Have you ever gone to a restaurant, had a brilliant new dish, and wanted to re-create it at home? It’s so nice, you think you can eat it every night, but just being able to have it again without making reservations and paying the bill would be enough. I do this all the time. I get most of my best dinner ideas from restaurant menus. I can save myself a long waiting time for a table, and several money by cooking the same thing at home. I just need some basic cooking methods and a keen eye.
Here’s how I go about recreating restaurant meals in my home:
First, read the menu description. It will tell you the key ingredients. “Chicken and shallots in a white wine sauce” gives you three good clues as to what is in the dish. I would start with chicken, shallots and some white wine. Often, there are culinary terms used like “en croute”, or “provencale” that give clues as well.
Next, examine the dish for a hint as to the way they used to cook it. If the chicken breast has grill marks on it, then it is obvious that it was grilled. If the chicken is totally white and very moist, it may have been steamed or poached. If it has a brown, crunchy skin, it was cooked with direct source heat, like sauté or broiling. The beautiful caramelization of sugars on the chicken also shows that some fat was added, like being brushed with butter or cooked in oil.
Third, check the sauce. Is it a thickened sauce or a jus? It’s pretty simple to tell when a sauce was made with milk or cream rather than broth or stock, it’s white. So, did they use milk and a thickener to create their sauce?
Lastly, taste for seasonings. This can be the most difficult part and takes a trained palate. Try to identify the dominant seasonings in the dish. Do you taste salt and pepper? Is it Italian inspired with basil and oregano? Or maybe it has an Asian feel with ginger and soy sauce. You might also get others ideas as to what they taste. This way, you start to imagine the flavor profile that went into seasoning the dish. Don’t over think it. It is generally easier than you taste.
So, if I dissect my favorite dish at my favorite restaurant, “Chicken and Shallots in a White Wine Sauce”, and I see that it’s a boneless chicken breast with a brown, crunchy skin and a white sauce that tastes like shallots and butter, with a hint of thyme and sage, I can start re-building the recipe.
It appears to me that the chicken breast was sautéed in oil with a hot pan, then was removed to finish in the oven. Shallots were added to the pan until they were soft, and white wine was used to deglaze the pan. After the wine has mostly evaporated, butter and cream make up the sauce that’s seasoned with thyme and sage.
How do I know this? It is because a basic sauté method is the same, regardless of the ingredients used. Once I can identify HOW the item was cooked, the mixture of ingredients are simpler to estimate.
Just like my friend who enjoys recreating songs with his guitar, it is a lot of fun for me to figure out restaurant recipes. It is a challenge that helps build and strengthen my cooking skills, but it does take up many time and wasted food through bad experiments.
Whether you want to unravel the secret and remake restaurant recipes yourself, of just purchase a book to offer you all the answers, great restaurant meals are a great starting point to getting great dinner ideas every night of the week. If you’re able to copy restaurant recipes, your kitchen will never be closed at dinner time.
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