67 Kitchen Tips With Michelin Star Chef Curtis Stone

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Oh my god, you just threw an onion at me.

When you cut them, they can make you cry.

It normally happens when you squash the onion

with a blunt knife, so I hate to tell you,

but if you're crying all the time with your onions,

you probably need to sharpen your knives.

Leave the root on,

'cause it makes cutting the onion way easier.

Because we gave ourself a nice flat side,

it means that the onion will sit nice and still.

If you wanna slice,

you're just gonna pull your knife straight through,

from top to bottom, just like that.

Let me show you how we dice it.

Long thin strips down the onion,

then long strokes

of your blade cut towards the root.

We'll get you all the way into the onion.

Turn it over and then you are dicing.

You can get a perfect dice really simply,

a perfect slice really simply.

And look at me, I'm not crying.

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One of the things our chefs learn

about when we go to school

is all the different knife cuts.

If you wanna take something

and cut it into a julienne,

all you'll do is very thin slices like this.

Then you'll turn it and you'll cut them

into really, really fine strips.

So that's great for a stir fry.

Great for when you want lots of texture.

Now if you wanna do batons,

is cutting it a little thicker

and then you push them all to your knife.

Keep the tip of your blade anchored on the board.

And then the back of the knife is

where you're actually doing your chopping.

If you want to take that one step further

and turn that into a dice,

you turn it and you just cut straight on through.

You might hear of a hacher, or mincing of vegetables,

and this is when you want the vegetable

to disappear in the dish.

We go back across and we're doing a fine mince

or a really fine dice.

So here we've got julienne.

The baton obviously much more robust

in its size and its shape.

That turns into this.

If you dice it and this turns into that.

So that's a dice.

This is a hacher.

Just take your time.

It's not a rush.

Don't try and be like the guys you see on TV.

Speed will come with experience,

so just take your time

and you'll get beautiful knife cuts

and your vegetables will really jump

and stand out when you're cooking with 'em.

I love cutting a julienne,

but I know lots of you are like,

that's way too difficult and I'm not gonna try it.

I've got something for you.

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I've got a peeler,

which on the other side is a julienne cutter.

Peel your carrot just like that

and switch it over to the julienne side

and you're just gonna go on

through your carrot just like this.

You could turn that into a really gorgeous salad.

It could replace noodles if you're going gluten free.

It's a great little tool.

Here's a quick little tip on cleaning as you go.

Keeping your kitchen clean

and organized when you're cooking in it is so important.

It starts with having a container for everything,

but then you also need to have a little towel.

I always have one damp and one dry,

is a really useful tool.

You don't need a hundred towels.

I always start by opening it up,

fold in it in half, doing the same thing.

So then you start with one, two, three, four.

I know it sounds crazy,

but trust me,

once you go through cleaning 20 towels

at the end of a cooking session,

you'll learn how to fold your towels really well

and get the most outta it.

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Let's talk dressings.

All you need to make a good dressing

is a bowl and a whisk,

and what we're gonna do is emulsify

two different components, an acid and a fat.

Those two things normally wanna stay far away

from each other,

but what we're gonna do is force them to be friends.

You start off with the acid

and then you can flavor your dressing

or vinegarette with anything you want.

Maybe you want to add a little Dijon mustard.

You might want to add a little honey,

some shallots, some garlic,

some different herbs.

Then you mix, and in a thin stream,

you're gonna pour some olive oil

and you whisk at the same time,

like one part vinegar to about three or four parts oil.

The appearance is gonna be, is creamy.

You're gonna season it with a little kosher salt,

freshly ground black pepper.

The right way to taste the dressing

is getting yourself a leaf, dipping it in.

Whoa, that's good.

So often people will make a vinegarette

and they'll taste it and be like, it's too vinegry.

They'll add more oil and then when they toss the salad

with the vinegarette, they're like,

it still doesn't taste right.

That's because you didn't taste it the first time on a leaf,

because you need to make the vinegarette way more powerful

than you think you'll need it to be.

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This is a zesta, this is a lemon.

The oil in the lemon,

those essential oils, are in the skin.

Good zesta is always one that takes off just a little bit.

It's really quite light.

Now, if I was to concentrate

and just go in one spot,

I'm gonna end up with more of the pith than the zest.

So you want the zest for that nice bright sour flavor.

The pith will have more bitterness,

so that's something you wanna avoid.

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All it is is a shape that has three sides.

