See Inside the ChefSteps' Recipe Development Process

Today we are trying something completely new. Rather than present you with a finished recipe, we want to invite you into the kitchen and have you join us for the journey of development, from an initial concept to finished product. Here is version 1 of our vegetable demi-glace, in all its imperfect glory. Take a look, add a comment about the recipe or the process, and check back tomorrow for our next iteration!

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Matt_67991

This is super cool!

Brandon_34695

Super! I wondered if you are actually this specific about the weight of every individual ingredient, or you make it a few times to taste before breaking it down?

michaelnatkin

@Grant definitely writes it down this carefully from the beginning because it is horrible if you get a great result but can't reproduce it.

Brendan_Lee_56950

How does he/you guys decide on initial ratios? just from experience or do you adapt from a previous recipe?

Matthew_Snyder_68770

This is going to be a very helpful thread! Looking forward to seeing how this recipe develops and the whys behind the changes that are made at it evolves.

As an aside, what's the longest anyone has ever worked on a dish before throwing in the towel? Before finally getting it right? Maybe its own thread, but I've read stories of dishes being tweaked for months in professional kitchens before everyone just calls shenanigans and packs it in.

michaelnatkin

Updated link: http://www.chefsteps.com/projects/vegetable-demi-glace-recipe-development

So now we'll add each day's iteration into the navigation menu on the left.

Tell your friends!!

grant

@ brandon- I definitely measure everything I can even at v1. Without doing so, I really do not have a reference point to work from. You can make assumptions and as a very experienced chef and I can get far with that. But eventually I would want to refine and measure to get the last distance anyways, certainly so someone else can pick up on my development if I give up or move on. It really helps me be consistent with each trial as well.

Samuel_68313

This is awesome, I look forward to following it, great idea.

Matthew, I seem to remember a story of Heston Blumenthal working for four years trying to make savoury candy floss before giving up. I don't know about an individual recipe like this, but for a finished dish I have also read that sometimes it has taken eighteen months at The Fat Duck of refinement. Although maybe Christ will come and give a better answer.

Samuel_68313

Hmm...Chris...err...haha. I know I could just edit that but part of me just does not want to.

Chris_Young_80640

Yep, we never quite solved savory cotton candy. The problem is finding a non-sweet sugar with the correct glass transition temperature.

As for recipe development, several dishes I was involved with took 12+ months of work.

Jack_Mayer_85396

Wow, this is a great idea! I just reviewed the material and left a post. As others above have mentioned, how do y'all determine the starting point?

Brandon_34695

It sounds a little like Grant has a great ability to cook in his mind and on paper before getting down to actually trying it out. That's both hard for me to imagine and kind of opens doors at the same time.

Rich_McDonough_67546

So what you're saying, @Chris, is that you are 33% faster than Heston? Sweet!

Brandon_34695

If you watch the "In Search of Perfection" program on BBC, it is really great to see the look on Chris's face when he has one up on Heston

michaelnatkin

I like the look on his face when he's digging the tandoor.

Jack_Mayer_85396

I loved the look on his face in the Brew Dogs segment filmed in Seattle ...

Matthew_Snyder_68770

Or when he forgot about the steak...... womp womp.

(That seemed staged, btw)

Chris_Young_80640

Oh, it was.

michaelnatkin

Version 2 of the demi-glace is up now: http://www.chefsteps.com/projects/vegetable-demi-glace-recipe-development#/vegetable-demi-v2

And... it's is @#@*& delicious.

michaelnatkin

And here is version 3... @Grant is dialing this thing in. http://www.chefsteps.com/projects/vegetable-demi-glace-recipe-development#/vegetable-demi-v3--2

T__2156

Since someone asked for feedback, I'll quietly note that these recipe development threads aren't quite hitting the mark for me. For the donut holes, what made y'all think about the diastatic malt powder in the first place (I only know how to use it with potatoes)? For the demi, why choose cauliflower? Where'd the eggplant come from? On the doughnut holes, which holes were at which temperatures, and why'd you decide to mess with it in the first place? How careful do I have to be, when frying, about the size and uniformity of my product? (and then show me pictures of nine pieces deep fried cauliflower in three sizes, at three temperatures, in a grid.)

Let me try to show you:

I'm aiming for a demi, but vegetarian. I'm old-school, so I at least remember that old-school demi is half veal stock and half espagnole. So I need mirepoix since those flavors will be expected in any demi. And I need something umami-ish (tomato, soy, MSG, mushrooms are possibilities here) to fill in for some of the missing meat flavor. I'll also need something meaty besides umami - dunno what yet. I'll need the flavor of browned butter and flour for the espagnole, and I'll need to thicken it somehow. It'd also be nice if the color matched animal demi-glace.

