100 Food Hacks I Learned In Restaurants

I spent my entire life learning what makes a great chef but many of you know I didn't go to culinary school I worked in restaurants in real life scenarios learning real life techniques and tricks now many of these tricks are industry secrets and you would never know unless you had done that before but the irony is that anyone could do them easily at home so today I'm going to show you a hundred of my favorite Chef hacks that will ideally make your life easier make you a better cook and maybe make you look like you know what you're doing so let's begin but before we get started with our Chef hacks I have something really important the book tour is live I'm coming to see you there's going to be books there's going to be hugging and kissing and talking and signing and free food so here are the dates the link is in the description if you want to see more information come see me I would love to see you now back to these Chef hacks how to properly wash produce I'll be honest I don't always do this but when I remember to take three parts of water one part vinegar toss that around in a bowl and let them sit for about 2 to 5 minutes then drain rinse off with water lightly dry off and they'll keep in the fridge for significantly longer and there's no Kaka poooo on it storage in the fridge is a big topic stop buying Tupperware and buy deli containers there's a reason that it's an industry standard they come in quart pint cups get one of each you can store anything in these they all use the same size lid for every single size they stack beautifully thank you the carou no lid no problem now look if your pots or pants don't have a lid and you need one then you make something called a carou take a sheet of parchment paper fold it in half lengthwise then fold that half again everywhere you look there's a seam a seam a seam except for this part here where you folded it from that point is where you're going to fold fold fold fold until you get this sort of paper plane looking shape cut an eighth of an inch off the top place that over a pot use the tip to find the center point and then cut wherever the edge of the pot meets with a parchment paper unroll it and you have a carou place it in your pot and well have a very beautiful time peeling many cloves of garlic at once I'm sure we've all seen this bowl trick you take all your cloves of garlic you put them in a bowl then you place an equally sized Bowl on top and you shake aggressively and they should all be be peeled except many of the time only half of them will be so what do you do you pour in a little bit of warm water you let it sit for 2 minutes and they should all peel easily if you intend to add herbs to a soup or broth and you want to maximize their flavor bruise those herbs first just give them a light Crush toss them in and then steep them you get twice as much flavor especially if you add them at the end of the cook time instant shredded chicken you got a cook chicken breast need to shredd it don't use your hands don't use forks instead I know this is kind of whack but I've been doing this a lot recently place the chicken in a bowl take your electric beers out and let her rip yes it will shred your chicken quite quickly actually now while we're on that topic chicken breast is the hardest protein to cook you have to cook it at a perfect temperature and it goes dry the second you go one dee over that this on the other hand is much more forgiving chicken thigh you can cook this for longer and it'll just get more tender it's really hard to overcook these if you're not anti- dark meat then please use chicken thighs moving forward for most of your recipes juicier easier to cook and more flavor towel plus mixing bowl so let's say You're whisking Something in a bowl and it's moving all over the place if you've ever cooked in your life this has happened to you instead take a damp towel wrap it around the bowl place the bowl on top and then when you're whisking it should prevent the bowl from moving around see look at that beautiful thing beat that thing up the paper towel lid if you're making pickles or anything that goes into a jar and you need to stay submerged in liquid you can literally just use a paper towel fold it in half gently press it in just until it's absorbed by the liquid inside don't press too hard now because of the surface tension this will create a small seal of liquid on top of the veg you can add another lid then place it well at room temp or in the fridge fixing fry oil that's too hot you ever heat up a pan full of oil or a pot with frying oil and it gets a little too hot yeah over 400° not good just add room temperature oil until decreas es to the temperature that you want that's it obviously pay attention to not overfilling your pot you may need to take some oil out in order to add more so be smart VI can you hand me the camera real quick just I'm going to be real nice hey enough is enough I told you to Salt your Tomatoes where you put on a goddamn sandwich you can't even taste it it's diluting all of the flavor of everything that you're eating this is a hack you might think oh it's a technique no it's a hack because it makes your sandwich taste 10 times better you're watering tomato sandwich please season them with salt first on both sides now can go in a sandwich using flour to clean flour now look when you're mixing a dough cleaning your hands is not fun but before you rinse with water and ruin your sink and garbage disposal take some dry flour rub it all over your hands aggressively kind of like if it were soap and water lather your hands then after about 20 to 30 seconds of rubbing your hands are mostly clean then just a little bit of water and you're good to go the perfect peeled eggs I get this asked so many times Josh how do you get the perfect peeled egg I'm about to tell you first off boil your eggs then get a bowl of water crack lightly on one side and this is the trick roll