re: What are some kitchen skills you don’t have but wish you did?

Knife skills, candy making, frosting a cake with finesse. Really, I’d love to be all around more skilled. Grilling and smoking.

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I can’t quarter a chicken properly to save my life.

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Way back when I was still in high school I took a job on weekends and during the summer months working for a cold storage facility located on Mehle St. in Arabi near the river.

One of my jobs that I got very good at was getting that large wax covered cardboard boxes of whole fresh chickens and parting them out. Sometimes it would be just to cut them in halves, but most of the time it was completely cutting them up into individual pieces.

I got so good at it that I could wind up with 2 of each, legs thighs, wings, breasts and back, and do it in less than a minute with nothing but a sharp knife.

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For sure. And precision- I don’t like baking because it’s too precise. I’d much rather cook by sight/feel. A dash of this, a handful of this, etc

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This is me, but I honestly don't care. I like cooking by feel. I rarely measure ingredients.

Why were you cutting the back in half?

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Why were you cutting the back in half?

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Because that's how they told me to cut them as I was working for them at the time.

I do it to this day when I fry chicken. Sometimes I fry the backs, sometimes I put them on the side and freeze until I have enough to make a stock as we go through a LOT of chicken in our house.

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I was going to say knife work in general. I watch these cooking shows and feel inept every time they slice something.

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I’m okay. And my knife is pretty sharp. Maybe it’s not sharp enough. But every time I watch Jacques Pépin on tv he makes me feel like a little child. I can’t manage his chop chop chop chop chop chop chop method of even dicing mushrooms. It’s like he’s a wizard or something. He can slice and dice as he goes. I have to do everything ahead of time before I start cooking.

To be fair, he’s a classically trained French chef who apprenticed in his teens and eventually was a chef to heads of state. He’s been a professional all his life. And his own daughter, who has access to the same tools, is sometimes on his show and sort of jokes about how she doesn’t have his knife skills. But the mushroom thing. I should at least be able to master that. But nope. I can’t chop. I have to slice.

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Baking and making sweets.

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This is me. I do ok with the basic baking but because there’s no improvisation and much precision I’m not good at it. I also don’t have much of a sweet tooth which means I don’t have much impetus to get better. I will say since I’ve started baking my own pizzas and bought a scale I’ve improved. Not much but….

Thank you. I will check it out.

Same. Chopping especially. I can cut up any protein you put in front of me, even if it’s still breathing, but my chopping and dicing suck.

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I can fry pretty good chicken, but I wish I could fry chicken as good as Popeyes or what you get at a really good southern buffet for lunch in a small town.

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Do you have a 35# capacity industrial grade kitchen fryer? That would be the first place to start! Temperature is not affected by the food going in, which in turn allows the crust development you are looking for.