Meet your new instructor, Chef Thomas Keller. The award-winning chef shares an overview of what he’ll be teaching in his MasterClass: fundamental cooking techniques that will empower you to make great food in your own kitchen.
Before you start cooking, learn which essential tools—from knives to whisks—you should always keep in the kitchen.
Learn the key ingredients that you’ll need to enhance and add flavor to any dish.
Finish your kitchen setup by learning what cookware you'll need for every dish. Chef Keller also shows you how to avoid cluttering your kitchen with unnecessary tools.
What does it really mean when food is called local, organic, or sustainable? Chef Keller explains those terms and talks about how he chooses ingredients for meals.
Vegetables are a source of inspiration for Chef Keller. Here, he introduces you to a few preparations that will let you enjoy their flavors in every season.
Blanching gives you bright, vibrant, and well-seasoned vegetables. Learn Chef Keller’s technique, and find out his favorite tools for peeling asparagus.
Chef Keller teaches you how to bring out the natural sweetness of carrots by glazing them.
Learn how Chef Keller refines tomatoes for use in salads, sauces, and sandwiches—by peeling them.
Preparing artichokes takes patience and practice. But Chef Keller shows you how to transform the ingredient into dishes that are satisfying and versatile.
This French potato purée is not to be confused with mashed potatoes. Learn how to create this luxurious dish—starting with the correct potato varietal to use.
Capture the seasonal flavors of vegetables for year-round enjoyment by learning how to properly pickle them.
Learn how to purée a parsnip: a lesser-known root vegetable that Chef Keller loves.
Chef Keller teaches you how to confit an eggplant, applying a technique most commonly used with duck to make a creamy and succulent dish.
Learn how to enhance the flavor of a typical summer vegetable with this technique.
Chef Keller’s technique for beets involves baking to avoid diluting the flavor and color of the main ingredients.
Chef Keller loves working with eggs. He discusses why they are his favorite ingredient and explains the different ways you'll learn to work with them.
Homemade mayonnaise is versatile, dynamic, flavorful, and the building block for many sauces. Learn how Chef Keller makes it.
Hollandaise is a very special sauce for Chef Keller, and he teaches you how to make it to accompany your dishes.
Crème anglaise is one of Chef Keller’s favorite dessert sauces. Learn how to make a traditional vanilla anglaise—without curdling.
Use leftover egg whites from your sauces to make a beautiful, sweet dessert that will delight your friends and family.
Chef Keller begins every day with boiled eggs. There are many variables when boiling eggs—egg size, burner strength, and pot size, among others. Chef Keller teaches you how to boil an egg to your taste.
Chef Keller shows you two techniques for scrambled eggs—the way his mother made them and the technique he learned in France.
Chef Keller teaches you how simple it can be to poach an egg, resulting in an elegant and satisfying dish.
Elevate your breakfast by making a beautiful, silken, golden omelet that's finished with some classic ingredients.
While Chef Keller is trained in classical French cooking, he loves working with pasta. Learn how to transform five simple ingredients into versatile pasta dough.
Learn Chef Keller’s technique for determining when your pasta dough is done, which he learned from an Italian grandmother.
Chef Keller teaches you his technique for making a pasta that traps sauce in pockets.
Learn how to make a composed dish with your agnolotti, complete with peas, bacon, and a delicate parmesan crisp.
Chef Keller demonstrates how to make two pasta shapes that take a little bit of patience but lead to gratifying results.
In this dish, the ingredients are simple, but the technique is refined. Use your homemade pasta, garlic, and olive oil, and finish with bottarga.
Chef Keller shows you how to make these two classic pastas and how to make sure your pasta sheets stay pliable.
Learn how to make potato gnocchi. Chef Keller shows you how to feel and test it to see if you've worked with the correct amounts of ingredients.
Pomodoro sauce is quick and fresh. Chef Keller teaches you his technique for making a perfect pomodoro that he learned from other world-renowned chefs.
Learn the six disciplines that were critical to Chef Keller’s success early in his career, plus how you can apply them in your professional or home kitchen.
Chef Keller leaves you with his personal philosophy about cooking and his thoughts on the importance of nurturing the people you love through food.
Back to teach his second MasterClass, Chef Thomas Keller shares why he’s returned, and outlines the techniques he’ll teach you—and the philosophy you’ll use to approach all your learning in the kitchen.
Chef Keller walks you through the grades and variety of cuts of beef, pork, and poultry. Learn the difference between choice and prime, the meaning of marbling, the purpose of air-drying meat, and the benefits of dry or wet aging.
Chef Keller teaches you his paillard technique through this versatile, light dish finished with a sauce you’ll learn in Chapter 19: Vinaigrettes. Learn how to pound out a protein for a thin cut and how to execute a quick sauté.
Using veal top round and building on techniques you learned in Chapter 3: Chicken Paillard, Chef Keller teaches you his tricks for achieving an airy, crisp layer of breading and the perfect level of seasoning.
Chef Keller teaches you how to make the fried chicken served every other Monday at his restaurant Ad Hoc. Learn how to brine and break down a whole chicken and fry each piece to perfection.
Chef Keller gives an overview of the meats you’ll be roasting in the next three chapters, including three cuts of beef, two cuts of lamb, and a whole chicken. Then, learn how to calibrate your oven, and the importance of bringing proteins to temp.
