What is the test of a great chef? Ingenious plate display? Cleverly time all the components of a meal? The taste of each dish is perfectly balanced? According to "Kitchen" host and "Chopping" judge Alex Guarnaschelli (Alex Guarnaschelli), it comes down to mastering three things. Guarnaschelli recently wrote on Twitter: "A chef I have worked for many years said that the biggest test for a chef is soups, sauces and salads...@guysavoy"

Guarnaschelli started her culinary career in France, where she attended the La Varenne Culinary School (via the Food Network website). After graduation, she worked in French institutions, including the prestigious Guy Savoy restaurant in Paris. In an exclusive interview with Mashed, Guarnaschelli said that Savoy is one of her most influential mentors. "He taught me to cook," she said. "He taught me how to think about taste." According to Food Network, Guarnaschelli continues to serve as the sous chef at another Savoy restaurant, La Butte Chaillot. To be sure, when she was promoted to this position, she had mastered soups, salads, sauces and other skills, because the role of the sous chef required excellent execution (according to Escoffier).

Alex Guarnaschelli believes that the greatness of a chef can be judged by soups, sauces and salads. This belief was passed on by Michelin star icon Guy Savoy. she. On Twitter, "New York Times" food writer Eric Kim agreed with Guarnaschelli, saying that the restaurant’s vegetable salad “has always been a barometer of the restaurant’s quality for me. The idea is that if they care about their lettuce, then Maybe they care about the rest."

Sauces are very important for restaurant chefs or home cooks. They impart complementary flavors, add moisture to dried meat, and are visually appealing. Mastering the five "mother" sauces is a key part of the development of classic-trained chefs, because they are classics in themselves and can be used as a starting point for countless other sauces (via Escoffier). 

Similarly, even though the soup seems simple, according to John Higgins (via McLean), director of the George Brown Chef School, “making a good soup means you have to know what you are doing”. Fergus Henderson, the chef of London's Michelin-starred restaurant St. John, once explained the importance of soup. "Food should do two things: maintenance and promotion. Both have the properties of soup." As a trained architect, Henderson said soup is the support of a meal: it is essential for its structural integrity important. Soups, salads and sauces: perfecting them takes time and effort, but delicious dishes start with these techniques.