By
Viewed
1,355,861
Please choose the correct answer for each question below:
Questions: 0/583
Correct: 0
Translate:
I dedicated my life to giving away secrets.
Secrets that chefs have held closely to them
for generations and because people deserve the
power. I once showed you a hundred food hacks
that I specifically learned in restaurants. So,
we're back with another hundred, but with three
times the firepower. So, joining me today is
Chef Chris Young, Chef Christian, and combined,
we're giving you 100 more food hacks that we
learned in restaurants. Industry secrets that
you'd never know, but you can ironically do easily
at home. Starting with number one. Want to always
have homemade cookies ready conveniently. Here's
what you do. Plastic wrap. Make a double or triple
or quadruple batch of your favorite cookie recipe.
Dump it onto your plastic wrap. Then I want you
to form that into a log. You roll the plastic
up, tighten plastic wrap around your log. Then
I want you to freeze this. And then whenever you
want cookies, you pull out your frozen log. And
frankly, you don't even necessarily need to take
the plastic wrap off. You can just take a nice
sharp knife and cut that into coins. Don't forget
to remove the plastic wrap. And then in like 10 to
12 minutes, these will bake up beautifully on a
baking sheet instantly. No wait time. Just think
ahead. Leave it in your freezer. And obviously way
better than the pre-cut storebought ones. Let's be
real. Here's a quick hack for removing fish skin,
especially if your knife skills aren't up to the
job. You need some fish, obviously. A bowl. I like
to put some ice in the bottom. We'll need a tea
towel. I explained in a moment. And some boiling
water. Tea towel on the fish. Our boiling water.
We're going to pour it over the tea towel. The
ice in the bowl beneath is quenching the boiling
water so that it doesn't steam the fish from
the bottom. And what the boiling water is doing
is it's breaking down the collagen beneath the
fish skin that holds the skin against the flesh.
And when we've got enough water, the purpose of
the tea towel is we can remove the boiling water
before it overcooks the fish. And then just find
a corner and unzip your fish. There you have it,
your skinless fish fillet and some fish skin.
Enjoy. Let's talk about how to get your pasta
sauce as nice and emulsified as a restaurant. So,
the key starts with this slurry solution. About
two cups of water, a tablespoon of flour, mother.
You're going to add this to your water before you
even put your pasta in there. This starchy
water is key to a thicker consistency for a
better emulsified sauce. Struggling to get your
chicken skin crispy before it burns? Start with
a cold pan. Chicken skin dried off down in our
cold pan set over low temperature. Season with
salt and over the course of a few minutes, the fat
will slowly render out. It'll begin to crisp. And
then just let it cook for another 1 to 2 minutes
or until crispy. Turn up the heat to medium high.
Flip and look how crispy that is. Let it cook on
the other side and it'll cook through. And that
just might be the crispiest chicken skin you'll
ever have. Frying herbs seems like the kind of
fussy thing that fine dining restaurants would do,
which is true, but here's a technique for making
it incredibly easy that we used to use at the Fat
Duck. Just put some olive oil on a plate. Take
your herbs, in this case basil, anoint them in a
little bit of olive oil like the Pope would want,
and lay them out on the plate. And now for the
key step. Yes, the microwave. Give them about 2
minutes. These will be a little pliable when
they come off the plate, but they will crisp
up very quickly as they cool. Be sure to add a
little salt. Nice little beautiful basily piece
of stained glass that's crisp, delicate, has
that fresh flavor of basil and is perfect for
garnishing some fancy pesto pasta. Do your baked
proteins look sad, plain, a little ugly? Juju it
up with a breadcrumb crust. So, to make the herb
crust, some butter, throw in some garlic. Go ahead
and throw in some herbs. And finally, breadcrumbs.
Saute till nice and golden. Brush a little mayo on
your protein. Even coat. Even coat. Mayo is going
to act like a glue. Take your protein. Dip it in
your crust. Herb crust. Beautiful. Making a dough
and you want it to be easier to work with. Here,
I've got a little dough for you. A lot of the time
people think when they're kneading their dough,
they have to knead it until it's done. You
can also just stop and let it rest for like
10 minutes and then go back to kneading it.
This does two things. It relaxes the gluten,
but it also makes it easier to knead, to shape.
It loosens it up. After resting, that once very
sticky dough is now smooth. It's already become
elastic. I can go back into kneading it just for
another minute or so. Look at this thing, dude.
You have a beautifully smooth ball of dough and
it's stretchy and extensible. Chef secrets.
The secret to crispy flat bacon is your oven,
not your frying pan. Start with a sheet tray. Lay
some bacon out on some parchment. Add a little bit
of water. The humidity is going to help that bacon
stay flat as it crisps up. More parchment on top.
Weight it down and into your oven. You want to be
patient about this. 250 degrees Fahrenheit. And
just wait. That low temperature steaming and then
frying in its own fat is going to make it crispy.
About an hour later, look at that bacon. Look
at how flat it is. Look at how perfect. It's a
bacon emoji. It's AI generated bacon. You want to
get rid of pesky red stains from your Tupperware?
Here's a hack. Put a little dish soap, a sponge,
and some warm water. Close it up and shake it.
Comes right off. No red stain. You crack an egg.
Oh no. Oh dang it. Eggshell got in there. What
the? Two hacks for one. Number one, dip a finger.
two fingers really in some water and you get your
eggshell out much more easily. Now, another hack
for you. Another eggshell somehow has a magnetic
power. You can also get that out. I actually like
this method a little bit more using your former
eggshell that you then cracked your egg in there
with to retrieve your broken eggshell. Now you got
clean eggs. If you've bought some picked crab
or you're picking some crab yourself, there is
nothing worse than biting down into a crustation
shell. It can be really easy to miss those little
pieces. But there's a secret. Get yourself to
Amazon. Buy one of these blacklight flashlight.
Check out what happens. We're going to take these
crustations to a club. You can see under the black
light any bits of shell fluores under the black
light, making it easy for me to spot them and
pick them out so that we can enjoy our crustation
without a trip to the dentist. Our nice delicious
crab and the crustation shells have been picked
out. When baking, always use grams. And how
do you measure things in grams? Well, a scale
for two reasons. Number one, for accuracy. So,
I need 580 g of flour. I'm going to get exactly
580 g of flour. But the other reason and the
biggest part of this hack that people don't think
about, I can measure directly in the thing that
I'm mixing everything instead of having to have a
cup here, a cup there, a bowl here, a bowl there.
