Measurements, Scales and the 6th sense

Measurements, Scales and the 6th sense

If there is one thing that I do that pisses people off in the Kitchen other than my attitude it’s my near refusal to use measurements when I cook and I have fought this for years. You’re lucky you’re cooking at home since once you get the hang of an idea, you can play with it. I on the other hand, have to maintain a level of consistency for my customers.

Yes, I’m on the reckless side but fuck it. When it comes to a production Kitchen, standards are set to the gram and this insures that once I show one of my cooks the EXACT way I make the dish, it can be replicated so that I can take a night off and the customers still get the same dish that they know and love, not one of my cooks “interpretations” of the dish.

The biggest perversion of this idea is the concept of Chain Restaurants. Fuck them and fuck you as well if you support them since places like TGIFuckheads is one of the biggest reasons that my kind are a dying breed. The guys that work in those places bust their ass and I really can’t talk shit about them since we all have bills to pay but them food that comes out is shit.  I’ll rant about that later.

I have the advantage of 21 years of experience so I can pour out 2 cups of milk and be off by no more than an 1/8th of a cup. I can weigh out 9 ounces of whatever and be on point. You can’t so when you first start cooking, you really do need to use accurate measurements.

I’m having to play Devil’s advocate here so please bear with me.

By all means trust your instincts and follow your heart. This is key to good food more than anything else. But if you don’t know what you’re doing to start with then its better if you begin with a set method the first time or two until you know and understand what you’re doing, after that you can really start to play.

Far and away the best way to measure is using a good digital scale. And use grams. Right now I’m trying to convert most of my recipes to this methods. Makes sense and you can give credit to your local weed dealer since you wouldn’t go buy a cup of weed would you? Fuck no, you buy by weight since it’s more accurate. Same with cooking.

It’s like playing music, when you first learn chords you have to think about what you’re doing, where your hands are etc. But the more you play the more natural it becomes. At a higher level it’s called “Jamming” and this works in the Kitchen as well.

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