In his third MasterClass, Chef Thomas Keller focuses on preparing fresh seafood like lobster and salmon, making classic desserts such as apple pie and lemon tart, and showing how sous vide cooking can be done at home to enhance flavor and texture. Whether you’re a beginning or advanced cook, you’ll learn the techniques and principles that will give you the understanding and skills to get the most delicious results.
Overview
Syllabus
- Introduction
- Chef Thomas Keller returns for his third MasterClass, focusing on seafood, sous vide, and desserts. In this opening lesson, Chef Keller discusses how to buy and look for freshness in seafood and shares tips for storing fish.
- Sauté: Salmon With Spinach
- Chef Keller teaches you how to make a dish that he eats several times a week: sautéed salmon with spinach. He demonstrates how to properly cut and fillet a King salmon and explains his technique for cooking salmon mostly on one side.
- Sauté: Dover Sole With Pommes Château
- Chef Keller shows you how to cook a dish that has been cherished by generations and is served with a classic garnish of pommes château.
- Pan Roasting: Monkfish Tail With Beurre Rouge
- Beginning with a red wine butter sauce, Chef Keller shares his technique for preparing a delicious monkfish tail.
- Baking: Salt-Baked Branzino With Fennel and Red Pepper Vinaigrette
- Sautéing and pan roasting are not the only ways to cook seafood. In this lesson, Chef Keller shows you how to create a salt crust for a branzino to capture and intensify the flavors.
- Butter-Poached Lobster With Macaroni and Cheese
- One of the most famous dishes at the French Laundry is the butter-poached lobster with macaroni and cheese. Chef Keller shares his recipe and teaches his techniques. Viewer advisory: A live lobster is cooked during this lesson.
- Oven Roasting: Shrimp Scampi
- In this lesson, Chef Keller talks about the dish he made every night as a young chef under the mentorship of his older brother, Joseph.
- Lobster Boil
- Chef Keller teaches you how to build the right mix of seafood ingredients and spices for a lobster boil, an ideal meal for a summer evening. Viewer advisory: A live lobster is cooked during this lesson.
- Sous Vide Cooking: Getting Started
- In this introductory lesson on sous vide cooking, Chef Keller provides an overview of sous vide packaging and preparation as well as how the technique is used.
- Sous Vide Cooking: Carrots, Asparagus, and Fennel
- Chef Keller shows you how to cook three kinds of vegetables using sous vide cooking methods, showcasing different preparation techniques.
- Sous Vide Cooking: Turbot
- Continuing to use the immersion circulator at a constant temperature, Chef Keller cooks a piece of turbot with chicken velouté enriched with cream.
- Simplified Sous Vide: Salmon
- In this lesson, Chef Keller demonstrates a sous vide technique that doesn’t require any restaurant-grade equipment: just a pot of hot water, a thermometer, and kitchen film.
- Desserts: Pots de Crème
- Pots de crème are small but extremely rich. Chef Keller discusses the importance of ingredient selection in this dish, and he explains the techniques for creating a creamy filling.
- Desserts: Lemon Tart With Pine Nut Crust
- Lemon tart is a very special dish to Chef Keller. He demonstrates the exact recipe for his lemon tart that he’s been making since the early 1980s, including how to make a pine nut crust and how to broil the dessert to perfection.
- Desserts: Apple Pie With Lard Crust
- Chef Keller teaches you how to make an apple pie with a lard crust, reveals why he prefers the Granny Smith apple, and demonstrates techniques for creating the lattice top.
- Conclusion
- Eat up! Chef Keller concludes his MasterClass by showcasing techniques for slicing your desserts, and he offers some final words of advice.
- Bonus: Sous Vide Cooking: Varying Time and Temperature
- Using short rib as an example, Chef Keller demonstrates how cooking for different times and at different temperatures via sous vide and more traditional preparations can lead to drastically different tastes and results.
Taught by
Thomas Keller
