Secret Food Hacks I Learned In Restaurants

why does restaurant food tend to taste better than the food that we cook and or eat at home in a way it's kind of become an industry kept secret cuz nobody really wants to say it but let's be real two things matter to a restaurant speed and quality as a result kitchens all over the world have developed cheat codes in their cooking game to elevate taste texture speed efficiency and these are hacks that normal people would never know about without years of cooking experience so today I'm going to be giving away all of the top

secrets that I know and some of my favorite Austin restaurants will show you how they utilize these Secrets now water restaurants Meats taste so good one thing that will help you is a short cure whenever you season something and cook it the salt is really only on the exterior of it but if you season it ahead of time it allows the salt to penetrate into the flesh draw some moisture and add a little bit of salt to the interior of the protein this also works with vegetables I'm going to show you a simple one you

take any protein that you normally would cook this works really well with chicken these are bone in skin on chicken thighs all you need to do put them down on a tray season them generously maybe a little more than you would with salt you can also add pepper you can also add spices but I would recommend just sticking to Salt then let them sit on a wire rack completely exposed in your fridge overnight and then the next day cook them however you like you want to grill them you want to roast them you want to

sear them do that and you'll notice you might just get the crispiest skin and most flavorful chicken you've ever cooked at Sate they cure 500 lb of brisket with salt every week for their famous sweat Aro tacos later in this video we'll see another secret hack that they use to take it from cured to Tender shredded meat and then of course there are longer cures where you would then add curing agents like nitrites nitrates to make bacon or Smoked Meats that would require measuring because some of those curing agents can kill you is that nice

big problem your flavors don't pop like restaurants do it starts with two very basic things the number one thing is always season your food to the maximum with salt this is a non-negotiable any restaurant that unders salts anything that sh is not going to go beyond the pass if it's a good restaurant but the real secret here is once you've seasoned your food properly the biggest thing that restaurants do to make their flavors pop is utilize acid lime juice lemon juice vinegar I think a perfect example is with something simple like a vegetable these shashido

peppers are being lightly grilled little bit of char cooked through and at this point you would season it with salt maybe a little bit of spices like togarashi but here's the kicker a little bit of acid we've got lime juice that we're adding to these you can do lemon juice you can do a little bit of vinegar it seems so insignificant like it's not going to do anything this is going to go from basic salted vegetables to all of a sudden it's like oh that's nice I get a little pop of tartness I want to

go back for another bite in a restaurant this is a very common thing to do anytime that there's like a vegetable side it's usually going to be dressed with salt olive oil lemon juice or some form of acid to add some level of dynamic quality that's exactly what Estee and Austin Texas does with their ciche they dress their Pomano or Snapper with salt and fresh lime juice they also add some other things like a splash of ice water for balance carrot pikayo more salt and more lime then it's plated nicely with avocado cilantro and chili

oil but the key differentiator is the acid and at emmer and Rye they use lemon juice to balance the fat of their beef belly Ragu and fermented tomato water which has more of an acidic quality to add to their take on a ccho Pepe pyn is going to come in and taste test two of these one with acid one without acid first one by far bright acidity goes well with like the subtle heat of the shashido I feel like it makes the togarashi and salt come out more amplifies everything I'm telling you this is what

they do moving on techniques exist to make things happen back in the day we would take real long processes to make great sauage but nowadays we have science and we have hydrocolloids it's a scary word but I promise you it's not scary it's literally just a nice magical powder not the illegal kind this is utilized through restaurants all over the world a hydrocol can be many things if it's a emulsifier it will stay emulsifier if it's a thickener it will stay thicken but I just want to focus on one as an example and that is

Zang gum because anyone can buy it most grocery stores sell it you can get it on Amazon really easily so maybe you don't want to add a lot of fat to a sauce but you want it to be thicker or you want it to be emulsified like let's say a hot sauce with have my fermented Fresno hot sauce recipe you can get that recipe the link in the description but if you just add a tiny little bit of xanthan gum when you're blending it will never separate in the fridge you will never have to shake

it when you use it it will always be emulsified and look nice with zero fat zero calories and that's just one hydrocol Aid do your research and look at the rest moving on why do raw fruits and vegetables for some reason somehow taste better at like a nice restaurant sure you can pickle it but the problem is that usually requires heat and it also requires time what if you need it quickly what if you want a different kind of flavor that you can't really achieve through pickling that's where compression comes in you take a pickling

liquid and you combine that with a vegetable or fruit in this case I have a cucumber sliced and then I added to a vacuum sealer vacuum seal it and that's it instantaneously we have pickled cucumbers but it can be pickled with anything they'll retain a much better Crunch and they get a cool looking translucent look they do something similar with the squash at emmer and Rye it gets quotation mark pickled overnight by utilizing the vacuum sealer with vinegar sugar and aromatics and it is the act of compression that really helps cut the richness of the

