Pro Chef Breaks Down Cooking Scenes from Movies | GQ

hey guys my name is Michael chernow chef and restaurateur and this is the breakdown my background in the restaurant industry goes deep I've worked in restaurants my whole life pretty much I've worked every single position in a restaurant front of house back at house there's really nothing I have not done food hospitality is part of my DNA today we will begin by learning to boil eggs let's talk about this for a second so I remember very clearly first couple days in culinary school now I went to the French Culinary Institute and it was no joke school just hearing that just like the lesson from someone who's insanely passionate about cooking that's French it's like burned into your brain but you are not an advanced cook but I do know how to boil an egg so let's pause right here so this is another thing that that sort of happened over time so many people are going to culinary school today and they think that when they graduate culinary school like their chef most people actually I guarantee you I mean maybe some of you guys know how to boil an egg but if I said hey soft boil me an egg I would argue that none of you would be able to do boiling an egg properly is definitely a skill set that you must learn this is another great thing that I think is SuperDuper important for people to know if you don't sharpen your knives regularly you run a much higher risk of cutting yourself because you want your knife to be able to go through something very quickly and that's something that they'll teach you in culinary school in intensely there's also a bunch of people that don't go to culinary school that just work in the fields and learn the hard way and most people in a kitchen will actually wait for you to cut yourself to like show you how to properly sharpen your eyes it's not important to cut an onion quickly when you understand how to cut something and typically even some of these guys here are running it a little close like you the blade of the knife to be running on this part of your finger they're holding it like this so if you hold it like this and you're not really good boom you cut you run the risk of just cutting the tip of your finger off as the onion gets smaller you need to hold it like this to hold it in place but I typically cut like this so like there's no chance of me cutting the tips of my fingers I Bend these fingers back but you want every single piece to be exactly the same size it's SuperDuper important especially in a fine dining establishment are you dead I think in culinary school if you had that many onions on your station you get assassinated they wouldn't allow for that to happen if you have three onions they're in a bowl if you cut those onions in half those haft onions are in a bowl the only thing that's on your cutting board is the onion that you're cutting and the pieces that you've already cut everything is like super organized super clean I actually learned that stuff at culinary school you know that's the stuff that that really helps you to be successful as as a cook or a chef culinary school today is a little bit different you know there's a lot more people but I would say in terms of like the demeanor of the chef's and the and the teachers it's very similar there's like no nonsense and this guy was very polite with her chef's hat for sure that's what the chef instructors wore at culinary school that is accurate he's wearing a lab coat most chefs coats are double-breasted like the guy on the left here that looks like a typical chef's coat the guy his chef's coat looks like maybe just a super old-school chef's coat also just to be real you would never ever be allowed to be in a kitchen in culinary school without a hat on that's like the biggest nono of all time ever like you get a hair in your food and it's just game over all right next up cook up a storm whoo so basically what that thing does is it offers a little bit of sharpening but ultimately it makes the blade super straight when you're cutting things the blade gets these little Nick's in them and ultimately those Nick's become dull and so what this is doing is it's just sharpening the blade filleting a fish is not easy a knife that you use to fillet a big fish like that it's very heavy the blade itself is very very heavy so it can lay down on the bones and actually cut through with weight down on the bone so it doesn't lift up so a super sharp heavy heavy heavy knife it's typically what the Japanese used for cutting knives for filleting knives but when he's running his finger across the the salmon he's actually looking for pin bones and those bones are a pain in the ass you see that that bone that just popped up in experience people that are working with fish don't know that those bones exist because they're not right there in front of you they actually sit just below the flesh but they're short like this long and they're incredibly hard for the most part all fish have them but in our bigger fish they're hard and if some if you don't pull those out big trouble like bone in the gum trouble not good and he's probably gonna pull out a tweezer and start up there he goes Wow look at that I don't know I've never seen anybody pull pin bones out like that they're actually pretty hard to pull out and they don't just dip out like that so maybe that guy's got some serious superhuman talents you know I've actually never seen a cross cutting technique like that and done the way he did it so it looks pretty incredible though I gotta say like that is that dude has got some swagger there's no doubt I mean it's awesome it's awesome let's fast-forward to the kitchen so he looks like he's working with some why'd you be fair like you is incredibly fatty marbled meat it originated in Japan this why'd you beef technique they massage the cows they feed the cows the cows Guinness beer the cows are treated literally like royalty and if you've never had why'd you it's an experience through the a walkathon y'all the kudo-kai thermoform will 32 a d1 poodle in a smelly Achieva so sous-vide is a style of cooking we basically take a piece of meat piece of chicken piece of fish piece of beef piece of pork and you put it in this plastic bag you drop it in the cryovac it sort of seals it and then you put the you put the protein into this water bath you can cook it the perfect temperature and