ChefSteps: A Free Online Cooking School

A local team makes modern cuisine manageable.

By Seattle Mag February 17, 2013

mdoernistcuisine

This article originally appeared in the February 2013 issue of Seattle magazine.

When former Microsoftie Nathan Myhrvold’s six-volume, 2,438-page book, Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking, was released in 2011, it was deemed nothing short of a culinary revolution—and established Seattle’s reputation as a hotbed of molecular gastronomy.

Now two of Myhrvold’s culinary cohorts—chef and principal coauthor Chris Young and food photographer Ryan Matthew Smith—have joined with former Mistral chef Grant Crilly to further secure our city’s food science cred with a free online school for modernist cuisine. ChefSteps takes the principles of the book (the hows and whys of heat, chemistry and molecular biology) and translates them into online video lessons.

The first, on sous vide cooking, takes students from “What is sous vide cooking” to advanced sous vide dishes. And if you aren’t sure which vacuum sealer or immersion cooker is best, don’t worry, the ChefSteps team answers your questions via online “office hours.”

 

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