COOKING LIKE A PRO

TV shows set in professional kitchens often make them seem like wonderful places to spend time in. Restaurants have picked up on this appeal, as many of them have opened up a view into the kitchen. So, if you are someone who is serious about food, and who loves the freedom of creating  professional chef-level dishes at home, you probably dream about a professional-style home kitchen which combines beauty, efficiency and functionality. The good news? You don’t need to be a master chef to have the kitchen of your dreams. Today, professional-style kitchen elements have firmly established themselves into home design because they are designed to withstand tons of use and abuse, and are full of effective and beautiful components, including major domestic appliances, smaller tools and kitchenware, all of which you can use at home.

Most professional kitchens are designed in the so-called “triangle” layout, which includes a  fridge, a preparation area, and the cooking zone. Ideally, you should be able to bring the food directly from the fridge to the prep area, and then to the hobs or the oven without having to run all over the place. If there’s more than one chef in the house, a large work surface is key in providing the space to work side by side, for preparation and ingredient layout.  To handle multiple pans and simultaneous cooking, choose a large induction hob, which combines precision, speed and energy efficiency, with professional options like a timer, pause, residual heat indicator, overheat cut-out, auto switch off and a child safety lock. 

Professional appliances to go the extra mile Setting up a workable layout is very important, but for certain preparations professional-level appliances can also be a great addition to reach the highest heights of gourmet food quality, while unleashing your creativity. Certain equipment may help you to do your traditional preparations in less time, with more precision and with the highest quality. For example, a premium oven enables you to control the cooking temperature with extreme precision. This may seem obvious, but clearly the right temperature is a crucial element if you want to prepare good food. You can additionally equip your work surface with KitchenAid Chef Sign deep induction trays: a 45 cm 5-in-1 cooking module that features 5 different cooking modes (steaming, boiling, roasting, frying and slow cooking) to cook your favourite dishes and try new recipes, with professional-level results.  

Sometimes, specific appliances can enable you to use new techniques, which would usually be confined to restaurant kitchens. Think of sous-vide cooking, which in recent years has become a common practice in many star-rated restaurants. It consists of placing raw food with all its dressing and flavourings into special vacuum-bags and then cooking it at low temperatures (usually between 50 and 70 degrees centigrade. To use this technique at home all you’ll need is the right equipment: a vacuum-packing machine and a steam oven with controlled temperature. The KitchenAid Chef Touch is the ideal solution: a stainless steel column with a three-in-one system that features a vacuum machine, a steam oven and a shock freezer for rapid chilling and freezing. The following video shows you how to prepare a very refined dish; venison fillet with black truffle, bacon and squash cream, all done with the use of the souse-vide cooking functions of the revolutionary KitchenAid Chef Touch.