Ever wonder what secrets professional chefs use to make their food? It’s not only the expensive ingredients or fancy equipment. The secret lies in techniques and scientific insights that transform good food into great. We’ve gathered 13 of the most surprising and effective tips straight from the restaurant kitchen. Get your lists ready and impress your family and friends at your next dinner party.
13. Tenderize Any Cut of Meat with Baking Soda
Baking soda isn’t just for cleaning and cooking, as you can make it useful for cooking too. One professional secret is sprinkling a small amount of baking soda on meat before cooking. It tenderizes and helps crisp the meat into its best form. It works by raising the pH on the meat’s surface, which encourages its browning. The science behind this is simple, as the alkaline conditions break down their proteins effectively.
12. Onion-Cutting Trick
You don’t need to cry when cutting onions with this kitchen hack straight from professional chefs. Just wear a pair of swimming goggles as they create a barrier that prevents the onion’s sulphuric compounds from going to your eyes. It may look silly, but it’s actually a foolproof way to keep mascara from running, and just focus on that perfect dice.
11. Create Intense Flavor Powders with Just Your Oven
Ever wonder how restaurants create flavorful powders to garnish dishes? There’s a simple ingredient for that, which involves shrimp shells, mushroom stems, or citrus peels. Dehydrate them in their lowest possible oven setting until they’re completely dry and brittle. After, use a blender to turn them into a fine powder. This hack promises you restaurant-like dishes in the comfort of your home.
10. Room Temperature Butter is the Secret to Better Biscuits
The secret to fine and flaky biscuits isn’t actually butter. It’s simply using room temperature for a more consistent batch. Just use soft flour for your biscuits and cut them thoroughly to avoid pinching the dough layers. The room temperature butter works evenly into the dough, which creates a better texture and flavor.
9. Add Japanese Dashi Powder to Your Desserts
Try to add Hondashi powder to your baked goods. It’s actually a Japanese dashi broth powder known for its bold flavor. Trust us, the umami-rich powder won’t make your sweet dessert taste fishy. Instead, it enhances the other flavors there is to your dessert. Just a small pinch in your cookies or brownies will do.
8. Butterfly Your Shrimp to Make Them Look Big
This trick is best adopted at your next dinner party. Make your shrimp dish look abundant with this clever restaurant trick. Cut each shrimp in half horizontally to make them look double the number of pieces on your plate. It creates an illusion of a larger portion and helps the shrimp cook more evenly and quickly. Its increased surface area also meant more flavor absorption from your marinades and seasonings.
7. Turn Vegetable Scraps into Black Ash
Another zero-waste tip that high-end restaurant kitchens adopt is that it adds to the look and flavor of your dish. Don’t throw away your vegetable peelings; instead, turn them into black ash. Do this by placing the peels in a hot oven inside a covered pot or foil-lined tray and leaving them until they’re dried and blackened. Use them to garnish your soups, salads, or meat by adding a smoky and a bit of an earthy flavor to them. It works best with veggie peelings of carrots, beets, and potatoes.
6. Mix Batter in a Figure-Eight to Keep it Light
Want to make your fried chicken crispier and lighter like in restaurant style? There’s a stirring technique for that. Avoid tough and gummy batter by mixing it gently in a figure-eight pattern. By doing this, you combine the ingredients without actually overworking the gluten in the flour. Note that over-developing gluten causes a heavy and dense coating.
5. Pre-Fry Your Fish for a Stress-Free Fry
Admittedly, frying fish can be frantic, but here’s a restaurant secret to keep things calm. Fry your fish up to an hour in advance and let it rest on a baking sheet at room temperature. Before you serve it, put it in a 300°F oven for about 10 minutes. It gently reheats the fish without overcooking it and gives you a result of crisp and hot without chaos. The key lies in the fish continuing to cook slightly while resting.
4. Know Your Butter’s Smoke Point
Ever wonder why your butter burns easily each time you’re trying to get a good sear? It’s because you’re using the wrong kind. Don’t use whole butter as it contains milk solids with a low smoke point of around 250°F (120°C). Instead, opt for clarified butter, which chefs use because it has the milk solids removed for high-heat cooking with a high smoke point of 450°F (230°C). With this, you’ll achieve a perfect and deep brown sear without that burnt flavor. Just save your whole butter for the finishing sauce.
3. Tame Spicy Food with a Pinch of Ground Cloves
If you made a dish that’s a little spicy for everyone, then this tip is a sure lifesaver. Instead of diluting the heat with more ingredients, just use a pinch of ground cloves. The compounds from the cloves have a mild numbing effect on the palate, which helps to temper the burning sensation of capsaicin in chili peppers. It also allows you to control the health level of sauces and moles without compromising the flavor.
2. Bloom Your Spices in Hot Oil, Not a Dry Pan
Yes, toasting spices to release their flavor is a well-known kitchen technique, but are you doing it the most effective way? Try a more powerful method used in restaurants, which is called “chaunk” or “tadka.” It involves frying your spices in a hot fat, like oil or ghee. The hot oil extracts and carries the aromatic compounds of spices more efficiently, which brings a more complex flavor to your dish. It’s an ancient technique used to upgrade curries, soups, and stews.
1. Season in Layers, Not Just at the End
Many home cooks wait until the end of the cooking process to add salt. But professional chefs season their dishes at every stage. When you’re sweating your onions, make sure to add a pinch of salt. When you’re trying to brown the meat, season it first. And of course, when you deglaze a pan, add a small pinch. It’s called layering to build a more complex flavor. That’s the secret to why restaurant food tastes much better, as it’s all about the flavor.