No Stoves, No Ovens, All Live Fire: A Day With the Sous Chef at Osito | On The Line | Bon Appétit

cooking over a lie of fire makes my life more difficult and more fun at the same time no stoves no ovens no microwaves you have to constantly be feeding it and watching over it I call it kind of like a needy boyfriend between the two fires we put out 720 plates in evening here I oversee prepping dishes and putting final touches on things as well as making sure that the staff the line Cooks the comeis are all on track and on schedule for the day it's five o'clock [Music] oh hi I'm Sarah Baldwin I'm the executive sous chef at osito come on in this is a Sito restaurant we are a 100 live fire everything is burned through wood and we use coals to heat things up and cook it's 8 A.M and as exact sue the first thing I do to start the day is to build a fire so we can get cooking [Music] so here we have a little kit to start our fire today the only use for this blowtorch in the restaurant is to build this fire as much as I would like to say I use rocks I'm not that good we have menus from previous days that we're going to use to crumple up to light and Kindle so I'm going to curl up a couple of these first we have smaller pieces of wood that'll catch a little bit faster setting up a little Lincoln Log for ourselves intertwine our pieces of paper that we have Twisted to kind of help Catch Fire here in ocito we use a 50 almond and Oak from the almonds you'll get a little bit more of like a Nutty flavor and a little bit fruitier and then from our Oak you'll get something rounder and deeper for when we're smoking When You're Building A Fire the three things that are super important are to give it air a heat source and ventilation I feel nothing anymore and then right now what I'm doing is I'm starting to push our fire into the corners by building it closer to one wall of the oven as the fire builds and the air flows upward it's going to push to the other side and then kind of climb back in that'll help us build a convection in the oven so let's build a fire over here so we can start cooking over the Hearth what I'm looking for right now are just manageable pieces that'll catch quickly this dryer stuff that has moss on it will catch so that will be more ideal for this application see our fire is getting pretty big over here we're in a good place so then I'm going to take one of these smaller pieces and use it to build the new one everything has contact with some element of wood between the two fires we'll be cooking enough food to put out about 720 plates in evening it's fine to cook over fire because it takes a little bit more than turning a knob if you want more heat you have to feed the fire a little bit more to get more coals to then heat up your pot and it kind of like feeds my brain in a different way these fires seem to be lit and going it's around 8 15 and this time we're going to write out our prep list for the day and get everyone on their test [Music] as the opening sous chef it's definitely more of my job to make sure that everything gets mapped out for the day our current menu is about nine courses it's composed of 20 plates the way that we build the menu is based on seasonality and currently we're doing a game birds menu we were inspired a little bit by the holidays all the components and the tasks that go into that are kind of going to be divvied up based on everyone's personal strengths if I know that someone is like really great at needing bread and portioning and forming then I'm gonna have them focus on that and then someone else is going to pick the garnish for that same plate Teamwork Makes the Dream Work okay so it's about 8 30 and we're gonna get started on seven ducks a peckin and break down some ducks [Music] these are beautiful ducks that we get in from Liberty ducks and Sonoma this is going to be a cross between a Muskogee and a peking duck so it's going to be a little bit bigger than the average duck that you see the top here is the neck and it has all this extra fat and I'm just gonna take it off so I can get to other parts of the duck a little bit easier but we will be saving this fat from here I'm gonna grab the front and I'm gonna feel for the wishbone tip my knife above where I would feel the bone kind of get my hand in put my finger around to kind of loosen it up from the breast meat and make my way up pull out and break it off and then you see here we have the wishbone flip the bird over and I'm gonna get the wings I'm gonna use the weight of the duck to kind of help me maneuver and find my way to the Bone so this is pretty much like the armpit of the duck make a little incision here and then as I pull back see the joint pop out a little bit follow it with my knife the seven ducts of pecking is gonna be the full utilization of the duck we're using the breast meat that we make into prosciutto we also use the duck liver we make a mousse out of that we grill it in cabbage and wrap it up and it's filled with a pineapple guava jelly we have a course that uses the duck brain with a little bit of embered sunchoke grains are kind of a softer texture it's kind of similar to like panna cotta and I'm sorry for the visual that I just created