smoked lamb pigs head Carnitas and at essay they also use compression but for something totally different instead of pickling they use it to ferment chilies in a vacuum sealer for their fermented hot sauce then the bag just puffs up when it's ready to be used and the chilies are blended with sugar garlic and white vinegar strained a few times and then served with fresh shucked oysters Minette and a dark salsa what about sweet fruits like pineapple strawberri or in this case water what if it's not perfectly in season or you maybe want it to be

sweeter you can literally compress the pineapple watermelon whatever with its own fruit juice to give it more of its own additional flavor big brain thoughts unripe fruit compress it with its own juice or compress it with a simple syrup and it's going to taste like the greatest bite of fruit you've ever had how do restaurants make everything taste exactly the same every time some would say this doesn't apply to everyone I think it actually is the most helpful tool you can have this will work every time because you're going to use exact measure ments every

time you cook anything this is useful in restaurants because it standardizes recipes this is how you can rotate in different line Cooks different chefs and the recipe still tastes the same it's not just a recipe it's an exact recipe down to the gram and in ever and Ry that exactness comes in handy for their 72-hour fermented heirloom grain sourdough they make 18 per day every weekend Precision is key at Ramen Del bario 2 though all the salt flavor for their carnus tonkotsu shoyu Ramen comes from the carefully measured shoyou tare it's so potent that the

they use exactly only 1 oz or 28 G of té along with lard and tootu broth which flavors the whole bowl of ramen perfectly every time for example in this edamame sauuce we have exactly 5 G of tha chili 25 G of garlic 25 G of shallots that's all going to go in a pan we have a total of 100 G of oil we're just going to add a tiny bit of that cook the vegetables then we're going to add 150 g of AME 25 G of mirin 25 G of vinegar 50 g of shirashi

and let that cook down while that's cooking we're going to put 70 G of blistered jalapenos exactly in the blender you don't want to be too spicy right you put the same amount of jalapeno it's going to be exactly the same spicy then everything else goes in there blend till smooth and emulsify with the rest of your 100 G of vegetable oil you've used all the ingredients you measured out and the product will be the same every time you're making dinner for a group of friends and you decided hey I'm going to cook 15 steaks

or 15 chicken breasts but you got to cook them all perfectly how are you going to do that how do restaurants do it sui we all know this we've all heard it but I want to clarify something this also applies to things outside of steak and chicken breast it also applies to vegetables it applies to eggs it applies to many things and the best part is you can do this days in advance so you get it to the perfect cooked temperature and then all you have to do is take it out put it in the

fridge and sear it when you're ready to sear it Emer and ride takes Sid next level with their Texas wagu bavet steak that gets seared and then rested in a beef fat bath utilizing a soused circulator at 52 C or 125 fhe for about 20 minutes keeping the beef moist perfectly cooked and ready to serve now at Ramen delario the SED octopus for their grilled octopus Taco first it gets blanched to curl the tentacles and then broken down before being sealed in in an aiot marinade and soued for 5 hours at around 74 C or

165 F this ensures that after it's grilled it's going to be super tender and perfectly cooked every time SED has a special place in my heart in the world of par cooking how do restaurants cook fried foods so fast but at home takes a long time and it's not as crispy the answer is par frying especially when it comes to big things that need to be fried like fried chicken where it can take sometimes 15 minutes to fry like a whole chicken leg or chicken quarter it's very basic it could be any type of breading

you want Korean style in this case we have a TKO three tier breading system you're going to bread your chicken or whatever it is that you're breading and then you're going to drop it in much lower temperature oil than usual around 300 to 320° Fahrenheit and you're just going to slowly let that cook just until the internals are cooked through and it starts to form a crust you take it out you drain it and you can pop this in the fridge you can leave this in the fridge for up to 4 days and then when

it comes time to actually serve and cook for people all you got to do is take that same oil clean it this time you're going to heat it up to 350 or 375 F depending on what kind of heat you need and you're going to drop in it again you can do it straight from the fridge that's totally fine until it is golden brown and hot throughout because guess what it's already fully cooked on the inside you just got to get it crispy and brown on the outside which only takes one to 3 minutes maximum

you just saved yourself a buttload of time and by the way that second fry is going to make it way crispier I haven't even picked this up and you can hear it how do you add intensity of flavor and an incredible texture to everything that you make without adding a lot of ingredients there's an old school way that's still Ed today and it's called coning coning is a cooking technique this applies to anything you can imagine aliums like garlic and onion High senu Meats like beef cheek short rib duck legs chicken thighs anything you can

