Why are a restaurant's vegetables so much better than homemade ones?

There is a famous clip of Anthony Bourdain making "Carrots Vichy", he adds 2 lbs of butter & 1.5 cups of sugar to a pan of chopped carrots. He looks at the camera and says "Now you know why restaurant vegetables taste so good."

Preconceived notion I started before watching the vid: Butter. It's butter, isn't it?

I worked at a high end steak and seafood restaurant and we steamed our brussel sprouts and asparagus about half way before shock cooling with ice. Then we tossed the asparagus on the grill for 2 minutes basting once with some butter, and tossed the sprouts in the deep fryer just before serving. Salted at the end. The sprouts were tossed in balsamic vinegar and topped with parmesan.

As referenced multiple times in the video, reading “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat” and “Food Lab” did more to improve my cooking than anything else.

As someone who has worked in a lot of restaurants: seasoned blanching, butter/fat

I remember cooking for my husband's mom, and her being "how does the rice taste so good???", and eating a couple of portions of just rice. I told her I had added salt and a small amount of olive oil, and she got offended, as she doesn't want to eat a lot of salt, and oil is high in calories (but it's healthy though, so IDK why she avoids oil). I explained there wasn't much in there. Usually she cooks without salt and oil, and then eats a whole bag of potato chips in one sitting. No salt craving after the rice though. So, if you have to choose between yummy food and tasteless food followed by junk, consider making your regular food tasty Steamed sweet potatoes are really yummy IMO :)

Another note on frozen produce: they're often picked, processed, and flash frozen at peak ripeness or readiness. So if they are out of season where you are sometimes depending on the food item frozen can be better than fresh at the supermarket

This reminds me of watching Good Eats with Alton Brown back when it first aired. It's not just a recipe. It's an explanation why it's done that way. Parboiling, soaking in brine, sitting in oil. All really good preparation techniques.

I like how you talk about the different goals between home and restaurant cooking. This distinction is also good for everyday vs. festivities. When you make whatever is the most important meal of the year, whether that be Christmas, Eid-al-fitr, New year's, or whatever is most important to you, don't be afraid of fat. You buy all these great (and often expensive) ingredients for a feast. Make them taste as good as you can. It's once a year, treat yourself and your loved ones.

Tip on parboiling: throw in a half teaspoon of baking soda to the water. The alkalinity will give you crispier outside layers :)

salt is like some magic cure for bland cooking. My partner told me I need to add 'salt, vinegar, and either sugar, sweet chilly, or honey to sweeten'. It's seriously improved my cooking. Everything pops.

This is one of the best cooking channels i've ever seen. YT randomly recommended this and I'm hooked. Great visuals, great teaching, good sound, and actual units (grams) instead of arbitrary or weird units.

One method I use for root vegetables, instead of parboiling for 6-8 mins simply season and oil as normal and cover the tin with foil for the first 15 mins. This steams them as the moisture cooks out of the vegetable within the pan, softening them up and then when you take the foil off they go and brown just as nicely! Easier than parboiling and saves a lot of energy and water too

I knew most of this, especially the importance of salt and oil, but I NEVER thought of parboiling anything other than potatoes before roasting them but that seems like an amazing idea because it will help the salt work its way deep into the veg and make it so that when you roast you can do an extremely high heat and focus purely on crispiness not needing to worry about overall doneness.

I love you that you teach us HOW to cook and not necessarily WHAT to cook. Such a helpful video!

Chef Lisa in cooking school I went to would hold her trusty spoon up up, wave it as if it was a magic wand, and say "Fat is the carrier of the flavor", and "There is never enough of salt". Those are definitely powerful spells that make your food taste better.

Great video! I’m a line cook at a high end hotel. I’ve gotten that question before. Why is this or that better in restaurants? My number one answer is fat and salt. Acidity is also a big one. Sometimes that missing component of a sauce is a great red wine vinegar or some lemon juice. You could spend the time building a great sauce and not taste any of the components without the right amount of salt. It’s amazing tasting a sauce over and over again trying to figure out what it needs when in reality it just needs more salt.

This video style with the different experiments does a lot for me in terms of learning better ways to cook and the reasons behind a certain kitchen method. I also tend to learn a lot from the "blueprint" style videos where you lay out "these are the components that make up this type of dish and how you might play around with them for your own meal"

I'm lucky I grew up in Spain. We make everything with olive oil, salt and garlic and that alone will yield amazing taste in any vegetables. Amazing video, I love the scientific approach to it, really helps me understand what's happening inside the oven / pan. New sub <3

I actually discovered the last tip on accident myself 😅 I was making baked salmon in the oven and had some leftover lemon, so I roasted some asparagus with salt, pepper and oil then squeezed on some lemon at the end. It was the best asparagus I ever had cus it was all crispy and zingy. So now its the only way I make roasted green veggies.