Food & Cooking

Simple tips to make home-cooked food look professional

15/07/2021 6:50 AM14 min read Damaris J. Dickerson

Simple tips to make home-cooked food look professional

Tricks of the trade

The Michelin guide remains one of the world’s leading authorities on restaurants and fine dining. Although the judges’ criteria are a closely-guarded secret, the techniques they praise are well-known – and the good news is that many are easily replicated at home. Discover our top tips to achieve restaurant-quality cooking in your own kitchen.

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Cook seasonally

What’s in season depends on where you are in the world. But wherever you are, using ingredients that are being harvested that month always makes sense. Produce at its peak tastes better, has much more flavor, supports local farmers, has traveled fewer miles and, often, is cheaper.

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Buy fruit and veg at farmers’ markets if you can

If your local farmers’ market is open and has social distancing measures in place, it’s a great spot to buy seasonal produce. Look for a certified market which has rules about what can be sold – you want to buy produce fresh from the fields, not from an individual who has bought from a wholesaler to sell on. Talk to the producers about how their food is grown and what’s coming into season. Michelin-starred chefs swear by the relationships they have with their suppliers. A vegetable box subscription is also a good option.

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Spot the best produce with your senses

Use your eyes and nose to spot the best stuff on offer. Choose tomatoes that are fragrant and not wrinkly; avocados that are free from cracks and dents; lettuce that’s crisp, not slimy; kale that has deep-colored, small leaves; white cauliflower with tightly packed florets (avoid yellow or flowering cauliflower); plump, heady garlic; and carrots without rootlets.

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Get meat from local independent butchers

You might have to spend a bit more but meat from a good-quality butcher is worth it – ethical, traceable meat is important to them. They can give you advice on how to cook different cuts and will slice or debone meat for you. They can also cater to more obscure requests such as chicken bones for stock, a suckling pig or an ox heart. It’s also worth visiting your local fishmonger for fish, or check out online delivery schemes.

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Grow your own herbs

You don’t need access to a balcony or garden to grow your own food – and you can’t beat the flavor of fresh herbs. Many Michelin-starred restaurants have small veg patches for this reason. You could start with a simple basil plant or grow microgreens to use as a fancy garnish.

Discover super-easy foods you can grow at home here

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Store fruit and vegetables correctly

There’s no point in investing in beautiful ingredients if you don’t store them with care. You might be surprised how many ingredients should never be kept in the fridge such as avocados, garlic and onions. Simple hacks like storing herbs upright in water, like flowers, will make them last much longer.

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Master the French mother sauces

One thing Michelin restaurants get spot on is sauces and it’s easy to get them right at home. At culinary school, students are taught five classic, French ‘mother’ sauces which form the foundations of many other sauces and dishes. They are béchamel, velouté, espagnole, sauce tomat and hollandaise. Master these five and from there you can make scalloped potatoes (with béchamel), creole sauce (with sauce tomat), and eggs benedict and béarnaise sauce (from hollandaise).

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Add butter

Much of the time, the secret to great-tasting food worthy of a Michelin star is simple: use an almost unreasonable amount of butter in your cooking. The secret to the perfect steak, for example, is to add a knob of butter and a sprig of herb to the pan halfway through cooking.

Discover more tips for cooking restaurant-quality steak at home here

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Season well

The importance of seasoning is greater than you might expect. Keep salt and pepper on the kitchen worktop during food preparation. Each individual component of a meal needs to be seasoned separately. It’s also about balance: taste regularly as you go and adjust accordingly. However, add a little at a time so you don’t ruin a dish by over-salting it.

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Buy good-quality oil

Don’t just season well, choose quality oil too – and make sure you use the right type for your dish. Use extra-virgin olive oil for dressings and vinaigrettes rather than for cooking. Higher heats demand a sunflower or vegetable oil.

Find out more with our complete guide to cooking with oil

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Invest in kitchen kit

Great presentation starts with how you prep ingredients. Julienned carrots (cut into thin strips) and onions sliced and diced with consistency are visible in the final dish. Get yourself a decent set of sharp knives, a mandoline, a peeler and a hand-held grater (for shaving and fine grating). You could even splash out on getting your knives professionally sharpened once a year.

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Mise en place

Mise en place is a French culinary phrase, roughly translating to everything in its place. It refers to preparing your equipment and ingredients before you start cooking: from cleaning the surfaces and locating knives, pots and pans, to chopping onions and measuring out flour. It’s vital to the smooth execution of complicated dishes and means you won’t be scrabbling for the next ingredient during cooking.

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Make food from scratch

Michelin inspectors love attention to detail and while some techniques are best left to the restaurants, making elements of a meal such as a salad dressing, mayonnaise or bread at home is a nice touch.

Find our best tips for making bread here

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Stock up on hero ingredients

Ingredients were not all created equal and there are a handful of pantry saviors which have transformative qualities. A drizzle of balsamic vinegar can add sweet and sour notes to a dish; anchovies make a wonderful salty sauce; chili flakes infuse dishes with warmth and spice; honey adds floral, sweet notes and sticky glazes to roast meat; a squeeze of lemon balances rich dishes; and umami-rich miso elevates both sweet and savory dishes.

