I’m Jamie Oliver.
My restaurant is Jamie Oliver Catherine Street.
I’m Thomas Keller,
The French Laundry in Yountville, California.
Hi, I am Chef Jose Andres
and my restaurant is minibar,
and a few others.
I’m Alice Waters, Chez Panisse restaurant.
And today we are answering your questions.
Your questions.
Today, we’re answering your questions about cooking.
So Reap-it-Murphy says, Griddle or grill?
Which do you prefer for cooking burgers?
Griddle.
Griddle?
I go griddle
All the way. I go grill.
Yeah.
I think griddle is interesting
’cause the fat stays around it doesn’t it,
and gives you that crisp.
On the griddle is gonna get so much more content
and everything is gonna be much more crunchier.
Texture is important.
Super important. So that’s why
the griddle for me works, because you get the texture.
Now the flavor – Yes.
on a natural fired grill – Exactly.
is better than the texture on a griddle.
Okay, so 1969somethingbatman says,
What’s the best way to consistently get crispy bacon?
Take your time. Cook it slowly.
Let it render, right? Low heat.
Let that there,
because it’s really about rendering the fat out.
to get the results and the crispiness of the bacon.
So if you’re trying to do it quickly
you’re not gonna get crisp bacon.
So just take your time.
Cast iron. Yeah.
It has to be a stove top.
It’s also about the thickness.
Mm. Yeah.
When it’s too thick, –
It doesn’t get crispy. it’s really hard
to get crisp.
Crispy bacon is the Darth Vader of bacon.
Bacon was never supposed to be crispy, people.
Was supposed to be used on the griddle,
one side, the other, and eat it nice and fatty and warm.
Crispy. Why crispy bacon?
Because we love the texture
of crispy bacon. No!
This is Darth Vader. We love the crunch.
Na, 99.9% of people – We love the aroma.
don’t know how to do bacon. It’s American.
No, no. Crispy bacon, get outta here, people.
I’ve got another one, guys. This is a goodie.
sapnupuas_O. What?
Chefs, is it rude to ask for a steak well done?
Not at all.
I mean, we wanna cook the best well done steak
you’ve ever had. It’s not rude to ask.
No. It doesn’t mean
we won’t think bad things of you.
Yeah. No judgment on my part.
Yeah, when my kids order well done steak on my dollar, –
Yeah. that doesn’t go down well.
Okay. Wow.
Because you’re a dictator?
Yes. Yeah.
When it comes to steak,
they’re just… At home, we agree.
Yeah. At the restaurant,
whatever the guest wants.
Yeah.
These things are easy to do.
All of us have the capability.
We eat, you know, steaks that are rare, medium rare,
just ’cause that’s what I like and in my steak.
Some people have to eat their medium,
medium well, well done.
I don’t know.
Oh, Alice.
So this person, Rodrik_Stark, asked,
Why are so many Americans obsessed with kosher salt?
I’m not sure why he’s just saying Americans.
I think it’s quite
an American thing. Chefs in most part
are using kosher salt around the world.
I’ve never, we don’t really say kosher salt.
Ah, because you don’t have,
do you have iodized salt in the UK?
We have iodized salt, which is like table salt.
Yeah. And then we have sea salt.
I think when we say sea salt
it’s got nothing to do with Jewish religion.
No.
It’s not blessed.
Yeah. Right.
For me, you know, it’s a couple of things.
Number one, it’s the grind, right?
So we use the red box kosher salt
because we’re used to the coarseness of the grind.
When you’re picking up, you know, one pinch,
two pinch, three pinch, you know, four pinch,
then you know how much you’re picking up
’cause you get used to how much that grind is.
So if it’s a really super fine grind,
then you’re putting too much salt
if you’re used to the more medium grind.
Kosher salt, for us, is without iodine,
’cause if you taste salt that has iodine in it,
it’s very acrid, it kind of burns your palate
so it’s not very pleasant.
