Chefs' Home Kitchens

by Susan D. Rock

Any professional chef will tell you that the secret to a smooth-running kitchen is organization. Whether cranking out dozens of meals at a restaurant or feeding the family at home, easy storage of and access to staple ingredients is essential. Flashy appliances may be fun, but it's a well-planned, properly supplied pantry that's key to efficient cooking, and to keeping culinary chaos at bay.

Whether your own food storage areas involve grand walk-in closets or are cobbled together from a cupboard or two, the following advice from Tahoe area chefs will help you set up and stock your kitchen like a pro.

Organizing a home pantry requires a cook to think about what's important and useful to his or her culinary style and habits, says Eric Liebendorfer, the former executive chef of South Shore's Echo Restaurant. Personally, Liebendorfer likes lots of open space for organizing his oft-employed items, using open cabinets near the stove for things like stashing spices. He prefers simple shelves to fancy storage systems and cavernous cupboards. "Deep cabinets just don't work," he says. "They start to look like my mom's, where you spend hours searching for something."

Liebendorfer, whose most indispensable pantry items are his salt and pepper grinders, also uses lots of mason jars to store various pastas, grains and beans. "When I go home at night, I can choose from 25 different kinds of starches," he says, clearly unafraid of carbs. "The dry climate lends those items extra long shelf lives."

Douglas Dale, longtime owner/chef of Wolfdale's Cuisine Unique in Tahoe City, repeats the mantra about proper placement of ingredients and tools for an efficient kitchen. "You want to keep things organized and accessible so that everything you need while cooking is easy to get to with as little footwork as possible," he says.

To that end, his home kitchen—where the entire family shares cooking duties—is outfitted with a double-door pantry stocked with "everything you'd want at your fingertips; everything you'd want to have on hand to be able to eat right away." In addition to "a really good olive oil," that list includes a variety of flours, soy sauce, sesame oil, a good vinegar and panko (Japanese bread crumbs), which reflect Chef Dale's affinity for Asian flavors and seasonings.

Keeping the most-used room in the house running smoothly is an ongoing improvement process, according to Dale. "If it's an ordeal to get to something, you won't use it," he says. "Every time you cook, you should make the next meal easier for yourself."

"I'm a neat freak; I don't like clutter," says Mark Estee, co-owner and executive chef of Moody's Bistro in Truckee. "I'm even more concise in my home kitchen. Everything has its place." Estee keeps his workhorse items to the right of the stove, the less-used specialty items on the left. "Proximity is very important," the chef continues. "Have the things you use most often close to where you're going to use them," with the rest, such as bulky dry goods, in another storage area, if need be.

A variety of shelving configurations is also helpful. Sixteen-inch shelves are great for tall bottles such as olive oils and vinegars, says Estee, while four-inch shelves on rollers work better for items that don't stack well. Some newer modular systems incorporate airtight drawers that extend the shelf life of more perishable foodstuff s.

If there's more than one cook in the kitchen, employ a grease board or notepad to track and replace inventory—and prevent a source of domestic strife. "There's nothing worse than going to get a can of black beans and finding that someone used the last one and didn't tell you," Estee says.

Once the cabinet, cupboard or closet structure is ready to go, how best to fill it? "Ideally mine would look like Dean and DeLuca. I'd go to Florian's and pick up one of everything," Estee says, referring to Truckee's specialty food shop. "My kitchen is stocked so that I can just bring home a piece of steak or fish and be able to cook it." His pantry is lined with cans of beans and tomatoes, bags of grains and a variety of extra virgin olive oils, vinegars, salts and peppers, as well as more exotic condiments such as harissa, curries and chutneys.

Estee encourages regularly adding to your pantry to keep your culinary repertoire fresh. "You have to try new things before they can become a kitchen staple," he says. "If you like hot stuff , buy different kinds of hot sauces. If you like sweet things, experiment with different preserves. Your pantry should be a unique expression of you."