your eggs around and around so that they get tiny little crackles all over it then submerge your eggs in the water and peel them underneath the water what you'll see is they're extremely easy to peel as a matter of fact those shells might just come right off like a jacket the wire rack dice if you need to quickly dice or rough chop something soft like hardboiled eggs cook squash cook potatoes then just place a wire rack over a bowl and push the food through the wire rack that's it don't overthink it just do it okay Nike I mean look at these eggs a lot of restaurants will do this for things like egg salad because imagine cutting this by a knife with 300 eggs this is a fan favorite you've seen it on my YouTube shorts most people when they zest things they do this big problem it does work there's nothing really necessarily wrong with it but it's not going to maximize the zest this applies to any Citrus Citrus in one hand microplane don't grab it down here don't grab it up here don't I don't know how that happened you're going to grab it in the middle I want your hand physically around the metal don't worry it's not going to hurt you hold on to it tight right now relax your hand pull it back just a bit index finger to apply pressure holding the base hold your Citrus Place the thumb of your imposing hand on the citrus see what I'm doing here I'm pushing the Citrus up start at the top of your citrus and then close your arms and rotate rinse and repeat all the way around till you're met with your first bit and you have a damn near perfectly zested Citrus you could go in there and clean it up more but guess what you got all that from just one using kitchen shears for everything when it comes to cutting things such as vegetables or even a piece of meat like a steak look I get it what if you just use a pair of kitchen scissors you can cut directly into a heated pot into a bowl onto a plate this is less of a hack and more of just just like a people don't even think to do this there are some cultures in the world that know this but now we're passing it on to you parchment paper cleanup when you're peeling a lot of potatoes or anything for that matter always do it over a single sheet of parchment paper then as you're peeling let all those peels fall into the parchment once you're done gather up the parchment and toss in the trash you can obviously recycle the parchment paper separately now a 5-minute cleanup becomes a 10-second cleanup I know this can feel a little wasteful ultimately parchment paper is meant to be used and then thrown away so its job has been done but you can also use compostable SL recycled parchment paper that's always a little better you can also reuse it for other things as essentially a garbage bag curing proteins for maximum flavor any protein literally doesn't matter put it on a small sheet tray with a wire rack this is for air flow season generously with salt you can also add other spices if you want Pat it down on both sides and let it sit in the fridge overnight this will provide juicier results a better myard I mean look look at this okay look at this God dang myard plus the meat will be equally seasoned throughout because the salt has had time to penetrate the meat we've all seen that way a core of pepper you cut down the sides right this method is easier and it applies to anything including jalapenos sanos any chili or pepper so pepper goes down cut the top off the bottom off now it's flat you can start slow but just cut down just until you make it past that first wall open it up and you can see where everything connects to that core so you're just going to cut around and unroll your pepper and the core is no more that rhymes now you can Julien beautifully or do whatever else you want stop your onions from making you cry when you're cutting an onion sure not cutting into the core can sometimes help prevent crying but for the most part that's kind of if your knife's stole you might start tearing up if the onion gets torn somehow you might start tearing up and sometimes you have to cut the core off ultimately when you cut an onion there are vapors that are released in the air that then come in contact with your eyes and oh so hurts makes you cry so if it's sticking on your eye because of all the water that's in your eyes what happens if you take the water and bring it to your onions lightly flick or drip water from your hands onto your onions this may not work for every type of cooking scenario but obviously if you're slicing a lot of onion onions believe it or not a little bit of water dripped on your onions will help prevent the irritation to your eyes using fat trim from Meats for cooking every time you get a piece of meat whether it be steak or a big pork butt every time you cut off excess fat save it in a little baggie in the freezer once you can fill around a one pint container then you just lightly chop it up place it in a pan over low heat and render all the fat out strain that out and now you have liquid gold that's animal fat you can cook with and you're not wasting product that you would normally throw away this is my favorite tomato trick now you can use cherry or grape tomatoes it doesn't matter I know a lot of people like those are grape not Cherry it's the same okay it's a different shape you can have use two dinner plates or two Deli container Lids in this just throw in I'm not even paying any attention as many cherry or graped tomatoes that'll fit comfortably place your other lid on top and then run a knife in between those two and I just instantly cut all of these in half evenly using meat trim for custom grinds whenever you're trimming a piece of meat and you remove bits of protein again this works with any protein save that up place it in a container in the freezer and once you have at least one lb you can grind it all together to make sausages Burgers meatballs that's assuming you have a grinder but guess what that brings up my next one I know