Too strong. So our substitute
is now kosher salt,
which becomes the workhorse for our restaurants.
Yeah. We use sea salt
as a finishing salt, as a condiment.
And different salts have different textures.
Okay, this is great because the username is [garbling].
What?
Yeah. Yeah.
How do you spell that?
[Thomas garbling] Yeah. Yeah.
Are you ready for this?
What animal trash parts are still cheap
and have not caught on yet?
Well, I don’t think an animal has any trash parts.
To respect where our food comes from
and an animal that’s giving up his life,
you know, we don’t wanna say it’s trash.
No. Right.
I love pig’s feet. I love chicken feet.
I love lungs. Oh, la.
Lungs are really underrated.
And you just don’t see them in either of our countries.
You’ll see ’em in Spain and Italy.
But lungs have a flavor that is, in my opinion,
like the secret flavor of some of those ragus
you have in the Mediterranean.
And when you go home and do exactly the same thing,
you’re like, why doesn’t it taste the same?
And it’s often lungs through the sofrito.
Lamb brains. Baby lamb brains.
Yes.
The eyes of a red snapper.
[Alice chuckling]
Oh my God!
The eyes of a red snapper!
[Jamie] Oh, it’s so good.
Oh my God, it’s so… Yeah.
That’s not an animal.
What is an animal,
a fish? It’s a fish.
A fish, an animal. All animals on earth.
Let’s not get too about biology now.
[all chuckling]
How do I get my pasta sauce to be sticky
and cling to my noodles better?
I mean, I always think it’s that beautiful relationship
between the pasta in question,
some of that starchy water
that it’s cooked in, – That’s right.
and some form of fat, whether it’s butter or olive oil
or something that’s rendered out of,
guanciale or something like that.
But that, I mean that classic emulsion, right, isn’t it?
It’s that kind of coming together of water and fat.
So it’s cream without cream.
The amount of reduction, right?
Just the appropriate amount of reduction
to get the viscosity that you want.
But if you’re talking about pasta in general,
some rigatoni have ridges,
some of ’em don’t. Yeah.
So the ridged ones wanna capture that sauce in the ridges.
The softer ones or the smoother ones don’t.
Oh my God, the names again.
But magellanspuma, what the heck?
Okay, that’s the question.
Why do people like chicken thighs so much?
Alice, why don’t you answer this one?
I kind of like the flavor of that dark meat.
I think it’s more moist
and the thigh cooks very evenly.
And then you can have a very crusty skin.
More fat than thighs. Yeah.
Yeah, they should do chickens that they are only thighs.
[Alice laughing]
They should do thighs with feet and a head.
[Jamie laughing]
So this question’s coming from neveryellow.
Phew.
Is air frying just convection?
I have no idea what air frying is.
I can answer this. Okay. Okay.
So air frying is a heating element,
just the same as like the 1960s,
with a fan blowing the heat down.
Convection is normally a fan
with heating elements on both sides
and you have circulating heat.
Whereas air frying, which is very trendy right now,
they’ll say it’s circulating, and it is to a degree,
but it’s because they have a little trivet
that allows a bit of air,
but it’s not equal. Okay.
So it’s probably about 75% top convection
and a kind of slightly fictitious
25% convection on the bottom.
It’s not frying.
It’s not frying.
But it’s kind of a play on words,
I think. Yeah.
And it’s about rendering fat.
But if you are able to spray even some oil
in the surface of anything,
that droplets of fat in the outside
in a way kind of fry without submerging.
This is from Expensive_Trust8211.
Expensive trust? Yes.
Expensive trust. Is that a trust baby?
I don’t… You’re getting
all the good ones.
What essential kitchen tools do you recommend
for someone who’s just starting to cook?
What is yours?
Absolutely a mandoline.
A mandoline. And a mortar and a pestle.
Okay. Beautiful.
But do you know what we call a mandoline in the kitchen?
What?
A crippler.