See what I mean? And then later...

OK, it's time to thicken this juice I have. Thickening will change my experience of the flavor, since it'll stay longer in my mouth, but I need to watch for thickening agents that trap/reduce flavor (like roux or gelatin). I'mma choose some xanthan gum, in part because you need only a very small amount to thicken, so it won't mess with the flavor much. If the xanthan gum doesn't do it by itself, I might use Ultra-tex 3, because it stays thick at a variety of temperatures and… blah blah blah.

That's what I want to read. Not that what you're doing is bad - it's cool, it's just not piquing my personal interest. And somebody asked me for feedback, so here it is.

What you guys are doing isn't all that far from what I'm writing, if your audience had enough experience to stage at Tru, but I don't think that's your target market.

grant

@Ted - I understand your points but it is extremely difficult and time consuming to answer all the predicted questions before the event goes live. At that time I am trying to encourage dialogue with folks like yourself. If you ask your questions on the activity I will answer them specifically. I would struggle to explain all the thoughts that go through my head with each decision I make while working through recipe development.

Capturing that process is on our list of problems to solve for sure but right now our only tool is writing and video and unless we recorded every minute of the day and posted it unedited we would lose attention through wasting your time. Where we edit out certain things or don't consider them depends on the project at hand.

I will try to answer in more detail the changes in versions as we move forward the best we can though.

Thanks for bringing this up,

Grant

T__2156

Yeah, I totally see that. Like I said, I wouldn't have brought it up - because it's impossible to predict which questions people will have in advance. No worries. And, at least for myself, once I passed a certain point of culinary knowledge it got pretty hard to explain things to non-cooks. For example, when pros say "work your pie dough quickly," it makes sense to people who already make pie dough - it means "don't heat it up much; be tender with it; have a light hand." But new cooks hear "work fast and loose." It's an incredibly tough challenge.

Brendan_Lee_56950

I don't see it that way at all. It seems to me that this is supposed to be a peek into the process that they go through rather than some targeted lesson on how to develop a recipe for us. If you have questions or want more information there is a discussion page as a part of the recipes where you can ask away and get feedback.

I think that the complexity and detail of the chefsteps team is what keeps me around. I don't want it to get boiled down to be too simplistic, that's a niche that's already filled with sandra lee's money saving bullshit.

T__2156

If it's a peek into the process, then it's awesome and a lot of fun to watch.

Matthew_Snyder_68770

Brendan_Lee_56950

They should take her back for a refund.

reub_50398

ChefSteps has experimented with streaming video. Maybe something in between that and the videos of the end product - more of a short documentary would work toward what @Grant Lee Crilly is getting at in terms of capturing the process. Obviously not feasible every time, but to add context to the development of one or two recipes.

Chris_Young_80640

Great ideas folks. Keep them coming. But what can we do to get you all to participate? What would be awesome. We realize a lot of learning (for us, for you) occurs as we experiment, fail, iterate, improve. Other than asking questions, what kind of things would you enjoy doing as an active contributor/collaborator?

robert.c.brown15

I understand what Ted is asking for is a lot, but even if a little bit of that was incorporated. Just getting the reasoning behind why specific ingredients were chosen as a starting point would be helpful. Yes I'd learn how to make a vegetable demi-glace, but more importantly I'd learn about how specific ingredients can be used and to what effect, thereby directly affecting my own thought process when I prepare meals and expanding my technique,

But, I understand that is a lot to ask, AND what is being done is incredible now.

What about announcing an upcoming recipe, say for example, "On December 20th we will be unveiling our first attempt at a vegetarian demi-glace. Here are a few initial ingredients we are thinking of using (list ingredients). If you are up to it, try to make it yourself and let's 'meet' on the 20th, share results, and discuss."

Now, that is assuming people on here try to do the recipe (or even a part of it!) by the 20th and have anything to share. Obviously the results will be much different as not everyone has access to the same equipment and even ingredients, but maybe it would lead things in a path not thought of and produce results? I guess version 2, and 3, etc. would then be more of you guys at ChefSteps doing it and people either just watching or trying to keep up in their own kitchen.

Or, and this is probably most likely, this was a terrible idea and not what you had in mind at all and a waste of your time, but I don't know. If you said you were making a vegetable demi glace with such and such ingredients and your initial thoughts of how you were going to approach it and then set a date to post and discuss, I may get creative and see if I can come up with something. And then if any of it was a similar step to what you did (like roasting the vegetables first) I would feel extraordinarily happy with myself, or if it was completely different, then shit, I'll definitely learn something from you.

Anyway, was trying to give you something different than just a question.