Mise en place your vocabulary with these culinary gems.
The temperature at which cooking fat breaks down and literally starts smoking, releasing bitter flavors and potentially carcinogenic compounds. It's your oil's way of screaming "I quit" before bursting into flames.
To enthusiastically describe and recommend a dish to guests, using sensory language and genuine passion to make it irresistible. The performance art of making someone crave something they didn't know existed.
A kitchen gadget powered by steam that could mean anything from a full pressure cooker to the espresso machine accessory that froths milk into cloud-like oblivion. In coffee shops, it's the metal pitcher-shaped torture device that baristas use to create your overpriced latte.
A small pouch of cheesecloth containing herbs and spices for flavoring stocks and braises. It's literally a tea bag for savory cooking.
The endless list of cleaning, stocking, and prep tasks servers must complete before being allowed to leave. The punishment for daring to work in restaurants.
The mysterious reddish condiment served at Denny's that technically qualifies as salsa by the loosest possible definition. A culinary mystery wrapped in a bowl of sodium.
Cooking vacuum-sealed food in precise temperature water baths—the cooking method that requires a PhD and creates suspiciously uniform results.
A molecular gastronomy technique that uses sodium alginate and calcium chloride to create liquid-filled spheres. It's caviar for people with a chemistry degree.
A creamy clay-water cocktail that ceramicists love and everyone else finds inexplicably messy. It's the artistic equivalent of mud, but way more sophisticated and infinitely more useful in pottery.
A bundle of herbs and spices (usually tied in cheesecloth) added to liquid during cooking and removed before serving. It's basically a tea bag for savory dishes.
A Swedish vodka brand known for its distinctive bottle design and advertising campaigns featuring a robotic mascot. It's a solid mid-shelf option for mixers and shots.