So I'm gonna break down how you do it.

I've got tomato and chili pepper jam.

I've got two spoons.

Rinse them in slightly warm water.

Pick up just enough to fill your spoon

and then you take it off that spoon with the other spoon

to keep going from one spoon to the next

until you get that wonderful shape.

One, two.

And of course, underneath are the three sides.

Bit of moose or a puree

or even a soft cheese can be quenelled very, very easily.

I think it looks a little nicer

than just a dollop of something.

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Now the blowtorch is how we start our fire here at Gwen,

but if you wanna get a little char

and a little sweetness

into an otherwise quite acidic cheese,

like a goat's cheese, here's a little tip.

Sprinkle it really lightly with a little Demerara sugar,

which has a lovely flavor.

You grab your blow torch.

You get to caramelize the sugar without melty goats cheese.

It gives it a nice crisp crust.

I'm gonna break a little piece off.

Just make sure that sugar's set first.

Hmm, delicious,

Oysters.

If you open them at home, you need a towel.

What you're gonna use is a thing called an oyster knife,

but you don't wanna push it into your hand is put the oyster

on your towel.

I always give it a tap.

Let 'em know I'm coming.

You fold that towel over onto the oyster,

wiggle your oyster knife in to that little hinge.

Once you feel like you've got a nice foothold,

you just pop it.

What you're trying not to do is just tear it off.

'Cause then you'll break the oyster.

That's the cup and that's the shell.

You're gonna stick your knife in here

and you're just gonna sever the oyster.

I like to turn the oyster over,

so you just flip him over like that

and then your oyster is ready to eat.

Bottoms up.

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Scallops or scallops, depends where you're from.

Wanna make sure they smell really sweet.

They never should smell funky or fishy.

They should just smell lightly of the ocean.

You always have the server side,

so there'll always be one side bigger and one side smaller.

You want where it holds onto the cup,

because there's more of it.

It makes the scallop look slightly bigger and fuller.

So it's a better presentation.

I always cook the server side first

so that bigger side goes into the pan first.

You only ever turn scallops once.

Get it beautiful and golden brown.

Turn it one time and it's done.

Pop them straight onto your service tray.

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This is a ribeye.

When you're talking about a ribeye,

this is the longer mus Dorsi

and this little crescent shaped mussel

is the Spinalis Dorsi.

Both those mussels eat quite differently

but are absolutely delicious.

So this is a beautifully dry aged, heavily marbled ribeye.

Let me show you what one from the store might look like.

Quite different, right?

You can see it's a little pinker in color,

much less of that marbling or intermuscular fat.

It's also very large.

It's come off a larger animal,

usually would mean

that it is older and probably a little tougher.

The other thing that's missing from this is that Spinalis.

So that's really delicious.

So I think that's a bit of a bummer.

It's probably just a little further up the primal.

You're really getting more

of a New York than you are a ribeye.

Always look for those two muscles

and look for that beautiful marbling

all the way through,

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Aging beef.

It is a big question.

Dry aging or wet aging, let me explain it.

This is wet aged.

This normally comes in a package like this.

A lot of the moisture stays in the beef, right?

So it's gonna give you a really juicy end result,

although there's not much flavor development

from that aging process.

Now all beef is aged.

You can't eat it immediately.

It can't be too fresh.

If it is, it's very fibrous and very tough.

If you dry age,

and here's an example of a primal.

This is the whole rib eye

that has been dry aged,

is a little mold growth on the outside.

Very, very dry and hard.

Literally is almost impenetrable.

You are developing a wonderful flavor, right?

There's a little bit of funkiness going on

inside the rib eye.

It's also been dehydrated, hence dry aging.

This, believe it or not, was cut from one exactly like that.

You don't eat the outside.

You don't eat anything

that has the mold growth on it.

Still beautiful and soft on the inside.

It does get that incredible flavor.

By far my favorite, dry age.

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There's a couple of important things that you need to do

before it goes on the grill.

I took this out of the fridge about an hour

before I'm gonna cook it.

Called tempering the steak.

Means you're not gonna get red in the middle,

gray on the outside.

It's gonna be perfectly pink all the way through.

Season the outside really generously just

with kosher salt.

Pepper on a live fire will burn.

You don't want that burnt pepper flavor.

You can pepper it at the end.

When we cook steak at Gwen,

we have a really interesting technique

because most people tell you to turn the steak once.

