Everett Doner, Executive Chef Events
So - your team at work is tight-knit, spirited, and competitive, and you’re interested in gathering everyone together for a group cooking competition. (And a few glasses of wine while you’re at it - you deserve them!) You’re in luck - this is the kind of activity that Executive Chef Events have excelled in producing for more than a decade.
But the budding chef inside of your colleagues might be wondering if there’ll be any learning involved from a competitive event - the answer is a resounding yes. Similar to our cooking classes, we select chefs for our competitive events that are not only at the top of their culinary game but also who can effectively communicate with a wide range of people, from kitchen amateurs to experienced culinary weekend warriors. Here’s a few examples of skills we like to impart to our guests:
Safety - Before anyone touches anything edible, we go over the fundamentals of knife, cooktop/oven, and food-borne Illness safety. From the claw technique to avoiding cross-contamination, safety is always on our minds - and we guarantee you’ll learn something new to take home.
The tricky dance of Acid and Salt - Acid and salt interplay with each other in odd ways. Both are essential to complex cooking, but did you know that, to a degree, one offsets the other? Both can be useful to add to a dish you’re working on, though acid can liven up a dish and build complexity more than salt can. Let our chefs talk you through this dance while you taste and learn.
Get those flavor compounds to your tongue - Flavors can reach your taste buds in many ways, and your food can taste more complex and profound if you use a few helpers. Take tomatoes, for example - Tomatoes have dozens of flavor compounds, only some of which can effectively reach your tongue’s taste receptors when dissolved in water. Some tomato compounds are only dissolved in alcohol, meaning that a splash or two of wine in your tomato sauce can indeed send more tomatoey “oompf” to your taste buds. Hooray for Science!