#006 The Importance of Family Meal

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On this episode, the boys discuss their weekly culinary adventures, starting with a deep dive into the world of smoking meats. Ronnie shares his experience with spatchcocked chicken dunked in an Alabama white barbecue sauce. They discuss discovering affordable and often underused cuts of meat. They also chat about the importance of family meal in professional kitchens, emphasizing resourcefulness and the often-overlooked art of preparing food for colleagues. The episode is filled with anecdotes and tips, making it a must-listen for food enthusiasts and home cooks alike.
YouTube - Meat Church BBQ - Smoked Chicken with Alabama White Sauce
YouTube - Brian Lagerstrom - SLOW ROAST CHICKEN (Tastes Just Like Rotisserie)
YouTube - Brian Lagerstrom - The Greatest Pancake Recipe of All Time (The GOAT)
Beers we drank
Brian & Ronnie - Singha (with ice!)
Keller, Thomas (1999).--First Course--The French Laundy Cookbook (pp.115)--Published by Artisan
THE IMPORTANCE OF STAFF MEAL

"Because the South Florida restaurant business was seasonal, I left Yacht Club and headed north in the summer to Newport, then Narragansett, Rhode Island, to look for work. My second year there, I met Roland Henin on the beach in Narragansett. He was chef at a place called the Dunes Club, a big hotel; he commanded a kitchen the size of a football field with a crew of forty cooks, and he needed someone to cook staff meal.

Henin was from Lyon, the gastronomic capital of the Western world. He was an old-school French guy, trained in the European apprentice system. There was Zeus, and there was Roland, god of cooking. He knew everything. He taught me how to peel a tomato, how to cook a green vegetable properly, things no one had taken the time to show me before. He taught me how to make stock, how to roast and braise.

The staff meal cook is a low man in the kitchen hierarchy. You cook meals from scraps for people who work in the kitchen. But the Dunes Club was a high-end kitchen and Henin was a classical French chef, so our scraps might be the butt from a tenderloin, and with that I learned how to make boeuf bourguignon. We'd have the legs left over from butchered chickens and with these I learned to make coq au vin. I turned lamb scraps into lamb navarin.

But, even more important, I learned how to make the vegetable side dishes, how to blanch green bean, how to make a gratin of cauliflower, how not to overcook broccoli. At the yacht club, I was used to adding a chemical oxidant that kept the vegetables bright. I though that's how everyone did it. Then Henin told me about the proper amount of water, and the proper amount of salt in that water, and how to cook and cool the vegetable. This was extraordinary to me, absolutely unique.

Henin taught me how to make a roux. Very, very, very important. How to make sauces, reduction sauces, and the clarification process that happens during reduction. The real fundamentals of cooking.

Staff meal was first about the fundamentals of cooking and how to work with by-products, using scraps to make something tasty, eye-appealing, and satisfying. But the message underlying that was "Can you be passionate about cooking at this level?" Staff meal. Only the staff sees it. If you can make great food for these people, create that habit, have that drive, that sincerity, and keep that with you and take it to another level in the staff meal, then someday you'll be a great chef. Maybe."