Everything can just be measured in grams in one
place. Go get a scale if you can. Nobody wants to
deep fry at home, but everyone loves deep fried
French fries. Here's a way to take frozen fries
and make them not suck with your microwave and
an air fryer. Start with some frozen fries. This
works best for thick steak cut fries. Add some
water just to start to thaw the surface. About
30 seconds. Drain that water off. Put a lid on.
And here's the secret. This is the part you have
to do. These are going to go into the microwave.
We are going to cook these through until they are
practically falling apart because that's what's
going to make them light and fluffy in the inside.
That is the secret to making them crispy in the
air fryer. Into the microwave. We're going to give
these about 5 minutes. Potatoes out. Careful.
They are hot. Got a little bit of a vacuum
there. We'll just release that. Plenty of steam.
Make sure this lid is on snug. And go to town.
into the air fryer basket. Do not overcrowd your
air fryer. Do not put a liner at the bottom. That
makes the air fryer not work well. Into the air
fryer, maximum temperature about 15 to 20 minutes,
shaking it every so often just to keep turning
them over so they get crisp everywhere. Fries
done, but not quite yet. They need to be seasoned
or they're not delicious. They need to be anointed
with the blessed beef fat. So crispy, so light
and fluffy on the inside. One of the best fries
I've ever had. Wa! This is air fried. Microwaved,
airfried. These are frozen fries. These are almost
as good as the triple cooked chips we made at
the Fat Duck with a fraction of the effort. I'm
actually going to use this one. Banger. Don't have
a dry aager? I got a hack for that. Fish sauce
brush and a steak and brush. Flip it. Brush. Put
it in the fridge for at least an hour. Easy funk,
easy hack. Got a little parmesano triangle, if
you will. But you're always left over with the
rind. What are you going to do with it? You
can eat it. Here's how. You're going to take
the parmesan rind. This has been cut all the way
down. You'll take the sharp end of a knife and
just lightly scrape the rind. I'm going to do
it just in case there's any ink on it. Pop this
onto a plate and then we're going to put them in
the microwave. So, after a beautiful two minutes,
you have a Parmesan crisp, if you will. Cheers.
It's like the ultimate cheetah. You have leftover
Parmesan rinds, at least there's something you can
do with them. You can eat them. If you've got some
dry ice, you can turn a stand mixer into an ice
cream machine. Start by taking some dry ice and
bashing it into a powder. You want small p-sized
pieces. Stand mixer. Add our sorbet base. Start
on low speed. We're going to put the dry ice in.
The dry ice is going to freeze the sorbet as it
stirs. Biting down on a piece of dry ice is a
trip to the dentist. So, after you churned it,
put it in the freezer for 30 minutes to harden
and allow any final pieces of dry ice to finish
dissipating. We got our sorbet. You can carbonate
anything with dry ice, like fruit. You just need a
cooler. Take a container of dry ice. We're going
to put the dry ice in a corner, uncovered. Then,
we're going to do some fruit. We need to let the
CO2 sit in here for a couple of minutes so that it
pushes all of the air out and fills us with CO2.
Put the lid on. Leave it cracked. You can tell
it's ready. If you stick your head in and take a
breath and it feels like you're on fire, that's
because it's all CO2. So, wait until it's too
difficult to breathe. Then, we're going to close
this up and wrap it tight. I'm going to leave this
overnight. Wo! It's literally like a little mimosa
in your mouth. Try a banana. I don't like seeing
the inside of my banana moves, so I'm going to
draw the line there. This is so good. It's like
spicy fruit. The kids are going to love this one,
dude. Food science. The stuff stick to your knife
when you're cutting it. Just wet your knife before
you cut that sticky stuff. For example, cutting
sticky fruit sucks, dude. It's always stuck to
my knife. So, if you wet your knife, it's going
to glide right through it. Promise. Voila. Want
to make the best cookies ever? Well, there's
very few recipes out there that are the best
that don't rest their cookie dough. When you
chill it, it firms up. Right at this stage,
it is way too loose. But refrigerating it will
firm it up. Second, it ages and deepens the
flavor. And the third one, for fun, when it bakes
from cold instead of warm, you end up with a much
more uniform, less spread out cookie, a thicker,
fudgier cookie. Bonus hack. That's right. We have
a brand new website for all the recipes that we do
on the second channel, which by the way, if you're
not subscribed, you should go subscribe to it.
Recipes Only over there. Josh Weissman Recipes.
But what I really want to talk about is the
website. We worked really hard on it. It's brand
new. It has all of our recipes fully written on
there and printable. So, link in the description.
Does your water take forever to boil? Two things.
Quit watching it and make sure you cover it. Don't
have a lid? Use a pan. So, as long as you cover
it, it'll boil faster. There you go. Boiling. Good
steak's expensive these days, but it doesn't have
to be. You can take a chuck steak and use sousvid
to make it ribeye tender by cooking it overnight
at 137° F, giving it all of that time to break
down the tough connective tissue and giving you
that ribeye tenderness and all of the flavor of
a chuck steak at a fraction of the price. Just
cook it off for at least 12 hours and then sear
it and enjoy. Wow. Butchers love this trick.
Basically, take a cheap cut of meat, upgrade
it into something as good as ribeye. Nailed
that one. You want to cook a super thick steak,
but you don't have a sousvid. This is called the
reverse sear method. Get your thick steak, season
it generously with salt and pepper. Set that on a
wire rack set over a baking sheet. Regardless of
the thickness, place it in the oven at around 250
to 275 Fahrenheit until the internal temperature
reaches 125 Fahrenheit. Then you'll take it out,
let it rest for a couple minutes, get a hot pan,
sear for 2 minutes on both sides. You can serve
it with butter on top and that is a beautifully
cooked steak. Dry ice can carbonate anything
like this bottle of orange juice. You're going
to want a plastic soda bottle. The soda bottle
is designed to actually hold the pressure of the
carbon dioxide. Start by taking your orange juice.
This works best if everything is ice cold to begin
with. I need about a 4 g piece of dry ice. We'll
let the CO2 fizz for a little bit so that the
CO2 pushes all of the air out. Lid on tight. I'm
just going to put this in my fridge for about 30
minutes. It's like a mimosa without the champagne.
