Real chefs recipes compared to mine

Cafe Society
21

I’ve nothing to add exactly, but it has been fun reading. Thanks all and keep it up. I’ve done so little quality cooking in the last 5 years that what recipes I once could do skillfully from memory would be a ghastly mess now if tried working directly from my detailed notes.

I do have a question for the OP though:
@mixdenny, what was your intent here with the thread? To make jokes about overly elaborate TV chef cookery versus our own, to share our own semi-elaborate recipes for only French onion soup, or just to swap our own semi-fancypants cooking stories and techniques?

Any / all of those would be fun. I just wonder what was on your mind as you whipped up the OP?

22

I like your style! Reminds me of the Galloping Gourmet who never left an partially empty bottle of wine.

23

I dunno. I just wake up and have silly ideas of something to start a discussion. I guess to poke fun at my simpler methods. I have read Julia’s recipe for Beef Bourguignon and although I am sure it puts my beef stew to shame I just can’t even begin to think about following that day long recipe. I love my version and it is dead simple. Maybe I’ll add some wine.

24

Until he became a born-again teetotaler.

25

The wife and I once won a day’s Masterchef (UK TV cooking competition) cookery course, where the instructor said they sometimes used equal parts potato and butter for mashed potato. Sounds vile to me, though ‘buttery smooth’ I’d imagine.

26

I loved that show. It enhanced my interest in cooking that was simply to satisfy hunger by extending it into my interest in drinking. You knew it was going to be a good show when he was already lit when it started. Despite that, he was an excellent cook and his shows were also very informative.

27

I think it’s all part of the pendulum swing. A lot of early cookbooks were aimed at making the dishes of “your betters” and aimed at the proverbial housewife cooking an elaborate meal / course designed to impress friends / family / the husband’s boss, etc. And later we swung in the direction of “why do all this work when Corporate American Foods™ can do it all for you?” leading to endless canned, preprepared, or otherwise processed broths, sauces, mixes, et al. Then celebrity chefs and increased interest in cooking became a thing and the pendulum swung again - although as many went in the direction of seeking out unique establishments as cooking for themselves. And of course, the Covid forced cooking/baking craze had it’s own effect.

While I like to cook, and will absolutely look down on the lowest common denominator pre-made options (especially garbage store broth!), it’s really about what suits your combination of taste, wallet, skills, and time when it comes to the best cooking and food for you. But as stated in many of these threads, if you have the space, you can make good food ahead of time in larger quantities, and dole it out as needed with only minor quality compromises.

Spice mix? Buy the raw spices, prepare in large batches, keep much of it in the freezer except for what you’ll use in the near future, and you’re ahead in both cost and quality from what you’ll see in stores.

Stock and broth? Big batches in slow cookers or pressure cookers, strained, portioned, and frozen (and/or reduced to a concentrate/demi-glace) and again, you’re ahead of the game and almost always saving money.

And a lot of the tricks you learn from the books can help a lot, even if they don’t require time-honed techniques or a big budget. I’m not going to joint a roast, or start with the highest quality of ingredients man can buy, but if I’m making French Onion Soup per the OP, I can buy some meaty beef bones and roast them and some veg in a sheet pan or skillet prior to tossing in the pressure cooker, a small investment that’ll pay big flavor dividends.

Still, if all I had was a small loft apartment with a tiny stove and half sized fridge/freezer with minimal storage, you’re never going to have the same options.

28

I’m with @LSLGuy , the fancy schmancy cooking trend makes me laugh.

How many young parents search for just the right cheese and hand made noodles for tonights dinner?

They opening that blue box.

If they are creative they might sneak a veggie in it.
Good luck getting kids to be quiet about it tho’!

I’m all for good ingredients and proper techniques but Abalone frou-frou slightly sauteed and carefully herbed and a side of birds nest soup ain’t on nobody’s dinner table. In any real world I know.

I say, as always, if you cook it and you and yours love it, It’s perfect.
No food is good if it’s left uneaten.

Fancy and expensive for fancy and expensive’s sake is just dumb.

(And, I apologize but Country Crock is the best on a biscuit)

29

As long as one doesn’t exceed the smoke point of the butter. The oil won’t keep it from burning.

30

I use butter milk, butter, a tiny bit of garlic oil and the right potatoes for mashed potatoes. (+S&P)

Can’t ever make enough.

31

It isn’t true Julia’s recipe is complicated, though there are more complex levels. It is way better than onion soups I have had at restaurants run by star chefs who claimed to cook the soup over two days.

Her recipe is good even if you use powdered beef stock. Her recipe is better if you brown beef bones in the air fryer and throw them in the mix after adding that. It’s more about the slow cooked onions anyway, but a bit about the booze.

But if you make your own broth from scratch the results are better still. I’d only do it for more special occasions at the moment though it is easy to do.

