of it. I used too much salt this time. the cut was too fatty compared to the last time. The pan wasn't hot enough. Etc.
It then reaches a point where you may even have a hard time enjoying that dish at restaurants because it's not special anymore. You will never feel good about ordering a steak at a restaurant because you know you can have better at home or steak has become too ordinary for you.
All this to say that after a while, you will impart that mind blowing experience on others with your cooking, and that will be the new high to chase. Just don't be disappointed that you aren't as excited about your own food as the first time you had it.
Great explanation. I've made great food, I've eaten great food, and have also chased that high. Turns out that many times it came out so wonderful was because it was NOT a replication of last time (not for lack of trying sometimes lol). I'd like to add on top of this, though, is having the food made for you, no dishes to clean up, while simply waiting and anticipating automatically elevates the flavor in my opinion. My partner threw me together a grilled cheese sandwich and heated up a can of soup for me last night (soup was my request, I'm usually making homemade but I'm not feeling well), and that grilled cheese was absolutely amazing to me, and the soup was actually decent (I can't stand canned soup most of the time anymore).
Just put a splash of fish sauce and a spoon of miso in whatever you're making, and never tell anyone. Adjust from there.
Butter, lots and lots of butter. Oh, and cream.
Find a recipe that seems simple and concentrate on doing it again and again, tweaking it a little each time to try to make it even better, or to assess what might have gone wrong. Eventually, it will have become your own, and you are able to incorporate a new ingredient or flavoring without throwing things off balance.
Please do not make the mistake of thinking something "fancier" is going to give a more delicious or impressive result.
As Silvanus recommends, pay attention to each ingredient, and each sub step, as if each were the most important thing. Because each step and each ingredient IS the most important thing. If a dish has been prepared that way, it will sing.
I agree that the book "salt fat acid heat " is good for training your palate to ,at the very least, be able to empirically test to find out "What is this dish missing?".
Excellent ingredients are key. That does not have to mean that they're expensive.
When you're considering a cookbook (which your local library probably has quite a few of), check to see if they thank a recipe tester in the acknowledgments, or whether a recipe is even listed directly along with the author, the editor, illustrators etc.
A recipe tester is someone whose job is to follow the recipe exactly as written - - before the recipe is published. It is often the case that the person who wrote the recipe failed to communicate precisely what they meant. The recipe tester catches this, early enough that the recipe can be rewritten, so books that make use of this expertise will always be more reliable.
Enjoy!
Good strong stock, butter, and salt.
Msg
its usually butter.
I almost never eat out anymore because I find I can make (most) things pretty well at home! One step for me upping my cooking game was having the spices I need on hand. It's so nice not having to substitute something and it makes dinner that much easier because I don't need to run to the store for a spice.
I think the second thing I did was always include a garnish or two. Fresh herbs, a squeeze of lemon or lime, finishing salt or a sauce topper is key. I don't think it needs to be homemade either. My easy go-to's are kewpie Mayo for some Japanese dishes, Barnacle hot sauce I got addicted to in Alaska, zough I bought from a farmers market (easy to make too) and a cilantro lime sauce I bought somewhere.
The real unsung hero in flavour is acid. Almost every dish can benefit from some tang. Usually it’s something basic like lemon juice, but white wine does wonders for a rich sauce, red wine in tomato sauce, small dash of vinegar in soups, etc. Even the richest, most decadent courses at a restaurant usually have something to cut through the oil and fat. It is tricky to balance, though — if you have too much acidity the dish is basically ruined
The best, most memorable meals Ive ever eaten are the combo of great food shared between great people. I've eaten delicious food with terrible people and I hated it, despite the food itself being delicious.
Food alone won't spark that "this is a good memory now" for me anymore. It has to be in a context where I'm set up to maximally enjoy the overall experience.
Msg
Fond
more salt more fat
I've never had this response to any restaurant offering.😢 Might be my fault for usually ordering things that I can make well, but I know what I like.🤷 I've had plenty of good dishes. Some even great. But nothing mind blowing.
Making "intentional" food creates a bond between your palate and your ability--with repetition you'll create a sense of pride in being able to change the way you perceive food and perhaps those you cook for.
On a slightly different note, sometimes food evokes/awakens feelings of nostalgia which is super specific and strong in nature. If you haven't watched Ratatouille, def give that a go.
Read Gastrophysics by Charles Spence. There's far more sensory input into how we appreciate food than most people realise- everything from the comfort of the chairs, weight of the silverware, colour of the plates, ambient noise levels, music, even how scenic the drive there is. Why we eat more or less depending on how many people we dine with, why do people order so much tomato juice on planes, etc.
Not to mention that fact that we eat with our eyes first, nose second and mouth a distant third.