
Jacques Pepin, unlike other celebrity chefs, will actually teach you how to cook - CarolineW
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/food/2016/05/jacques_pepin_unlike_other_celebrity_chefs_will_actually_teach_you_how_to.html
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weisser
I grew up in the town next to Jacques and asked if he would take part in a
project for French class.

He invited me and my project partners to his house, gave us a tour of his TV
production kitchen, let us film a segment for our video, and signed a copy of
his book for or teacher.

Needless to say we got an A+ but more importantly we got to spend time with an
incredibly intelligent and empathetic master. Forever grateful that he took
the time to meet with us silly but curious kids.

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Natales
What I learned the most from JP is the "no fuss" approach to cooking. A little
bit of this and a little bit of that. A relaxed approach. I typically follow
the school of though of the Modernist Cuisine, where precise measurements are
everything. And don't get me wrong, they work great. But cooking like that
feels more like an engineering project. Results are great, but it's "less
fun". What I learned from JP is to be flexible within reason, and to relax,
share with friends and family in the kitchen and have more fun in the process.

Last year, KQED did a radio interview with JP, and people kept asking him what
was his favorite knife brand, type, etc. He said "the sharp one". And he
showed amazement at how chefs are now celebrities. "After all, we are just
food preparers". His humility is the real teaching here.

~~~
collyw
Reminds me of this article I was reading the other day, comparing writing code
to cooking:

[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000024.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000024.html)

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tptacek
Recurring reminder that Pepin's chicken deboning video is the best cooking
video that has ever or will ever be put on the Internet:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfY0lrdXar8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfY0lrdXar8)

~~~
Tomte
Damn, I've just re-watched it, like a dozen times before...

But a question: all those TV cooks trade convenience in front of the camera
for hygiene, do they?

Jamie Oliver is my favorite offender, always mixing all kinds of dressings and
sauces with his bare hands, then, without even touching a towel, grabbng the
refridgerator door.

Here in that video Pépin has just been handling chicken, his hands are covered
in grease, and he picks up a pinch of salt from a bowl where the rest
theoretically remains for the next five days.

Am I just too extreme?

~~~
tptacek
You are mostly too extreme. Home cooks are way more squeamish about proteins
than professional cooks and butchers are.

But no part of his technique depends on how casual he is with his proteins.
I'm pretty careful about chicken and cross-contamination, and I can execute
Pepin's deboning technique in under a minute. I use paper towels, for
instance, instead of side towels when breaking down birds.

~~~
Tomte
Technique is a good point, and the one I'm actually really interested in. I'm
a beginner in cooking, and just today I made a bad trade: leave the big chef
knife be and take the smaller serrated one, so I'd only have to clean one
knife. The result should come as no surprise: a trip to the hospital to have a
nasty cut desinfected and bandaged, because I didn't manage to staunch it.

I thought I had already learned that lesson: Proper tool and good technique is
important. Obviously not.

~~~
jimmywanger
Just curious, what happened exactly? Should you have used the big chef's
knife, or the serrated knife?

In my experience, the only use for a serrated knife is for bread, especially
hard crusty bread.

A big chef's knife should be able to do most things in the kitchen.

~~~
Broken_Hippo
In a kitchen with knives kept properly sharp, sure, it can do a lot - if that
big knife fits your hands well. Sometimes a smaller or different shaped knife
is just as useful - always smooth and sharp, of course.

But in the home kitchen, things change some. Cheaper knives don't always take
well to sharpening and most folks don't know how to sharpen knives. Taking
this into consideration, a serrated - or partially serrated knife, as is
popular with cheaper knife sets - becomes a better and probably safer choice
with some items.

Take tomatoes, for example. Most home cooks get a easier slice with a serrated
blade than the smooth, simply because the smooth-edged knife must be sharp to
slice through the skins. Celery can be a similar thing - the serration cuts
through the strings better than a dulled chef's knife.