but it's true the casserole dish that we have on the menu currently that was a dish that I created for that course we're taking all of our duck wings and braising them in Duck stock on top of that we have creamed spinach black trumpet mushrooms with truffle and we top it with crunchy scallions this knife is a toji hero honasuki a knife that's designed for Butchery and it has an angled tip that makes it a little bit easier to wedge your way in when you're trying to separate meat from the bone we usually butcher about 10 ducks a week these are pretty generous size so we're able to utilize a lot of it for multiple people the duck carcass is here spend some time in our wood fire oven and roast and then we're going to make a duck stock within goes back into braising the duck wings that we previously talked about and that's it it's about 9 30. so we're gonna get these bones roasting and moving on to our next project which is the Dashi which is a Japanese broth that is going to be put into our Chao Mushi dish let's go [Music] I'm just getting some water and a pot here to bring to a boil to start making my Dashi ciao Mushi is a steamed egg custard normally found in Japanese restaurants we're gonna season it with a little bit of white soy and then all of our uni from the day before is actually going to be blended into the base in this cold harvesting would you mind putting some under the Chao Mushi guys thank you the Hearth here is kind of the lifeline of the restaurant throughout the day throughout prep and throughout service we're constantly feeding it wood so that we can build pools and then transfer it to wherever needed and the bigger the pile and the closer up to the metal is going to be how hot it's going to be so to start the Dashi base for our Channel Mushi I have some kombu here that I'm gonna have kiss the fire a little bit to impart some of that Smoky flavor kombu is a seaweed that has been salt cured and dried rather than just being the Umami that you get from seaweed it'll have like a little bit of like a deeper flavor I don't want to burn it I just kind of want to see it start to Ripple we've had our water on the flat top here for a little bit it's about the right temperature to start our Dashi so we have our torched kombu that we just did and we're gonna pop that in there and then these are dehydrated smoked King trumpet mushroom stems when we cut them up and Portion them for service I take all of the butts and I put it up top dehydrated in Smoke just to like re-impart that flavor in the dish same idea with our Mandarin skins I just save all the peel and then I add that in here and then classic Bonito flakes dehydrated flakes of fish that are typically from tuna adds a little bit of umami as well as a slight fish flavor and then the last ingredient for this Dashi is going to be some pine needles it's gonna bring out the grassiness of all of our other ingredients you might see a little bit of Asian influence in the food that I make because I am a hapa my mom is Filipina and my dad is a Caucasian man so I grew up kind of having a lot of traditional Asian treats as well as you know your stereotypical like Kraft macaroni and cheese so I kind of like to think that the food that I make is a blend between the two I'm gonna kind of mix it up a little bit and then I'm going to let this steep for about 20 to 30 minutes and strain you don't want it to go any longer than that because the pine tends to turn bitter so we just want to make sure that we catch it before that point [Music] all right so our Joshi is done it's about 10 15 and we're gonna go into our next project which is making pate the Pate that we're making is gonna be a pork butt and squab innards we use pork butt because it's a nice ratio between fat and lean meat It's always important for like the bite and the structure of the meat to have a good percentage of fat to meat this pate kind of evolves with the seasons and what's available before it was Persimmon in pear but right now we have some like really beautiful dehydrated peaches and I thought it might be a nice bright addition to this dish this pate is served with our house made milk bread it has like a little bit of allium powder in there that we make in-house so we take all of our scallion tops throw them up top and use that as like our dehydrator and then we grind it to a fine powder and fold it into our batter head over to the prep kitchen to bring down our meat grinder and then we can start grinding our Pate so here we have all of our pork and we're gonna season it with a mixture of cured salt as well as our fine sea salt then we're gonna get grinding foreign and start feeding some of the pork through it's not exactly the most glamorous job but someone's got to do it oh yeah meaty the rehydrated peaches and figs that we are adding to our Pate add a little bit of sweet and tartness we have a lot of umami and savory notes and this kind of balances it out and when it's served with the jam it kind of Pops a little bit more I rehydrated the peaches and figs with a little bit of white wine and warm spices and then add our Suave innards a little bit of heart and liver and we get about 40 squabs in a week we want to use all the parts so