a lot of you complain about me grinding meat with this or even my big boy but what if you could use this you just need a knife I mean granted it's nice to have the fany one but take any protein ideally one with a high fat content you start by slicing that as thin as possible then run your blade through the meat chopping constantly you know as if you were finally chopping herbs alternatively you can also use a Cleaver if you have one literally doesn't matter though it's slightly easier but you can do it without it keep chopping and folding until it's as fine as you like yes it works see that don't be a little baby okay it only takes like 5 minutes for like a pound of meat see it even forms a meatball paper towel slicing technique now when you're slicing chives you could just line them up and slice them like this if your knife is really sharp it shouldn't be too hard but if it's not well they're eventually going to get messed up and disigned to make chive cutting easier regardless of the knife you're using take one strip of paper towel lay your chives onto the paper towel with your chives sticking out of one end roll that up very tightly clean up the edges and now they're all even do you want an easy Julien fine dice or brunoa yeah one of these bad boys mandolin so first pick your thickness don't go too thick cut your suspected vegetable or fruit then for your Julien cut the same thickness against your sliced veg or fruit as the thickness that you sliced it at and you get a perfect match stick Julien they literally look like match sticks if you want a perfect Brun W you literally take your match sticks and cut against them and you get a beautiful brunoa in this case apple look at that why need fine dining technique when you have mandoline the potato masher ground beef trick when you find yourself cooking some ground beef and you want those really nice crumbles you know like Taco Bell type these ugly chunks aren't going to cut it trying to get it fine with a spoon ain't going to work what you really need is a handheld metal Masher like this you can also use a plastic one then just press and twist and you'll get the most beautiful fine Deluxe level beef crumbles now obviously you don't need a Masher this big this is a bit of a flex but nonetheless take the trick or leave it this honestly is like probably one of my favorite tricks pepper coring a tomato so surprisingly the same same technique that I use for Peppers actually applies to tomatoes as well if you don't want the seeds use this technique it's the fastest way to remove the seeds and all the goopy yucky poopy stuff on the inside now granted the course can be saved to using a tomato sauce or to juice later no waste but the whole point of this technique is so you can Dice and Jean your tomato perfectly I don't know what accent that is plastic wrap we know it we love it I get it this is like somewhere between $7 to $10 and it's always annoying sure it's working cuz it's new but as you're using it starts to fall apart it's flim and every time you pull it it's following you everywhere like a dog a quick trip to a restaurant supply store or Amazon for $16 you get three times the amount and it's bigger and this thing is sharp Food Service film always better always worth the price I wish I hadn't wasted that all right the cater wrap this is a big one I'm not sure how many people have actually given this trick up sometimes you don't have a lid or you need to cover something with plastic wrap most people don't know how to really do this properly to cater wrap give yourself some room get a long sheet of plastic wrap place your item in the middle or on the far third of your sheet fold the shorter end tightly and directly over the top of whatever it is you're wrapping and take the long end over wrap that fold it underneath the product neatly wrap all the edges underneath and it's cater wrapped now if you've done it properly it is in fact waterproof this technique works on almost any singular kitchen item no matter how big or small you might just need multiple sheets seasoning High when you're seasoning don't use a little no instead fingers always season and don't season here and do this okay too concentrated always season high for maximum surface area coverage and look at that evenly coated literally I'm not touching I'm stepping back look at that Vic that's even you're not going to get them when you're like this salt throwing maybe you do want to get concentrated and you're in a rush you could quite literally just throw the salt more of a party trick but it it actually does season very concentrated because as the salt flies it hits what you're seasoning with a cone you see that cone look at that cone right there that's a g damn cone zanan gum fixes everything so anytime you're blending something let's say it's a sauce or a soup maybe the emion breaks in the refrigerator or maybe it separates after sitting for a few minutes this is one of my favorite tricks you literally put it back in the blender blend on medium speed and then add about an eighth of a teaspoon of zanen gum while blending and that's it you literally have a cohesive sauce such as this beautiful hot sauce which is now not only slightly thickened but it simply won't separate thanks zenam this technique can apply to any sauce and some soups that you make in a blender fixing a broken Mayo so let's say you made a mayo and well it's broken the oil is floating on top and it looks horrific so here's how you fix it get a bowl option you can set that bowl over ice water sometimes it'll help the Emulsion that's not mandatory though if you had about three cups of mayo then in your new bowl you're going to add two fresh egg yolks along with about a teaspoon of Dijon mustard and a splash of water whis that together and then slowly while constantly whisking add in your broken Mayo a little drop at a time and slowly transition into streaming and in while constantly whisking then once all of