Some of this is likely technique as well. I was lucky enough to be taught some
knife skills from a chef, who I worked in a small establishment with. Lots of
others don't put any practice into it, nor can the home cook generally build
up the skills as quickly simply because the volume is less.

~~~
jimmywanger
> Cheaper knives don't always take well to sharpening and most folks don't
> know how to sharpen knives.

I'm sort of a sharpening fanatic (I have an apex sharpener) so I just
generally reach for my big chef's knife, or my little paring knife for detail
work.

Sharpening serrated knives is quite unpleasant though, I don't like doing it
at all.

> Most home cooks get a easier slice with a serrated blade than the smooth,
> simply because the smooth-edged knife must be sharp to slice through the
> skins.

But a smooth-edged knife actually slices, the serrated knife pulls and tears.
I usually have a couple of tomatoes on hand when I'm sharpening my knives,
just to make sure I'm happy with the edge I put on them.

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WheelsAtLarge
Try, Cooks Country
[https://www.cookscountry.com/](https://www.cookscountry.com/) is by far the
best. You can grab the recipes on line, that's how they make their money so
you pay, and they show you how to cook it on the show. You can't go wrong.
Also, Jacques focuses on French recipes. Yes, it's nice but that's not the
only type of food I want to cook.

~~~
tootie
Everything on PBS is gold. Jacques Pepin is my favorite, but America's Test
Kitchen/Cooks Country, Lidia, Ming Tsai, even Nick Stellino. All great.

~~~
hugodahl
I've always had an affinity, going back to my childhood, for Martin Yan for
his cleaver style and catchphrase "If Yan can cook, so can you".

~~~
sn9
There are videos of that guy taking apart a whole chicken in 12 seconds.

Just a truly impressive level of skill.

(IIRC, the cleaver is actually a Chinese chef's knife, different in
construction from western meat cleavers which are thicker and heavier to chop
through bone.)

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fotbr
I'm late to the food-on-tv game. I learned a little in school, where we
actually had mandatory "home economics" classes that taught basic food safety
and a few simple dishes, along with things like balancing a checkbook (yes,
there were people who didn't make the connection between that and math class)
and basic hand and machine sewing. I learned more from my parents, but mostly
I learned from my grandmother.

As a result, I arrived at college in a little better shape than most of my
peers, who could barely work a microwave. Driven partially by necessity, they
watched a lot of food network back when it was mostly how-to shows and the
only "competition" they aired was late-night translations of the Japanese iron
chef show.

A decade later, food network was nearly all competition and food-tour shows.
They stood up a sister network -- cooking channel or something similar, which
seemed to be mostly re-runs of their old how-to shows, some of which are
surprisingly good. Unfortunately, it too is falling to the competition tv
genre, and if you want actual cooking instruction you have to catch it early
morning or late night, when the remaining non-competition shows are still on.

It would be nice if, along with cookbooks, some of those shows were available
in complete collections that I could purchase.

~~~
jf271
My wife still teaches "Consumer and Family Studies" in one of the few school
systems here that still has that curriculum. From how amazed the kids are that
you can prepare things from scratch I don't think there are too many parents
and grandmothers out there cooking dinner. Mostly takeout and packaged goods.

PBS has a secondary channel here called Create that runs a lot of the older
cooking shows during the evening and prime-time hours. Maybe take a look and
see if it available in your area.

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agumonkey
Tempted to say "how to think". The now famous chicken deboning is a
biomechanics tutorial in disguise.

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caf
Perhaps oddly, another celebrity chef that you will learn worthwhile things
from is Heston Blumenthal (despite the fact that the actual dishes he makes
tend to be the sort of incredibly complex creations that you'd never think of
making at home). You wouldn't use his recipes, but if you listen you'll learn
much about the basic chemistry and physics that underlies a lot of the "why"
of cooking and baking (things like: salt binds together the meat in patties /
sausages; the purpose of oil on a pan is to increase heat transfer into the
food).

The "in search of perfection" series is pretty good in this vein, because he
takes routine dishes (eg fried chicken, pizza) and analyses how to optimise
them, which gives you an insight into the most important parts of the
preparation.

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ElCapitanMarkla
If you like Jacques check out some of the videos with him and Julia Child.
Especially the ones where she's getting on in years, the banter is hilarious.

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mmgutz
Jacques and Julia ... those were the days

My boiled eggs always come out perfect and more importantly easy to peel
thanks to him.

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myrandomcomment
He is fantastic if you want to learn how to cook. His shows are funny and
entertaining and also teach and make things look simple. Another show I can
highly recommend if you want to learn how to cook is Good Eats with Alton
Brown. Both shows teach while being enjoyable to watch.

~~~
oftenwrong
Good Eats and Fast Food My Way were my introduction to cooking. I think the
latter was more influential for me because it helped me to stop measuring and
cook by feel.

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webkike
I love Pepin. Mostly because of his delightfully pleasant accent but also
because his no-nonse view of cooking as a craftmanship.

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wyclif
I really hope they put those classic episodes on YouTube.