cook for relatively long time or slowly is going to benefit from a comfy and all it is is submerging something in a large body of fat like at low temperature and cooking it slowly until it lightly caramelizes and Cooks down remember I mentioned earlier we were going to show how swear to gets their swad tacos from cured to super super tender well they use a cone Fe method which is slowly done in beef fat and when it's time to Plate it gets seared and dropped onto a hand pressed hot corn tortilla cook to order top

with guac onions and cilantro one of my favorite tacos in Austin this can also be a method of par cooking but you can literally just take something out of the con Fe and eat it right away as well you can also chill it in the fridge and reheat it corn fing was created to preserve but what they didn't realize was that they created something delicious restaurants use this as a park cooking method but they also use it to pull out a ton of flavor when you cook something in a volume of fat you're just slowly

caramelizing the whole outside or slowly creating a 360° myard reaction on your proteins or caramelization on your vegetables and I have two examples for you use any fat you like it can be vegetable oil or it could be beef fat it can be duck fat here we have some melted duck fat which we're lowering in some garlic setting that on low heat and just letting that barely cook until it's softened and caramelized like this now on the other hand something bigger like beef short rib you can cook in Tallow maybe add some aromatics to it

if you want like garlic or black pepper corns or thyme lower in your short ribs and you can cook that in a very low oven around 275 to 300° F or even on the stove top at a low heat until it's incredibly tender which will take take probably an hour or two but when you remove it you'll have the most beautiful rib that honestly eaten straight up would be delectable or you can chill it and sear it the next day that's hot moving on you want consistency and speed in the things that you cook they're

always good and they come out very quickly or you want to grill something but it's way too big like a really thick carrot or a really thick piece of meat and it would be burnt before it was cooked what do you do that's where par cooking comes in like at emeron Rye where they par cook thick cooked squash before service to help with the quick plating of their roasted squash with peri Pier pepperonata sunflower seeds and guajo Chile it's a two-step process the first step is cooking it 80 to 90% of the way through with

any method you want that could be through roasting any method of slow cooking you can call Fee whatever it is and you're not worried about getting any color on it you're doing it low and you're just getting the internal temperature cooked up to where you need it to be so in the case of a carrot you don't want it to be mushy you want it to be just soft and restaurants use this for the same two reasons quick pickup times meaning that they can kiss in on a grill real fast get some color on it

and it's done and it keeps consistency of product the product will always be cooked perfectly not overcooked not undercooked and it's something that you could do at home very easily don't you want that so we're coning our carrots in a large vat of fat with different aromatics and we let them cone for about 20 to 30 minutes very low just until soften but with a little bit of bite we then take them out and then this is where the second stage comes in listen carefully you can take that food and chill it and let it

sit in the fridge for up to 3 days and then whenever you're ready to actually serve it then all you need to do is kiss it on a grill or in a hot pan or whatever you want get some color on it get it hot again and it'll be perfectly cooked and perfectly seared this might be the the biggest and yet most obvious solve so you never make a nice dish that takes a long time to cook like a braze or a roast because you're at the stove all day long while your guests are chatting

and you're not with them or maybe you just don't want to spend any time cooking the day that you're eating the evening before the day before 2 days before if you have a braze or something that's getting slow cooked this is the perfect item to cook all the way through all restaurants do this none of them have ever made this the day of and if they have somebody done up so for examp simple like my Bea recipe that's a great thing to make 3 days 4 days in advance all you do is the entire recipe

all the way through up until the point that you're making the tacos making the brazing liquid adding your chilies rehydrating them blending it brazing your beef until it's all the way completely tender even pre- shredding it if you like then all you have to do when the day comes that you're ready to eat is just heat everything back up in a pot a pan whatever stuff your tacos and serve that is it at Roman delario they'll tell you the same thing about the mole broth for their suc men dipping Ramen which has so many steps

and ingredients you really would have probably the worst day of your life if you made this for service to be honest and at ammer and right you know they're par cooking they're huge Burkshire pork bellies in pork fat for a quick pickup during service 90% of your time will really just be spent cleaning the best part about that is all you really have to clean is a couple cooking utensils a pot and maybe a pan because all the other utensils you use were used the day of cooking the benefit is the day that you cook

this which needs to be a day or two before you have the opportunity to dial all the flavors in so everything can be cooked perfectly the beef can be perfectly braised if it needs a little longer you can spend that time and no one's going to be waiting the day that you need to eat including yourself but it doesn't end here these are just some of the highlights that I love there are many many many more out there and if you want to see more of them comment and let us know but more specifically subscribe

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