Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Your Salad Forecast: Cool and Crisp with a 100% Chance of Blue Cheese "Snow"

This is one of my favorite restaurant tricks ever. I invented this technique in 1985, after seeing another chef do it at a small café in San Francisco. It is an amazing way to distribute blue cheese over a salad without messing up your fingers, and without having the cheese end up alone at the bottom the of bowl when the lettuce is gone.

This simple trick guarantees a perfect blue cheese portion with every forkful. As you'll see in the video recipe, it does require a plastic rotary grater, which is very inexpensive and easy to find. These graters are great if you ever need to grate large amounts of Parmesan as well, so I think they are a nice thing to have in the kitchen, even if you don't plan on using it to stun your foodie friends with the best blue cheese trick ever! Enjoy!

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

while you may be preventing the spread of BCF you are also causing an epidemic of BCG.

Chef John said...

OK i'll bite...BCG?

Anonymous said...

Very cool Tip! I love blue cheese but hate how it falls apart sometimes...

Unknown said...

I'm guessing it's "Blue Cheese Grater?" Maybe?
I like this technique, I'll have to go buy one of these graters.

Vicki said...

OK, you solved my bleu cheese problem (most ingenious, I might add), now what do I do about the cucumbers / tomatoes / red onions / etc that also fall to the bottom of the bowl?

Chef John said...

call them dessert. ;)

Julie said...

It could snow blue cheese on me anytime, I just love the stuff.

Anonymous said...

How can you say you "invented" the technique when you saw another chef use it?

Chef John said...

ah, that was a joke.

Anonymous said...

BCF LOL

Algis said...

Hi Chef John!
Hey, cool trick there with the goat cheese! BCF...hahaha...
I stumbled across one of your videos on YouTube about a year ago when I was looking for a No Knead Bread recipe, and just fell in love with so many of your other recipe videoclips.
Since I work at home, I always have dinner ready for my girlfriend by the time she gets home from her work, and you are always my go-to-guy to come up with something good for her. I love your recipes because you make cooking so easy and so much fun. Thank you always!

My best wishes to you,
Algis

Birder said...

Can you reco a few brand names that sell good graters for this purpose? Thanks, Chef!

Chef John said...

Here you go, this is the only one I have used... cheese grater

Becky said...

Hey Chef John!
This is totally crazy right now...just viewed your blue cheese video from a posting on culture cheese mag's site....and I was one of your students @ CCA....nice to see your face again and this video doesn't do your wit justice!!! Obviously it paid off b/c now I'm a cheese monger....hope all is well. Thanks!
Rachel Perlstein

Chef John said...

Hey! Great hearing from you, Rachel...or is it Becky? ;-)