I’ve been watching a lot of YouTube cooking videos lately, and of course, the more I watch, the more get served up to me. In addition to the actual cooking videos, there are a lot of videos in which people criticize the techniques used in other videos, and sometimes try to reproduce the methods to see how successful they actually are (or are not).
So I’ve seen a lot of ridiculous things, and was originally going to just call this post ‘Stupid Chef Tricks’. But I’ve also seen a lot of interesting recipes and cool-looking cooking or food prep hacks I’ve bookmarked and plan to try sometime, or already have. So I thought I’d have it both ways and make a thread where we can discuss dumb cooking related stuff as well as interesting hacks we’ve seen and maybe even tried. I will start off with one of each…
Stupid Chef Trick: wrapping or accenting food with gold foil. Why?!? Apparently celebrity chef Salt Bae does this a lot. I understand a lot of his shtick is that he’s this theatrical, performative style of chef, but I’m sorry, a steak wrapped in gold foil is not the slightest bit appetizing. I’m used to cooking food in foil over a campfire or storing food in foil, and all of my deeply ingrained instincts are to REMOVE FOIL BEFORE EATING. Plus, I know the foil is so thin it doesn’t use much gold, but it just seems a waste to eat and poop out any amount of precious metal.
Cool Chef Hack: I’ve seen a couple videos on turning $30 or $40 worth of Costco salmon into hundreds of dollars worth of restaurant-quality sushi and sashimi. You need to use the Atlantic farm-raised salmon, which I always thought was highly inferior to wild-caught and usually avoid it. But for this hack farm-raised is best, because since it’s not rated as sushi-grade, farm-raised is more or less guaranteed not to have any pesky parasites. Here’s a video on how to sashimify Costco salmon. Anybody already try this by chance? Would you try it?
I’ve become friends with a guy who operates a sushi food truck. He has done this and has helped me with my attempts. I also like using salmon like in the video for ceviche. Getting good at cutting fish takes lots of practice and a very sharp knife.
My own hacks include “refreshing” greens before serving. I make fresh cuts on the ends of spinach stalks, then put them in a glass of water for awhile. The leaves “perk up” a bit.
I also often heat my plates/bowls prior to plating. And when plating I always try to have some garnish so that the food looks nicer.
If I make scrambled eggs or an omelet for guests, I pour the beaten eggs through a chinois (a very fine sieve). I don’t do this when cooking for myself.
When making potato pancakes I take the fluid that I drain after grating the potatoes and toss the liquid portion, but reserve the bit of sediment and add it back to the potatoes.
I have some small, white towels that I soak in water and either microwave or put in the freezer (whichever seems most appropriate at the time). I then fold/roll them and put them on a plate that can be passed around the table. I do this when we have company. People really seem to enjoy the refreshing towel right before a meal.
This reminded me, and at first I thought it’s where you were going, of the ‘eternal onion trick’ I’ve seen on YT-- a guy chops up the green part of a scallion or leek for a meal, then suspends the bottom of the remaining white part (I think with a little bit of green left on top) into a glass of water until roots grow. Then he plants it into a pot of dirt and it regrows the green part. No idea if that is real or one of the many fake videos out there, though.
Reminds me of one of our all-time favorite places to eat, an Ethiopian restaurant called The Blue Nile. Since you eat everything with your hands, no utensils whatsoever, they give everybody piping-hot towels to wipe your hands before and after the meal.
I’ve regrown green onions tons of times. My problem is that eventually I use up my onion and don’t get around to replanting, then dang! It’s back to the store.
A cold water bath will rejuvenate old wilty lettuce and greens, to a limit. Give them at least 20 minutes. Also if you pull them apart in the water, most of the dirt and silt that’s deep in the leaves should come out, so you’re cleaning them at the same time. When I was a produce man at Safeway we soaked all the lettuce every morning so it was bright and crisp (and an amazing amount of dirt always came out of the fresh-off-the-truck ones).
A few seconds in microwave will soften hard bread, but you have to eat it hot or it will harden back up.
Microwave corn in the husk for 3 minutes. Chop off the silky end. Husk and silk should pretty much just fall away once cooked.
Fill a glass with hot water, let it sit a few minutes, then place over a cold stick of butter standing on its end for about 10 minutes to soften it without melting it.
The shaker tops of grated parmesan tubes fit on the tops of small mason jars.
Buy ginger in bulk when it’s on sale, grate it all at once, then put into ice cube trays to freeze. Once frozen dump them into a freezer bag and use a cube as needed. Oh, and unless you’re serving it in chunks there’s really no good reason to peel ginger.
Yes it is inferior. Atlantic Salmon are lazy fish that will stack up in the net pens like logs and get no exersize. The orange color is added to their feed, either astaxanthin or cantaxanthin. Natural carotinoids from algea, but this color is not a sign of health. And parasites are rampant and can wipe out a net pen. So they are heavily medicated. You would be healthier if you ate your gold fish.
(I made commercial salmon and trout feed for hatcheries and net pens for 30 years)
Interesting. I’ve always done it the other way. I fucking hate corn silk so I cut off that end because it’s gross.
Y’know what’s really funny to me is he’s cutting that with a Ronco Six-Star+ Showtime Knife™ and I know that because I watched that informercial dozens of times back in the day. I never bought any of that shit but I have to admit the man was a hell of a salesman.
Within the last week, I saw a hack by Canadian Chef Gonzo, Matty Mattheson that stuck. He was preparing Banh Mi sandwiches, and instead of making pate’ from scratch, he used one of those little “chubs” of Oscar Meyer Braunschweiger and processed it smooth with about three sticks of butter. Such a gourgeous and rich, extravagent, workaround and sub. I know it tastes good.
Banh Mi’ ala Matty Mattheson:
To clean mushrooms, put them in a bowl of water and add a handful of flour, then swish them around with your fingers.
The flour acts as a mild abrasive and gets all the crud off the mushrooms nicely without damaging them.
If you are cutting large cuts of meat into smaller pieces, say for stews or fajitas, semi-freeze the meat before cutting. it is much easier to cut and it retains much of the juices which results in a juicier meat when cooked. Also, don’t salt meat before cooking, it will result in less juicy meat. Salt when when it is about done. Learned this from a guy that opened a small Mexican restaurant about 30 years ago, now he has 12 locations in the Seattle area.
Yes, not my most well-constructed sentence. What I meant was, since you’re using salmon for sushi that’s not soecifiically rated as sushi-grade, you want to get the farm-raised since it’s less likely to have parasites.
At least according to the video I posted. After reading a few of the responses here, I think I will stick to buying my sushi from sushi restaurants!
I’d like to take this opportunity to debunk the myth of “sushi-grade” fish. The FDA actually requires most types of fish to be frozen for a certain amount of time depending on the freezing method to ensure parasite destruction.
“Sushi-grade” is pure marketing and means nothing. Fish from the supermarket is generally fine for sushi or sashimi.
If you are catching skate in Florids on the beach wih live shrimp bait, then you have a piccante crean sauce with swimp and skate and lemon and capers. Lefrtover swimp and capers.
I started a thread a few years ago about making sushi from fresh grocery store farmed fish. It’s tasty, and reasonably free from parasites. But I haven’t specifically made sashimi nor used Costco products.
I don’t watch chef videos. Cooking is about technique and practice, and I have other sources for that. I’m not cooking for rappers. It does not need to look ghetto fabulous.
