There are some very pedestrian foods that are so simple they are actually difficult to master and their mastery is the mark of a good chef. For example:
eggs. Quiches, fritatas, even good old sunny-side up eggs.
basic tomato sauce
custard
white rice
Are there any other low level gold standards? Do these vary with ethnicity? Is there any of these basics that is stumping you as a chef?
Hollandaise that doesn’t break.
Being able to cook meat to the degree of doneness you want.
I’d add omelettes to your egg list.
I knew a chef that was profiled national media that cooked a dinner for a few of us at a friend’s apartment in New Orleans. The way he worked was amazing but the thing I remember most was him frenetically making up some mashed potatoes. I don’t even like mashed potatoes that much but his would make you slap your mamma. He just used basic ingredients as far as I know. I tried to make them like that and couldn’t do it. Mashed potatoes are pretty basic.
Here in the UK, we have a remarkable chef Heston Blumenthal. His TV series discussed making dishes like spaghetti bolognese and roast chicken. He takes incredible pains to find the best way to do this.
A chef whose restaurant was voted the best in the world is to be awarded an honorary degree at the University of Reading, it has been revealed.
The Fat Duck restaurant in Bray, Berkshire, is owned by Michelin-starred chef Heston Blumenthal.
…
Professor Donald Mottram, of the university’s School of Food Biosciences, said: "While Heston has been developing a novel approach to food at his restaurant… he has had frequent contact with the School of Food Biosciences.
"He visits for discussions on all sorts of aspects of food science.
how about pan gravies?
Beef and Chicken stocks and reductions thereof
chicken soup and french onion soup
appropriate saltiness in any dish
I’d definitely agree with the cooking-meat-to-doneness and egg recipes as well.
Timing, temperature, and understanding the quality of ingredients.
A guy I knew used to cook dinner in bachelor homes. What is there to eat? One day, there were two eggs, a package of ends and bits of bacon, one moderately fresh tomato, and a box of spaghetti. Salt and pepper, no other spices. The chef guy boiled the spaghetti, fried up the bacon really crisp, but not burned, leaving the fat in the pan. Then he fried up the uncut spaghetti, with the bacon, until it was not quite browned. He turned it out onto a paper towel, then put it in a bowl, beat the eggs and tossed it with the spaghetti, and added diced tomato, and some salt and pepper. Served four of us, and it was delicious!
Understanding the quality of ingredients.
Tris
Tris
This may sound odd, but it took me a long time to master sauteed onions. Now whenever we have burgers, dogs or brats, everyone loves the way I sautee the onions. It took me a while to realize there was more to it than just cooking them.
As somebody who eats white rice on an almost daily basis, what sets great white rice apart? All I can think of is that it’s not too dry or wet. That’s not exactly hard to do.
Which is basically spaghetti carbonara. More or less.
I would side with the making of sauces and gravies. Very simple to do, unless you don’t know the tricks. Eggs can be a bitch; people who fail at eggs usually add the wrong things and/or at the wrong time, or use too high heat. Cooking pork/chicken/shrimp/fish so it isn’t dry and tough. Having an intuitive knowledge of spicing, although that’s not so simple a task. I can do all of the things mentioned, but am not a chef. Maybe I should be!
:dubious:
Most chefs in this country are paid chump change. I can do all of the things mentioned, too, but cooking is simply not a highly paid profession here, unless you’re executive chef at some high-end restaurant.
No kidding. One of my friends is a chef, and he keeps going back to work as an alarm tech because the pay is better and he doesn’t get yelled at by idiots.
This one is very key, yet is actually very simple to master. Buy a probe thermometer and use it whenever you cook any piece of meat larger than a steak or a chop. It’s a simple matter to learn what temperature represents your desired degree of doneness and remove your meat from the heat 5 -7 degrees before that point.
I haven’t missed the mark on a roast, a chicken or a turkey ever since AB taught me that one.
As a latin american with a taste for Asian food I have eaten my share of white rice (nowhere near to everyday, but a lot) and I can tell you there is a lot of people out there who just make crappy rice. Greasy, lumpy, soupy, dry, you name it.
I am not a chef, btw. Nor did I mean this thread for professional chefs. I just meant for people who cook.
Anyone here who can swear for the meat doneness technique with touching your fingertips with the thumb of the same hand and feeling the thumbpad. I always found that curious even if not terribly accurate.
I think that advice comes from people who already understand the doneness of meat, and can identify the feel on their hand. I don’t think it’s so easy for a person with no experience to go, “oh, this feels like that” and nail the proper doneness.
I do a lot of cooking. . .and I cook a steak on the grill every 2-3 weeks, I’d say. If you do that, and you haven’t figured out by the end of three months how “feel” correlates with “doneness”, you’re just not paying enough attention to your cooking. You gotta pay attention.
Anyway. . .as a contribution to this thread: a steak or a hamburger is a simpe thing to do, and it amazes me how poorly some people do it.
oh yeah, I grill once or twice a month and never use a thermometer and never screw up. But that might have to do with the fact that they are always the same 3-4 cuts of meat on my same grill for the last 2 years. If you can’t learn that, then well 
As in comedy, I believe that timing is important to being a good chef.
You try preparing 8 or 10 different dishes and having them all done to perfection at the same moment.
Not easy.
I think great roast potatoes and a really good tomato sauce are the marks of an excellent chef, but I also have to agree with **BMalion **. As far as I’m concerned one of the most impressive skills a chef can have is the ability to get everything onto the table at the same time and at the correct temperature. That takes a great deal of organisation, awareness and discipline, and it’s one of the main reasons that I could never be a chef even though I love cooking. It’s a matter of knowing when to start cooking things and in what order as well as for how long.
On a slight tangent, I have to confess that Heston Blumenthal is one of my least favourite chefs. Not because of the quality of his cooking (I’m sure everything he makes tastes delicious), but because of his ultra-scientific, “Molecular Gostronomy” approach to food. If you have to use liquid nitrogen and a specialised vacuum-creating machine to form the perfect gateau, then something’s gone very, very wrong. This whole attitude makes cooking more difficult and complicated then it needs to be and effectively isolates or intimidates people from having a go in their own homes.
Food should be fun, casual and accessible. It should be warm, welcoming and full of love. It should NOT be an exercise in physics or leave your kitchen looking like Dr Frankenstein’s lab.
Well, two things. . .
This thread was about “what simple dishes mark a good chef”? But whatever, to continue the hijack. . .
How often does a “good chef” really have to have numerous things ready at the same time?
Either he’s in a restaurant where he has a lot of folks working for him, or it’s a very special occasion at home. Even then. . .putting together a decent meal usually isn’t much more involved than a starch, an entree, and a vegetable or two. How hard is that? I do it almost every day.
Shit, every year a million doofuses seem to get the turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, corn, peas, carrots, sweet potatoes and bread to the table at the same time, all reasonably warm.
I’ve put together meals where I’ve had all 4 burners going on my stove top, and the oven going, but I don’t consider coordinating all of that nearly as important as making good food.
There is no “should”.
It can be fun, casual, and accessible. And it can be odd, formal and challenging.
Frankenstein’s lab? Part of the fun of cooking is taking off the apron and walking out of a kitchen that looks like a trailer park after a tornado carrying a beautiful tidy creation.
Really good flaky pie crust (for dessert/fruit pies) seems basic but is tough. I don’t even try it (partly because I have a phobia about touching flour and the first step is to spread flour out for rolling :eek: ::shudder) but my Mom’s is amazing and I know it took her a long time to get it that good.