it has been added it should be emulsified back into a beautiful glossy thick Mayo if you need it even thicker then you can add a little extra oil while constantly whisking the finger technique we've all seen the finger test where people say this is rare this is medium rare this is medium not accurate but you can get good at touching it and knowing when your steak is done and the trick is every time you cook a medium rare steak feel it memorize it do it over and over and eventually every cut of steak you'll be able to touch and know that it's medium rare that's the correct cook on a steak the corn bowl trick if you have to cut a lot of corn and you're doing on a cutting board it's going to be a nightmare instead place a small mixing bowl inverted cover with a towel in a larger mixing bowl take a sharp knife and cut down the corn to remove all the kernels you see the benefit of this is once you're done you take your bowl out up and look at that not only is all of your corn neatly kept off your freaking counter but it's also conveniently in a bowl ready to be mixed with other various ingredients so it saves you cleanup and prep time the start high go low technique now when you're cooking something like a steak where you need it nice and medium rare this technique doesn't work for every single steak in the world if you have a slightly thicker steak and you don't have an omen you lay it in a pan over high heat you sear it and when you flip it you turn the heat down to low the goal is to get color then let the steak cook through the rest of the way on a low temperature this is going to give it the best color for searing but a more even cook to medium rare so when we slice into it it looks like this not bad while it might not be perfect the inside will have a little bit less of a gray ring how to make all your raw onions taste good when you're using raw onion on a dish eating it straight up I think in many cases is kind of crazy I would highly recommend when you slice your onion after slicing instead of just putting it straight on what you're going to use it for place it in a container into the sink cover with a wire rack and start filling it up with cold water let that water run for about 30 seconds to 1 minute that'll flush the onions out pull them out so instead of stinky spicy onions you have lightly sweet perfumed onions that are beautifully extra crispy this trick is the easiest to master and the hardest to accept sometimes you make something and you think that there's a way to fix it take this steak for example that's you can't fix this what do you do when you can't fix something sometimes you just got to do it again I'm not saying throw this away I'm just saying please dear God do not serve this to another human being not even a dog re fire again the easiest but the hardest to accept the secret to cooking evenly is even Cuts now you could slice garlic or an onion or whatever you need to slice or you could use a mandolin and when you do this not only is it faster and slightly more dangerous but you end up with perfectly evenly sliced vegetables this works with onion garlic carrot anything that can be run on a mandolin and sliced a lot of restaurants do this regularly rest longer than you think when you cook a protein or more specifically a steak rest time matters I know a lot of people have said it doesn't it does the secret for most great steaks in steakhous is quite literally letting them rest longer than you think they should instead of 5 minutes try 10 to 12 minutes after searing a nice thick steak now this one has rested for 10 minutes and this one rested for five big difference always let it rest longer than you think the longer rest retained its juices while the unrested loses juice and loses flavor this is more of an aesthetic trick when you thinly slice vegetables and I mean thin such as green onion carrot radish bowl of ice water and you'll just toss in your veg into the ice water let it sit toss it around a little bit and you take the these out dry them off and they naturally curl up you get little cups from radishes you get very dainty wavy carrots or some nice curly green onion it makes them look nicer and it makes them crunchier you've either heard this a million times or never at all always slice your steak against the grain which is going to be different for every steak this New York strip you can see that the grain is running this way but nobody wants a steak with long strips like that so what you do is you cut it in half you got two halves here you're then going to cut it that direction or well against it that is this is against the grain this is with the grain with the grain Against the Grain even tear this one not so much so look it's still delicious it's just significantly more tender don't you want your guests to enjoy a tender steak now a lot of people are going to peel Ginger with a peeler which makes sense but funny enough I find a spoon much easier you see you hold the spoon facing away from you and you're using your thumb you're going to press the ginger against the spoon and scrape along the entire piece of Ginger now here's the real benefit of a spoon once you get to these really annoying things you don't have to remove them that's why we use the spoon the benefit of the spoon is you can do really gentle fine work I'm not scraping hard all the way around all your little Nubs being gentle not to scrape too hard the skin should come right off it's almost like the ginger nose it's a spoon it's gentle it's loving you know you ever spooned before why do you think that term exists and once you've peeled your Ginger you have scrap normally you throw this away howage you learned here I have a bunch of vegetable scrap for every time that I have prepped something this week now with that scrap I'm going to add my Ginger peel you can use this vegetable scrap to add fragrance to a vegetable stock or chicken stock or beef stock or any stock that you're using you just