stretch

Definition

To make insufficient ingredients cover more portions than originally planned, usually through creative dilution or portion reduction. The culinary equivalent of loaves and fishes, but with more anxiety.

Example Usage

We're running low on risotto—I need you to stretch what's left for six more orders.

Origin

General restaurant kitchen term for extending resources

Fun Fact

Master chefs can stretch ingredients so skillfully that guests never notice their portion is 85% of the original size—it's basically kitchen magic.

Source: Restaurant kitchen management slang

Related Terms

Intermediate

Nose-to-Tail

A cooking philosophy that uses every part of an animal, from snout to tail, because waste is bad and also because chefs realized they could charge premium prices for parts butchers used to throw away. Oxtail went from peasant food to $35 an entree real quick.

🍳 Food / Culinary

Beginner

casserole

Both the dish and the food cooked in it—a one-pot wonder where ingredients mingle in an earthenware vessel and emerge as comfort food, usually topped with something crispy and fattening. The potluck MVP and the reason your grandmother's Pyrex collection is worth more than your car. It's how entire generations learned that cream of mushroom soup goes with literally everything.

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Beginner

give me hands

A desperate cry for additional help with plating, carrying, or expediting dishes when one person can't handle the volume alone. The kitchen distress signal.

🍳 Food / Culinary

Intermediate

Coulis

A smooth, strained sauce made from pureed fruits or vegetables. It's what happens when you put berries in a blender and then run the result through a strainer so you can charge $14 more for dessert. The fancy zigzag on your plate? That's coulis doing overtime.

🍳 Food / Culinary

Advanced

liaison

A thickening mixture of cream and egg yolks whisked into soups or sauces at the end of cooking to add richness and body. The French finishing move that takes 'good' and elevates it to 'magnificent.'

🍳 Food / Culinary

Beginner

breakdown

The nightly ritual of dismantling, cleaning, and sanitizing the entire kitchen—the unglamorous reality that cooking shows conveniently ignore. Where food preparation goes to die, usually after midnight.

🍳 Food / Culinary

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