it could cook for 48 hours but it'll stay the same temperature you get a similar sort of texture with with any piece of protein when you subete it that looks very very good what creates fire typically when there's hot oil and water it makes a big boom similarly wine also will spark fire alcohol makes fire rice wine vinegar will create something like that basically what they have here is what we call cooking sweets they're very expensive but they're it's typically a huge oven or a huge of them with a big range across and there there's typically a number of different stations on top of it in a fine dining establishment there's a number of different components that go into every single dish and there's different cooks that are cooking specific things for each dish so if you have them all in one area and they're all able to sort of communicate with each other around this cooking sweet it makes life a little bit easier yes sir like what he just did there like he cut that with a paring knife that would never happen you would not use a paring knife to cut a piece of meat to plate you would definitely 100% use your chef's knife everything else looked legit until I spent all of that so now he's doing a little smoking technique so he's gonna put that on and he's gonna blow smoke in there too to give that a smoky flavor to give that dish a smoky flavor cook up a storm it's definitely exaggerated I mean it's the the dramas there it's cool I'm into it but you know they would never cut a piece of beautiful meat like that with a paring knife all right guys are about to throw on burnt [Music] okay so just off the bat this is intense there's no doubt about it and like when a restaurant of this stature is full throttle Friday night eight o'clock there's a hundred and pointing covers in the dining room there is a level of intensity for sure however typically this looks a little chaotic typically when you look into a kitchen of that stature it is completely organized so that feels like an intense moment and there's definitely intense moments but they exaggerate this a bit the chef of the restaurant will always you know walk over and look over somebody's shoulder and if you see something that's not being done the way he wants it done he will sometimes just push you out of the way and take it over or tell you and either a nice or not so nice way how to do it the way he wants you to do it like a chef like this is looking at every single dish that's coming out of the kitchen as a piece of art and they take it that seriously and so you can imagine the level of stress that that is on chefs like that let's just say they do a hundred to you know 102 cover 100 covers a night when I say covers I mean people 100 people a night let's just say 100 people you know and and and it's a fine-dining restaurant where there's five or seven courses or whatever it is that's 500 dishes coming out of the restaurant a night every single one of them needs to be precisely perfect and if it's not it doesn't go out and if it goes out and it gets sent back it's not fun [Music] yes that right there is a moment that I think is incredible right like that is he he did that so well if a chef gives you that moment right there where he said look at me in the eyes and is not gonna like annihilate you that is a chef saying I like you I think you're awesome I'm trying to mentor you this is this is that that is a good thing that's a good thing sweetie so that right there if someone saw you do that in the kitchen what she just did nightmare trouble for you you have a tasting spoon in a kitchen like that always I mean that happens all the time just to be honest with you like that's the truth but I mean it's nasty and so that's why you always have a tasting spoon on you so if you're gonna taste something you have a spoon that you taste and then you throw it you know you you you run it under some water and you put it back in your pocket what's your name again I mean next time you make cuts you're toast the pepper first remove the moisture and then you want to grind it by hand yeah let's see that one again so she just took her spoon tasted and that put it right back in the dish if I see that you know it doesn't go over well so I think what's happening here is he is her mentor and in the world of restaurants once someone is your mentor they're always your mentor it's never like oh you've come up and now you're doing your thing and you're and you're everywhere and you're like on my level it just that's just not the way it goes my mentors guy a guy named Frank frozen zombies he was my boss before I opened up Seymour's and he still is my mentor and he'll come into any one of my restaurants and break my balls about everything shows that co-ceo will clap off yeah yeah our trick sure the typical chef has a massive ego and our very type A that's classic male-female doesn't matter there's very few things that get that are as an intimate as as preparing something that's going into somebody's body when you look at the role of a chef who's in control of feeding hundreds of people a day thousands of people a week it's a very very serious responsibility right like you're putting food in people's people's bodies I mean we don't really think about it that way on our regular basis but it's true you know and it's for real and so when you're trying to be the best at that it comes with baggage you should a sense it's inspectors to restaurants to eat and award stars one two three or none I'll just stop here and say like the world of Michelin star restaurants it is the top of the top at the top the most elite and like there are definitely restaurants today that have Michelin stars that you're like Michelin star that diner really but if you have a Michelin star it is because you actively have pursued one it doesn't just happen the level of intensity that one would have to endure to gun for a Michelin star or two or three forget anything else in your life if you're going for three Michelin stars it is because you live eat sleep in your restaurant all right guys we're gonna move on to chef I've been waiting to talk to this prick for a long time I am NOT cloying I am NOT needy I don't care what you think you're not getting to me I'm not needy this is obviously a scene where a food critic walks into Jon Favreau's restaurant who's given him a terrible review and now he's back for