All done with your pickles? Have a bunch of juice?
Don't toss it. You can make a lot of things with
this. Have a marinades, even salad dressings.
Strain your pickle juice, a little bit of salt,
fresh pepper, and some olive oil. Oh, voila.
Salad dressing. Making a pizza and it sticks to
the peel? Sure, flour works, but you know what
works better? Semolina. Okay, they're like little
miniature ball bearings. This will help your pizza
slide from peel to oven. Here's how to turn your
domestic oven into a Neapolitan pizza oven with a
cast iron pan upside down and a broiler. And we're
going to use the broiler to create the radiant
heat that you would get from a traditional pizza
oven to quickly cook the top so that the whole
pizza cooks in under 90 seconds. It is important
that your pizza not be larger than the diameter of
your cast iron pan. Ask me how I know. There is a
chance you will slide the pizza off the back side.
So, I really recommend putting a baking tray
underneath it because if you miss, the pizza's
ruined, but at least you won't have to clean your
oven. 90 seconds. This is a great hack. Crispy
bottom, first of all. Really nice. Prism the edge.
That's a beautiful pie. And I'd have no idea it
was made on a cast iron skillet. Beautiful work.
90 seconds. Job done. Want creamier, fluffier, and
richer eggs. The key is just to add a little bit
of mayo. So, for about three eggs, 2 tsp of mayo.
Let's start with the maybe the normal one. Still
good. Classic. Oh, I don't even taste the mayo. I
texturally though, it is very different. It hits
way better. You ever go to a restaurant, you see
those nice little cheese ribbons on salad? You
might think, oh, they take a knife and they No,
you can do that. But I think a lot of people
have one of these. Instead, use a vegetable
peeler on your cheese and guess what? You get
stunning, beautiful ribbons of cheese. I mean,
look at this. Any hard cheese this will work with.
Parmesano, pecorino, an aged gouda, so on and so
forth. Want to cook a great steak faster, more
evenly, and with an amazing crust? Flip it every
30 seconds. Boil the steak a little bit rather
than the pan. You'll get less smoke into the pan
laying it away from you. If you leave the steak
alone, the top is essentially staying cold the
whole time, but you reach a point where heat can't
go into the bottom of the steak any faster. So, by
flipping it every 30 seconds, we're bringing heat
to the surface of the steak as quickly as we can,
turning it over, letting this side rest while heat
still penetrates. So, we're effectively cooking
it from both sides at the same time. You're
going to get a lot more carryover cooking. So,
if you want a rare, medium rare steak around 130
Fahrenheit, you're going to need to pull this off
when its core temperature is 105 and let it rest
so it coasts all the way up. Don't have measuring
cups available? Deli cups. If you don't have
these, go get them. Half pint, one cup. Pint,
two cups. A quart, four cups. Easy. Don't have a
half pint? Fill a pint in half. Quick math. Want
to rise dough faster, but you don't have one of
those expensive proofers? Don't worry. Just put
it in an empty oven or even a drawer with the
light on and a mug of hot water. Close that.
Let it proof. It'll probably proof twice as fast.
Here's a way to make a slurpee without a frozen
carbonated beverage machine. You're just going to
need some Coca-Cola. Just take an empty bottle,
add the sugar, add the guar gum, add the pectin,
and add the yucka powder. Blend them together by
shaking. You want to add the Coke to the powders,
not the other way around. Stir that up. Pour your
syrup in slowly so that you don't get too much
fizzing. We've got our magic slurpee ingredients
inside our carbonated Coke. Just give that a good
shake. Gently crack it to let any air out. Tighten
it back down. And this just needs to go into the
freezer for a few hours. Give it a shake every
hour or so to help break up those ice crystals.
So, this has been in the freezer for about half
a day. It's nice and frozen. I'm giving it a
good shake to break up the ice. It should feel
like you're shaking wet sand. And just going to
crack this open. Little bit of an overflow. It's
a Coca-Cola slurpee. Is your sauce too thin
and you don't want to deal with a rue? Use
a cornstarch slurry. It'll thicken up real quick.
Water. Corn starch. Whiskey biscuit. Drawing from
Asian cooking techniques. It's way easier than
making a R and it works on a variety of sauces.
I got another hack for you in the middle of this.
You ever rest your meat and it somewhat overcooks
by it sitting on the counter top? It's cuz
the heat is pressed up against the board,
essentially suffocating. It doesn't allow for air
flow. So, instead, rest it on a wire rack set over
a baking sheet. This will allow air to circulate
so it can cool a little bit and not continue to
cook. The secret to a perfect French fry is
a perfect potato. Big fast food companies can
demand their potato suppliers give them perfect
potatoes. You buy whatever potatoes are left at
the supermarket. What makes a potato perfect?
The right amount of dry matter content. How do
you measure it? You just need some salt brine. 120
g of salt for every liter of water. And then you
just put your potatoes into the brine. Potatoes
that sink have the right amount of dry matter
content. Potatoes that float are floaters and
floaters are never good. Get rid of them. Use them
for mash. Just sort your potatoes into mash and
perfect for French fries. Now take these potatoes,
slice them up, blanch them, and double fry
them because that makes for a great French
fry. Does your at home pasta not taste as good
as the restaurants? The key is salty water. No.
How do you know if it's salted enough? You taste
it. If it's as salty as the ocean, you're good to
go. Before you sear your meat, always dry it off
completely with a paper towel. Then put it in the
pan. If you have a wet piece of meat, you will not
get a good sear. That layer of liquid then has to
evaporate before the heat even gets to the surface
of your meat. And by then, it's boiled the meat
and you'll flip it over. It'll be gray. It won't
have a great mayard or browning. Make your sorbet
fruier using fructose. Just start with about
500 g of ripe strawberries, 100 g of fructose,
5 g of malic acid to make it juicier and more
delicious. And here's my secret if you're making
this for adults. Some Agnesa bitters. The
alcohol in the bitters is going to make this
punchier. And the flavor is delicious. About 50
g. Blend that up. Pass it through a sie. You can
turn this into a sorbet just by freezing it in
a Ninja Creamy canister because who doesn't have
a Ninja Creamy these days? Here's the fastest way
to clean your blender. warm water, soap, and turn
on your blender. And it cleans your blades. Air
fryers aren't known for being great at searing,
but they can be with the help of some mayo. Take
a nice pork chop, a little bit of mayo, brush that
over. If you just put oil on this pork chop, and
put it into a air fryer. As the juices come out
of the pork, the oil is going to run off. You're
not going to get very good heat transfer. It's not
going to brown evenly. We put mayo on because it's
emulsified. It keeps the oil in place. It also
helps our seasoning stick. Cook that until the
pork chop is about 135. and then and let it rest
to about 145° so that it's still slightly pink
because pink pork is actually juicy and delicious.
