20 Chefs Answer: Their Secret Weapon Ingredient

Bon Appétit

Bon Appétit asked 20 chefs at top New York restaurants what their secret weapon ingredient is. Discover which ingredients, from seasoning and spices to freshly ground beef, make the food so delicious at NYC’s favorite restaurants.

Transcript

00:00My secret weapon ingredient at Oxomoco is cilantro vinegar.

00:15So cilantro vinegar is basically all the stems and we infuse them with apple cider vinegar

00:21and white vinegar.

00:22And we use this vinegar to season basically everything, sauces, purees, just like anything

00:29that needs acidity and the freshness of the cilantro.

00:32The longer you leave it, the more flavor it will have.

00:37My secret weapon ingredient is these Thai chilies.

00:41This is definitely one of my favorite things to cook with.

00:43It adds a ton of flavor.

00:44It's not just heat, it adds like a whole lot of fruitiness as well.

00:47As you can tell, I'm super, super into Thai chilies.

00:52My secret ingredient is MSG because it makes stuff taste good.

00:55Literally have it everywhere.

00:56Our first out MSG, our MSG, our backup MSG, got more backup MSG, all right next to our

01:01salt because that's how important it is when it comes to seasoning our food.

01:04I always say salt, sugar, MSG is like the Chinese trinity of seasoning and I think that

01:09really helps balance dishes out when you use it properly.

01:12We put MSG in almost everything we make here.

01:14You find in our desserts, not just our savory foods, you'll find it in our drinks as well.

01:22Our secret weapon ingredient is pickled summer peppers in like the dead of winter when it's

01:30really hard to kind of get produce that you're excited about or kind of dreaming about spring

01:36and summer.

01:37Being able to have something that you can like tap into from your walk-in that kind

01:42of gives you a little bit of like that energy blast that kind of like keep being creative

01:46and keep pushing the menu, it's really nice to have.

01:49So these are habanadas.

01:51They are a crossbred between habanero.

01:54They're not spicy at all but they take on those fruity floral qualities that habanero

01:58peppers have but are usually harder to taste sometimes because of how spicy they are.

02:03These are aji dulces.

02:05They are very similarly non-spicy, sweet, you know complexity from florality and some

02:11fruit characteristics.

02:12We've used them for like mini-nets before, for oysters and stuff like that.

02:18Our secret weapon ingredient here at Illis is our wall of fermentation that we use on

02:23a daily basis.

02:24Everything here is kind of an active item in our larder.

02:26It's a fermented, could be pickled, it could be some type of sauce.

02:29And so this is a way for us to grab something quick because that can make a big difference

02:33in a dish that wasn't there before.

02:35One really, really cool one right now that we've been utilizing is these young pine cones.

02:39We forage them in the spring.

02:40They're much smaller than the pine cones you would get right now so they're a little more

02:44tender and have less of that tannin that you would get from a normal pine cone.

02:50Our secret weapon ingredient at D&D are pickles.

02:54We put pickled things, acidic things with our fatty foods and it balances it out.

03:00So we make a pepper jam that is going on as a drizzle over our root vegetable pancakes

03:06and we also drizzle some shallot aioli so like the fatty and the acidic and the sweetness

03:12all kind of goes well together with a fried pancake.

03:17The secret ingredient weapon at Sobremasa is corn.

03:20It's the backbone of Mexican cuisine.

03:22We like to celebrate the diversity of corn by using as many different varieties of corn

03:25with as many different uses.

03:27This one here is called cacahuacinte and it's made for pozole.

03:30And we also like to grind it very fine and use it for batter like for a fried fish taco.

03:34And it's very high in starch.

03:36We like to mill it into a really fine flour and we'll use it as batters or for cookies

03:41or things of that nature.

03:42And this blue corn, we're right here, it's cooked part of its soaking process.

03:46This is the conico also from the state of Mexico.

03:48This one's really good for tortillas.

03:50It makes really, really nice tortillas with really, really beautiful color.

03:55As a pastry chef at Kellogg's Diner, the most important ingredient that we have is probably

04:00salt.

04:01We use salt pretty liberally here.

04:03We use a pretty typical salt that most restaurants use.

04:06We use dining kosher.

04:07A lot of times I feel like when you eat diner food, you're pretty full, so it's difficult

04:11to indulge in a dessert that might be too decadent.

