Cooks And Foodies Blog# 7 Restaurant Food

Why does restaurant food taste so much better than home-cooked food? 

• Can you bring the same taste with home-cooked food?
• What are the secrets to getting restaurant quality and taste at home?
• Is restaurant food healthy?

Let's find it out...

When I googled for the answers, I saw the same question we are talking about here was posted on Reddit by someone.

"Why does food from restaurants taste so much better than when I cook the exact same thing at home? 

Here are some of the replies:

"Even when I followed the exact same recipe measures, I was not able to get the same flavor and taste that I ate from this restaurant. Why?"

"According to Anthony Bourdain, in Kitchen Confidential, it is because they use a ridiculous amount of butter, salt, fat, and quality stocks."

"Yeah, watch videos of cooks in restaurants. That guy from Resto Vivaldi comes to mind. Everything he makes is 2-3 tablespoons of butter for a single dish. And then he adds salt and pepper. And then he usually throws in some white wine. And then he usually throws in stock. And demi-glaze. And a lot of times cream. Those sauces are built from a tonof flavorful ingredients. And all this is for a single order."

"An acquaintance of mine started a health-oriented food truck. It lasted about a year and a half before she had to shut it down. I don't want to speak poorly of it, but I'll just say that even when you have a health-oriented cuisine, it's probably not a good sign if everyone tells you it tastes healthy."

"Home cook turned chef turned owner. I’m on with technique being a big part of it…especially getting the texture correct. When I’m cooking at home, I don’t have nearly enough space to prepare the ingredients the same way I do at the appropriate station in my restaurant kitchen. It’s also easy to get lazy/distracted and lose consistency in your knife work… Then the products cook to different levels of completeness, and you end up with undercooked, overcooked, or correctly cooked bites. This is part of what you pay for…trained cooks who are coached and supervised for quality and adherence to the process."

"There's actually a theory on this that when you make food for yourself, your olfactory system is being exposed to the ingredients for a longer time and becomes more desensitized. Since taste and smell are highly correlated, food seems to taste better when it is brought to you or made by someone else"!

In my view, I think the cooking technique and the skills on using the ingredients in a correct way along with the right amount of oil, butter, sauces, or masalas are important. 

The reply below seems more reasonable to me.

"Generally speaking, the "simpler" a dish is in terms of number of steps and ingredients, technique and ingredient quality become more important.

Roasting a chicken with salt and pepper is a relatively simple task, for example. A beginner cook could make something edible with little to no trouble.

A skilled cook will take a few extra steps, like making sure that the skin is completely dry so that it crisps up more during cooking; they'll truss the bird properly so that it cooks more evenly and bring the raw chicken up to room temperature before it goes into the oven so that the inside of the chicken will get to a safe temperature a little bit faster, leaving less time for the outer parts to overcook. They'll understand that the chicken will continue to cook a bit longer once it's out of the oven and factor that into their cooking times.

All of those little decisions add up and become much more apparent than in a dish where you can hide your mistakes with an amazing sauce or some perfectly cut garnishes. Presentation matters, but when the old-school chefs wanted to test us in culinary school, it was always to see if we could nail the simplest dishes."

Tips and Techniques

A few years back, when I was researching restaurant-style food, I found these tips to bring the taste of restaurant food into the home-cooked meal.

1. The pan, wok, or any utensils you are using for the right recipe. For example, using a wok-shaped utensil helps to mix ingredients evenly with the right amount of heat distribution. 

2. Always heat the utensils before adding the oil or butter. When you heat the pan on high heat, reduce it before adding the oil or butter. This technique consumes less oil and butter. It also helps food from sticking to the pan when added and regulates the right cooking temperature. 

3. Fresh and high-quality ingredients. Use fresh vegetables. fresh species and fresh herbs always.

4. Using high flame while sautéing, simmering while cooking, and finishing the recipe in high flame brings a charred, smoky flavor like a restaurant touch. The restaurant has specialized equipment like high-powered grills and fryers, which can cook food quickly and evenly. A home chef cannot beat that, but cooking in high heat at the right time can elevate the taste of our home-cooked food to equal that restaurant-style food. Always be cautious when using the high flame for any fire accident and burning food easily.

5. Blending the ingredients at the right time during the cooking process. Being a cook for 25 years, I think this step is very important because to achieve the desired flavor, texture, and taste, incorporating each ingredient at the right interval is an art during the cooking process.

6. Last but not least, their secret blend of spices. Of course we cannot get their secret blend of spices; instead, you can always make one.

Without their secret blend, if we follow the other above tips still, we can bring the restaurant-style food home in your own kitchen.

Simple Recipe

Here is the simple recipe that I tried using the frozen stir-fry vegetables that made me feel wow, which tasted like restaurant-style stir-fry vegetables.

1. Add the frozen veggies in a wok or large-sized pan in which you can stir freely.

2. Turn the heat to high and keep mixing for 2 minutes or until the frozen veggies are thawed completely. 

3. Splash 2 tsp of water onto the veggies, reduce the heat to low, cover and cook it for 2 minutes. 

4. Once the veggies are cooked, bring the flame to high again, add 1 tsp of butter, and mix them vigorously.

5. Prepare the stir-fry sauce. Add 1 tsp honey, hot sauce, or sriracha sauce and 1 tbsp soy sauce.

6. Add the prepared stir-fry sauce mixture now and stir it for 1 minute in the high flame. and turn off the heat.

NOTE:

• Caution: Do not burn the vegetables and the sauce.

• Adjust the heat according to your cooking.

  
  

  What did I do differently?

  1. I thawed the vegetables using high heat that gave me a mild smoked flavor to the vegetables.

  2. I added the butter and sauce at the end once the vegetables were cooked completely. 

  3. I adjusted the heat according to the requirements of my cooking.

  These two simple techniques that I followed gave fresh and flavorful stir-fried vegetables.

  I had this with brown rice porridge. It was delicious and flavorful. A simple technique can change the flavoring of your dish to be equal to restaurant quality food.

  
  

I hope this blog will bring that taste of restaurant-style quality food to your own kitchen table.

Happy cooking! 😀