5 Chef Secrets for Cooking Dinner

Welcome everyone. Thank you. Thanks for coming. I’m Chef Todd Moore from
webcookingclasses.com, and we’re here to at this beautiful wine festival today to teach
you how to cook with wine, right? So, I’m here today to tell you my five chef secrets for
creating amazing meals at home. You don’t need to be a chef. You don’t have to go to
culinary school. I’m going to bring it all to you. It’s very simple to do and there are some
great analogies that I’m going to explain this. We are going to empower you with secret
number one.

The first thing that I tell you is going to change the way you think about cooking forever.
Just this one concept is going to change the way you think about cooking. Secret number
two is going to get you in and out of the kitchen much faster, not have you running to the
grocery store. Anyone ever get a recipe and has to go to the grocery store to buy this
specific ingredient. People tell me all the time “Oh Chef Todd, I got this great recipe and
it calls for saffron, and I went to the grocery store and I got saffron and its two years later
and the saffron its still up on my shelf”.

We’re going to show you how to create recipes from what you have rather than shopping
for the things that the recipe commands. Secret number three is going to give you
precision prepped, show you how to make things cooked consistently in your house. This
is the most important thing, is cooking consistently, right? Secret number three is having
the right tools in your kitchen and especially the only four knives that you need in your
kitchen. You need only four. You don’t need the butcher’s block of 17 knives, and this is
the thing that always kills me.

The butcher’s block comes with like 15 steak knives, who here has cooked steak for 15
people? Beside me, he’s been a professional chef. You don’t need 15 steak knives. It’s
really kind a silly. And if you’re like my mom, and you have a serrated steak knife from
1972 that you got with like to thank a guest. When they gave you stuff of to thank a
guest. My mom uses this to cut onions, take tags off clothing, and tighten the lights
switch. It’s all a general hardware item.

Get yourself a chef’s knife and the most important tool in the kitchen and secret number
three is precision prep. Things that are cut consistently, cooked consistently. So, a chef’s
knife is your best friend in the kitchen. It’s a very easy device, chef’s knife. I will
introduce you to the chef’s knife, Chef’s knife. People, people, chef’s knife.

Chef’s knife has handle, that’s the obvious part. It has the spine, the dull part. I can run
my finger up and down the edge. I won’t run my finger up and down the sharp part.
Where the handle meets the blade, this is called the bolster, B-O-L-S-T-E-R, bolster. It’s
an important part of the knife because the correct way to hold the knife is not like a club.
This is particularly dangerous because the knife can spin in your hand, so if you’re going
along chopping stuff, you’re holding it like a club and it runs toward your hand, that’s
particularly dangerous. The correct way to hold the chef knife is between thumb and
forefinger at the bolster with the other three fingers around the blade. This locks the knife
into place. Now the knife can’t roll. So you might think that the right hand, my right
hand, your knife hand is the most important hand in knife skills.

Left hand, by far, none knife hand most—I got no way to cut this hand that all kinds of
ways to cut this hand, right? So, the home cook loves—you got a piece of celery or
something. You hold the celery fingers extended, you start chopping along and you never
quite know when you going to reach those fingers right? That’s the scary part about it.
Well, in knife skills, the right hand is dumb. The right is at tip fold chrome method. The
tip of the knife stays on the cutting board and the knife rocks back and forth. I tell people
it’s like dipping water from a bucket with a spoon. It’s not a movie clapper kind of up
and down.

It’s a little forward back and forth but the right hand is dumb, tip fold chrome method.
When I did, done cooking classes before, before I started webcookingclasses.com, or in
teaching people all over the world on line, but when we did cooking classes we would
add 10-20 people all with this. I know a small room, we got tip fold chrome method was
much, much, much nicer. So, right hand dumb, left hand most important hand in knife
skills and what we do is kung-fu grip, tuck all these fingers and thumb underneath, and
the best way to make sure you always know where your knife hand is despite always
having it in contact with the blade.

So the blade runs up and down against the knuckle of this none knife hand, not above the
knuckle, because you come back down add red food coloring to your food that you don’t
want. But it rises up and down on the knuckle, now my non-knife hand is the brains of
the operation. So, if I move my left hand in small increments I get thin cuts. If I move my
left hand in large increments, I get larger cuts. So the right hand’s job is just to stay
against the left hand. It’s the left hand’s job that dictates the increments. So, in culinary
school, they will take you’re cutting—not that one, then they’ll line them up on the knife.
And the chef will come around with a ruler, and this is a really annoying and measure all
your cuts. But the point is made and chef secret number three is consistency of cut is
consistency of cook.

If you make me a soup, and it’s got a round carrot and half moon carrot and a square
carrot and carrot stick, and I look at it, would you find these carrots somewhere? It looks
like it was not cooked with much regard plus, if you take a carrot this big and a carrot this
big put them on the same procedure, will this one soft and mushy, this one’s hard and
crunchy. They don’t cook consistently using a chef’s knife is one of the most important
skills in the kitchen.

I thank you for your time and attention, I’ve really do appreciate it. To your cooking’s,
we’ve got a taste here, we going to play it up, so if you want to come this way and
through, and we’ll give everybody a taste of the South French chicken. Thank you.