32

I enjoy cooking and reading cookbooks. But I won’t buy a cookbook unless two-thirds of the recipes are stuff I would enjoy making and eating. Also, I must be able to easily buy most of the ingredients. And the recipes should stand on their own, not be a pretentious plating of four odd dishes.

I think Julia is well liked because the results are great and they aren’t that particular. There are many better examples of fussy cooks. I have seen stock recipes beginning “ask your butcher to save you four pounds of venison bones”. The local butcher guffawed. Be easier to get these by speeding up North….

Recipes intended for daily use benefit from simplicity, good but common ingredients, use of time-saving shortcuts, sometimes things like frozen or canned products.

33

Julia’s roasted chicken was how I first ever made one.

It was eaten. And next day chicken salad was the best.

I can have Son-of-a-wrek rotisserie a couple whole chickens on the outside grill and be just as happy with it. Prep. Send him out with it. Easy peasey.

34

@ParallelLines nailed it.

Cooking shows now have split into 3 broad genres:

  1. The contests (races actually), where stupid time pressure and silly-assed required ingredients essentially turn elaborate cooking into slapstick. Uggh. Spare me.

  2. Snooty things done snootily in oh-so-superb surroundings. An all organic 5-course cooked entirely outdoors at a hillside winery, etc. That’s just vacation eating porn. Which is fun, but isn’t really about the cooking.

  3. And the backlash shows, which are trying to get back to relative basics: moderately skilled but not time-wasting techniques that yield a lot of extra pizazz for rather little incremental effort. America’s Test Kitchen was probably the prototype for this. Take a supposedly 30-step dish and figure out to get 90+% of the results in just 5 steps and two fewer hours invested. Those have long since exhausted that ore vein, but being one trick ponies they’re sorta stuck plowing the same ground over and over and …


@Beckdawrek: I’m not real sure what you think I said that you’re agreeing with.

Speaking for myself, I have almost never in my life made a meal for a child and the constraints of child-centric food prep are of zero interest to my idea of what the words “American Cookery” might represent.

My idea of how adults should cook for themselves involves a certain level of fol-de-rol and sophistication.

Yes, a hamburger can be a frozen walmart cheapo pattie tossed frozen into the pan for a few minutes then flopped lopsided onto wonderbread on a paper plate.

Or you can spend an extra couple of minutes at the store to get good beef, good buns/rolls, and maybe 30 extra seconds in the kitchen per person served making something worthwhile out of that meat with perhaps onions, peppers, various spices, marinades, etc. And grilling it slowly, and accurately to whatever your favored doneness may be and serving it nicely with appropriate condiments and accessories.

If I just wanted calories I’d guzzle room temperature beer. Why room temerature? It goes down quicker than the cold stuff will.

35

I’ll buy a cookbook if the food-porn photos are delectable. Yes, I’ll buy a physical book, because sticky fingers go better with paper than with my phone or keyboard. Most of my cooking is pretty basic, but rarely highly processed or pre-prepared. I’m happy with a crudité plate, good bread, cheese or meatsy bits, maybe soup, and fruit. A couple of times a week, I’ll make something more extensive or elaborate. I don’t do basic American food, though. I didn’t grow up with it. I’m much more likely to make an Asian dish.

36

Oh, yes we agree.
You get the best you can afford.
That good burger doesn’t have to be Waygu beef and hand made rolls from the best bakery in town.

You can make a good burger in your own kitchen or grill with normal ingredients. I personally like a leaner ground beef. We have many arguments that it just doesn’t make the best hamburgers.

I’m just saying you don’t have to have that frozen patty from Walmart, unless that is all you can afford. You don’t have to go fast food. You can do a burger that is decent at home.

You can have the done-ness you prefer and not get ill.

I think we agree the cooking shows that were once a way to teach have jumped some kinda weird shark and people think that’s a proper way to be.
There are things shown on those shows no average family, kids or not, would ever eat.

To be a great home cook you need two things, the best food you can afford and the “want” to cook for your family and have them like it.

Altho’ if you wanna fight, we can😋

37

Oh no need to fight. Not even throwing gravy-soaked rolls at one another. :wink:

38

A successful restaurant is generally one that turns cheaper ingredients into ambrosia (or makes the most of more expensive ingredients). A successful home cook makes good meals with minimum fuss and moderate effort. Fresh ingredients and respect for food go a long way. I like the Cooks Illustrated recipes even if the backstory is always the same.

On the thirty-fourth try, I almost gave up in frustration! But then I remembered a trick from when we made Spam Kebabs. So I asked the Science Editor…

Some of these TV chefs scowl at using a microwave or any canned or frozen food. Home chefs understand that 80% of the flavour comes from 20% of the effort. Not that much is usually added by making your own tomato ketchup.

But lean burgers are for turkeys!

39

Aw. Man. Food Fight!! Stymied.

:blush:

40

Julia Child taught me how to shave my butts. Until then, I was only trimming them.