Dissecting Chickens

I’m a little late posting from my class last Wednesday. Busy weekend I had. I won’t go into too much detail about the weekend, but let’s just say, The Food Dude had his first official stalker.

It was more like the beginning of the Cable Guy. Fortunately I was able after 5 hours to sneak out the back door and never have to see the guy again.

Wednesday’s class dealt with Standards For Controlling Production Volume in a restaurant setting.

So as not to bore you I won’t go into too much detail. But overall there are 4 Tools that are used to ensure a restaurant can prepare the same meal every day at the same level of quality regardless of location or person preparing the meal.

The 4 tools are:

Product Specification Sheets
· Spot checks help assure that ingredient quality standards are met

Preparation Sheets
· Help assure that Par levels for basic items are available

Standarized Recipes
· Help assure that quality requirements will be attained

Menu Descriptions
· Help assure that food items meet standards when served to customers

All of this information is used to assist in creating of Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) SOPs are used so that everything done in a restaurant is consistent.

We applied SOPs to a very basic function, Breading of Meats.

S.O.P. for Breading

(Season as you go) = (s)

Pan Product (s) ---> Flour (s) ---> Egg Wash ---> Bread Crumbs (s) ---> Pan Product

We also learned how to make a standard chicken stock:

Chicken Stock (1 Gallon)

4-5-6 pounds chicken bones
1 lb Mire Poix (50% Onion 25% Celery, 25% Carrots – All Medium Dice)
1-11/2 Gallons Cold Water
Sachet d’ Epice

Bring to boil, reduce heat to low simmer (barely bubbling) and simmer for several hours. Cool in Fridge and then remove fat residue.

Sachet d’ Epice
3-4 Parsley Sprigs
1 Stalk of Thyme
1 Bay Leaf
1 tsp Peppercorns

Place in cheesecloth tied into a pouch with butchers twice

If you add 1 piece of Celery Stalk you now have Boquet Garni

Additionally once you have your chicken broth you could make a Roux and slowly add the broth to make a nice chicken gravy.

Roux = 50% Fat + 50% Flour (By Weight)

We also learned about the difference between Sous Vide and Cry-O-Vac.

SOUS VIDE - Anything in a plastic pouch that has special plastic which won’t melt when cooked in water.

CRY-O-VAC – Thick plastic, air sucked out. Different type of plastic then Sous Vide.

Lastly we attempted to dissect a chicken into 8 pieces. 2 Legs, 2 Thighs, 2 Breasts, 2 Wings. I have cut up chickens many times before but to learn the “proper” way left me feeling a little inadequate. It will take some practice but it was fun, none-the-less.

Until Next Time.....Cook On!!!

The Food Dude

Welcome to my blog

My name is Steve Lobdell. I am known as "The Food Dude". I am a personal chef in the Los Angeles area. I started this blog to have my Culinary Happenings saved for posterity.

I have been a personal chef for about 2 years now. During the week I'm an Analyst for an I.T. department for a Major Medical Insurance Company, well Thee Major Medical Insurance Company, but Weekends and Nights are spent being a Personal Chef.

I am self taught since I was a young child and recently started attending a Local Community College to hone my skills. As of Monday, I started a Culinary 101 Class, which I will be posting here about my experiences with School, as well as my Personal Chef Business and other Culinary Happenings in my life.

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Monday was my first class for Culinary 101. Being the first class we do not yet have our books, uniforms or knives. Therefore it was pretty uneventful. Mainly we received the syllabus and ordered our Coats and Knives. Textbooks? Well that's another story.

College Textbooks have to be the biggest scam in Education. Every year, pretty much every class changes their textbooks, so students are forced to buy "New" books every year. And for those classes where they don't change their textbook, the students can buy "Used" except those classes also require a supplemental book that has a special test scantron in it, therefore the student still has to spend $40 for a "New" supplemental book.

The book and test for my class is going to run $125. I went and looked online to see if I could find it cheaper. Yes, I could, for $100 total, but...and this is a BIG BUT...The book companies don't ship the book until a point that you will have to wait late into the 2nd week of school to receive it. So if your in a class that is more than 1 day a week, you miss quite a few classes before you receive the book.

I'm sorry folks, but not alot has changed from year to year that requires a new book every year, or rather a new edition of the book. So tonight I will be picking up my $125 Culinary Book.

However on a positive note, our Culinary Instructor does have a deal with the Knife Company, Messermeister, where we get the knives at cost. :) So I will be purchasing a High End Chef's Knife, a Boning Knife and a Pairing Knife for about $150. The 3 knifes retail for about $300, so not a bad deal.

The class I am in has only 8 registered students, and 6 showed up on the first night. So it will be a small class which will allow for more personal instruction from the Professor.

Other than getting our supplies in order, going over what we will be learning all year, we did have a brief lecture/demonstration of the various knife cuts. Tonight we should be doing hands-on with these cuts.

Most of the cuts are cubes. Generally you cut either Julienne or Fine Julienne and then from there you cut the cubes.

The cuts we learned are:

1. Fine Julienne = 1/16 x 1/16 x 2-2 1/2"
2. Julienne = 1/8 x 1/8 x 2-2 1/2"
3. Fine Brunoise = 1/16 x 1/16 x 1/16
4. Brunoise = 1/8 x 1/8 x 1/8
5. Small Dice = 1/4 x 1/4 x 1/4
6. Medium Dice = 1/2 x 1/2 x 1/2
7. Large Dice = 3/4 x 3/4 x 3/4

We also saw another cut known as Tourne. Tourne looks like a little football, about 2 inches long with 7 sides. You will often see this cut with potatoes and carrots. There is a special knife called a Tourne knife that is used to make this cut. The knife has a crescent shaped blade.

After we were lectured on these various cuts, we then saw a demonstration. The Tourne is going to be one of the hardest I do believe and it's one that is often the key of winning or losing a culinary competition.

So that was the excitment of our first night of class.

Until Next Time.....Cook On!!!

The Food Dude