Welcome to the Dalty Cooks blog
What the heck is this blog about?
Here I will highlight a vast array of cooking techniques, philosophies, stories, and best practices that will make you a better cook. This also allows me to open the valve in my mind, providing a place to catch the myriad of facts and opinions sloshing around in my noggin. I’ll cover everything from how to properly salt your food (the answer is actually more complex than you might think), to the best way cook a steak, to how food sets us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. For me, food and cooking is more than something I do to fuel my body. It’s about creating, connecting with people, learning, showing love, innovating, and much more.
My beginnings in the culinary world are actually rooted in food philosophy. I originally studied medicine, and was working as a paramedic when I made my decision to leave the medical world behind, and try my hand at becoming a chef. The mystique surrounding the world’s greatest chefs, the passion behind producing the best products available, and the freedom of creativity were incredibly appealing. There was something I loved about the idea that I could creating something extraordinary with the sole intention of it’s consumption that seemed beautiful. Little did I know how difficult that journey would be. It turns out, going to school doesn’t make you a chef. Cooking fanciful food doesn’t make you a chef. Wearing a pressed coat with your name on it doesn’t make you a chef. I learned all of these lessons, usually the hard way, over my career in professional kitchens. My trajectory from culinary student, to first achieving the word “chef” in my working title was actually quite steep. I went from stepping into a professional kitchen for the first time, to becoming a sous chef for a James Beard awarded celebrity in less than 2 years.
I underwent an incredible amount of learning and technique development while working long, hard hours. My 5 1/2 years in kitchens feel as though they passed in the blink of an eye. When you average most of your career pushing 70-75 hours per week, you don’t have a lot of time leftover to to focus on much else. I changed a lot, learned a lot, failed A LOT, and became almost an entirely different person during this time. In fact, the origin of the name “Dalty” can be traced back to my very first kitchen. I didn’t know at the time, but this name would become ubiquitous with me as not only a chef, but as a person.
I was wet behind the ears, starry-eyed, timid, and a little scared. It was my third or forth day in the kitchen, and the owner came out of the office: shirtless. He looked at me, flexing, and said: “What do you think? I look pretty damn good for forty huh?”. He then said “You’re the new cook right?”. I said “Yes chef! My name is Dalton, thank you for hiring me”. He looked back at me and said “How is everything going so far, Dalty?”. Thus, Dalty was born. I hated it. Alas, this name would evolve into “Salty Dalty” and follow me to every kitchen I worked in for the remainder of my professional kitchen career. Only after a lot of personal work (work that is very much still in progress) was I able to shed the Salty, and embrace the Dalty.
There you have it, the first of many ramblings. Now that you have a little history, we will jump into culinary topics of substance. I hope you enjoy the journey as much as I do!
