Some tips for garde manger cooks out there tasked with making family meal salad every day. Learn to think outside of recipes for vinaigrettes and creamy salad dressings. 

Mastering Salad Dressings

Making an aïoli is something every cook should be able to do without a recipe. I’d even go so far as to argue that aïoli is a mother sauce of the modern restaurant kitchen. 

There’s no recipe required for Mayonnaise

Culinary school can teach you so much about cooking, but it's a mighty questionable value proposition. Is it worth it? 

Should I go to Culinary School?

Michael Cecchi-Azzolina’s Your Table Is Ready, Tales of a New York City Maître D’ is here.

The Next Big Industry Read Has Arrived

The very essence of cooking lies in learning to make use of the mealy bits - the bones, the vegetable trim, the parsley stems. The good news is that making stock is way less complicated than the culinary Gods want you to believe.

Stock is a necessary touchpoint on the road to culinary enlightenment

The story behind the genesis of usefirst.com. How a New York City line cook used his down time during Covid to try and change the industry for the better.

Why I Built Use First

Tips on how to show up for that big first restaurant job interview. First appearances are everything. Make sure you’re not ice-capading around the kitchen in a hairnet in front of your future comrades and other lifesaving tips.

What tools should you take on a restaurant trail?

Ever wonder how professional line cooks make use of cake testers to hit the pass with perfectly cooked proteins every time? Here's everything you need to know to become a ringer on grill.

How To Use A Cake Tester

The salamander or "the sally" is a broiler that's usuallly positioned at eye level somewhere on the hot line. It's useful for gently browning toppings (think French onion soup), flashing proteins that were maybe not quite medium rare or heating up food in a more gentle manner than the direct heat of the plancha or the French top or the range.

Salamanders can be intimidating at first because it's a lot of heat coming directly at your face while you work, but a common refrain is "the salamander is your friend". And it is indeed. Once you can kind of intuit how long something needs to be in there for without coming out still cold or scorched, it is very helpful for putting up plates that you and your chef are proud of. 

in general everything that goes into the sally does so on a " sizzle" or sizzle tray. Those are the oval or square trays slightly larger than hand size that you can usher into and out of the salamabder or lowboy oven using a combination of your tongs and a dry side towel. 

The salamander or "the sally" is a broiler that's usuallly positioned at eye level somewhere on the hot line.