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"What does chiefly animate Japanese soups and broths is an amino acid called glutamate. In the best ramen shops it's made naturally from boiling dried kombu seaweed; it can also come from dried shrimp or bonito flakes, or from fermented soy. More cheaply and easily, you get it from a tin, where it is stabilised with ordinary salt and is thus monosodium glutamate.
This last fact is of little interest to the Japanese - like most Asians, they have no fear of MSG. And there lies one of the world's great food scare conundrums. If MSG is bad for you - as Jeffrey Steingarten, the great American Vogue food writer once put it - why doesn't everyone in China have a headache"
no matter if its an attempt at making Philly cheese steaks, pizza in the oven or fried rice ?
they tell you how to make fried rice, but it does not come close to the restaurant. Philly cheese steaks are good when you make it at home, but it does not have that taste they have at any restaurant. the take and bake pizza tastes great, but still not like the restaurant. if anyone knows that would be good ?
As someone mentioned, your fried rice should be made with cold rice. Let it sit overnight in the fridge.
When I make steaks at home, I buy the prime cuts. More expensive, but taste much better.
Fried rice at restaurants tastes the same at every restaurant and I haven't duplicated that taste. They are using some sort of oil or seasoning that I can't figure out. I make a heck of a good friend rice, though.
If you haven't already, try using Basmati rice, (white) it's often used in Chinese restaurants instead of plain white rice.
In a sense this is correct. Restaurants do NOT worry about calories, oil or salt, they want things to taste good. I used to own a restaurant and make better food than most restaurants at home, but I know how to cook. Fresh ingredients and timing is important. You can't make good food without good ingredients. You CAN make better food than most restaurant, but it takes prep. For example, making a simple hamburger may require you to grind your own meat blend and keeping everything clean, so you can have a medium rare burger. Good cheese, a bun that is thrown on the grille with some butter and more to step up a burger to a GOOD restaurant standard. 99% of burgers at restaurants are crap, but there are some that are actually very good. Most people only want good toppings and could care less about medium rare, so that is why most restaurants don't care.
In general you have to define "restaurant" to answer this question. I can beat most of them at home. Only those who have good, real chefs and use top quality ingredients really beat home cooking.
Plus many places use huge amounts of fat (butter, oil, even add tallow on top of steaks), tons of salt (ever watch Ann Burrell on FN? She throws more salt into a single meal than I'll use in a week.), MSG. And top places just have access to ingredients most of us can't get (because most in this country get to pick between Walmart and Kroger for their shopping.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by oregonwoodsmoke
I don't know what foods OP thinks are better at restaurants. Whatever I cook at home beats what the restaurants serve.
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Steak is all about the quality of the meat. You're never going to beat the steakhouse with the USA prime meat and a high heat flaming grill with your select grade marginal quality meat from the grocery store.
When you don't have access to a butcher and your meat comes from Walmart, you just can't get the quality product. Lord, some of their "best" is what mama used to have ground into hamburger when I was growing up.
This last fact is of little interest to the Japanese - like most Asians, they have no fear of MSG. And there lies one of the world's great food scare conundrums. If MSG is bad for you - as Jeffrey Steingarten, the great American Vogue food writer once put it - why doesn't everyone in China have a headache"
Well, genetics perhaps? We know that some foods, take alcohol for example, affect different genetic populations in different ways. All I can say is how I feel when I eat someplace that uses lots of MSG on the food.
For certain foods, being cooked at higher temperatures than used by most home cooks, as well as step heating/cooking where something is cooked at one temperature for a period, then cooked further at another temperature, often going from grill or pan to oven or vice versa. Various meats and, for example, twice cooked fries are example of this.
Also, many foods are prepped and then reheated which sounds like a failing, but actually changes the texture and properties of the final product for the better. For example braised pork that is let coll, then reheated in a pan with some oil for making carnitas. The contrast between the soft melting pork interior enclosed within a crust, browned exterior is essential to bring out the best of the dish.
Also, as much as many people laud their home cooked pizzas as better than anything you can get in any pizza shop anywhere, Unless they have an 800+ degree oven, I'm dubious.
Also, as much as many people laud their home cooked pizzas as better than anything you can get in any pizza shop anywhere, Unless they have an 800+ degree oven, I'm dubious.
I have a number of friends who have built pizza ovens in their outdoor kitchens.
Funny you should say that, I've taken a couple of classes at CIA in Poughkeepsie and that's just what the chefs tell you, fats have concentrated flavor. We used duck fat, lard, and plenty of butter, flavor profiles go off the scale as well as the calorie counts.
Of course you can cook at home and it will taste as good as a very good restaurant. Prime ingredients (do not squeak because you get what you pay for). Table set with linen, .... We go through the charger, glasses, lighting routine every night. Hot plates, chilled plates. Timing!!!
Last night was meatloaf. Yes! Individual meat loaves of course ground beef and fine ground pork, mashed potatoes with 1/2 and 1/2 and horseradish, grilled asparagus and grilled cabbage wedge with olive oil and balsamico. Cooked vanilla pudding in tall glasses with warm honey and some sugared pecans. The beer was cold not frozen. Desert came with a chilled white. A small plate of antipasti did not hurt the martini. 45 minutes start to finish including feeding the sofa tigers. They prefer canned.
Frozen pizza has its place. But not when you look at it as restaurant food. Hold it! I have eaten at some places where that might have been an improvement.
Funny you should say that, I've taken a couple of classes at CIA in Poughkeepsie and that's just what the chefs tell you, fats have concentrated flavor. We used duck fat, lard, and plenty of butter, flavor profiles go off the scale as well as the calorie counts.
Yes, I think it's why people are shocked when we read articles that say such-and-such chain's pasta alfredo or even some type of salad has more calories in it than you should eat in a day. We wonder how that could possibly be.
I've also heard that the reason salads taste so good in restaurants is because they add a ton of salt to the greens.
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