Basting proteins in restaurants

[wax311]

Hello to everyone. First time posting here, have been lurking for a while and I think this is a great forum.

One day this guy has the nerve to tell me, "You are not a good cook because you do not baste your proteins." I get pissed.

I work at a pretty authentic Northern Italian restaurant in Boston. We never baste our proteins. Meats are usually cooked on our wood grill. Fish is usually pan-roasted, skin side only, and finished in the oven (we do grill, fry, and poach fish sometimes though). My chef, who has spent a couple years cooking in Italy, told me that Italians generally do not bother to baste their proteins. It is my understanding that basting is French technique.

I respond, "So I am bad cook because I don't bathe my meat in hot, aromatic, bubbly butter? If that's true then there aren't any good cooks in Italy. Go back to your kitchen and continue spongebathing your hangar steak to medium rare, and don't forget to clean behind its ears, Frenchy." Okay maybe I didn't say that, but I thought it.

A while before this conversation, I did one-day trails at three top Boston-area restaurants. All of these places used the pretty much the same basting technique on proteins - sear in oil or clarified for a little maillard action, add whole butter or beurre monte along with a clove of garlic and sprig of thyme, and stand there like a madman, spooning hot aromatic butter over the protein. To me, it seems like a lot of fuss - a couple times I saw cooks baste themselves into the weeds, and once they were weeded, surprise they stopped basting, as if it wasn't important anymore.

So here are my questions for all of you: How much of a difference in flavor does basting make? What are you trying to acheive? What's the science behind it? Do you baste more when it's slow because you are bored? Does your chef make you do it? And most importantly, is it really worth the time and effort?

[Chef Fowke]

Classic debate…literally.

I used to work beside (and watch in awe) a South American Chef who cooked in a cold pan that he added butter, white wine and herbs brought to a boil with the fish. When the wine has evaporated and the butter had clarified the fish began to caramelize. The flavour was marvellous.

Tell a French chef that a dish was started with a cold pan, or that the oil was put into a cold pan…absolument pas !

Now, with that said – I was told that the ‘basting process’ was not truly a French technique, rather a Chinese technique that was adopted by western chefs around 1992. I have no data to collaborate this; hopefully someone else here will be able to expand this possible culinary urban legend.

At my two restaurants we concentrate more on ‘seasoning the pan’ with grapeseed/olive oil, the appropriate herb and garlic when necessary. The aromatics are introduced to the pan and oil when it reaches temperature. The protein is then added. With fish we rarely baste as we tend to cook the fish unilaterally. With meats it is hard not to baste, it looks/smells/tastes so great. But the basting is not a continual motion. It is two or three spoonfuls over the protein, into the oven, another baste – out of the oven – rest the meat and finish with whole butter/olive oil.

In the end, it is about style. I do not think basting is the end-all to great cooking, but it does add a very specific style of flavour to the food.

[Qwerty]

Basting is done for two reasons--flavor/aroma and its a great way to evenly coat the protein with heat to finish cooking. When you add aromats to the foaming butter--be it garlic, rosemary, thyme, etc--they flavor the butter then add the aroma to the dish as it finishes cooking.

That foaming butter is HOT, and so does a good job of finishing cooking. A nice thin sheen of butter adds a nice taste and flavor as well.

Is it worth it? I dunno, it depends. It certainly is a GREAT way to cook proteins, and my preferred method. Doesn't mean that you can't make great tasting meat and fish without it. I'd say that when done correctly it is totally worth it, when not, well, not really probably.

The main drawback is that you go through a TON of butter, like pounds of butter during a busy service, and as any chef will tell you butter is very expensive. So if your food cost can handle it I say go for it.

Listen, don't pay any attention to that guy. To qualify someone as a good or bad cook based solely on basting is silly.

It's a great technique, but, as Chef Fowke said, not the be and end all of cooking protein.