04:15The balance of salt is super important, especially in desserts, because I think it gives you

04:21the bandwidth to explore different textures.

04:24The salt actually, to me, brings out the sweetness.

04:27At Saigon Social, our secret weapon ingredient is mcmum, fish sauce, basically fermented

04:32anchovies and salt.

04:33Depending on the brand, sometimes there's more additives, like sugar and different spices.

04:39About 80% of our menu uses fish sauce.

04:43It's incredibly potent to the nose, incredibly powerful as well.

04:46A little bit goes a long ways.

04:48Think of it as kind of like your flavor enhancer.

04:53Our secret weapon ingredient at Cozy Royale is definitely this guy right here, ground

04:59beef.

05:00The Meat Hook, which is our sister business, it's a butcher shop, works directly with one

05:03or two farms, really, for our ground beef.

05:05Ground beef is very important at Cozy Royale, because we sell a lot of cheeseburgers.

05:10We're going to sell between 60 and 80 pounds of ground beef a night on weekdays, and much

05:14more than that on weekends.

05:15If you come to Cozy and you have a burger at 5 or 6 o'clock, the overwhelming chances

05:19are that that ground beef was a part of a whole animal or part of an animal 10 or 12

05:23hours beforehand.

05:26As head chef at Kellogg's Diner, my secret weapon ingredient is saison.

05:30I put it in everything.

05:31We use it in our Spanish rice.

05:33I put it in soup so it provides a little bit of color, depth of flavor, because it's pretty

05:37much just MSG.

05:38The one with cilantro is actually my favorite.

05:41This is my second favorite.

05:45My secret ingredient is nutmeg.

05:47It cannot be pre-ground.

05:49It has to come just like this.

05:50And I love it because it sort of has the warmth of cinnamon, but it's a little bit spicy.

05:55We put nutmeg in everything, so from our cinnamon buns to our molasses spice cookies, the sour

06:02cherry pear pie, lots of nutmeg.

06:05Probably most famous for being sprinkled on top of the banana cream.

06:09My secret ingredient at my restaurants would probably be leche de tigre.

06:12Leche de tigre is our base of all our ceviches.

06:15So it's a mixture of lime juice, fish stock, different aromatics, pieces of fish.

06:19We blend it all up and strain it, and that's what we use for all our ceviches.

06:22I find myself putting it in a lot of things to add acidity, to add a little more depth

06:28to the food.

06:29When you blend everything up, because of the proteins, it looks milky.

06:32So that's why we call it leche.

06:34The reason for tigre is because it's like very zippy and very like, you know, it's supposed

06:39to like kind of like, you know, energize you as like a tiger in a sense.

06:45At Hamburger America, our secret weapon ingredient unquestionably is Lowry seasoned salt.

06:50It adds just enough to the burger that goes beyond salt, obviously.

06:54It's very flavorful.

06:55I love it.

06:57Ah, it smells so good.

07:00You know why it's so good?

07:01It's because it has sugar in it.

07:03Salt, sugar, it has turmeric.

07:05That's the color obviously.

07:06It has paprika.

07:08It has garlic.

07:09And those are really good things for a flavor profile of a burger.

07:12Really good.

07:13Not much.

07:14Just a little bit.

07:15Not much.

07:16A little bit.

07:17Ah.

07:18So our secret ingredient at Simple is la sel hanout.

07:23It's the head of spice and we make it once a week and we use probably as much as we can

07:29because we're addicted to it.

07:31Process is we pick whatever spices that we have and we do a mix.

07:35So it's called the head of spice because it's whatever I want to be.

07:39It's the translation is the head of the shop.

07:43We use la sel hanout for probably about 10 dishes.

07:50One of our secret ingredients here at Golden Diner is the nutritional yeast.

07:53It provides lots of umami, some nuttiness, and it's really good for making nacho cheese.

08:02Our secret weapons at Chino Grande are our homemade spice blends.

08:05So Chino Grande is a fusion restaurant between Chinese and Latino food.

08:09The adobo is used for the Latino side.

08:11We use it in our chicken mix and a bunch of other dishes.

08:15It has a lot of oregano, thyme, garlic, onion.

08:19It's really nice.

08:20So we use the sazon for a lot of our sauces.

08:23I don't buy the pre-made sazon.

08:26It's because of the salt.

08:27They're mainly very salty.

08:29We can control the salt when we make these.

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