Latest / Chef's PSA Podcast / Will A Chef Fail Without Recipes? Ep. 25

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Will A Chef Fail Without Recipes? Ep. 25 · Chef's PSA Podcast

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Hello chefs, you're listening to chefs, PSA podcast.
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I'm your host Entre natera. On today's episode we're going
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to talk about recipes. So stay tuned.
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So, I should probably start with an update.
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What have I been up to this past week?
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Well, I have some big news. I finally finished up the
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culinary leadership. Fundamentals ecourse.
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That's live. I went to different directions
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with it so you could rent it or you could buy it and I wanted to
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be able to reach a larger audience.
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I know a lot of cooks out there or maybe Sous chefs out there, I
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wanted to make it more accessible to them so you could
0:48
rent it for eight dollars or you could buy it for $48.
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So you rent it. You know, you could watch it, I
0:52
think you have 72 hours before you got to complete the video.
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But if you if you want to own it, you could buy it for $48.
0:58
You can take it anywhere with you.
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The link is in my bio. If that's something that you
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want to do on that video, I cover everything from food cost
1:08
management. Basically basically, it's about
1:12
an hour and 15 minutes of everything you need to know to
1:14
be an executive chef crash course.
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I also wrapped up the culinary leadership, fundamentals,
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audiobook, and that's been submitted, I submitted it on
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December 13th. It could take up to 10 days for
1:27
audible to approve. Assuming there's no glitches or
1:30
errors in the audiobook should be out by next week.
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I'll announce it on all social platforms when it's live.
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So for those of you that have been asking the audiobook is
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done, it took me a while longer than I thought but the audio
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book is done. Hopefully it'll be out next week
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before Christmas but I You all will enjoy it.
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I worked long and hard on that project with the narrator
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Gabriel, correct? So excited to bring you that and
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then starting in January we will be working on the audio book for
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the line, cook, survival manual, so that will be next and I'm
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still unsure if I want to write an a fourth book and I talked
2:08
about writing something, you know, to pay tribute to the
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chefs that I've worked for, but still unsure, let me know if
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that's something that you want to read.
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If it is Maybe I'll start writing it anyway.
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Something funny happened this week and that was a chef friend
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of mine called me up and he had a catering gig and he couldn't
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do it. He was he was busy and he was
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double-booked. And so he called me up and said,
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hey do you want to you want to do a catering project for me?
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I thought about as I had. No let me see.
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If I know any chefs I don't feel like you know working a private
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event but nonetheless I couldn't find any chefs.
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So I said well screw it. I haven't cooked in a long time.
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I'll do it. So, you know what?
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I'm one of my former chefs and I we got together, we went cooked,
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this five-course meal and boy, was I Rusty.
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But anyway, the food came out good.
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I was sore the next day. I haven't haven't worked as a
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professional chef in a long time and Catering at someone's house,
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is not something I typically enjoy doing, but it was fun.
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I had fun doing it, it was fun to be back in the kitchen and it
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does tie into this episode because as I was, Was going
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through dishes that I wanted to make I needed recipes.
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And I couldn't remember how to make everything off the top of
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my head. So I did need to dig into my my
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book of recipes and it's amazing how quickly skills a road.
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And I know I've talked about this on, I think on the last
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podcast I talked about how, if you don't keep your skills
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sharp, you start to lose them pretty quick and I'll say that
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the last thing to go for a chef as their palate.
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Like everything. I made still tasted good like
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the last thing. To go, when you've been out of
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the kitchen for a while, will be your palate.
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But the first thing to go is your back after after a couple
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of hours standing up. I was like, holy shit.
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My back hurts. My feet hurt.
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Anyway, I knocked it out of the park.
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It was a great catering but anyway, that's neither here.
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Nor there. It was fun.
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I had a lot of fun, doing it and let's get into recipes.
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So, I did a poll today on Instagram, and I said, what do
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you guys want me to talk about today?
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Culinary, competitions recipes. Or Q&A so recipes.
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It came, you know whose it was close.
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It was culinary competition recipes with Q&A, just slightly
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behind it but recipes ultimately one and not you know you guys
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were voting for us because I'm not even sure if you know what I
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was going to talk about with regards to recipes but I'll get
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into it. So I want to be able to steal
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man the the case on both sides for recipes and against recipes.
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And I'll start with this. I have two friends that are
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extremely successful chefs that run your restaurants that are
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household names, two of the best restaurants in the world, but I
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don't want to use my chefs names without without their permission
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anyway. Both of these chefs are amazing.
