The first step in teaching how to taste like a chef is to explain that tasting is not eating. A chef tests foods primarily to taste if seasonings need to be adjusted. Tasting the cooking point and the texture are the next two important reasons. A chef doesn't taste to replace food.
Did you know that 90% of taste is linked to smell? It's true. Foods only have five taste qualities (as I said: salty, sweet, bitter, sour and salty), but there are more than 10,000 flavors. Think about when you're sick or have a cold, when your immune system is weakened and you can't differentiate any smells. Do you think EVERYTHING is underseasoned? I went to a restaurant for the first time many years ago, when I was starting to get sick, and the chef had received very good reviews in different publications, so when it didn't surprise me as much as my fellow diners, I knew that my cold must have gotten worse.
The cold had nothing to do with my taste buds, but with congestion and the sense of smell. The next time you eat a bite from a plate, give it a deep smell. Even if you're not a chef or a food enthusiast or normally care about what you put in your mouth, smelling food before you try it will dramatically change the way you experience taste. A good dish is a combination of balanced flavors that the taste buds can acquire.
If your dish has all the basic flavors of salt, bitter, sour, sweet and umami, then you're very good at your cooking skills. Here, balanced flavor is not related to the same amount of flavors, but to avoid overdoing it with any flavor, this makes the dish balanced as a whole. Second, cooking alone is a recipe for disaster. Recipes are just guidelines and should not be followed to the letter.
This also means cooking times. The cooking point should be determined by taste and feel. Frequent tasting prevents undercooking or overcooking. Third, every ingredient you add changes the personality of the dish.
Great cooks understand the relationships between the ingredients they use and choose them specifically based on how they are mixed. Building this flavor library involves testing with every addition. Salt, pepper, herbs, spices, aromas, meats, fruits, vegetables, etc. Recent research reveals that we can smell at least 1 trillion scents through 400 types of olfactory receptors (a count that was previously only thought to be around 10,000).
To translate it to the food industry, we asked ourselves what is more important, smell or taste?.