To render your fat evenly and prevent your steak
from curling, score your fat cap. You're going to
go one way, flip your steak and go the other
way. Create little diamond cuts. Looks like
this. Problem. You've got a frozen turkey breast
that you want to have for dinner. This is going
to take a couple of days to thaw in a fridge.
It'll take 6 or 7 hours to thaw in your sink.
Just cook it from frozen. It's faster, juicier,
and safer. Just put it on a roasting tray. Put
it into a low oven at 250 degrees. It's going to
take a couple of hours to thaw as it cooks. That's
why you don't want it too hot. You do not want to
burn the outside before the inside is thawed. Then
finish cooking this turkey breast to 155 160 so
that it's still juicy and entirely safe. And then
when you're ready to eat, turn the oven up to 400
450. Finish browning that off. And there you go.
Now that it's had just a couple of minutes in the
oven, it's thought out enough that it's wet on the
surface. I'm going to salt and pepper it. First,
I'm going to remove this turkeyy's hairet. Plenty
of salt. You can use more than you think. Some
black pepper. Back into the oven. Couple of hours
to thaw through. Finish cooking and getting up to
temperature. And then we'll crisp it. Brown under
a broiler. Now, we just need to slice. By thawing
the turkey and cooking it straight from frozen,
you keep about 30% more juice than if you thought
it in your fridge and then cooked it. That's about
as good as turkey gets. Having a hard time cutting
cinnamon rolls with your regular knife? Well,
you actually don't even need a knife. You just
need unflavored dental floss. You're going to wind
it between your fingers. Find the thickness you
want to cut it. I'll say like right around here is
a good thickness, right? You're going to put the
floss underneath the dough. Bring it around. So
now they're crossing each other. And then you're
just going to pull both sides all the way through
and across. Beautiful little cut right there. Bro,
this is by far the best method to cutting cinnamon
rolls I have ever found. It blows my mind every
time. See, when you use a knife, this happens,
right? You sort of squash the layers together as
opposed to keeping them nice and intact. Sure,
if your knife is really sharp, you might
be able to saw away at it, but even then,
you're still kind of crushing the layers. You
see how compacted the cinnamon sugar is here
versus here. You really want it to be loose. You
really want to have some breathing room. Okay, so
you're going to go to the trouble of deep frying
at home. You've got your fresh oil hot and ready.
The problem is fresh oil doesn't fry very well.
The best oil is oil that is somewhat broken in.
How do you break your oil in? Save some used oil
and pour a little bit of that used oil into the
fresh oil. The used oil has plenty of the natural
emulsifiers that are formed when oil is used.
Adding them to the fresh oil is going to help it
fry your food better, so you get a golden brown,
even crust and none of that splotchiness. And now
this oil is ready to fry some great battered fish.
Gluten is the enemy of crispy batters. Vodka is
the secret to a better batter. Here's how. 200
g of allpurpose flour. 200 g of rice flour makes
it crispier. A teaspoon of baking powder. So, I'm
going to stir my vodka into my dry ingredients.
Since this is going to be for fish, I'm going
to add about 300 ml of beer. This should have the
consistency of a thin pancake batter. Then into my
batter and into some frying oil that's been broken
in at about 400° F. Look at that. Got these extra
crispy bits here. That fish is going to be perfect
on the inside. And that is light and delicate. Not
going to be stodgy at all. That fish is still
juicy in the center. Perfectly cooked. And my
batter isn't doughy. It's just crisp and delicious
all the way through. You ever add tomato paste,
but it doesn't quite add the flavor you thought it
would? Instead, try doing this. Cook your tomato
paste first. Never just add it to a finished dish
and call it a day. But add it to an empty pan,
whatever your aromatics are. In this case, I'm
making a vodka pasta, so I've got garlic and
shallots. I'll add my tomato paste. And you
cook that tomato paste way down. Medium heat,
sauté, stirring often until it's deeply, deeply
caramelized, about 2 to 4 minutes. You'll know
once it starts to stick to the bottom of the pan
like this. Now you can add whatever sauce, cream,
broth, or whatever you're using tomato paste for.
Just make sure to cook it down first. This is what
adds the flavor to the tomato paste and you're
cooking off the water that's getting in the way of
the flavor. When you deep fry, shallow, whatever,
you will probably end up with a bunch of oil that
is dirty and looks like this with schmutz in it.
You probably want to throw this oil out. But don't
do that. Save this oil. You can rescue it. You
just need a little bit of this, some gelatin,
and a little bit of hot water. Dissolve the
gelatin in the hot water. Stir it into that deep
frying oil. Now you just let it sit. What's going
to happen is the gelatin in water is going to pull
out all of the debris, all of the dirty stuff in
the oil. It's going to settle to the bottom. You
can leave it in the fridge so that that gelatin
gels and then just pour off your perfectly clean
reusable oil, which will in fact actually fry
better because this oil has been slightly used.
There we go. All of the schmutz, all of that
gelatin and water has settled to the bottom,
leaving us with very clean oil on the top. I
could leave this in the fridge and let this gel
and solidify. But if I'm in a rush, I can just
pour the oil. Use a strainer to catch any loose
bits that happen to come through. And there we go.
Clean, refreshed oil with the help of a little bit
of gelatin. Ready to fry a second time. Don't want
to damage your nice countertops, but you got a
lot of crumbs. Use a squeegee. Not a scratch. Add
instant umami, more specifically flavor to things.
Either add Shiraashi soup noodle base. Just adds a
nice savory flavor to things. My favorite MSG. You
can apply this to literally everything. Let's say
you're making a nice little sauce for a sandwich.
So, you got a little mayo, you got a little
mustard, maybe you want a little relish in there,
too. That's pretty common, right? Mix it together.