We continually rest the steak

during the cooking process.

We start it for maybe 60 seconds on each side and remove it

and sit it on a rack and allow it to rest for five minutes.

Once those juices have redistributed through the steak,

we bring it back to the grill

and we give it another 60 to 90 seconds on each side.

Then another five minute rest.

We continue that through the cooking process

and we'll end up with a perfectly pink ribeye.

You want to cut with the grain or directly against it.

You never want to cut through it on an angle.

You will make it tougher to eat.

There's not a pool of juice on my board.

That resting process allows all of those juices

to redistribute through the meat and it stays in the steak

and not all over your cutting board.

Oh man, that is a beautiful way to cook a steak,

I gotta tell you.

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Check out this baby.

This is fennel.

There's a way to use it all and I'll explain it to you.

If you go through and remove some of this leaf,

it smells and tastes very similar to dill.

So you can use that and chop it up.

When it comes to the actual bulb,

if you cut straight on through it,

you now give yourself a nice flat side that you can prep.

Run it through a mandolin,

Those beautiful super thin slices,

It gives you wonderful texture.

One method is to salt it, right?

Wash the salt off after an hour

and then throw a hot pickle over it,

which is one, two, three.

One part vinegar, two part sugar,

three parts water,

right with smoked salmon

or any sort of shellfish.

So the bulb, you can thinly slice.

The leaf, you use in place of dill.

And any of these big stalky parts,

that's good to make a stock.

Or you can go ahead

and use this as a bed to roast your meats

and fish over.

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Delicious steam just the way they are.

That's a very Californian way.

Just cutting the base off here, steaming the whole thing.

But the really beautiful thing about an artichoke

is the actual choke itself.

I'm gonna show you how to get to it.

Do you need a big strong knife

that you can get up on top of and go right through.

Trim it up so it's nice and flat.

Then hold onto the base.

You're gonna go around the artichoke

and remove these outer leaves.

Come in and you're gonna turn

the artichoke around like that.

Work kind of quickly, 'cause it will oxidize.

So you don't wanna spend too long

because you'll end up with a brown artichoke.

This is the center.

We've gotta take that out,

because this is the part that's inedible.

All right, and you've got yourself

a perfectly turned artichoke.

This is where all the flavor is.

That is now ready to cook.

You're probably gonna do quite a few when you turn 'em.

So the best thing

to do is drop them into some acidulated water.

So just water with some lemon juice

and that will keep them from turning brown

and that's the best way to keep them

until you're ready to cook.

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Take a good long look at my leek.

I love this vegetable.

They're a little tricky to clean though,

so let me give you a couple of tips.

The green, you don't really use very much

unless you're making a stock.

This white part is the really special bit.

Get yourself a nice sharp knife and just start at the top

and slice all the way through the heart of that leek.

Now I can look and see all of that sand.

I leave the root on, go onto the tap.

I can sort of play that like a deck of cards.

Get the water running in between them

and that way you get perfectly clean leeks.

The most common way to use it is just

to slice it straight across.

There's no sand showing up to your party.

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One of my favorite

and I think most underrated herbs,

it will wilt quite quickly.

But I've got a little tip.

When you buy a bunch like this,

do I break it into pieces

that I'm gonna use it in .

Simply use now.

Use later in the week and then use next week.

Mist some water over it, some paper towel.

Take your fresh herbs.

Place them inside

and then just roll it up nice and tight.

That will keep 'em fresh so you'll get maximum life out

of those herbs.

Will probably double the usable time

that you can use the tarragon for.

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You can see the leaf of the cilantro right there,

but what I'm interested in is the flowers.

Crate for garnish in a salad,

a raw fish dish, even a big old steak.

The flower has a slightly more mild flavor than the leaf.

So if you like the flavor of cilantro,

but you don't wanna use a big old leaf, serve the flower.

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Best way to know you get in a nice fresh tomato

is actually the green.

That's old and dry, probably been picked a while ago.

If it's beautiful, vibrant and green,

then it's probably pretty fresh.

You can also kind of tell the ripeness

of a tomato by its smelling it.

The stronger the aroma,

the riper the tomato will be tomato.

Tomato.

Excuse me.

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Peas have to be one of my favorite ingredients.

There's two ends, one where it was attached

and the other where the flower was.

Snap it and then you peel

that little piece of string off the pea.

Is it absolutely essential?

Yeah, I don't want that stuck in my teeth.