[chefs chuckling]
‘Cause there are so many young people
who are using mandolines and so quickly
that they end up always
cutting their fingers. Cutting.
[Jose] Yeah. Yeah.
And they’ve crippled themselves
by a mandoline. I like that Japanese
inexpensive… Yeah, that’s what we use.
That’s what we use now. But you just
have to be careful. Yeah.
But the mortar and pestle, for me,
is indispensable. Yeah.
But a knife?
A knife’s a good idea too. Okay.
And obviously, a good set of pots and pans.
that will last you forever.
30 years ago I was given one set.
That is the same one
I use today. Yeah. Yeah.
ShakaBradda asks, General question:
How long do you leave your steak out at room temperature
before grilling?
It depends what the room temperature is, I guess.
[Thomas] Depends on the size of the steak.
Two hours, three hours.
And nothing is gonna happen to you,
people. No, nothing’s gonna happen.
It’s like eggs. I mean, –
Yeah, my mom always had
the eggs outside and nothing happened.
Yeah. So, more time the better.
Yes.
[Crew Member] Would you ever take a steak
out of the fridge and put it right in a pan?
Never. If I’m really hungry.
If you had a really cold steak in a really hot pan,
if you go rare or medium rare,
it’s gonna be chilled in the middle.
It doesn’t cook correctly.
No. No.
It doesn’t cook correctly.
It needs to be all the same temperature.
SPecialist_PLUM673 asks,
What is a very, very American ingredient?
American cheese.
That special mustard that you get on burgers.
What’s it, the..?
French’s? French’s. Yeah.
French’s. Heinz ketchup.
[Jose] Ketchup will win the day.
American? There’s Tabasco sauce.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Definitely.
Everywhere, every bar in the world has Tabasco sauce.
Every restaurant that serves oysters has Tabasco sauce.
But then we go with the bounty
of the goodness of the earth or the sea,
I would say, oysters.
You can go to Des Moines, Iowa,
and in an Irish bar they’ll have a special of oysters.
I would say oysters is a very
American ingredient. Catfish is.
Okay, so this is a person whose name is denim_duck.
Denim duck.
Denim duck asks,
Why don’t Michelin chefs use a food processor for onions?
We like to do with things with our hands, of course.
And depending if you’re dicing an onion,
you don’t wanna put it in a food processor.
’cause you want consistency in the shape of the dice.
When I was young, we were using a meat grinder.
A meat grinder?
Because we were doing so many onions
and the meat grinder was very effective.
Yeah. Sure. The truth is that,
yeah, it was kind of a – Bruised and…
onion, soupy, final product.
The answer was we were making sofrito.
Yeah. That’s my point.
If you’re gonna be cooking it for five hours,
it doesn’t really matter.
Put ’em in a food processor. Put ’em in meat grinder.
A deleted user says, I give up.
Why do non-stick pans always lose their non-sticks?
I would say if you are losing your non-stickiness,
it’s because it wasn’t good enough quality
in the first place
and you’re using metal tools.
If in doubt, get yourself a cast iron pan
and you’ll be fine.
I don’t think non-stick pans will last forever.
Oh, yeah. I mean, non-stick pans
have allow us to make amazing things.
Yeah.
Now the issue is, are they healthy enough?
The new ones are, yes.
They’ve removed a lot of the chemicals
that were prominent in the old versions of non-stick pans.
Technology has improved.
Okay, so chefs, our answers were okay?
I’m not sure.
Did we look like experts? Like legends?
You guys! Of Chefs Table.
You guys did. I think we had more
comments than answers, actually.
[lively violin music]
Can you explain to me in English
what a deleted user means? It’s just like a…
Is somebody you kill after asking the question?
A deleted user? They’ve deleted the account.
What happens, what are you doing to them after,
there is the question?
[Crew Member] Look, it’s the wrong question.
You want to undergo, oh my God!
If you start asking questions,
sometimes… A deleted user, asks,
I mean, this is very strange. I don’t wanna be
a part of this. I think it’s French.