Oh, yeah. It tastes all right. It tastes pretty
good, but it could be better. Instead, you could
add a pinch of MSG. Or you could add a little
squirt of shiashi. You know, about a teaspoon. And
then, if you're making a little sandwich, guess
what you do with the sauce? You put the sauce on
the sandwich. Maybe add a little turkey to the
sandwich. Add a nice little piece of lettuce. Bada
bing, bada boom. You got a quick little sandwich
with a little extra flavor. The secret to nacho
cheese that melts like the store-bought stuff
but tastes like real cheese because it's made with
real cheese is Alka-Seltzer. Get the stuff without
the aspirin in it or if it's Cinco de Mayo, get
the stuff with the aspirin in it. You will need
three Alka-Seltzer tablets, six teaspoons
of vinegar. This reaction is going to create
sodium citrate. Sodium citrate is the secret
ingredient that makes melt so well, and it's
what's going to make our nacho cheese sauce uber
melty. Let this react. Once it's fully reacted,
we just add it to a sauce pot over low heat. We
add 6 ounces of cheese a little bit at a time,
just like you're making fondue. Let that melt
slowly. Water, add enough to the consistency
you like. You can make it as thin or as thick
as you want just by adding more or less liquid.
Cheese doesn't melt like that without sodium
citrate. And you can either buy sodium citrate
or you can make it with Alka-Seltzer. There is
your own nacho cheese sauce that tastes like
real cheese with a little help from Alka-Seltzer.
Groceries are getting expensive, so this is how
you keep your food costs low at home. You could
take your leftover scraps, put them in a jar,
and save them for soup or stock. All these scraps
are going to add a huge depth of flavor to your
stock. Dredging chicken and your hands get all
clumped up and messy, and it's just gets harder
and harder to dredge. The hack is use one hand
for dry stuff and the other hand for wet stuff.
Never mix the two. So, I'll take my wet chicken
and put it in my dry batter. Then, I'll swap
to my dry hand, coat the chicken with flour, and
then toss it to coat fully and beautifully. Then,
I have a nice coated piece of fried chicken.
Now, if you mix the two, if I decided to dredge
this chicken, and then reach back over here
with my flowery hands, dunk them back in,
and then go back over here, and then dredge again
with yet again the same hand, look what happens.
Uh-oh. Just try to do your due diligence, and,
you know, keep your hands separate. Do you love
sweet and sour candy? Of course you do. It's
delicious. The secret is to mix a fruit acid
with your sugar. Malic acid is a naturally
occurring sugar found in apples, cherries,
and other delicious fruits. Just mix it with a
couple of tablespoons of sugar. You can do this to
taste. You can make it as sour or as sweet as you
like. It's going to make these berries juicy and
delicious like candy. Just over my strawberries.
Give them a toss. Better than sweet and sour
candy. Take that malic acid and combine them with
sweet summer fruit to make them like candy. So,
you got some herbs. They're sitting in the fridge
and well, you forgot about them and they're kind
of limp. Here's how to bring them back to life.
Ice water. Herbs in the ice water. Let them sit
for a few seconds. Spread them out and then remove
them and drain on a paper towel. Good as new. Is
your ice cream hard to scoop? Dip your ice cream
scoop in warm water for a few minutes, then give
it a go. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Look at that. Hack. You
want to maximize your flavor of herbs? Add it at
the very end. Add your herbs later. So my stock
is done. I've turned off the heat, but it's still
very hot. I take my fresh herbs, bruise them or
crack them open, put them in the stock, let the
stock rest for about 10 minutes. That will be the
most amount of flavor you get out of those herbs.
If you can whisk eggs and boil water, you can
make a perfect Parisian omelette. This is going
to look crazy. Three eggs. Boiling water. Pour
it in. It's going to look like a mess. Cover it.
The omelette rises to the top. We're just going
to decant off some of the water. Sie, clean tea
towel. Just shape it with the tea towel. And I'm
just going to roll that out onto the plate. Some
butter. A little bit of flaky salt. That is light,
fluffy, perfectly cooked all the way through. Oo,
that is a delicious Parisian style omelette made
by poaching. the easiest herb oil. Now, you want a
nice little green herb oil. Very simple, right?
Pick your green herbs, something tender, like
parsley, for example. Maybe you want some chives.
Add some chives in there, too. Now, you'll see
a lot of recipes where you got to cook it or you
got to blanch it, blah blah blah blah. No, it can
all be done in a blender. Top that off with some
neutral tasting oil. And then all you're going to
do is blend that on high, letting it run and run
and run until it reaches a temperature of around
149° Fahrenheit. Take it out, strain through a
fine mesh strainer with a cheesecloth set into it.
And that's herb oil. Ever feel like your cutting
takes forever? A chef once told me, "The less you
put your knife down, the more you get done."
It's all about efficiency. If you're cutting a
lot of something, repeat the same motion before
you move on to the next step. Finish it all,
then put your knife down. So, for example, cutting
onions, instead of cutting both ends of one onion
and then peeling it, see how I put my knife down?
No. Cut all the ends, then put your knife down,
then you do the next motion. It's more efficient.
Trust me. Don't want to deal with chopping onions,
put them in a food processor. Nobody cares
about knife cuts in a meatball or a sauce.
Have you ever wondered how they take mandarins
that look like this and turn them these perfectly
pith-free jewel like mandarins in a can? The
secret is a helper enzyme, pectinex. Let me show
you the trick. Start by peeling the skin off your
citrus fruit. You can leave them whole or break
them down into individual segments. I'm going to
add just enough water to cover while weighing the
amount of water I added. In this case, 400 g.
And I'm going to add 1% of pectinex by weight.
So that's 4 g. Cover that with a lid. Give it a
swirl to stir the enzyme around into the water.
Leave this in your fridge overnight. And let me
show you what you get. After an overnight soak,
all of the pith has been broken down by the
enzyme and you're left with clean mandarins.
You can just give them a little rinse off to make
them perfect. This works for any citrus fruit.
Make a soup out of just about any vegetable.
This is what restaurants do. You get a pot,
you could sauté, you could boil with broth,
whatever. Find a way to cook your vegetables way,
way, way, way, way softer. I've got tomatoes. I've
got some red bell pepper that's been simmering in
some broth that I sauteed and browned a little
bit. It's already cooked down. It's already in
the pot. If you have a stick blender, just give
that a quick run through. Now, at this point,
you can emulsify a little bit of oil or butter
in there. In this case, I'm just going to add a
touch of olive oil. That's just going to make it a
little bit richer, a little bit creamier, a little
smoother. You have a beautifully smooth, delicious
instant soup. Shout out to restaurants for that
one. Now, I might not be a vegan or a vegetarian.