food and I think chef is approaching it you'd have to be drunk really angry you know prose super high-level reviewers that are writing for The Times or something like that definitely know what they're talking about but you know sometimes I'm like you don't have to get you don't have to do that you know however today with Instagram and you know like every single dish that comes out of every single restaurant is walking into a photo shoot that is this the way it goes like today everybody's a critic it sucks everybody has different palates and you know you just got to be prepared for that I've never seen anything quite like this before like this is so dramatic I don't think that it would necessarily happen although I'm sure at some point it has it wouldn't be good if a reviewer is coming into your restaurant a super high-level reviewer is coming into your restaurant it is because your restaurant is at a standard that would warrant somebody to walk in and review your restaurant and typically a chef that's cooking at that level does not want to have a long-standing bad relationship with restaurant reviewers so he probably or she probably would not address someone like that if they gave a about their career long term I don't think a chef would be going after a critic the way he is going after a critic because that's just like death by suicide you know like you just don't go ahead on with a critic before you deal with it it sucks you take it and you pray to God that they come back in so you can wow the out of them and in your heart of hearts you know that you can hate that person but like you can't attack them we're gonna fast forward a little bit so now suddenly you're gonna be an artist will be an artist on your own time oh man this hits me like right in the gut the restaurant business is such a hard business man it's like you you it's like this conversation that they're having right now is so typical there's so many different ways kitchens are run if it's a chef owner there's no shot that the pronounced manager has precedence over a chef/owner ideally and most in in most scenarios the general manager and the chef of the restaurant are in cahoots and they have a great working relationship and so though these fights happen but miss conversation wouldn't happen between a chef and a manager this would be a chef and an owner next up one of my favorites ratatouille so I mean obviously he does not know what he's doing he's got a huge stockpot sitting on his station that would never be okay like you have bowls set up for uncut vegetables cut vegetables and and then peels like onion peels or something like that so like you have like your your trimmings your on cuts and your cuts and you would never have a stockpot sitting right on your station like that that's probably why she just flipped out this is my cooking is Acutes Jobbik leg mommy in the kitchen yeah that's pretty on point I gotta say like it like an old-school beautiful French kitchen setup I mean that's a beautiful kitchen I love this movie you would never pour boiling anything into another pot with boiling anything because you'd burn yourself you know like and you typically would not hold the pan handle without a towel you know on your hand because you'd most likely burn yourself specifically if you're dealing with copper pots that gets super hot and then you also wouldn't stack your pots on top of each other on the station because you'd get screamed at like she's about to do right now keep your station clear or I won't get you when your stations a mess everything becomes a mess it's like you know like they say the age-old saying like you walk into a restaurant and if the bathroom is a mess the bathrooms like dirty you can only imagine what the kitchen is like it's the same thing with a cook if a cook stations all messed up and this looks like there's no order you just kind of know it's not it's not happening it's not gonna work yes please look like you threw up on them keep your hands and arms in close to the body like this see I think that that's pretty much saying like you want to keep everything tight clean efficient you don't want your elbows sitting on your station so you get them all dirty like she was talking about before if you don't want to be dirty you gotta be organized you know and that's what she's trying to do that's what every in fact that's with all these clips it's all about trying to be organized I gotta say that like actually now like looking at this cartoon they did an incredible job of really making a kitchen feel like a kitchen I mean even to the dish station so that's the dish machine right there like it's perfect the whole entire setup and the line there and the dish that's called the dish pit it could not be more accurate remember what I said about having different bowls for Muzo applause so like you know they're not peeling their potatoes on to their cutting board they're peeling the potatoes into those goals so it's nice and neat and clean they have their peeled potatoes in that container they have their unfilled potatoes in the other container they're peeling into the bowl it's pretty on point guys thanks so much for watching me break down these awesome classic cooking clips power

Channel: GQ

Views: 5,865,827

Rating: 4.8763461 out of 5

Keywords: michael chernow, ratatouille, the breakdown, burnt, professional chef, pro chef, cooking movies, cooking movie, cooking scene, cooking scenes, pro chef breaks down, cooking scene breakdown, ratatouille breakdown, julia and julia, burnt breakdown, julia and julia breakdown, cooking up a storm, chef movie, julia and julia cooking, ratatouille movie, ratatouille movie breakdown, ratatouille food breakdown, gq, gq magazine

Id: GF_bsZMe7zg

Length: 20min 35sec (1235 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 13 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Sharcbait]

Straight up, the only thing Ratatouille is missing to really feel like a kitchen is the drug and alcohol abuse. Hits on the fact that it doesn't matter where you come from, kitchens will accept you. The way that the stations are run actually makes sense, it isn't a head chef running around working every single station at the same time. It even touches on the fact that a head chef can get distracted with everything else and not even cook regularly. It really was a masterpiece of a movie.