Do any of you guys ever try to re create some dishes that you get out at a restaurant?

Me and my girlfriend try to do this quite a bit, but it normally never turns out as good, or even good at all.

Why the fuck does restaurant food taste so god damn good. I try remaking a simple grilled bbq chicken salad that my favorite local restaurant has, and its always shit. I can never get the ranch to taste good, and no store bought compares to it, the chicken is never as soft, I can't figure out their delicious bbq recipe, and their lettuce just always tastes more crisp than if I cut it myself, or buy it bagged.

Same applies to just about everything I try, even simple queso dip.

I'm not a horrible cook either, I just can't seem to get it down.

i wish i knew the answer, they prob use a lot of spices and sauces

look up recipes online, might find something good and easy to make

Fat, salt and MSG.

This. Plus restaurant grade cooking equipment.

You can't recreate restaurant food. It is just so good.

We have some active pro chefs here and they will probably laugh when they read this thread.

You see, that oh so juicy chicken that you can't recreate at home was probably delivered vacuum packaged, having flown more miles than you have in your life already, and then just thrown into a hot water bath.

Unless of course you mean top of the range restaurants.

BTW try POACHING chicken thighs, then just browning them quickly in a pan. Thats what i'd do if i wanted to be sure they stay juicy.

The problem is partly equipment. I have said many times here that it is very difficult to cook , say, pizza, chinese or indian food at home (although why anyone would want to cook the dog mess that is indian food at home is beyond me). Your home grade oven or even expensive range just doesn't kick out enough BTU's.

There are ways round this.

There are a lot of sites on the net for people looking to recreate certain dishes. Also I can only recommend the In Search Of Perfection TV series by Heston Blumenthal.

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Bring on the pro chefs

I'll try the poaching and browning next time I try. I wouldn't call this place expensive, really nice, dark atmosphere, but its a 9 dollar salad.

Yeah I've seen plenty of the sites of people recreated stuff, and again, it never works out for me

There's also a big part of practice going into it. When I was working as a prep chef and on the line at middle or sauté stations (both of which I hated with a passion), re-making the same stuff day in and day out, I learned so much about food and how it comes together, how to balance flavors, how to create stuff that's appealing both to the palette and to the eye.

That sort of consistency is a big part of it. You won't see a pro chef that goes and does a cooking exercise every couple of weeks. They're in the kitchen day in, day out, perfecting their craft. Doing that without some sort of commercial/professional training isn't impossible by any stretch, however, understand that you're immediately at a disadvantage, due to the fact that even the lowly fry-cook will be trained to do things consistently the same way (and they'll even get it right 90% of the time if they're worth their salt) and in a fashion that appeals to the restaurant's clientèle.

That's not to say you shouldn't try, because if nothing else, it'll encourage your creativity and improve your skills. And hell, who knows, you might eventually get the point where you're coming up with dishes that are BETTER than those you'd eat at your favorite joint. That's certainly the case around my kitchen, since there are often dishes that I feel are prepared with a better understanding of how to create good food than following the recipes where I worked for three years.

This would seem to be the most obvious answer.

Other possibilities: You buy shitty food products, you don't follow recipes precisely, you haven't prepared the recipes enough times, you have poor utensils, or perhaps the recipes you follow just aren't that great. I would lean toward "you don't follow recipes precisely", though that's just because you strike me as being moron, based on your other posts.

All that said: Find a recipe, follow it step by step, and consult other things to make sure the recipe's suggestions are correct. For instance, some recipes require a roux (ie. many sauces), though the suggested roux-preparation within the recipe might not always yield the best results. AE5150's suggestion about preparing a dish repeatedly is also very true. You learn to omit or add things, you learn the proper temperature, the proper seasonings, etc.

Don't choke.

(To everyone else: I think eBagger is a piece of shit, and I'm surprised that he even knows how to use a fork, let alone cook. I normally wouldn't be so hostile while giving advice. )

Restaurant cooking really isn't nothing to hard to recreate in most cases. Hell, 9 times out of 10 you could probably make it better than it would have been if you came in on a really busy day (lot of people=more hastily prepared food). The main thing is the cooks have all the right spices, and the right equipment.