Chef tips part 2

It’s been pointed out to me that there’s certain things that I subconsciously do when I cook, that people would’ve never thought about doing! This has come from years of working in professional kitchens, you pick up some tricks of the trade that help with the speed of home cooking.

Learn your tastebuds

There are 5 universal tastes: sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami. Umami is described as being a savoury flavour - something like mushrooms or marmite. The 5 tastes are something to think about when you’re deciding what to cook, some of the best dishes usually have a combination of all 5 tastes as elements to the dish.

Onion trick

When chopping an onion, don’t cut the end with the root off when peeling it. It helps when chopping and slicing the onion to hold it all together!

Chopping board

Something I always forget to do is to secure my chopping board down. In the kitchens we would wet a piece of kitchen towel and stick it under the chopping board to let the friction top it from moving around when you chop on it.

Freeze your cakes

If you’re making a big sponge that you need to perfectly stack with buttercream. I normally always freeze the sponges before - which increases the moisture and also sets the buttercream instantly whilst icing so there’s no need to chill it after the first crumb coat.

TASTE

Something that chefs whilst I was training used to shout at us all the time, was to taste our food as we were going along! It’s so important to keep checking the dish, whether that’s adding more seasoning, a dash more acidity or if it needs an extra ingredient, especially with savoury dishes - you won’t know until you try it.