Restaurant DNA
Consistency and tasting
Professional cooks taste at every stage and adjust, rather than trusting the recipe blindly.
Tasting habits
Cooks taste the base, then after each major addition, then before plating, using clean spoons each time. Ingredients vary (tomatoes are more or less acidic, chillies more or less hot, salt varies by brand and grain size), so the recipe is a starting point.
- Taste for salt first: under-salted food tastes flat
- Then check acid, sweetness, heat and bitterness
- Taste at serving temperature; cold food needs more seasoning
- Use a clean spoon for every taste
Calibrating
In restaurants, the chef or sous-chef tastes components before service to make sure every batch matches the standard. Some keep a reference sample from the last good batch.
Seasoning in layers
Salt added early seasons ingredients through; salt added late sits on the surface. Indian cooking layers spices too: whole spices at the start, ground spices in the middle, garam masala and herbs at the end.
Bring it home
- Taste before adding more salt at the end; add in small pinches.
- Keep a small bowl of lemon wedges or a splash of vinegar handy as an acid adjuster.
- Note how your salt measures: a teaspoon of fine salt is saltier than a teaspoon of flaky salt.
- Use the balancing assistant if a dish goes wrong.
Related techniques
These lessons describe widely used professional practice. They are not any restaurant’s proprietary recipes or methods.