When he’s not yelling at people in Hell’s Kitchen, Gordon Ramsay currently holds seven Michelin stars and has made a name for himself as one of the best chefs of a generation.
Being the boss of so many fine dining institutions means he has to keep the quality of his food exceptionally high by hiring talented and trusted chefs, who are required to hold down the fort when he’s not there.
But whether you’re in the back of a fine-dining restaurant or a home cook experimenting with new flavours and techniques, Ramsay has one simple method of judging whether your cooking ability and it all starts with the humble egg.
Ramsay, alongside legendary French chef Jacques Pepin, has been known to test cooks by simply asking them to whip up some scrambled eggs or a classic French omelette.
In a video posted to his YouTube Ramsay revealed: “If they can make the perfect scrambled egg, you know they know how to cook properly”.
Forget elaborate sauces, foams or gels, cooking up a batch of top-notch eggs can show that a cook has perfectly mastered the basic techniques to elevate a simple ingredient into a tasty dish.
But why eggs? The beauty of the test is that it is actually more complicated than it first seems. Anyone can cook some scrambled eggs or whip-up a quick omelette, but avoiding rubbery or overcooked scrambled eggs or a torn and uneven omelette is much harder than you may think.
To nail an egg dish requires patience, finesse and solid cookery instinct. Being able to balance the heat to create deliciously creamy scrambled eggs is an incredibly tough battle. In Ramsay’s recipe for cooking up the breakfast dish, he recommends taking the pan on and off the heat every 30 seconds to keep the mixture loose.
Their test also shows that it is not about complex or fancy ingredients to overcomplicate the classics, it’s all about execution.
Cooking up the dish while a Michelin star chef looms over your shoulder also shows them something else about you in the kitchen. It gives experienced chefs a glimpse into how a new chef ticks.
Do they look nervous? Have they prepped everything before? Are they cleaning as they go along? Are they tasting and seasoning? All little things that on their own may not mean much, but added together create the picture of a chef’s skills and ability to cook and maintain standards under the high pressure of a service.
So next time you find yourself in the kitchen wanting to test your own cooking ability, forget the fancy dishes and sauces and instead focus on the fundamentals as the secret may just lie in the simplicity.