that's going to land in our Pate this week very Valentine's Day oriented when you do this what do you do today just grind some parts the last bit is going in and we're gonna finish mixing everything in the kitchen next step is to add our eggs and our milk so I'm going to make sure I break down these eggs a little bit better and then we're going to start dumping into this lexan this is going to make approximately 12 loaves which will last us probably about a week and then we'll start this whole process over again doing bigger projects is more on my side because it has to be so precise as far as like measurements and consistency of the meat so like right now you can kind of see there's operation between the meat and all the liquid that we're adding to it once we fully emulsify it and mix it you'll see that it'll bind and you won't see any separation it'll just be like all one Mass she looks crazy right now but I promise you it's pretty good from here I'm going to start doing my favorite task and also work out we're going to start kind of self emulsifying it like this bringing the fat and the proteins together as I'm doing this it's starting to Clump up a little bit and that's like exactly what we're looking for and then play whatever music you need to to get you motivated for the last push oh yeah so then you know I don't have to do arms today as you can see it's like starting to kind of like really stick together it's pulling away from the edges and it's kind of building more of a mats in the center so we're almost there Chef sound wise and feel wise it feels pretty tacky right yeah basically when you work it the salt pulls the proteins out and so the more you work at the tackier it gets and so you're listening for it to be really tacky in your hands I feel like we're there now I'm going to put them in pans and cook them in the oven [Music] as I fill the Pate I'm going to stud the top with a little bit more of that rehydrated fig let people know what flavor it is slam it down a few times to push out any air that might have happened while I was filling it I'm going to place it here in these Hotel pans we're gonna pour in our hot water bath it's allowing it not to come from one heat Source but kind of all around and it Cooks a little bit more evenly that'll keep the moisture in but also emulsify at the same time boom and then I'm gonna head this over to the oven coming down right behind corner and she goes tend to load the Pate pan in a little bit closer to the fire you're going to get more of like your higher like 400 degree heat they're going to take about an hour it's 11 we have about an hour to cook family meal and I'm gonna go see what's in the back foreign [Music] what we're going to use for staff meal is do we have anything that's excess is anything cooked off so I kind of look through here and I see that there's some leftover chicken thighs from yesterday that weren't used for family so I'm going to scoop those up we have some already cooked off pasta and then I see that we also have arugula we like to kind of centralize where all the things for family meal goes so it's a little bit easier for people to decipher what they're going to make we like to rotate staff wheel so that everyone kind of has a chance to participate and it's kind of their time to like show off what they can do and kind of experience something together I think I'm gonna start smoking some chickens marinate it in a little bit of ginger scallion and so I'm just going to kind of pour it over scrummaged through people's stations to see what they had excess of or things that they weren't going to use today for service I'm going to start skin side down to kind of help with making sure that it doesn't stick to the rack a lot of the fat is going to render out through that so it'll create like a little layer between the rack and the meat I like making family milk it kind of breaks up the monotony of you know everyday routine I'm gonna put it up top to smoke when I'm putting them up here I'm going to look for where the fire is and obviously right above is going to be the hottest and probably more likely to burn but as you can see there's like a little bit of smoke that pillows up to the side and that's going to give me a little bit more gentle heat and it's going to smoke it more evenly I prefer smoking over grilling because I think it gives you a little bit more leeway it's a little bit lower and slower and so the likelihood of burning it is less and also I think it makes the chicken a little bit juicier and the next thing I'm going to do is head over to the back and get some veggies for our noodles I'm thinking I'm gonna go like yakisoba routes and I'm going to use this cauliflower I have some celery here take these noodles that are already cooked off and kind of kiss them on the Plancha get them a little seared up with some veggies [Music] [Music] for cooking on the blancha number one last dishes and number two It's a larger flat surface so I'm able to cook more food faster family meal in the mornings are for about 15 people whereas at night it's about 20 to 25 and it's really important to have enough food for everyone so that everyone's geared up and ready to go for the day I'm