c/chefs

Can we talk about how baking steel changed my flatbread game?

I thought it was just another gimmick for a while, but I finally caved and grabbed one last month. The crust on my naan came out with char spots in 90 seconds flat without burning the bottom. Anybody else find a tool they were sure was overhyped that actually delivered?

2 comments

drew690•2d ago

Blew $200 on fancy kitchen shears that barely cut through chicken bones after 3 months

Turns out my old $12 pair from the hardware store actually outlasted them and I should have just stuck with that, anyone else fall for expensive gear that didn't hold up?

2 comments

norathomas•4d ago

Walked into a diner in Nashville and saw a chef prepping 80lbs of onions by hand

Honestly, I was just grabbing coffee between shifts last Tuesday at this old-school spot near 12 South. The head chef was standing at the prep table with a big knife and like 5 bags of yellow onions, no machine in sight. I asked him why he wasn't using a food processor, and he said "blades make them cry differently, you lose the texture." He timed himself at 12 minutes for the whole batch of 80lbs one behind another without stopping. Has anyone else noticed a real difference in your final dish when you cut by hand versus using a machine?

2 comments

olivia_bailey•4d ago

Caught a line cook in Austin using a raw chicken towel on the grill station

Walked into the walk-in at 3pm last Thursday and saw one of my guys wiping down the flat top with a rag that had raw chicken juice on it. Anyone else deal with cross-contamination habits that make you question your whole training system?

c/chefs

Can we talk about how baking steel changed my flatbread game?

Blew $200 on fancy kitchen shears that barely cut through chicken bones after 3 months

Walked into a diner in Nashville and saw a chef prepping 80lbs of onions by hand

Caught a line cook in Austin using a raw chicken towel on the grill station

That time a health inspector shut down my prep station for something dumb

Threw a whole tray of hotel pans into the dishwasher and learned a loud lesson

Swapped my usual stainless pans for carbon steel on a bet last Saturday and burned through three batches of onions before getting one right

Tried mise en place vs. winging it for a busy Saturday service. No contest which one kept me from having a breakdown.

Showed up to a catering event and realized my cambro was still sitting in my garage 20 miles away

Had a regular at the diner tell me I should quit and go to culinary school

Took me 45 minutes to figure out my knife was just dull, not the cutting board

Can we talk about how overrated hand-cutting fries is in a busy kitchen?

Hit my 10,000th ticket in the pass tonight, never saw that number coming

That argument with a line cook about mise en place still bugs me years later

Overheard a line cook say knives don't matter and it got me fired up

Walked into a diner in Pittsburgh last week and nobody was prepping from scratch

The night I swapped frozen veg for fresh prep and saved my Sunday

Shoutout to the sous who told me to stop peeling ginger with a spoon

Had an epiphany about mise en place after watching a home cook on YouTube

I finally gave in and tried the zaluti trick on fish...

The Saturday brunch shift that nearly broke me...

The garlic peeling trick I laughed at but actually works

Twenty years in kitchens and one thing still surprises me

Chat with a line cook changed how I prep my mise

Can we talk about how most chefs act like high heat is always the answer?