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

In professional kitchens, to pinçage in the case of a braise or stew or a brown stock means to add a tomato product, most typically tomato paste, during the browning step and let that develop into a rusty color before carrying on with deglazing. This is done for flavor nuance but primarily for the "rust" color it lends to the final product.

Most brown stocks, stews, and braises where the main food item is seared follow the same general steps:

You remove the meat and add in the mirepoix and other vegetable items and sweat those out.

You add garlic and toasting spices in the final minute as to not burn them.

You deglaze with wine or another acid or simply water to pick up the fond.

You add the braising liquid, the sachet and simmer.

Pinçaging is an optional step but one you will see quite frequently as it does help to develop depth of flavor and provide for a more rustic final result. 

Pinçage