Stories in Cross-Utilization
Who doesn’t love some good cross-utilization. Sure, you’re gonna get more efficient, probably waste less, get some labor savings, better consistency, all that good stuff. But, it’s also an awesome strategy for developing the very real unique identify of flavor at your restaurant. I hate the way that ‘identify of flavor’ phrase sounds to be honest, but I literally can’t think of another way to say it, so it’s staying, and I’ll deal with the embarrassment. That said, I stand behind the sentiment.
Especially as you’re scaling a concept, it really starts to compound when you’ve developed some killer base recipes that can be used in a bunch of different dishes.
So this is what I’m calling ‘Stories in cross-utilization’
First up are two power house sauces from the Make Sandwich concept.
The Gochujang-Dijon Sauce was one of those recipes that almost pisses you off because of how well it works and how stupidly simple it is. Three ingredients. Gochujang. Dijon. Honey. That’s it. You get salt, heat, acidity, umami, fermentation, sweetness, bitter all in just these 3 ingredients. The base recipe is here.
We used the gochjang sauce in a bunch of recipes.
One was this sous-vide pork belly, marinated in the sauce, then charred on a griddle. (This went on the Pork + Pickles Sandwich which was an amped up version of a Bánh mì)
The gochujang sauce works great standalone as well. We added it to this all-day breakfast sandwich; acting like a funky spicy ketchup style sauce that cut through all the cheese and fattyness of the sausage and gooey egg.
The sauce works beautifully mixed into Make’s house Koji Mayo. Another super simple recipe, 3 ingredients. For the Make Sandwich concept, we didn’t make our own mayo (Hellman’s baby). So it was just Hellman’s, Nutritional Yeast, and Liquid Shio Koji.
SIDENOTE: you should DEFINITELY check out this liquid shio koji. It’s insane, works with way too many things. Shout out to Japanese Pantry (supplier) and Chef Wylie Dufresne for the recommending it)
We used the Koji Mayo for literally every may based sauce at the restaurant. It’s like [insert very addictive illegal substance of choice]
A few of those other mayo based sauces below:
I’ll keep sharing more of these, and would love to hear what you’re cross-utilizing!
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