But if you are or you like to cook tofu, always do
this first. Dry and press it. One paper towel, set
your tofu on top, place another on top of that,
and put any weight directly over it. Ideally, this
is a chef's press. Could be a container of heavy
berries. But you dry it and press it in the fridge
overnight before you cook it, sear it, fry it.
Otherwise, I'll show you the difference. So you
end up with a much better product here because on
one end the drained and pressed one has a lot less
moisture on the surface and on the inside. So it's
going to get a really nice crispy crust. It's
going to get brown properly and then the other
one that hasn't been drained as well. It doesn't
get enough color and browning. Try and press your
tofu. When you're making pio, you got to cut the
butter into little even pieces. It's never even.
It's inconsistent. So take your butter, put it
in the freezer, then grate it. You get consistent
little butter pieces. Consistent. Don't have a
piping bag? Okay. Well, what about just a regular
plastic bag? Take a Ziploc bag, plastic bag of
some sort. A storage ziplo really. Fill it up with
whatever batter or whatever you need a piping bag
for. And now you cut that tip and you essentially
have a piping bag right here. Which brings me to
the next one. Everybody loves a perfectly circular
pancake. But what could make that? Well, actually
a piping bag or our makeshift one. Cut the tip,
hot pan, and just pipe it in. It's so circular.
Sousid has a reputation for being too slow. These
chicken breasts take over an hour. way too long
for a quick meal on a Tuesday night. Not anymore.
Not with this simple technique. If you want your
chicken breast a nice, juicy, delicious at 155°,
start with your water bath 20° hotter, 175. Drop
your chicken breasts in. Don't worry, they're not
going to overcook. By setting the water bath
hotter, we're getting the chicken breast up
to that sousvid temperature without having to
wait around forever. When the timer goes off,
just turn the bath down to a couple degrees above
your target temperature and add some ice to get
that bath down to that temperature so that you
don't overcook your breast. By starting hotter,
you're getting the surface temperature of
the chicken breast up to the sousie bath
temperature faster, saving you all that time
and getting these chicken breasts done in half
the time of traditional sousie. And there you
go. Sousie chicken breast done in 30 minutes,
not an hour. And all these need now is a quick
sear off on the grill. These are two hacks for
one. caramelizing onions significantly faster.
If you're doing a caramelized onion, normally
they take about an hour to do. So instead,
here's what you do to kickstart it. Hot pan,
little bit of oil or butter, your onion. A lot
of the time people would salt it and you cook it
down. You let the natural sugars caramelize. But
if you add a touch more sugar to those onions,
not much, just a pinch, okay? Just a pinch along
with your salt. Stir that together. That little
addition is going to interact with the rest of the
sugars that are already naturally present and help
speed up the process of caramelization. Second
hack to caramelizing onions faster. You could
leave this on a low heat and then just let it
slowly caramelize. Instead of it taking an hour,
it might take 45, maybe 30. But what if you
wanted to take 15 minutes? Turn the heat up to
medium medium high. Let them sit for a couple of
minutes and they'll start to look like this. Okay,
they're burning a little bit. That's good, right?
We're getting a little bit of a coating on the
pan of fawn. Add a touch of water. Just a splash,
like a tablespoon. And delaze that. Let the water
evaporate. And then let that cook down again and
let it burn again. Then a few minutes later starts
to burn again. And guess what? You're going to
delaze again. Reduce all that water out. Scrape
up the brown bits on the bottom. And you can
see we're already like halfway to a caramelized
look in like 5 minutes. Rinse and repeat that for
another 5 or so minutes. And in 10 to 15 minutes
total, you have essentially a caramelized onion.
Similar flavor, but a little bit less cooked. It
works if you're in a rush. I've got a bonus hack
for you. I'm wearing something different. It says
team water. The hack is if you donate $1, you
give one person water for a year. 100% of the
money that we raise together will support our
charity partners led by Water Aid to bring clean
water to communities around the world for decades.
The goal is to raise $40 million. So, if you want
to help out, if you want to participate in this,
all you got to do is donate. Donate $1, give one
person water. Simple as that. Click the link in
the description and you can participate in team
water. Want to vacuum seal a steak but don't have
any fancy equipment? Ziploc bag, add some fat,
add some herbs because it's more delicious this
way. And then use the Archimedes principle. and
some water. Crack a corner. Push that bag all
the way down to squeeze out the air using the
water to displace it. Make sure it's closed. And
there you go. Vacuum sealed without any fancy
equipment. This is great for sousvid or if you
just want something to stay fresher in the fridge
for longer. Hollands has a reputation for being
incredibly finicky. You just need to stand at
the stove stirring and if you look at it wrong, it
breaks. Not anymore. At least if you have sousvid
ziplockc style bag, plenty of butter. Add your egg
yolks. salt because seasoning is delicious. Shout
and vinegar reduction that of course you've
prepped out in advance and a squeeze of lemon
juice. Just put that all into a sousie water bath
at 165° Fahrenheit. The sousvid is going to melt
the butter. It's going to dene the proteins in
the egg yolk so that it is primed to just emulsify
perfectly when you take the next step which is
dump it all in a blender and just blend. Then you
have bulk Holland days on demand that is perfectly
silky smooth every time without any worry. Perfect
for those of you who work brunch. Coaching an egg
and it falls to pieces. Here's a key. Two things.
Number one, salt. Number two, a splash of vinegar
helps the whites congeal. Cracked egg. Give it a
stir and drop your egg in. There you go. Perfectly
poached egg. Do you have a stained and smelly
cutting board? Use lemon and salt to make a scrub
to refresh and clean it. So, throw some salt on
your cutting board. Squeeze a little bit of lemon
juice. Open up your lemon. Just go to just go to
town. The salt works as an abrasion. The lemon
works as a refresher. clean and fresh. This is
a big one. Whenever you're cooking, always have a
dry towel and a wet towel. Why? Maybe your knife
is a little dirty. Wet towel to clean it off. Dry
towel to dry it off. You always are prepared for
any situation. Dry towel for dry ingredients like
breadcrumbs. And a wet towel for wet ingredients
like umami sauce. Shout out to Kimono Mom. Wipe
that up. Oh no, this is dirty. And now it's not.
