How To Make Restaurant Dishes At Home, According To TikTok Star Jeremy Scheck - Exclusive
When it comes to recreating your favorite take-out or restaurant dishes at home, it can be pretty difficult if you don't have the right equipment or patience to follow the best techniques. There are also some easy swaps and smaller components of building a better restaurant-quality dish at home if you know where to look. That's exactly what TikTok star and chef Jeremy Scheck explained to Mashed in an exclusive interview, too.
First and foremost, everyone should have a well-stocked pantry with a few essential items before trying to make their favorite restaurant-style dish. "Having good building blocks is what's most important. I like to have my staple ingredients that I keep on hand at all times, and then when I grocery shop, I'll pick a few proteins and vegetables, depending on what looks good, not necessarily with one specific recipe in mind," Scheck explained. "When you have good building blocks, which are usually cheap and last a really long time, if it's pantry staples, it can be an olive oil or rice but you can also consider things like onions and garlic and carrots to also be staples for me because I always have them. If I don't have them, I need to get more because it's the urge to sauté some onions and see where it goes from there, which is a joke that goes around on TikTok. That's really how I cook and how I do this," he joked.
Choose the right ingredients for authentic dishes
Once you have all the right pantry staples on hand, the best way to make your recipes taste even more like your favorite place to eat out is all about making good ingredient choices while cooking. "Having one thing that I really care about and try to do is, if we're talking about oil, for example, oils last for a few months but the flavor compounds are really important in them. I really care about matching the oil to the recipe that I'm using. If it's a Mediterranean dish, olive oil is the best thing to use," Scheck explains. It's all about keeping the ingredients you choose aligned to the cuisine you are preparing for the most authentic results.
"I have an aversion to mixing olive oil and soy sauce, if it's for a marinade or a stir fry. If I'm doing a stir fry, I want a neutral oil for the cooking. You can pick a plain vegetable oil, which is probably the cheapest option, or a grape seed oil is also great, and then maybe a sesame oil," Scheck said. Another example he shared for more advanced home cooking is his latest recipe for his partnership with Credit Karma. "In the recipe for Credit Karma, I topped the ramen off with a little bit of chili oil, but those can be more for finishing flavors. It's a nice way to add aroma and flavor to a dish," he said. So, use good judgement in what you use in the dish you are making.
You can check out Jeremy Scheck's Credit Karma collaboration on his TikTok page, along with the rest of his recipes on his website. Visit CreditKarma.com to see how you can improve your financial situation in just a few clicks.