Biggest Cowboy Tricks

[Mucho Bocho]

I love all this passion about how meat should be cooked.

Sous Vide is an outstanding intervention when applied with care and knowledge. Cooking jowls or short ribs 72hrs is brilliant. Sure you can over do the treatment and it aint good for everything (seafood) but once you understand how the gentle heat awakens the enzymes without denaturing the proteins, if executed properly, will yield a superior product than dropping a raw cold steak onto a super hot surface. Even bringing the steak to room temperature will have dramatic results. Obviously there's inherent issues with bringing meat to room temp: contamination being the main problem.

Some may have seen these pics before:

72hr Sous Vide Chuck Roast


24hr Chicken Ballontine



72hr Jowl

 

[Dardeau]

I love Jowl so much. I've never circulated it, I always rendered the skin, put it on a bed of aromatics, plastic wrapped and foiled it, and put it in an Alto Sham or low oven for ten to twelve hours. When I was at Cochon we had the wood burning oven and would pick it up on there, letting the high temp recrisp the skin. It's getting to be wintertime, maybe I should get some pig face for my face.

 

[panda]

i love me some jowel bacon for use in sauces, but lets get back to stories of dumb sh*t that people do in kitchens eh?

 

[kpeddie2010]

Lol this thread is great. I remember a sous chef making nage and then straining the nage in a china cab. Then a waiter comes in and says some lady wants puréed veg for her baby's meal and the mother ****** goes back into the prep area where the nage veg has been sitting for three something hours and grabs the carrots to make carrot purée. I see this **** and when he brings it up to me at expo I ****en fly the plate at his feet and I tell him off. Quit that job that night, cowboys now a days ***. Never would want my kids to be exposed to this kind of debauchery.

 

[Salty dog]

It comes down to highchairs. Don't got'em. Keep those little darlings out of here.

 

[Chef Niloc]

Why 'shoemaker'? I saw this term today on Reddit and didn't get it at all.

No idea , if anybody knows please chime in

I know this is a old post and I haven't read all the pages yet but just in case no one has answered this question here you go.

When I first saw this post I thought "cowboy tricks" were in reference to "cool" or "good things/tricks" that you've seen chefs do over the years. Shoemaker is the term I have always heard used in reference to hacks.

It goes back to the old days when the traditional old-fashioned "cobbler" found himself being replaced with the "Shoemaker". A cobbler hand crafts shoes one by one. it's not an quick or easy thing to do takes years of training and apprenticeship (foreshadowing going on here), obviously these type of shoes were (and still are )very expensive . People with multiple shoes (your wife sound familiar guys) were considered wealthy, terms like keeping your wife barefoot are also a result of this, going shoeless, all sorts of old metaphors towards shoes being expensive. Then with the industrial revolution shoe making factories started to pop up and became more and more prevalent and excepted throughout the world. The workers or shoemakers as they were (and still are) known in these factories needed hardly any training whatsoever and were paid next to nothing.
So a shoemaker is A untrained workmen (rather then craftsmen). Uses shortcuts to produce a cheaper but usually (if not always) inferior product. Needless to say cobblers held them in quite contempt.
As for the foreshadowing, I'm sure everyone notices the similarities the restaurant industry, The well-trained "professional" chef is becoming all but obsolete these days, likely one of the biggest reasons that the pay rate for chefs hasn't increased for over a decade. I am sure you custom knife makers see a little of this two in your industry?

Edit: guess it takes a leatherworking chef to know the history behind this one.

 

[Chef Niloc]

Also don't know if this one's been posted already but I guess one of one of the biggest cowboy tricks I've seen then would be washing potatoes through the dishwasher, low temp chemical "to boots" (pun intended)

One of my favorite "Bartolo stories**" was his recipe for Orange bourblanc, which by the way he found necessary to put on just about everything, his blackened tilapia with Orange bourblanc sauce still haunts my memories.
Here is his "secret" recipe
Orange juice ( out of the bar gun)
Heavy cream
Corn starch slurry
Procedure: mix orange juice and cream together thenbring to boil, thinking with Slurry. Important note do not season whatsoever with salt or pepper, God for bid


** The Bartolo reference is in relation to one of my old sous chefs. Some of you older members might remember some of them my "Bartolo saga" I haven't told any "Bartolo stories" in a while so I thought I should reference this.

Bartolo was by far my biggest nemesis and the biggest "cowboy " that I have ever worked with. For some godforsaken reason I couldn't get him fired you save my life ( or anyone else's for that matter*), I finally got him out of my kitchen when they promoted him to executive chef of one of their new restaurants.

* another great Bartolo story is his "cold fusion" New England clam chowder. We had a proofing/holding cabinet combo unit in this place. To switch from proofing (98° high humidity) two hot holding all that was needed was to flip one switch, the switch was labeled proofing /holding. Every day I come in and Bartolo would be holding soups when it was still in proofing mode, and every day I would show him the correct way to use the Box and explain to him how and why he shouldn't hold food in proofing mode.
One day I came in and saw the New England clam chowder boiling away inside the box. I remember thinking to myself this idiots got the cabinet set at 300°. So I pull it out only to realize it's just warm??? It took me a minute to realize the rapid boiling was massive bacteria growth. Best part is even though I told him to throw the **** away he tried to service for staff meal!!! I remember doing a running dive noooooooooo to save a waiters life that day.

 

[Dardeau]

That is horrific.

 

[Sambal]

People with multiple shoes (your wife sound familiar guys) were considered wealthy, terms like keeping your wife barefoot are also a result of this, going shoeless, all sorts of old metaphors towards shoes being expensive. Then with the industrial revolution shoe making factories started to pop up and became more and more prevalent and excepted throughout the world.

The term "well shod" is a great example of this.

 

[Geo87]

Chef niloc.... That is Really disturbing stuff!
I think the worst part of all is these people seem to not get fired or even noticed by anyone with the authority to fire. Scary this person is an "exec chef" but typical lol

This reminds me of another. We needed fish roe for a canapé function. The chef fishes some out of the deepest darkest corner of the walk in freezer. ( I believe most caviar should never be frozen) so its out of date by a staggering 3 years . It's a disgusting pale orange mush not even resembling fish roe. So I tell him it's not useable and it's 3 years out if date. He informs me not only is it fine buts he's kept one for 5 years before.... Shudder.

Sadly it mysteriously fell on the floor.. had to get fresh stuff anyway

 

[aaamax]

even though I told him to throw the **** away he tried to service for staff meal!!!

Oh the **** I've seen getting hoisted on the staff... sickening.
My 100% rule is to never eat the "peo-mat" (as they call it here in Sweden) unless I make it.