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Both of these chefs are highly successful and both of these
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Chef's, run. Some of the best restaurants in
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the world. One of these chefs is a big
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believer in recipes, everything is followed to the G and the
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other Chef freestyles. It No recipes.
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Everyone knows how to cook the kind of get the idea.
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They understand the system, they have guidelines, but no recipes.
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So it's interesting to note that you could have two very
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successful restaurants and chefs on both ends of the spectrum and
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there's a strong argument to be made on both sides.
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Now, when I was a chef coming up in culinary school when I didn't
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know how to cook, I followed recipes like yump and back, then
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it was like cups and spoons. So So I followed recipes to the
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team, you know, someone could be a recipe, I would follow it.
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And if it wasn't in the recipe in my mind back then it wasn't
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going to. I wasn't going to adjust it.
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Everything was pretty much measured with the exception of
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salt and pepper. If you all remember, everything
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said, salt and pepper TT, salt and pepper to taste.
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That was always the, the standard format and most recipes
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that were written. But as I started to grow as a
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chef in my skills, progressed, I started to move into.
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I understand how to cook intuitively.
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I cook based off taste. I understand how something
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supposed to taste. I understand how to make it
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taste. Good, I taste it.
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I seasoned it. I adjust, I taste it.
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I seasoned it, I adjust then, at the end of the day, boom, here's
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something delicious for the guests to enjoy, and that worked
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out great for me. So, I went through a period in
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my career where there was no recipes, I would, you know, kind
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of designed the dish. And some of my, some of my chefs
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that used to work for me, would get so annoyed with me because
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they're like, can you just give me a straight?
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Right answers like, well, today, it needs this.
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Like, but yesterday you said it needed.
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That was like, well, yesterday, I did need that.
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But today, it needs this and I lived in this gray area of
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trying to teach them how to cook intuitively, you know, using
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their, their senses. What I like to call the chef
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for. So if you're familiar with Star
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Wars, you know, they use the the force like this, this Jedi
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magical. Anyway, I call it the chef
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Force. It's like your intuition to know
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how to do shit in the kitchen intuitively like, you know, the
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chickens done. But you didn't take the temp,
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you didn't touch it. You just know like based on my
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intuition that tells me that chicken is done just by looking
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at it. You know, you'd smell a pot.
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You're like this needs this. And like how do you know you
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didn't taste it. I said, trust me Chef Force.
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So I used to joke around and say I had the chef Force.
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So a lot of what I used to do, you know, probably for the
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middle part of my career was no recipes and then towards the end
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I would say probably in about 2013, there was a moment where I
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had this one of my one of my chefs that used to work for me.
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He had also worked for Michael Mina and he showed me the system
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that Michael Mina uses where they had all these recipes and
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was documented. It was on this computer intranet
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that they had that they were able to share ideas and I
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thought it was brilliant. And if you've ever worked for
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the Michael Mina group, you know, exactly what I'm talking
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about. I think they have probably the
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most brilliant recipe system categorized that I've ever seen.
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So, after I saw this, you know, kind of my brain explode, I was
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like, I need to do that. That that seems to be the way.
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And also at that time I had discovered This website,
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chefsteps.com, if you're not familiar with it, it's really
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great website and they put up a video.
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That was the difference between weight measure and cups and
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spoons. And it's a really good break
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down and you can watch the video.
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And, you know, obviously you start to understand, okay,
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everything needs to be done by the ground versus cups and Oz,
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it's just more practical and the way that they had all their
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recipes always listed out by G. It made me recalibrate how I
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thought about recipes and moving more towards Everything having
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an exact recipe. And so, I moved towards recipes
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in the latter half of my career, and I would say in my very last
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job. Before I stepped away from being
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a chef, it was the recipe is the recipe as the recipe, you did
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not change it. You might need to adjust for
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Taste and that would be, you know, salt acid heat, something
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like that, but you don't adjust the recipe.
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You try and keep it as true to the recipe as possible with some
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slight deviations. So Towards the latter half of my
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career. I was a firm believer in
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recipes, but anyway, let's steal.
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Man, the case on both sides. Let's first, let's start out
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with why you need recipes. Well, I'll tell you this, that
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the end of the day, you guys need to decide, it's your
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kitchen. I'm going to present both sides
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of the argument as to why you need recipes or why you don't
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need recipes. But let me start out with why I
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believe that you do need recipes.
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And as a head, chef If you want to build a consistent restaurant
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and you want guests to come back and experience the same thing
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over and over again based on your vision, then you need to
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have that documented somewhere. So people understand how to
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prepare it, the argument could be made that something needs to
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be made per taste and the cooks taste should be the metric on
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which recipes are measured on. But the problem with that
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becomes that Your palate as a chef.
