Cooking food from scratch doesn’t preclude using pre-made items such as crackers and peas from cans.
Hugh Hefner's Favorite Recipe: Lamb Chops
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I would call it amateurish. I would never use a store bought can or f'n store bought crackers. Julia Childs started this quaint ideas of using canned soups and stuff to trick people into thinking you made it from scratch. But, if you like to cook that way, and you want to call it what you want, then fine. We do not even buy condiments in our house. Mayo is whipped up when needed.
But... WTF is up with Hef going to restaurants and telling the cook not only what he wants but how to cook it? Why not just bring your cook and get a place with a kitchen if he only eats this one thing. I think that today, he'd get thrown out on his bum, for doing this.
I mean, why not try what the cook is good at, or what he enjoys cooking? What a putz. Hell, he never even showed us the "good stuff" in his rag.
It does in my book! If chef can't make soup . . . well, he's a cook not a chef. Now if Hef was happy with such a plain recipe then the factotem whould have stated commercial items were used and the cooking was "Almost all from scratch." I'll concede, before the nit pickin' begins, I don't make my own salt and the like. But I certainly make my stock from scratch using carcassess where needed. Beef broth, chicken broth all mean tidy beef and chicken dinner or lunch. Stock is why God put bones and marrow in a beeve!
"The King of the Airbrush" created some wide eyed lads when the "first unvieling" occurred in the backseat of dad's Biscayne or whatever.
I believe Holly pre chewed it for him
Seriously?
I suppose we all whip our own butter from whole milk from a Jersey.
Whether peas are from a frozen section bag or in a can, they are peas - I suppose we all pick them ourselves.
Canned foods are an ingredient. What you do with those canned goods is up to you.
In the heart of our very best restaurants that "make food from scratch" one will find all sorts of "short cuts".
I worked two years as the head cook in an Italian restaurant. Yes, we used some essentials that came from cans such as tomato sauce, but what we did with that sauce took many hours to prep. More importantly, all of our meals served were prepped from ingredients that we prepped earlier in the day before the restaurant opened. I can not imagine the amount of labor and help it would take to peel, cut, stew, and prepare the tomatoes in addition to creating the sauces that later flowed from them. This goes for our cream sauces as well. Nothing magical about butter and cream - they all come from packaged materials that you then mix together and add cheeses and spices that .... wait.... come from individually prepackaged items themselves.
The restaurant always received positive reviews and existed because of a discerning and loyal customer base. 30 years later it is still going strong and has expanded to many locations around the Saint Louis metropolitan area.
Without canned food items, restaurants would not be able to provide delicious and yet reasonably affordable meals to the vast lot of people living in America.
The foods we served from the restaurant were fresh as fresh could be, healthy, and more importantly, worth spending hard earned money on by hard working people.
Food snobbery and pipe snobbery
Psssh.
I suppose we all whip our own butter from whole milk from a Jersey.
Whether peas are from a frozen section bag or in a can, they are peas - I suppose we all pick them ourselves.
Canned foods are an ingredient. What you do with those canned goods is up to you.
In the heart of our very best restaurants that "make food from scratch" one will find all sorts of "short cuts".
I worked two years as the head cook in an Italian restaurant. Yes, we used some essentials that came from cans such as tomato sauce, but what we did with that sauce took many hours to prep. More importantly, all of our meals served were prepped from ingredients that we prepped earlier in the day before the restaurant opened. I can not imagine the amount of labor and help it would take to peel, cut, stew, and prepare the tomatoes in addition to creating the sauces that later flowed from them. This goes for our cream sauces as well. Nothing magical about butter and cream - they all come from packaged materials that you then mix together and add cheeses and spices that .... wait.... come from individually prepackaged items themselves.
The restaurant always received positive reviews and existed because of a discerning and loyal customer base. 30 years later it is still going strong and has expanded to many locations around the Saint Louis metropolitan area.
Without canned food items, restaurants would not be able to provide delicious and yet reasonably affordable meals to the vast lot of people living in America.
The foods we served from the restaurant were fresh as fresh could be, healthy, and more importantly, worth spending hard earned money on by hard working people.
Food snobbery and pipe snobbery
Psssh.
Uncle Hef likes his bananas on the bottom of his cereal. LOL what a character. Too bad he gave up the pipe in his old age. I believe he stopped smoking after his stroke in the 80s.
Hey, you can do whatever you like for you.
I'll do me. But... there is a difference between using bought butter and a can of broth. We grow all of our own vegetables, so we've never bought peas canned or frozen.
But, good for you for cooking. I applaud that.