Here's a quick hack for making some. Rather than
rolling it out and cutting them down by hand, just
get yourself a piping bag and some string. Check
this out. So, I'm just piping these out to length
using the string to cut them off right into the
simmering water. And I will strain them out onto
an oiled sheet tray. Keep them from sticking. And
then quickly cook them off in some brown butter to
give them a nice bit of color and flavor. Job
done. You ever cook a recipe and you realize
halfway through, oh snap, I'm missing something?
Let's prevent that by melass. Put everything in
its place. For example, here I have a recipe for
vodka pasta. Have everything already measured out.
There's no need for me to stop halfway through
and be like, "Oh, snap. Let me grab a teaspoon. Oh
snap, where's the garlic? With everything in front
of me, I can cook without stopping. Efficiency.
Here's how to char peppers quickly. You could use
a broiler. You could just kind of bake them in a
high temperature, but the best, fastest way
is directly over an open flame, whether that
be a campfire or on a grill or directly over your
kitchen stove. Turn your kitchen burner on maximum
heat and place your pepper directly on top of
the grates. Want to speed that up even more? You
could even add a blowtorrch in the equation if you
have one. This will char your pepper much faster.
Bonus hack. Don't wash the skins off your charred
peppers. Instead, take a damp paper towel and then
just wipe the char off. You see, if you wash
it off, you're washing all those nice pepper
flavors off. Now, you're left with a pepper with
maximum flavor. Nobody likes a cold steak or a
warm salad. So, to solve that, put your hot food
on hot plates, put your cold food on cold plates.
Let's maximize your eating experience. Throw your
plates in the oven. The hotter your oven is, the
less time you want to put it in there for. About
5 minutes or so, give or take. For cold plates,
just put it in your fridge until you need it.
All right. If you plan on storing cheese longer,
here's a problem. You wrap it in plastic wrap,
right? Or you put it in a plastic baggie. It molds
faster that way. You want to store it longer, all
you got to do is take a block of cheese, place it
in some parchment paper, fold the sides over to
then enase the cheese. Now, you could leave it
like this, but just to keep it extra airtight, you
can also put it in a layer of foil. This will keep
it better for longer in your refrigerator. So,
you're grating a little bit of parmesano, maybe
some pecarino, and you got this down to the nub.
Don't throw this away. First of all, save it in
a bag. Leave it in your fridge. If you're making
some chicken stock, snap it, throw it in there,
and let it finish with the stock for the last 30
minutes of making it. It'll give it a beautiful
rich umami, a little bit of cheesiness, and just
some general overall depth. And for example, this
would be a great stock to use in a risoto. Brazed
vegetables can be delicious, but way too often
they just have this stewed texture and no flavor.
There's actually a secret for getting that melt
inyou mouth texture, but keeping all of the fresh
flavor of that vegetable. Take something like
finel. The trick is to just microwave it and let
it steam in its own juices. I'm add just a little
bit of water. Plenty of Evo. A little bit of salt
because it makes everything taste better. Covered
in a microwave safe container into the microwave.
Everybody's microwave is a little bit different,
so your exact time may vary, but I'm going to
start with about 4 minutes. And then after that,
I'll check the texture and give it 30 second
bursts until it gets that melt inyou mouth texture
while keeping all of the fresh anesy flavor of
this bulb of fennel. Careful when opening. It is a
little steamy. Still got that vibrant spring green
flavor. Hasn't broken down to brown, but I can
just see by poking at this, even the root bulb is
nice and tender. It's soft. It's still slightly al
dente. Has that really fresh flavor. And it took
about 4 minutes in the microwave. Want to blanch a
small amount of vegetables, but don't want to deal
with the pot, the strainer, this, this, that bowl?
You can do it all in one bowl with a water kettle.
This only works with a small amount of vegetables,
but let's say you've got enough green beans for
two to four people, or any vegetable really. Large
bowl, tea kettle, boiling water. Take it off.
Pour just enough boiling water on top to cover the
vegetables. Cover with plastic wrap. And then let
that sit for about 3 to 5 minutes. Now after that,
take the plastic wrap off. You already got a
bowl. You already got water in it. Just dump
ice directly over it. Toss. And now you have
ice water. Let those cool down. And in about 30
seconds, you have a beautiful ice cold blanched,
tender, still retaining crunch vegetable. Wrapping
celery in paper towels or plastic, make it
flimsy. Wrap it in foil. The foil helps retain the
moisture, allowing your celery to stay crispy. You
ever make a cucumber salad and you let it sit and
it just becomes a watery mess? Do this first. Once
you've cut your cucumbers, before you dress them,
first season them lightly with salt and then toss
them together. Let them sit for about 5 minutes.
Then squeeze them and that'll drain them of their
excess water. Then dress them. Don't know when to
throw away your food? Before you put your stuff
away, label it with the date you're going to
throw it away. Less thinking. Bread stails
as it sits around. Stale bread sucks. It's
easy to fix. When bread sits around, it actually
gets heavier. It absorbs water out of the air,
and it tastes dry because the starch granules
crystallize. We can undo that process, and it's
easy. Just take your stale bread, wrap it in some
foil, put it into an oven at about 300° F or so,
just long enough to warm the bread through.
It will drive off the excess moisture. It will
melt those starch crystals, and it will make this
bread not suck. Into the oven. It's going to take
about an hour. The bread's a foam. doesn't heat
quickly. Oh, nice and soft. Take the foil off.
Let that cool a little bit before eating it. But
there's your refreshed, no longer stale bread. You
want to keep your mushrooms from being moldy and
slimy? Store them in a paper bag cuz plastic bags
trap the moisture and they get all sticky. Paper
allows the mushrooms to breathe, allowing a little
bit more shelf life. Storing homemade sauces is
messy and inefficient. I love my deli containers,
but instead store them in squirt bottles. If
you store them in squirt bottles, it's the same
concept. I mean, they're going to stay completely
airtight. You can leave them in the fridge. Now,
they store easily and they're immediately ready
to use whenever you need to. I spilled, but it
it is ready. But it doesn't stop there. You can
also do this with the things that you regularly
use every day, like oils. That way, anytime you go
to cook, ready to go. You don't need to unscrew a
bottle. You just squirt it in. You're good to go.