steep this in warm water and you'll have a vegetable stock that's it it's good for planet Earth now keep it in the fridge and keep adding to it as you cook through the week the Saran Wrap Belt look I know this seems like a novelty but I'm telling you one day you're going to think back to this and be like damn I'm glad that Josh showed me this if for some reason you find yourself in a kitchen you don't have a belt find the nearest plastic wrap get as much plastic wrap as you need to cover your waist size that's not a jab legitimately roll it around into like a thin sausage stretch it out and well use it as a belt tie it on surprisingly it works quite well holding your pants up the equipment trick now this is a personal choice what goes in here but you can have all your stuff in your drawers and your kitchen but on top of that you should purchase something called a bane line Cooks chefs alike use these day to day then pick all of your most used equipment put it in your Bane and keep it near you when cooking try it next time you cook and you might just find yourself cooking significantly faster tempering proteins whether you're cooking steaks or any other protein a lot of people say oh tempering doesn't matter you don't have to I think those people are wrong I'm no scientist but every time I pull out a protein such as a steak let it sit at room temperature for like 10 to 12 minutes take the chill off of it seasoning it and then searing it in a pan beautifully I mean look at that crust hang on just for proof we're going to sear this cold steak the exact same way we did the other one and look at the difference in color on the crust this is the cold steak and this is the tempered steak the personal trash can instead of constantly walking back and forth from your Workstation to your trash can you can keep a large Bane or large bowl near you at all times then as you're cooking toss your trash scraps Etc then take that to the trash and dump it out fix a slippery cutting board keep seeing these ticktockers slicing stuff while their cutting board flies away from them not safe do not let this happen you could buy a cutting board mat or you can get a regular paper towel or cloth towel soak that in water ring it out place it under your cutting board and now your cutting board no longer moves to maximize flavor season at every stage of cooking you add an ingredient you add salt make sure you don't make it too salt Sal Y and you're much less likely to end up with something that doesn't have enough sauce and feels like it's a missing flavor the quarter tray sidekick if you really want to maximize your cooking to be as efficient as possible then buy yourself a quarter sheet tray like this maybe two you get them on Amazon for cheap and it works for anything this would normally live right next to a cutting board makes cleaning up easier and you don't need a million plates or Bowls the bench scraper cleaning technique cleaning up debris when you're cooking sucks that can be solved with two things a quarter sheet tray and a bench scraper before you wipe down scrape all of your debris with your bench scraper onto your sheet tray then rinse and repeat over the whole countertop and all you need to do is get a quick wipe down and you're good as new this will be the fastest clean of your life a lot of people don't know when their pan is hot enough but a quick way to test is a little bit of water flick it into the pan you see that it's not immediately evaporating that's how you can tell if your pan is properly hot fixing an overs salted soup if potatoes make sense dice them up and add them to the soup they'll absorb the excess salt simply let them cook in the soup until fork tender if potatoes don't make sense in the soup then add one big chunk instead of a diced one and remove after cooking either way your soup should be noticeably less salty than it was before following fat lines when you're cutting a protein it doesn't matter what it is a butcher's secret is following the fat lines now this doesn't work for every single thing in the whole world but if you're cutting something like let's say I'm cutting this leg loose here you see that line of fat right there that separates the membrane from the actual chicken breast I cut through it now you can see where the breast begins and where it ends follow this trick and it will help guide your Cuts even in the unknown I need to take this out of the oven I don't have oven mitts or I lost them or I threw them away or the dog ate them first off old yellow second off dry towel you think chefs are walking around with oven mitts no never wet if it's wet it will Steam and burn you grab your hot boy pull it out no event required finger Meat technique two there's nothing wrong with not knowing where protein is from the bone take a thumb or index finger and feel around and you can feel where the muscle is and where the bone is then use your knife to follow in between those two things to separate proteins such as chicken or really any protein for that matter so the rule is when in doubt feel them out saving herbs that are going bad so let's say you have herbs and well they're on the edge of their life or you know you're not going to use all of them you get a long piece of kitchen twine lightly wrap it around the base of your bundle of herbs tie it off with a knot leaving a long string then hang them somewhere with a light draft like this and all you need to do is leave them out until they're completely dried now you have redried herbs and you didn't throw them away yeah it's good for the planet when you heat a peita or a tortilla a lot of the time you have to get the pan out get it hot blah blah blah you can just do it directly over an open flame don't be shy flame goes on make it hot that is it flip it occasionally see that puff that's good that's good stuff right there brother boom she's done cut the heat best one you'll ever have blender emulsification when you're making