Mise en place your vocabulary with these culinary gems.
Culinary speak for 'I want my meat still remembering what grass tastes like.' Cooked briefly on the outside while the inside maintains its will to live.
A fancy bite-sized open-faced sandwich that appears at corporate events to convince you attendance is sophisticated. That appetizer costing $3 to make but charged at $40/dozen on the catering invoice.
Setting food on fire at the table for dramatic effect and/or to burn off alcohol. It's cooking's answer to a magic show, minus the actual magic and plus occasional eyebrow loss.
Taking a traditional dish and serving its components separately to confuse diners and justify charging twice as much. It's plating as avant-garde philosophy.
A dish with a browned crust (usually breadcrumbs, cheese, or both) on top, cooked under the broiler. It's the French way of saying 'melted cheese makes everything better.'
A drink (usually whiskey-based) served over crushed ice with mint, consumed on hot days or during horse races. It's not culinary, but bartenders use the term constantly.
A deliciously pretentious way to describe something so delicious you want to marry it. Often used by food critics to sound sophisticated while describing comfort food.
To caramelize vegetables in a pan with butter and sugar to create a concentrated, slightly sweet glaze. It's not quite candy, but it's definitely on the journey.
Using liquid nitrogen to instantly freeze food, creating unique textures and allowing for creative presentations. It's cooking that requires a lab coat.
A crustless quiche-frittata hybrid that lets you enjoy eggy, savory goodness without the carb guilt. Think: quiche's sophisticated cousin who showed up to the family dinner in athletic wear and somehow made it work.
A light, airy confection made by whipping air into cream, chocolate, or pureed fruit. It's what you make when you want dessert but also want to feel like you're eating a cloud.
See 'Brunette' entry—it's important enough to deserve its own definition because sauce nerds care about roux nomenclature.
Slicing a cake layer horizontally into thinner layers for assembly. It's the difference between a one-layer cake and a 'proper' professional cake that actually has strata.
In painting, the art of mixing two containers of similar paint colors to ensure absolutely uniform color across your project—because nobody wants a stripe down the middle of their wall. Also applicable to boxing actual punches, but that's less relevant in a commercial setting.
Someone whose diet consists exclusively of uncooked foods, whether plant-based or carnivorous. It's a dietary philosophy that believes cooking destroys nutrients (science would beg to differ on some points).
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 candy combination where Skittles get sandwiched between two Starbursts, creating a flavor mashup that supposedly enhances both candies' sweetness. A Parks & Recreation-inspired snack hack.
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 rich brown sauce made from brown stock, tomato paste, and a brown roux, then strained. It's one of the five mother sauces and the base for countless French preparations.
One of the five mother sauces, an emulsion of egg yolks, melted butter, and lemon juice that is dangerously easy to break. It's the sauce that separates dedicated cooks from quitters.
An edible decoration added to a dish for aesthetic appeal and sometimes flavor. It ranges from a simple parsley sprig to an elaborate microgreens installation.
An even more precise brunoise cut, measuring exactly 1/16 inch cubes. It exists primarily to make chefs feel superior about their knife skills.
The fifth and most accessible mother sauce, made from tomatoes, aromatics, and stock. It's the only mother sauce you can make on a Tuesday night without pretension.
A heated enclosure where baby chicks or premature infants are kept warm and cozy—basically a luxury incubator for creatures too delicate to handle room temperature like the rest of us peasants.