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That's been doing it for x amount of time versus an
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entry-level Cooks palette, who's fresh out of culinary school?
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Or maybe it's their first job are completely different, right?
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I'll cook hasn't fully developed their palate yet in there in the
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beginning of their career as much as amateur chef and I'll
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give you some examples of things that when I say this, you'll
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know if you've been cooking long enough, you'll know these these
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taste and one is the flavor of a scorched pot.
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When you're cooking something over the Heat and it was too hot
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and you forgot to stir it and it Scorch the bottom and then you
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taste in your like, what's that taste?
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Oh, it's scorched pot, like that flavor is Unforgettable or
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another one is rancid nuts. When nuts, go rancid.
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They have a an off flavor rancid oil or fryer oil, that's too
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old, right? All these things have a very
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unique specific flavor that you know, you could, you could taste
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any like oh this went wrong in the, in the process.
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And the reason I bring that up is because many times throughout
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my career, I've had people bring me things and say taste this and
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I'll taste it. I'll say you scorched, the pot
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and the black. What are you talking about?
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Tastes fine. Is like, nope, you scorched, the
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pot and then they check the like, oh, I did Scorch.
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The pot. How did you know?
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It was like? Well, because I know what Scorch
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pot taste, like, I've Scorch pots or I'll taste something
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made with nuts and I'll say, the nuts are rancid, and there would
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be like, really, I didn't noticeably.
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Yep. Your nuts are rancid.
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Now, that is because I've developed my palate, so, and
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again, I'm speaking about ingredients, but this should
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reinforce the fact that just assuming you're leaving it up to
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someone's taste. You really can't do that.
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You have to have some Guidelines for people to follow when it
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comes to recipes. Now from a business standpoint
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recipes are good business practices because everything
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will be costed on the recipe. Everything is measured and
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assuming that you're costing your recipes and measuring them
12:08
correctly, it gives you a better understanding of what your food
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cost is what your theoretical food cost us.
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So it's it's it's a good business practice to have
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recipes. And it's a good business
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practice to also have to have those recipes cost.
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It on top of that, again, we're talking about Cooks developing
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their palate when you give them recipes, then you say, okay,
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make the recipe now taste it. Okay, now, make the recipe
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again. Now taste it.
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And after they've done that multiple times, they'll
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understand okay, I've made the recipe exactly multiple times
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but there's some there's some Nuance within the recipe.
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What changed? Well, what changed is, you know,
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what type of oil were using what type of produce?
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We're using, was it in season? Was it not?
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Was it fresh was, it was the product rancid.
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So a lot of these things, then you start to understand the
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subtle variance between the recipe over the course of time.
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So having recipes in place also, helps train the cook on how to
13:06
build something when ever I'm writing recipes.
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Now, my recommendation is, I always go and kilos and G.
13:14
It's much more specific. So, all the cooks that work for
13:17
me, part of their uniform. Merc toolkit was to always bring
13:20
a digital scale because all our recipes were written in grams.
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And then, the kitchen also had heavy duty digital scales.
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If you need to make something in bulk, we'd have digital skills
13:30
for that, but I recommend doing that getting out of cups.
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Announces like I said, go watch the chefsteps video, they do a
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great job of breaking down. Why you should use ounces, I'm
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sorry. Why you should use grams and
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kilos versus ounces and cups and spoons and things like that.
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I don't use that and I haven't used it for more than almost 15
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years. I don't I've used that.
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So now you have a firm understanding of parameters.
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You're able to hold people accountable when something's
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wrong, I've made recipes throughout my career dozens of
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times. And then someone will present
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that recipe to me. And I'll say it's wrong.
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I'm just looking at it like that recipes wrong.
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They're like, how do you know? It's like I fucking know,
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because I've made it a hundred times, that's how I know because
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I it's my recipe. I know it's wrong.
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I could look at it and know that something's different about it.
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So recipes do allow you to have accountability and then the last
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point I'll make Ache when it comes to recipes is that if
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someone doesn't understand the type of Cuisine, and in my case,
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I've worked with a lot of culinarians that have come from
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International. And so they may be from India or
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they're from the Philippines or they're from wherever.
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And so I'm introducing them to flavors that are completely
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foreign to them and if I say just make it taste good, I don't
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know if their frame of reference is what it's supposed to be
14:46
like. That would be like, you know, if
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I went to a foreign country And they said make this, you know,
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kind of is like this. Like I have no frame of
14:53
reference of how that's supposed to taste.