This is what restaurants do. Once you've finished
your delicious rotisserie chicken, here's how you
turn it into a restaurantw worthy chicken stock
in under an hour with your Instant Pot. Yes, an
Instant Pot. chicken carcass in. If you got some
remnants, scrape them in, too. Don't worry if
it's been in people's mouths. You're going to
pressure cook this. It's going to be sterile. Add
just enough water. You don't want to quite cover
it. There you go. Lid on. Pressure cook for about
1 hour. 1 hour later. Strain that off. M. That is
perfect for some chicken noodle soup. If you want
this to be crystal clear, if you want to be fancy
and make it a cheffy cons, all you need to do is
freeze it. Get yourself an ice cube tray. Pour
the chicken stock into the ice cube tray. We're
going to freeze this. I'm going to show you how
we ice filter this to get a cons so clear you'd
think it's chicken bourbon. Now that you've frozen
your chicken stock, just demold them. Pile these
into an appropriate device with a coffee filter.
There you go. Just stack them up. This is going
to go into the fridge overnight. As the ice thaws,
it's going to self-filter, self-clarify,
self-conentrate into chickeny clarified
deliciousness. You want clear and better tasting
stock, you have to skid the impurities. So,
right off the top, all those impurities suck up
your flavor that you want to keep. You're looking
for that scum, cloudy, nasty stuff off the top.
All you got to do is just skim it with a little
strainer. Do this throughout your whole cooking
process. You'll have a clear, flavorful broth.
I'm a firm believer that a rice cooker is the end
all be all of great rice. But what if you don't
have a rice cooker? You don't want to buy one.
Well, if you have a pot, here's how you do it.
Rice into your pot. We're going to fill this with
water. Going to get in there, agitate your rice,
carefully drain off the water not to get any of
the rice out. Fill it up again. And then just
repeat that process until your rice water runs
clear. Here's the real key. You're going to then
spread your rice out into an even layer that coats
the bottom of the pan. And then from there, you're
going to add just enough water until when you
touch the rice with your finger, that water comes
just up to your first knuckle. Now take that to
the stove, cover with a lid, bring it up to heat,
medium high, and then bring it to a boil. And now
once that comes to a boil, you're going to take a
lid, place the lid directly on top, and then cut
your heat off, and let it steam for around 20
to 25 minutes, depending on how much rice is in
there. Then you can take the lid off, check it,
make sure it's cooked through. If not, you can
cover it and let it continue steaming until cooked
through. Then once that timer is up, open up the
lid. Looks like the rice is cooked. But first,
you always want to check. So fluff it, and always
have a little taste. Make sure that it's cooked
all the way. It's actually cooked quite nicely.
It's never going to be as good as a rice cooker,
but it is pretty darn close. So, you make a
beautiful lasagna, you take it out of the oven,
you immediately cut into it and serve it, and
it just kind of falls flat all over the plate.
It almost unravels. That's because you're doing it
wrong. You have to let it rest for about 10 to 15,
sometimes up to 20 minutes if it's really thick
before you cut into it. Here's what it looks like
cut into fresh. Now, we've let this rest a little
bit, and I can already tell just by cutting it
that it's going to hold nicely together. And look
at that. You can see all the layers. It's still
nice and hot. Set it on a plate. Is this like a
mindbending hack? No. But if you want to serve
people a really nice even slice of lasagna,
this is the only way to do it. You must rest
it. Otherwise, yeah, if it's really saucy, it's
going to be even worse than this. It's going to
fall all over the place. Here's how to remove the
pulp from any juice. You just need the help of
a naturally occurring enzyme, pectinise, often
sold as pectinex. You can find this on Amazon.
Start with about half a liter of juice. About
half a teaspoon of the pectin enzyme into the
juice. Swirl that around. Then put this in the
fridge and wait. The enzyme is going to break
down the pectin. That's the pulp that's making the
juice cloudy and we're going to be able to strain
this out and get clarified juice. Here you go, a
day later. You can see the juice is very clear,
still tinted orange on top. All the pulp has
settled to the bottom. We just need to strain
this through a coffee filter to finish catching
any of the pulp to get our clarified juice. And
since it's Sunday somewhere, some champagne, my
clarified orange juice mimosa. Delicious. Pickling
something taking too long. Here's how restaurants
do it instantly. If you have a vacuum sealer,
fill a vac bag with your cucumbers that are
sliced. Add in a splash of pickling liquid. Open
up a vac sealer and give them a good oldfashioned
suck. Not only do they look cool, but they're now
instantly pickled. Cutting desserts can be really
messy. To solve that, run your knife through some
warm water and give it a wipe before each slice.
Cuts like butter. Clean cut. For precision plating
or precision anything in the kitchen, I get
made fun of for this, but honestly, I got chunky
fingers. Sometimes with all the caffeine I drink,
I'm a little shaky. So, culinary tweezers very
underrated. So, in the case of let's say you're
plating a basic crudeo, you've got your nice herb
oil on there and that looks all nice and pretty.
What about all the little things like carefully
daintily placing some jalapeno or some dainty
herbs? All that is done much more effectively when
you're using tweezers versus when I'm grabbing
this and pinching this and trying to lay it ever
so perfectly. The precise movements can be done
with something much more precise. For easier meat
grinding and to prevent the fat from emulsifying
and melting, make sure your meat is cold and your
grinder parts are cold. I put the grinder parts
in the freezer. As you can see, the fat still
in pieces and not melted all over the place. If
you're measuring sticky ingredients like honey,
you ever pour it out and all of a sudden there's
like half of it's left in the spoon. It's like
a little bit of cooking spray and just lightly
spray the inside. Add said sticky ingredient.
And when you measure it and you pour it out into a
container, it comes out significantly cleaner. So
there's all the honey. Here's how much was left.
Almost nothing. If you did it without greasing it,
this is what happens. That's how much was left
behind without the spray. This is how much is
left behind with the spray. It's a hack, not
a necessity, but might save you some fingering
time. Yeah, that's a hundred more chef hacks.
And I'm sure there are many, many, many, many,
many more out there. I'm not claiming that we know
all of them, but we're trying to provide some of
the best ones that we think are out there. And you
have them now. Love you so much. Subscribe. Bye.
Related Songs