a sauce and you want it to be creamy lighter and color more Rich a chef's best friend is the blender simply throw your ingredients in a blender add liquid if necessary blend on high until as smooth as possible then while constantly blending slowly streaming in an oil such as vegetable oil or olive oil the beauty of a nice blender is it will force emulsify anything pretty much which will lead you to an extremely smooth and velvety glossy creamy sauce apply this to nearly any super sauce that can be run through a blender passing sauces if you want restaurant quality smooth and glossy sauces simply pass them through something called a fine mesh shinoa the finer the mesh the smoother the sauce now look at that that's a glossy sauce the ice bath technique you ever been told to wait until a certain liquid cools before you can use it that could take an hour here's how you do it in less than 1 minute for your sauce soup broth chowder or whatever liquid of choice you have into a bowl set over an ice bath and stir for about 1 to 2 minutes until it's as cool or cold as you like this will also help sauces retain vibrant color and create strong emulsions this is the quickest way to a perfect Toasted Bun get a pan any pan butter in once it's melted and bubbling add your bun now here's a secret just keep the bun moving around the pan in just a few seconds you have a beautifully Toasted Bun this took me 10 to 20 seconds stop sauces from getting skins not like from fortnite but if you have a sauce drink soup stew that develops a gross film on top simply place a piece of plastic wrap directly on top of that so it suctions to the liquid and this will stop it from forming a skin forever a lot of the time when you peel an orange you need a cutting board you got to cut the top off got to cut the bottom off and then you have to go around and it takes all day really you only need a knife and quite literally nothing else knife on the upper let's say 10 to 20% of the orange you're going to cut across till almost all the way there right now we have the lids about to pop off so turn that lid up and then begin to turn your knife towards you and then cut around while turning the orange the white is the pith underneath that is the flesh now you run around and you're just going to repeat that to run around your entire Orange so You' met your other top 10% of the orange cut that off and you have a peeled orange you eat this straight up or you can get your suprem M A lot of people complain about kitchen storage we never have enough may I introduce the restaurant favorite this is called a speed rack it's on Wheels so it can move around you can put it anywhere in your kitchen look at that this is specifically built to hold baking sheets but you can use it for anything cutting boards bus tub or trash bin storage buy this and it will change your life forever it's like 150 bucks on Amazon take it or leave it no funnel no problem so if you need to get a thick sauce or a Mayo into a squirt bottle place a sheet of plastic wrap down on a work surface pour your mixture onto that plastic wrap gently roll it up make sure to seal it off and once it's rolled up you essentially have this Saucy sausage fold one excess side down then cut the other and carefully place it into your container and let gravity do its work gently squeeze the rest of it in and you have a filled squirt bottle how to remove the cloves from one head of garlic instantly sure you can peel them one by one but you don't have to do that place a whole head of garlic on a cutting board with the root side up then using the palm of your hand heal strike it and should all come apart all at once this only works with room temp garlic do not do it with cold garlic it will not work this is a sharpener right wrong don't have to sharpen your knife every single day to keep it sharp use a honing Rod all this does is keep your Edge straight over time you get all these sort of like kinks in your knife so to properly use it this is the easiest method point it at a 45° angle so from the tip at around a 45° angle on your knife run it away from you until you reach the heel and repeat on the other side that side of the edge that side of the edge this prevents you from having to sharpen your knife every week now you only need to do it like maybe every 2 months salt to prevent burning when you're cooking onions or really any aliam the second and hits the pan the first thing you should do is add a light sprinkle of salt it's going to help the onion cook through before it gets too dark in color cream to emulsify if you're making something like a sauce and you want it to be emulsified and Rich but it's not quite as smooth or emulsified as you want you can literally just add heavy whipping cream obviously it's going to force it to become creamy but this is something really worth thinking about because not only does it add a creamy quality but it will stabilize and emulsify your sauces better fixing a broken sauce with warm water so let's say make a nice emulsified sauce say like a bermonte and it breaks that looks like you have two options you can either throw it away and start again or you can save it begin heating it over the heat that you originally had it on quite literally just splash in warm water into the sauce whisking constantly continue to whisk and it should come back together I would say this has like an 80% success rate it depends on the sauce if it doesn't come back together well I'm sorry burning food is good so usually people would throw something away that's burnt but it really depends on how burnt it is and most things are never Beyond repair maybe you intentionally add a little burn heat of a cooking apparatus real hot add your food let it aggressively cook to get a light Char on as many sides as you want then turn the heat down see even this can be charred more than you see here but it is the Char that adds the Smoky depth of flavor that most people will enjoy this