That is really quite fibrous.

You wanna peel the stringy bit off your peas.

Now the thing about the snap peas is they cook so fast.

If you have water at a boil, 15 seconds, that's it.

If you toss them into a stir fry into a hot wok,

maybe a minute or two

and they're ready to go.

You can even eat them just like this.

Fantastic.

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While we might consider these wild mushrooms,

I can tell you with absolute certainty

they were grown in a hot house

and they weren't grown out in the woods

where they would come into contact with all sorts of things

that would need them to be cleaned.

So when you find these varieties

that are grown in a hot house,

you don't have to worry too much about washing them.

If you wash mushrooms in water, the porous nature

of a mushroom is it will absorb the water.

If your mushroom absolutely needs a wash,

get yourself a damp cloth, that works.

If you are buying from a forager

or you are collecting mushrooms yourself,

you might want to brush it with a pastry brush

and even use a toothbrush to sort of get

into some of those hard to reach areas.

You can always feel your board.

Was there any sand in there?

No.

That was actually pretty clean and pretty simple.

Mushrooms are delicious.

Once you know how to clean them,

you'll be using them all the time.

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If you're gonna spend lots of money on truffles,

you need to know how to store them.

If you leave them in a container,

eventually they will become wet and they'll become slimy.

Wrap each one individually in some paper towel.

So each day that you have these in the fridge,

you're gonna change that paper.

You're gonna rewrap it

and then hop it into a little container.

Another thing that we will sometimes do is keep them on rice

because the truffle aroma will scent the rice

or keep them with eggs.

Because eggs have a porous shell,

the flavor and aroma of the truffle

will go through the shell of the egg

and your eggs will taste delicious like truffles.

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How do I put together a beautiful cheeseboard?

I always think getting three distinct varietals

of cheese is really important.

I've got an alpine style aged cheese over here.

I've got a triple cream for those cream lovers

and then I've got my goat's cheese log down the end.

Make sure you serve 'em at the right temperature.

Let them temper for about half an hour before you serve 'em.

The other thing that's important

about selecting great cheeses is knowing how to cut them.

So the alpine cheese really quite strong in flavor,

so you want to cut it into really thin slices,

just like that.

You wanna slice all the way along the cheese,

so you get some of that milky center

and some of that thicker, richer flavor from the outside.

If you cut a big thick piece of that cheese,

it would be way too rich.

Next, I have a triple cream.

Is what you wanna do with a cheese like this

is serve it in wedges.

Some people will warm their knife.

That'll allow it to go through the cheese quicker,

but what you wanna do is quite quickly punch your way

through the cheese.

You have it still kind of chalky right there in the center.

That hasn't fully ripened,

but the outside of the cheese looks much softer,

almost a little gooier and that is

because the cheese is ripening.

We wanna make sure that we get a piece of that mold

with the interior of the cheese,

which is why you are gonna cut through in wedges like this.

We'll be able to pick up a piece of cheese

and eat it from side to side

and that is the perfect balance for a triple cream.

Oh, doggy, that is good.

This cheese is very soft.

It will be quite delicate,

which is why we use a wire.

Just pressing straight through the cheese like that.

You can also just line it up from the top

and go straight through.

Because the wire has virtually no drag,

it is certainly the simplest way to cut those lovely disks

of what is otherwise a very, very soft cheese.

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The best way to cook eggs.

My favorite way is sunny side up.

I'm using a non-stick pan

and you'll notice I haven't got the pan too hot.

If the pan is too hot,

you're gonna cook the egg from the bottom up too quickly,

so that's why it's gotta be on a pretty low heat.

Let that butter turn slightly brown.

You're gonna season this

with a little bit of salt and pepper

and then I'm gonna finish it with some

of this white truffle on egg.

There's just nothing better than that.

Before you take it out of the pan,

while it's still hot and bubbly, take your truffle.

You don't need a lot.

Lightly go over the top, make it rain.

Whenever someone in a restaurant comes and talks to you

while they're shaving truffles, distract them.

Try and confuse them.

Then they'll just keep on shaving.

It's the way you get the most out of the person.

And I don't know about you,

but everything I've ever learned in the kitchen,

there's not much that compares to this.

I would die happy right now.

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I know these blocks of butter look very similar,

but they couldn't be more different.

This is a fresh butter, the one that you are used

to buying from the store, and this one is a cultured butter.

The difference is one takes long walks,

read books and visits museums.