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I don't understand the heat levels.
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I don't understand the acid levels, Etc.
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So I could be making something completely wrong and then they
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come up to me and say it's completely wrong.
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So recipes provide good structure.
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Well anyway, that's my Steel, Man case for recipes.
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Now, what I want to do is I want to steal, man the case for no
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recipes If you work in a place where creativity is Paramount
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and there's a lot of restaurants out there that their menu
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evolves right? The chef is free-style in their
15:23
creative their cooking on the Fly today at the end of the day,
15:27
we look at what we have and we create a new menu Tomorrow.
15:30
Based on the ingredients that we have.
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Everyone's cooking at a very high level, everyone understands
15:35
how to cook and you start to develop a certain level of
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confidence in the system. For those places.
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I'm not sure if you truly I need recipes because you might have
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some systems in place that we know here.
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This is how we do it. So if I say do this, this and
15:49
this you know, exactly what I'm talking about because we've
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worked together for years and we're all developing the same
15:56
flavors because we have the same frame of reference because we
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have a good team that's been working together.
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Also, when you're working in places that the the skill level
16:09
is very high and people could cook in - Lee, you know, they
16:14
could just taste something like notepad this at that.
16:17
And I've talked about this before, at least, maybe not on
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the podcast. But I know I've talked about
16:21
this maybe on social media, is the way I look at flavor and
16:25
salt and acid is, whenever I would do a tasting with chefs, I
16:29
would say think about seasoning as the dial on a radio.
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So the volume dial and it would be if it's too loud, you can't
16:40
hear the song, it's almost, you know, obnoxious It's so loud,
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it's obnoxious you can't hear. And if it's too low you can't
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you can't hear it so you can't even enjoy it.
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And there's a sweet spot on the volume where you're going to
16:53
enjoy it. And I would teach Cooks, like,
16:55
there's flavor enhancers so it'd be like, salt is like the, the
16:59
dial. So you adjust the seasoning,
17:02
you're turning up the music if it's too salty, that's like,
17:05
having the volume all the way up.
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If there's no salt. It's like having the volume all
17:09
the way down. So finding that sweet spot of
17:10
salt of acid, Of heat, Etc. So learning how to balance those
17:16
flavors and when chefs would bring me dishes to taste, it's a
17:20
chef. What do you think about this?
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I'd say, okay, the salts like a seven, turn it down to a six or
17:24
lets punch up the acid. It's right outside of six.
17:26
Let's take it up to an eight, whatever the case may be and you
17:30
start to develop your palate and developed palette.
17:34
I will say might be one of the most important things you know I
17:36
kind of joked around at the last thing to go for a chef is their
17:39
palette and a developed palette might be one of the most
17:43
Important things to Chef, can can develop on their own because
17:45
you know, all the skills that you get, you know, bracelet a
17:48
etcetera etcetera. Like, you can have all the
17:49
skills, but it doesn't mean your food is going to taste good,
17:52
right? You could, you could, you could
17:53
know how to cut very well and you could know how to braise
17:57
very well, but it does not mean that the food is going to taste
17:59
good. But if you have a good palate,
18:01
you understand, add a little of this, take this away.
18:04
You understand how to combine flavors and you understand the
18:06
Nuance of adding this will lift that up.
18:10
You start to also build flavor memory Is in your mind if you
18:14
try a lot of food and you have a lot of experience tasting things
18:17
when you have this, like this database, this data Bank, of
18:21
flavor memories in your mind when your start to create
18:23
dishes. You start say oh this will taste
18:25
good with that. And have you tried it before?
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No, I have not, but I know intuitively that this will taste
18:31
good together. An argument can be made that a
18:37
chef doesn't need to be the best cook in the kitchen, but they
18:41
need to be the best taster and have the most Find palette
18:43
because they should be able to taste things especially you
18:46
know, in a larger operation. You know, if you think of a chef
18:49
that might have four or five restaurants, the truth is,
18:51
they're not behind the line probably ever, but they're
18:53
meeting with their chef de cuisine and they're saying,
18:55
okay, let me taste this, let me taste that, you know, adjust
18:56
this, that the other, they're able to adjust the, the dishes
19:00
that are being put forward based on their experience and their
19:04
refined palate and the fact that they're exposed to so much where
19:09
you maybe those Chef De Cuisine, is of those restaurants are so
19:11
hyper focused just on. What they're doing, you know,
19:14
they can't see the forest through the through the trees.