supplies to breads vegetables proteins and so on a lot of time people cook vegetables and they Wonder that's just missing something how do restaurants do it a lot of restaurants just do one really basic thing cook vegetables or raw go into a bowl and they're typically going to be seasoned with a few different things a little bit of salt lemon juice and olive oil that gets tossed together that's it you'd be shocked how much that changes a finished cooked vegetable it's literally the perfect bite the ring mold trick if you want things to look more poised in their shape such as hash browns pancakes or anything cooked in a pan then use a circular metal mold or round biscuit cutter it needs to be metal just to clarify and then just cook whatever it is that you're cooking in that Circle it will maintain that shape and it will look a little more clean cut a little more professional what about keeping herbs fresh container in the bottom f up a dry paper towel a very lightly damp paper towel place your herbs in and gently roll up place in your container top with a lid or plastic wrap and into the fridge now your herbs will last twice as long making all your bread soft if you want any bread softer instantly you're going to add something called a Tang zong most breads will be somewhere around 2 to 3 tbspoon of Tang xong all you need is flour and water sometimes milk add this to a pan over low heat constantly stir until a thick paste has formed let that cool completely and add that to almost any single batch online bread recipe now your BS will be softer springier in more beautiful suction cup wrapping if you have a container that's pliable like a squirt bottle and you need to quickly store it place a small sheet of plastic wrap over the top pull it down tightly gently squeeze to form an air bubble then release and it will suck a little bubble inside using a rubber band or more plastic wrap tie the top down and that will act as an airtight container for a short period of time the easiest grated cheese of your life whenever you're grating soft cheeses like mozzarella or guda instead freeze them for 15 to 30 minutes before grating and you'll get the most beautifully grated cheese of your life let's say you've got a soup that you want a little bit thicker you want some more mouth feel to it if you're in a rush you don't have flour you don't have cornstarch but maybe you have breadcrumbs that is your last Saving Grace it's not my favorite but it works you got a simmering pot of soup you add some breadcrumbs and then you just blend it in make sure you're getting every little bit introduced to the soup so now you can see this is much thicker much more viscous not perfect but it works clean a birn pan uh-oh you burned a sauce here's how you fix it fill your pan halfway up with water set that onto your stove over high heat can add a little splash of white vinegar let that come to to a boil swirl it around the pan to help get that hot water up the sides of the pan then in about 5 minutes D out the liquid rinse with water and should be close to completely clean this also works with getting caramel and burnt sugars out of pans instant minced garlic you don't have a garlic mincer no problem place your clove down using the flat side of a knife Smash It aggressively then give it a few rough Cho passes with your knife and within a few seconds it's minced salt paste method if you want a paste of aliam such as garlic you can take the last step that we just did and before ringes imin add a generous pinch of salt and then just keep running your knife through it over and over lightly folding and pressing every so often and eventually you should be left with quite literally a paste the salt acts as an abrasive which helps extract water and pactify the alium if you want to fit parchment paper into a small tray this is how you do it find one edge of your parchment match it to an edge on your tray then fold the others to match you could put it in like this but it's not flat knife perfectly fitted the cheated demig gloss look to make a demig gloss you have to reduce the stock a lot how can you fix that well you can reduce it not as much and instead quite literally add jelly sheets to your boiling stock until the sauce reaches your desired consistency the mouth fuel you get is attributed to the reduced gelatin that's naturally in your stock so instead we're just like literally adding it try it it works this might not seem like a trick but you always skip it toast your spices please double sometimes triple the flavor and it helps extract the oils making any pan sauce velvety so let's see you have a reduce sauce in a pan cut the heat add a few tablespoons of cold unsalted butter swirl it around until it's melted and emulsified this is called mounting with you can apply this technique to any reduced sauce to soups to stews and you'll notice that it makes things noticeably thicker and beautifully glossy the offset spatula this is my favorite kitchen tool it is to me the secret Chef tip for all tools every Chef loves this thing it can do all the big tasks in a small package just keep it on you next time you're cooking and the next time you think you need a spatula or you need to pick something up or you need to cut something or you need to spread something pull this thing out you'll think me later a lot of people they remove their crab legs with the tap tap tap and it takes forever and the meat's all done up this is the trick you separate each segment all you need to do is once it's open on both sides hold this and tap your palms together and it pops right out perfectly and that works with each segment you see you can still see the shape of the crab parchment paper crispy skin fish if you want an easy crispy skin fish use a piece of parchment paper get a hot pan season the fish how you normally would leave the piece of parchment onto the skin of the fish with a ripping hot pan place your fish parchment side down cook until