That was a stinker and I'm sorry.

A cultured butter is aged,

actually has flavor developed.

I've also got my favorite butter

that I couldn't not show you.

It's called beurre de baratte.

The flavor of this butter to me is really quite exceptional.

Oh man, I'm serious.

I could just slice it, eat it on a cracker.

The regular butter you might want to use

to melt in the bottom of your pan

before you make your omelet in the morning.

The cultured butter, that's a real specialty butter

that maybe you want to eat just with some bread

for a special dinner party.

Invest in good butter.

I've pulled together some of my favorite fats.

I absolutely love using butter.

It has a really low smoke point,

so you can't just cook in butter,

if you wanna cook on a high heat.

Like a steak for instance.

You try and cook a steak in butter,

the butter's gonna burn every single time.

The extra virgin hasn't had any heat brought to it.

That's a wonderful finish in oil.

Here's something that we used to cook in a lot.

Beef tallow.

When it comes to cooking in animal fat,

use the fat to cook the same type of meat.

So if you're gonna use duck fat,

it's wonderful for cooking duck.

If you're gonna use beef fat, it's great for cooking steak.

That said, duck fat roast potatoes.

Oh my Lord, it is really, really good.

If I make Yorkshire pudding,

I always use beef fat,

'cause I serve it with roast beef.

Experiment with it.

You get different flavors from cooking in different fats.

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I always think of food as a balance.

Is it rich enough?

Normally that comes through fat.

Is it bright and acidic enough?

Normally that comes through a vinegar or an acid.

We actually use acids all the time.

In every single vinegarette

or dressing that you've ever had,

there would be some form of acid in it.

Is really more there as a flavor enhancement.

Vinegars bring beautiful brightness.

Rice wine vinegar, a sherry vinegar, a champagne vinegar,

raspberry vinegar, lemon juice.

This is a bit of a different one.

This is a Buddha's hand.

Now it looks really pretty,

it doesn't have juice in it,

so you're only really using this for the zest.

Always have already just a few drops into that pasta

with crab or into that bolognese sauce.

It will totally change the way you cook.

Don't forget about the assets.

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Probably the most important tool that you have as a chef.

You call that a knife?

This is a knife.

This is a beautiful big slicer.

I have smaller version of that, which is a utility knife.

For a big cook's knife you want with a heel on it

because your knuckles will be underneath that blade,

so you want to be able to chop.

You know, I've always got a knife in my pocket

to open boxes.

This little switchblade.

I have no idea what it's for, but it's super cute.

If I could just have one knife,

I would go for something like this.

That's a santoku.

It's a great slicer

and it's also got a heel so you can use it to chop,

and then of course, not too thick,

so you actually don't have too much drag

through the things you're slicing through.

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If you came into my restaurant

and had a look in the fridge,

you'd see all these containers

with these little blue labels on.

You're gonna laugh at me, but I don't let my crew take

that blue tape and just tear it off like this,

because sometimes you'll get the corners

missing on the tape.

No, no, no, no, no.

You need to label and date everything

that goes into your fridge.

If you're like me and you're just a little OCD,

the tape also has to be torn perfectly.

I know how embarrassing that is.

Let me show you in the kitchen.

This is the fridge, the most important room in the building,

so everything's kinda sectioned off into different areas.

So we have all of our juices

and all of our elixirs in one area,

all of our sources in another.

Everything's in its place.

All the mise en place can be easily accessed.

You know exactly what it is when you need it.

If you wanna organize your kitchen, just like a chef does,

get similar size containers,

label them all

and have things put into sections.

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Cooking over live fire gives incredible flavor,

but every type of wood will give you

a different scent, aroma, and taste.

I'm actually cooking with white oak.

There's also wonderful cherry trees

and apple trees here in California,

so sometimes we'll burn those.

The one thing all three

of those woods have in common

is it's relatively mild in flavor,

but it burns nice and hot.

They're the two characteristics we really look for.

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I know this sounds strange,

but a chef spends most of his life standing on his feet,

so you need real comfy shoes and these are the ones I like.

They're Birkenstocks, open heel,

so if you need to kick 'em off in case you burn yourself,

you can.

That cork sole means that your back doesn't ache.

I swear by 'em.

I've really enjoyed hanging out with you.

Having you in my kitchen for the day.

We've done a bunch of tips together.

I hope you use 'em in your kitchen.

All the best.

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