Chef Keller teaches you his pan-roasting technique for Pekin duck breast, including how to render the fat for a crispy skin and how to achieve the perfect medium-rare finish. Then learn how to make a honey-orange gastrique sauce for a sweet and sour finish.
Chef Keller thinks of côte de bœuf, or rib steak, as a celebratory dish, built for sharing. Learn how to air-dry, truss, and roast a rib steak, and how to prepare a maître d’hôtel butter for the final flourish.
Learn how to re-create what Chef Keller describes as his first choice for his “last meal.” Chef Keller explains the benefits of brining and air-drying, and teaches you how to truss and roast a chicken in a single pot with vegetables.
The main ingredient is a center-cut rib roast, and a key implement is a propane blowtorch. Learn Chef Keller’s technique for a prime rib roast cooked to an even medium rare in every slice.
Chef Keller teaches you the principles of braising and the role of mirepoix, marinating, and matignon in adding flavor and texture to slow-cooked cuts of meat.
Learn how to truss, sear, and oven-braise a pork shoulder à la matignon with celery root, apples, and onions in a traditional cast-iron cocotte.
Chef Keller teaches you how to braise short ribs through a slow-cooked recipe that is worth the patience it requires. Learn how to make a red wine marinade, clarify it to become the base of the sauce, and reduce it into a finishing glaze.
Chef Keller teaches you his techniques for grilling a variety of proteins on a stove top hibachi. Learn how to choose the right fuel and manage your safety while grilling indoors.
Stocks are an essential building block in Chef Keller’s restaurants. Learn stock-making fundamentals, from their ingredients and techniques to the broader applications of stocks throughout so many dishes.
Chef Keller teaches you how to use a pressure cooker to make a restaurant-quality veal stock that will become the foundation for a number of sauces and recipes, including the sauce in Chapter 21: Brown Chicken Quick Sauce.
Learn the steps to simmering, clarifying, straining, and storing the light chicken stock that Chef Keller uses to cook pasta and as a base for soups and sauces.
Chef Keller walks you through the definition of a sauce and provides an overview of some the most common French sauces alongside the proteins they most commonly pair with.
Learn how to makes a variety of sauces including a basic oil-and-vinegar vinaigrette; a creamy vinaigrette, emulsified with a raw egg yolk and mustard; a sauce vierge; and a chow-chow vinaigrette, from a medley of chopped and pickled vegetables.
Using the stock you made in Chapter 17: Light Chicken Stock, Chef Keller teaches you how to make the French mother sauce, velouté. Then use your velouté to create three more versatile sauces.
Chef Keller developed this “quick” sauce in the early days of The French Laundry. Learn how to build flavor by browning chicken parts, caramelizing vegetables, repeatedly glazing and reglazing, reducing, and clarifying.
Chef Keller concludes his MasterClass with parting words of wisdom and reminds you the importance of patience and practice as you continue on your culinary journey.
Chef Thomas Keller returns for his third MasterClass, focusing on seafood, sous vide, and desserts. In this opening lesson, Chef Keller discusses how to buy and look for freshness in seafood and shares tips for storing fish.
Chef Keller teaches you how to make a dish that he eats several times a week: sautéed salmon with spinach. He demonstrates how to properly cut and fillet a King salmon and explains his technique for cooking salmon mostly on one side.
Chef Keller shows you how to cook a dish that has been cherished by generations and is served with a classic garnish of pommes château.
Beginning with a red wine butter sauce, Chef Keller shares his technique for preparing a delicious monkfish tail.
Sautéing and pan roasting are not the only ways to cook seafood. In this lesson, Chef Keller shows you how to create a salt crust for a branzino to capture and intensify the flavors.
One of the most famous dishes at the French Laundry is the butter-poached lobster with macaroni and cheese. Chef Keller shares his recipe and teaches his techniques. Viewer advisory: A live lobster is cooked during this lesson.
In this lesson, Chef Keller talks about the dish he made every night as a young chef under the mentorship of his older brother, Joseph.
Chef Keller teaches you how to build the right mix of seafood ingredients and spices for a lobster boil, an ideal meal for a summer evening. Viewer advisory: A live lobster is cooked during this lesson.
In this introductory lesson on sous vide cooking, Chef Keller provides an overview of sous vide packaging and preparation as well as how the technique is used.
Chef Keller shows you how to cook three kinds of vegetables using sous vide cooking methods, showcasing different preparation techniques.
Continuing to use the immersion circulator at a constant temperature, Chef Keller cooks a piece of turbot with chicken velouté enriched with cream.
In this lesson, Chef Keller demonstrates a sous vide technique that doesn’t require any restaurant-grade equipment: just a pot of hot water, a thermometer, and kitchen film.
Pots de crème are small but extremely rich. Chef Keller discusses the importance of ingredient selection in this dish, and he explains the techniques for creating a creamy filling.
Lemon tart is a very special dish to Chef Keller. He demonstrates the exact recipe for his lemon tart that he’s been making since the early 1980s, including how to make a pine nut crust and how to broil the dessert to perfection.
Chef Keller teaches you how to make an apple pie with a lard crust, reveals why he prefers the Granny Smith apple, and demonstrates techniques for creating the lattice top.
Eat up! Chef Keller concludes his MasterClass by showcasing techniques for slicing your desserts, and he offers some final words of advice.
Using short rib as an example, Chef Keller demonstrates how cooking for different times and at different temperatures via sous vide and more traditional preparations can lead to drastically different tastes and results.