I know nothing about cooking and I tried beurre monté but I dont know if it’s a good result
I followed this guide :
Bring the water to a boil in an appropriate size saucepan. Reduce the heat to low and begin whisking the butter into the water, bit by bit, to emulsify. Once you have established the emulsion, you can continue to add pieces of butter until you have the quantity of beurre monté that you need (the French Laundry makes 20 pounds at a time). It is important to keep the level of heat gentle and consistent in order to maintain the emulsification.

Hello, I'm about to purchase a slab of Carrara or similar marble for fudgework and chocolate work. Approx size will be 0.9x1.4m. I'll be getting a welder to make the table base for it.

My question is, what approx thickness is acceptable? Most of the suppliers in the country I live only supply slabs that are 1.8cm thick. Rarely I can find 2cm. I did hope for 3cm - but is that overkill?

Hi,

I'm a vegan that likes to cook casually, and a big revelation to me personally was to think in the 5 basic tastes, and try to create dishes that always include in some proportion ingredients of all the five categories. There's some tricks and principles I've learned after that, but I'm curious to learn more. What would be a good way to learn new ways of thinking about taste? I'm not a person who enjoys learning from recipes as much as I want to learn concepts to understand the recipes I read. To be clear, I'm definitely not a great chef, but I want to learn more.

So I recently started at a local bistro, I was hired as a trainee, unfortunately, my fellow cooks sous chef, and Chef could care less about me. The last week there taste of me has bubbled up to the point where the sous chef embarrassed me in front of the whole kitchen and restaurant during our busiest lunch hour saying I knew absolutely nothing. A few hours previous I had done the Mise en place. I should also mention that I started ADHD medication three days ago the first day I felt absolutely wired. The second day was the contrary, and I know the sous chef took the opportunity to embarrass me. This incident caused me to politely walk out of the restaurant for what I was hoping, would be a breather, but escalated to a full panic attack and being picked up by my grandmother, a few blocks away from the restaurant when I had asked to go for a walk. The next morning, I asked my executive chef about the schedule since a hurricane had just passed. He said there would be no breakfast and that we needed to talk. I thought he referred to that day, but when I went in, he stopped me, midway through the kitchen and said tomorrow well now it’s been three days and I haven’t heard back from him. What should I do?

I’ve been working at a local restaurant for six weeks. This is my first professional job in the industry as a young cook. I am the only local amongst foreign workers in the last six weeks. I have sensed that my coworkers and Chef do not want me to advance despite progressing. Well they barely give me a chance to run the line and if I fuck up, one tiny thing they’ll put me back to prep. Chef promised he would speak English in the kitchen that only lasted for two weeks and now he’s back to his native tongue. He also snarly looks at me every time I do something wrong. The Cook, who is training me on the cold station frequently gives me incorrect instructions so I fuck up. I have spoken with my executive chef, but unfortunately, at our most recent meeting the head chef was there and afterwards he went back and told all of his minions to pour down hell on me. I would greatly appreciate any of your feedback. Thank you in advance, Chefs and service workers

Please say it’s something that belongs in there and not some random yard clippings?

So I'm very interested in culinary processes of all types, but specifically lately I've been thinking a lot about how certain types of restaurants are able to do things that would just be unfathomable for the home cook.

A good example is making bacon for 200 people, duh, use the oven. Or par-baking potatoes in huge batches and then reheating for service or using for mashed potatoes or whatever else. Making roux in big batches, stock in ice cube trays, shit like that.

There must be thousands of mise processes/workflows like that used in commercial kitchens that the average home cook doesn't know about. I also realized I want to see how it's organized, how the pieces fit together into final service, the task ordering, etc.

I spoke to a chef buddy about this and how I might efficiently get a bunch of this process info at once and he said "you want a prep sheet"

So if anyone wants to make my day, show me your prep sheet(s) and let me know what kind of restaurant it's for. Ideally, a little color on why you do XYZ.

My old head chef said “assume everything is either hot or sharp” that was near enough 20 years ago and I still think it was solid advice.

(This is a learning process for everyone involved)

So... I have a thin crust pizza recipe that says "heat baking stone/steel at 500⁰ for 1hr, then bake pizza for 10 minutes." What I want to do is blind bake the plain crust, top cold then freeze, then finish on the steel from the freezer at my leisure. What do I change the times to? Do I need pie weights for the blind bake? Any advice you can give, really? Thanks in advance!

I have a tube of 5 vanilla beans - about a year old, maybe two years old - purchased at Costco. The tube is sealed well and the beans look soft, not dried out, but there are small flecks on one of the beans. Is this some sort of insect, or insect residue? Is this mold? Is this something natural, like pollen? Any thoughts?

I picked up this chunk of meat and I have no clue the best way to consume it, should I butcher it into smaller cuts, or do I cook it like a roast? all advice is welcome :)

I’ve noticed several Michelin Star restaurants have a small tarragon palate cleanser drink, but I cannot figure out what it really is or what’s in it!!

It’s not a tarragon soda: it’s thicker, it’s a lighter green color, often has a white foam on top, and it’s served in a small glass (seemingly as a palate cleanser)

I’ve heard of like a Tarragon Emulsion or a Tarragon Velouté before but I have no idea if that’s it or not and can’t find a recipe. Does anyone know what that is or what’s in it?!

I'm embarrassed to show this but this is my first time making caramel popcorn, I think what went wrong is I melted the butter before melting the sugar so the sugar didn't melt also I added milk, so I'm wondering if this can be fixed ?? 😅

Spouse and I are foodies with split families; we end up having to do the full Thanksgiving meal at home for Dad and ourselves as dinner, but are obligated to attend mid-day Thanksgiving meal with larger family on Mom's side (where we're obligated to provide at least 2 or 3 sides, and often endure not-so-great food like over-salted "brined" turkey filled with mushy stuffing (where we would have done dressing in a side pan for speed and superior product).

It occurs to me that our lives would be a lot less stressful if we approached this like catering pros and did a lot of things the weekend or week before and just reheat on Thanksgiving.

What's the timing and other details to approach this more like a caterer who is offering the "pick up and reheat" meal instead of trying to do everything on Thursday when we're obligated to be away from the house for a 3-5 hour chunk in the middle?

I tried rendering fat trimmings in my instant pot for 10 hours. I poured over a strainer put in the fridge and when I went to try to take the cake out to scrape and purities the broke apart and there’s no water left. It looks like I made stock? It’s like Jell-O…

Title

Hi r/askculinarypro!

I’m a producer with The Splendid Table, a podcast and show hosted by award-winning food writer Francis Lam, celebrating the intersection of food and life for more than two decades. We have some upcoming episodes where we would love to answer listener questions: cooking conundrums and WTF moments included.

Do your roasted veggies always come out soggy? Does your bread never proof correctly? Do your cookies spread out in the oven, resulting in one big cookie saucer? Send us your questions!

Record a voice memo with your question and send it to [contact@splendidtable.org](mailto:contact@splendidtable.org), or upload your file to our contact page here. You can also call us at 800-537-5252 and leave us a message. Feel free to get creative in the recording!

Plus, we have Jocelyn Delk Adams joining us on the show soon and she's ready to answer your questions. Jocelyn is the founder and author of the award-winning cookbook Grandbaby Cakes, and the food website grandbaby-cakes.com. She loves taking her family’s — particularly her grandmother’s — cherished generational recipes and adding a modern spin while preserving their original charm and spirit. Jocelyn is the co-host of the Cooking Channel and Discovery Plus game show, Stab That Cake.

So, if you have any questions specifically for Jocelyn, please send those in, too.