19:16
So having a very refined palate is very important for Chef in
19:20
the only way that you're gonna be able to do that is by tasting
19:22
everything. So a case can be made that you
19:25
don't need recipes. If you're working in the
19:26
environment where you're constantly developing and
19:29
refining your palate, And you have a strong team around you
19:34
where there's minimal mistakes. Of course, there's always going
19:36
to steaks. Even if you do have recipes, but
19:39
if you have a strong team around, you might not need as
19:42
many recipes because everyone understands what the other
19:45
person is thinking when they say do this, you know, if I go to
19:48
like, I did, like, I said, it did this catering with one of my
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chefs that I've known for, over 13, 14 years.
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And if I said, hey do this. He knows exactly what I mean.
19:59
I don't need to explain it to him.
20:00
I said, hey, can you make a call if Our puree and he's like, yep,
20:02
I got it. Because we've made it together
20:04
so many times. I don't need to hand him a
20:05
recipe, but as I was saying, I was doing this catering event
20:10
and I couldn't remember something.
20:11
I was like, I want to make this recipe and I couldn't remember
20:13
exactly what it was and I was like, okay let me let me stop
20:17
and let me look up my old recipe database because I want to make
20:20
sure it was accurate and it tasted good.
20:21
So like I said an argument could be made either way.
20:26
But if I had to choose, I would say I would err on the side of
20:30
recipes. I do think These are important
20:32
and I think, like I said, if you want to have a kitchen that is
20:36
responsible in terms of profit margins and cost you need to
20:40
know what your recipes are in. You understand how much they
20:43
cost and if you want to minimize the amount of mistakes and if
20:46
you have a large operation in the last kitchen, I had was
20:49
like, 120 employees. So I couldn't just trust
20:52
everyone to just make everything to my palate because they were
20:55
from all over the world and they had all different levels of
20:57
cooking experience. So having recipes established
21:00
guidelines and parameters. Is to minimize the amount of
21:05
error. And deviation away from what I
21:08
wanted. So an argument could be made of
21:10
either way the larger the operation, I think, the more
21:12
important, the recipes, the smaller, the operation smaller
21:15
at the team. Maybe it's not as important.
21:17
In like, also in a lot of catering operations, you know,
21:20
the menu changes so much yo day-to-day, maybe you don't need
21:23
recipes. But again, fact of the matter
21:26
is, it's not my kitchen. It's your kitchen and whatever
21:29
your chef says is Right. Assuming that you're not the
21:32
chef, if you are the chef, whatever you say is right?
21:34
It doesn't matter what I say. It's what you think.
21:36
I'm just My case. And I'm I want to make sure I'm
21:38
able to steal man both sides of the argument but it was
21:41
interesting. So I put up a poll and I asked
21:43
the question. I said, chefs, do you all use
21:45
recipes? And this was a couple of weeks
21:46
back, and it was interesting because I didn't realize that
21:50
people were so passionate one side or the other, and that's
21:52
actually why I put up the poll because, you know, sometimes in
21:55
my world I live in an echo chamber.
21:57
Meaning that everyone that I talk to always has the same
22:02
ideas and kind of thinks the same.
22:03
We all will have the same beliefs when it comes to how
22:06
kitchen should be. Be run.
22:08
And it's interesting for me to hear other perspectives that I
22:11
don't hear every day because they're not in my general circle
22:14
of influence. So, anyway, That's basically
22:17
going to wrap up the show next week.
22:19
We will talk culinary competitions.
22:22
I'm excited about that one. I'm actually, and I'll save this
22:25
for the next episode, but I'm tomorrow.
22:27
I'm going to go talk to two people.
22:29
That are very much involved in competitions to pick their brain
22:33
before I record next week's podcast.
22:36
So come back next week. You'll enjoy that one.
22:38
If you want to support the show, go subscribe on Spotify or apple
22:43
or whatever. You're listening to this on.
22:45
Make sure you leave five stars. This is a five-star podcast, go,
22:48
get the books culinary leadership.
22:50
Fundamentals line, cook survival manual and how not to be the
22:53
biggest idiot in the kitchen if you want continuing education.
22:57
Look for The Culinary leadership fundamentals video.
23:00
You can find all of this on Chefs PSA.com.
23:02
You can also look at the merch on there.
23:04
There's a, there's a shirt that I put up.
23:05
That's Happy, Chef. It's honest.
23:07
It's one of my favorite shirts that I've made.
23:10
It's simple but I think it's funny.
23:12
Anyway, go do that. Thank you all for listening.
23:16
If there's something that you want me to touch on next week,
23:19
please drop me a DM or in the comments and hit the porno
23:22
music, see you next week.