the skin is crispy flip and remove the parchment paper and let your fish cook the rest of the way through medium to medium rare I honestly was shocked by this one using your eyes to cook when you're cooking fish like a piece of salmon you can always tell how well it's cooked by how far the cook goes up the fish you see this gradient here top is raw the bottom is not once the gradient is halfway up the fish is ready to be flipped and cooked the rest of the way through once there's no gradient the fish is cooked through just you know try not to cook it Well Done how to season visually take a steak for example a thick steak is nearly impossible to overseason an even coating of salt across the entire surface in most cases cases will not overseason something if you can visually see the salt in a thin layer you're probably in a good place now this is not a guarantee for all things at least you have a baseline you have problems with fish sticking on the grill right you put it directly on the grill uh-oh don't do that it's too hot the grates are too dry instead get a separate cold grate generously grease that great take a piece of Fish Grease the skin place it down right on your hot bals let it do its thing now you could just flip it on this but it's much easier if you have another wire rack and then you gently flip him over look at that Grill crispy skin puffed and just let that finish on the other side no sticking carving Fork skin removal that sounds pretty bad for any piece of cooked fish maybe the skin isn't so great or it was steamed the easy way to remove it is grab a carving Fork carefully pull back starting at the corner of a fillet then begin to wrap it around your carving Fork kind of like spaghetti then what you'll see is the skin will actually peel right off at that point you can add some maldone finishing salt maybe some olive oil potentially some lemon juice maybe some fresh herbs Big Butter biscuits if you're having trouble getting flicky biscuits probably has something to do with one basic thing how you cut your butter before it goes into the pastry always cut your butter into bigger cubes than you think you should maybe half in or even 1 in cubes then when you incorporate them into the dough you shape your biscuits and you bake them it is the chunks of butter that leads to the flakes it's probably one of the most important tips you're going to learn today and that's how to taste for salt this is a make or break for almost every place you'll ever eat any dish you'll ever consume I have a basic spicy mustard mayo sauce to demonstrate but it can be anything when you're seasoning always start with a little bit less than you think you need until you're confident make sure it is evenly Incorporated little taste okay things I'm tasting I'm tasting acid and all the other things in there something's missing it almost feels not powerful enough so I'm going to add a little bit more salt most of the time things need more salt than you think how do you know when it's salty enough how do you know when it's too salty I can feel the flavors Rising but still it's missing something a little more salt I'm going in incrementally I'm not putting a ton each time now we're getting somewhere any acid or sugar that's in something will reduce the effect of the salt which means you will need more salt that's why you keep adding and tasting you know it's too salty when it just tastes like pure salt and you can't taste anything else what I was once told to check that is to put a very small amount on your hand and put just three to four granules of salt on there if that's too salty it's there every type of salt should have a different purpose you wouldn't use fine sea salt the same way you would use flaky salt this will have a huge effect on your final product and how well you salt things you got three choices very fine salt flaky salt and something sort of in between kosher seasoning salt flaky salt should be used as a finishing salt that means that after you cook something you put the flaky salt on your typical seasoning salt looks like this use that for seasoning raw ingredients such as a uncooked steak something where the salt will dissolve and you use fine sea salt for cold things or desserts where the salt needs to dissolve very quickly so please stop wasting flaky salt and pick your salt accordingly finally number 100 this might be the most special one of them all in a restaurant it's been a long day your back hurts your body hurts you're emotionally broken down it's hot you're sweaty you stink but what do you need you need water so there time to drink I've talked about how these are the greatest storage containers that there is but they also double as something else if you've ever worked in a restaurant you know exactly what's going on here you opener dispenser we have this faucet in here we can drink it lid goes on find just about any knife that you got all right and you're going to make on the top a nice little X or a cross go down I want to clarify something really quick this is dangerous take it slow and then across find yourself a straw and you have a nice tasty beverage and I know you're thinking just that's wasteful uh excuse me I never said throw it away keep it and use it as many times as you like it is dishwasher safe I hope you enjoyed this I love you [Music] goodbye

Channel: Joshua Weissman

Views: 10,550,937

Keywords: sat bawl pro, joshua weissman, cooking hacks, food hacks, food tricks, chef hacks, cooking tricks, cooking, how to cook, knife skills, knife tricks, chef knife skills, how to plate, how to clean, how to clean a kitchen, joshua weissman guide, crab leg trick, how to open a crab leg, life hack, life hacks, cooking hack, cooking trick, food hack, easy life hack, joshua weissman food, joshua weissman recipe, easy recipes, cooking techniques, easy recipe, quick recipe

Id: H_erG7HSK0A

Length: 36min 50sec (2210 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 01 2023