gonna start adding my nudes it's a little hot so I added a little bit of soy sauce season everything a little bit more sesame oil burns easily so I want to add it towards the end sacrificial noodles all right servable I'm gonna check on my birds it's a lot easier to work here if you're tall I've been short my whole life so I'm very crafty the chickens are a little bit more opaque and then you'll see that the skin has seized up a little bit and has a brown color to it they look pretty good but I want to get maybe the skin potentially a little bit crispy so I'm going to pop it in the oven for like two to five minutes and then it's ready to go we have some arugula here this green salsa it would be like a fun vinaigrette so I'm gonna try it out and see what happens I'm going in oh yeah they're looking right tonight all right and lunch is served it is 12 30 we just got back from lunch and we're about to go on a crab party crab party crab party we like to get a couple of people together to harvest all of the meat off of the crab this is Dungeness crab it's kind of like a HomeTown hero and so whenever it's in it's like a hot commodity and everyone tries to get it as much as possible the part of the crab that I have here is the body what I like to do is go in with my kitchen shears and build myself a little route so I can crack it in half and have access to most of the abdomen me a little bit easier and I'm going to take my tweezers pluck them out of there the crab is used in our first snacks served with the ciao Mushi on a separate plate with a brain sauce on the bottom and then on top is the harvested meat from this a couple pieces of leg and it's finished with our house made fowl EXO traditionally it's made with dehydrated scallops and Chinese bacon and here we've just used our duck prosciutto and supplement of the Chinese bacon we have here a crab leg and I'm gonna use my shears and come in on the side because we want it to be as whole as possible I'm gonna go all the way through shimmy the top off and we have our whole leg here now we have a claw I'm gonna take off this side first and kind of slowly wiggle out and I'm going to do the same thing that we did before with the leg with my scissors and try to build a path oh yeah see there you kind of cut through pop the top off and then I'm going to hold on to the base and then pull out a little oh that was anticlimactic look at that little guy we got the goods well our crab party is officially over a day in my life all right behind behind coming down right behind coming down coming down right behind it's almost two o'clock we're gonna get ready for our Roundup meeting where we all kind of gather before the day and talk about anything that might be pertinent to service you want to do it right every time we want to Value the guests that are coming in the service hero Sito is different than other restaurants because we are one communal table so it's just a matter of orchestrating the timing of everything so that everyone is accommodated in like a timely fashion we only have one aversion today and it's one no shellfish um so that means we'll have like an uni supplement just to be safe the expectations when coming in to eat here I feel are a little bit higher than most restaurants due to you know recently being awarded a star so it's important for us to kind of maintain that level and standard of Excellence is much to our ability so it's about three o'clock I'm gonna go around the kitchen to make sure everyone's good for service and pick up any little tasks do we have more of this by the way part of my job to go through and make sure that we have everything for service I want to check the quantities the quality I like to also take note of like how quickly we're going through things to see if it needs to be done the next day yum so we're checking in on our last batch of batch to make sure that it's ready I'm gonna use my digital thermometer here and I'm looking for an internal temperature of at least 131. we see we're a little bit over which is great Corner out hot stuff all right it's five o'clock we call back in this kitchen just to make sure that everyone heard that information and that's my way of knowing and confirming that they heard what I said [Music] we just got our reservation sheet for the evening that means it's about 5 15. we open at 5 30. I hope you got an idea of what it was like to be a sous chef here at osito unfortunately you have to go and we love seeing you soon bye that's a wrap [Music] here at osito the man behind it all Seth still away we call him dead

Channel: Bon Appétit

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Keywords: bon app, bon appetit, bon appetit on the line, bon appetit osito, cooking over live fire, cooking over open flame, fire cooking, food, how to cook over fire, live fire cooking, live fire grilling, live fire kitchen, live fire restaurant, on the line, on the line ba, open fire cooking, open fire cooking grill, open fire cooking meat, open fire cooking setup, open fire grilling, osito, osito live fire, over the fire cooking, restaurant behind the scenes

Id: c1HE6bgmbsM

Length: 21min 50sec (1310 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 15 2023