Take a look at more ingredients that’ll transform your favorite dishes

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Marinate everything

Michelin-star cooking means adding flavor at every stage, even before you start to cook. It’s not unusual to marinate meat for up to two days, to tenderize and flavor the produce. But more than meat can be marinated. Infusing fish, tofu and vegetables with flavor does wonders too.

Turn up the flavor with these bold, quick marinade ideas

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Toast nuts and spices

Michelin-quality cooking is all about little techniques and small touches that add depth to dishes such as toasting nuts and spices before cooking with them. Toast nuts in a dry pan or in the oven for five to 10 minutes at 350–375°F (150–170°C) until golden in color – once cooled they’ll be crisp and refreshed. Cook whole and ground spices in a dry pan to unlock their aroma but watch carefully they don’t burn.

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Deglaze pans

Deglazing pans is a French technique which ensures no flavor is wasted. Remove sautéed vegetables or browned meat from the pan, then pour in cold wine, stock or water to create a cloud of steam and help move any caramelized pieces of food that are stuck to the bottom. This flavorful jus can be used for gravy or just poured straight over your dish.

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Set aside vegetable scraps for stock

Cutting down on waste isn’t just good sense from a financial and sustainability perspective, many of the things we regularly throw out can be used to create or enhance another dish. In top restaurants, you’ll never see vegetable trimmings thrown in the trash but rather into a pot for stock. The same goes for meat bones and cheese rinds.

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Sear steak on cast iron to get a crust

Create a steak with a charred surface and tender interior by searing it on a cast iron griddle pan – they’re the best at retaining heat. Make sure the pan is roaring hot before you begin and don’t add butter first. Add a knob before you finish cooking the steak for ultimate caramelization. Resting the meat is also incredibly important. It should equal the time spent cooking so if you fried steak for five minutes, let it rest for another five.

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Try unusual cuts of meat in the slow cooker

Ever had a delicious, unusual cut of meat in a restaurant that you’d never consider buying? The secret to the melt-in-the-mouth texture and rich flavor is likely to be slow cooking, which can turn even the most unpromising of cuts into something wonderful. The low and slow method does wonders to the likes of beef shin or lamb neck. Better still, just like in a restaurant, slow cooking can be done ahead of time with the dish warmed before serving.

Find our top slow cooker recipes here

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Try sous-vide

Sous-vide is a classic high-end restaurant technique which produces perfectly tender food. Food is vacuum-sealed and placed in a temperature-controlled water bath to cook slowly on a low heat. You’ll have to make a hefty investment in the kit but if you really want to push the boat out and you’re set on replicating restaurant-style confit duck legs, tender fillets of fish and evenly-cooked sirloin steak, it’s worth considering.

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Blanch vegetables

Michelin-starred restaurants put as much thought into how they cook vegetables as to how they prepare meat. Blanch hard veggies to tenderize them and lock in color, flavor and nutrients, instead of boiling them. After the vegetable is scalded in boiling water, remove and plunge into iced water to stop the cooking process.

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Master a quick pickle

Pickled vegetables will elevate any meal by adding acidity and crunch, plus a pop of color on the plate. Make a quick 20-minute pickle with thinly shaved vegetables soaked in a bowl of white vinegar, salt and sugar.

Get the recipe for pickled slaw here

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Carpaccio more than just meat

Carpaccio is a traditional Italian dish of thinly sliced raw meat or fish served as an appetizer, however top chefs have applied the technique to fruit and vegetables. Make a beetroot carpaccio with a mixture of different colored varieties for a visually appealing starter. Alternatively, try thinly sliced kohlrabi marinated in lime juice, balsamic, honey, olive oil, salt and pepper.

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Try flambéing

Flambé refers to the technique when alcohol is added to a hot pan to create a burst of flames, adding a rich flavor to the dish and some theater in the kitchen. Have a go at home with a 40% proof alcohol that complements the dish. Be sure to use a large ladle with a long handle and warm the booze in a pot first – pouring straight from the bottle is a safety hazard.

Get the recipe for flambéed crêpes Suzette here

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Make melt-in-the-mouth confit

Confit means to preserve through slow cooking in fat. Meat, fish or vegetables are poached in oil slowly, over a low heat, until they are tender and rich. A classic recipe is confit duck legs or turkey legs. To really go high-end, try confit egg yolks for the ultimate Michelin meal.

Get the recipe for confit duck here

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Experiment with flavor combinations

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Turn plating into an art

Create a dish that captivates by choosing a large white plate that showcases the food. Take the main element of the dish and switch up the proportions. For example, serve strawberry sorbet with button-sized meringue bites and dots of cream, instead of a traditional layered pavlova. Arrange components in odd groups (one, three or five); twirl pasta; serve rice or mashed potato in metal rings then remove to create towers; and artfully pour jus or gravy.

These 50 genius food hacks will transform your cooking

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Tidy as you go

Finally, if your kitchen and dining space are the same room, try to prep as much as you can in advance and tidy as you go. Just like the theater, people don’t mind seeing the orchestra and lights but they don’t want to see the whole cast in the wings, or in this case, a load of dirty pans.

Now take a look at these top cooking tips from your favorite TV chefs

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30/30 SLIDES

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