I only eat directly from cans. No need to heat.
The vast majority of people live in cities. The vast majority of people have lives that allow them to do something more than forage for food. A definition of “scratch “ that removes options not related to focusing only on food preparation because of time constraints or distance from necessary ingredients is nuts. Julia Child elevated food preparation and in my book was a culinary gift to the world.
Food snobbery or pipe snobbery, for that matter, isn't about the ingredients, it's about the attitude. Put a dog turd on a silver salver and it's still a dog turd, especially if you call it dog turd Francois.
Of course people use shortcuts, and as long as those shortcuts don't reduce the quality of the result, why not?
When I painted in oils I didn't make my paints from scratch I bought the best quality I could find.
The rest is how you use those ingredients. If you're talentless or a hack, tools won't hide that.
BTW, I did teach myself how to make paints from scratch based on formulas used centuries ago. And I always mixed my own painting media from scratch, none of that bottled shit. Know your materials.
And I learned to prepare and use colloidion wet plates for photography. Know your materials.
And I've made my ravioli from scratch, ground my own curry powders and made plenty of other foods from scratch. It's no big deal when you're serving 12, but not an option when you're serving 200 or more a day, day after day.
So while a chef isn't going to churn his own better, it's not such a bad idea that he be able to do it. There's no worse hack than a proud hack.
Room temperature chili straight from the can is ambrosia, don't you agree? As a Vegan, do you prefer beef, pork or turkey chili?
I don't know the "vast majority" of people, nor would I eat at their house.
Why are you so worried about how others define something like this? I'm not judging you.
My Italian Grandmother who passed away just before this pandemic begin, at 96, God bless her Soul: would always use canned tomato sauces (including Barilla brand tomato and basil) to add to her Sunday gravy, which was simmered with meats from the deli for over 6 hours.
Also her Lemon cake was made with Jello brand Lemon Pudding added to the batter. According to our tradition, if you want to make it authentic you use canned products along with naturally sourced ones (meat / olive oil) ... just dont forget to put love into the food while your making it (she would bless the food).
She was also a huge fan of Julia Childs.
Sometimes the shortcuts are unnatural and make the food taste better.
Some might not like to admit it... but nothing compares to Chinese food with MSG. Because even when they say it's not in there, believe me, they found a way to sneak it in. And I love every bit of it.
and @telescopes
See, I think the problem here is vocab and use.
Someone can "cook" using anything they want. Julia Childs was one of the world's best chefs. When I go to a restaurant, I don't expect "scratch". Julia Childs did not call what she was doing "cooking from scratch."
However, when one goes as far as making their own broths, then yes, it has met the criteria as being defined as "scratch." This does not necessarily mean that scratch is any better than just regular cooking. I'm sure some things cooked by some "from scratch" sucks. And, many of the world's best chefs, do not cook from scratch, and what the hell is wrong with that.
But, by the definition of the word "scratch," using a Cambells product does mean that it can't be scratch by my definition. But, you guys don't have to live by my definitions, correct? However, the majority of the world may agree with me.
Why use the word if you aren't making all aspects of the recipe?
And, Picasso used tubed paints. Who the hell ever said that all painting has to use mediums made from scratch. As I have said, one can be a world class chef and not cook from scratch. Why would an artists have to make their own clay or grind their own plaster?
Just cooking is great! And, being from scratch does not necessarily mean it is any better.
I just live my life a little differently. That doesn't necessarily mean it is any better, right?
I agree with your definitions sir.
The rub here is that Hefner likes his mother's recipes and they called for these canned ingredients to be authentic. The head Chef was embarrassed by this! And it is no wonder he attempts to explain it when he says guests are served homemade stocks but Hef still wants his Campbell's! LOL
It still blows my mind that any chef would do any of this, despite whether it called for canned this or that. Gordon Ramsey and most of the chefs I know would throw him out on his ass for asking them to follow "his" recipe, despite whether it used cans or not.
I am irritated to go out to eat with people who get so picky as to request other things be added or left out of their dish. My wife doesn't like sliced tomatoes, but she knows not to request it left off. We have a thing, where she just pushes it off her plate onto mine. I will NOT tolerate setting at a table with weird requests like that. Food is the chef's art, don't make it couch art. But, we eat at some of the nicest restaurants. Some meat and 3 would be fine to do that.
I spent 24 hours 6 months ago cooking my own pork bone broth for homemade ramen.
What a great example. Thank you for sharing. Someone made a statement about not eating at other peoples’ homes - but I have found that sharing a meal with others - is a remarkable way to get to know them and celebrate this thing we call life.