3 Key Ingredients Professional Cooks Use to Make Food Taste Better

One question I'm regularly asked by my family and friends is, "How do I get my home-cooked food to taste as good as restaurant food?" My answer is always the same: "salt, butter, and shallots." Really, that's it. Sure, some skill and technique applied in restaurant kitchens can make a difference, but ultimately, what I have come to recognize as "The Big Three" are all you need.

Butter

When I first started working in professional kitchens, I was absolutely floored by how much butter is used in everything. Like, actually SO much butter. It's the secret ingredient in pretty much everything.

For example, one thing that many home cooks struggle with is getting their pasta dishes to have that glossy sheen that restaurant pasta has. I'm sure you'll be unsurprised to hear that the secret to that is, of course, a healthy knob of butter. Tossed in at the end with a splash of pasta water, a few tablespoons of butter emulsifies to create a creamy, shiny sauce that clings to pasta like no other.

This is also true for things like grains or pilaf. A splash of wine, a bit of stock, and a tablespoon or so of butter vigorously mixed into your warm grain of choice (wild rice is a favorite of mine) will yield a luxurious pilaf that can transform any pile of plain grains into a restaurant-quality side. Don't hold back in blended soups either! A nice chunk of cold butter at the very end of blending will give you a supremely velvety texture.

At home, it's hard to justify using as much butter in each dish as I have at restaurants in the past, but when I want something to taste indulgent like it would at work, I don't hold back. Life's short, add in an extra tablespoon of butter every so often.

Salt

Generally, when food tastes flat all it really needs is a bit more salt (or possibly a squeeze of lemon). I think that much of the time, people are afraid to use as much salt as is actually necessary to fully unlock the best flavor out of food. But unless you're specifically on a low-sodium diet, I say go for it. Salt's job is to enhance the flavor of your food, so in order to really extract all the goodness from a dish you've worked hard on, you have to season generously.

At my very first kitchen job, I was working the fry station and was plating up fries when the chef came over and told me that all of my fries were under-seasoned. When I tasted them, they tasted…fine, just like regular fries. He told me he wanted me to salt so aggressively that someone would send them back for being too salty. I started to nearly double the amount of salt I used; I tasted the fries again and was astounded. They were the best fries I'd ever had. I couldn't believe the difference just the additional salt had actually made.

I learned this lesson once again the first time I spent some time in the pastry department. We've all had chocolate chip cookies with a pinch of flakey salt sprinkled on top, but it turns out, all sweets are infinitely improved by a generous pinch of salt. It makes all the difference in the world; chocolate tastes more chocolatey, fruit tastes more concentrated, and caramel tates deeper. It's even the top secret ingredient for my "world famous" banana pancakes. The salt is nearly undetectable, the pancakes certainly aren't salty, but the banana flavor is far more potent compared to other banana pancakes.

Shallots

If you haven't noticed, the ingredients on this list so far — and the techniques used to deploy them — are all about concentrating and coaxing all the flavor possible out of your food. Enter, shallots. Anywhere you'd typically use an onion, try a shallot. It's much smaller but has all of the aromatic oniony flavor, and a bit of garlicky taste, packed into something half the size of a regular onion.

Restaurants definitely still use onions plenty, but for many dishes where we want major flavor payoff, shallots are the go-to — especially in things like pasta, risotto, and pan sauces. I was completely sold the first time I saw a prep cook blend a raw one into a salad dressing; it tasted oniony, but not sharp. At home, I now turn to shallots for pretty much everything you'd normally use an onion for.

Related:

• How the Pros Make Meat Taste Better and Last Longer
• When You Add Salt During Cooking Matters, Here's Why
• 11 Culinary School Tricks You Can Use In Your Home Kitchen