Profile of a celebrity chef: Heston Blumenthal
Heston Blumenthal is an English celebrity chef. He owns The Fat Duck, a restaurant in Berkshire that has three Michelin stars. Voted Best Restaurant in the UK, it’s received a perfect score of 10/10 every year since 2007 by The Good Food Guide!
Blumenthal is entirely self-taught and his first paid job as a chef was in his own restaurant. Before this, the only experience in a professional kitchen was the week he spent in Raymond Blanc’s kitchen.
When it comes to his cooking style, Blumenthal is completely modern. He started his own research and development kitchen early in 2004. Some might call him a molecular gastronomist, but he dislikes the term and believes that it makes the cooking approach sound elitist and more complicated than it is.
A slow-approach sensation scientist
Whatever you call him, he’s good at what he does, and he holds multiple honourary degrees in recognition of his scientific approach in the kitchen. One of Blumenthal’s signature techniques is the use of a vacuum jar to increase the expansion of bubbles during food preparation.
This technique is used when preparing certain dishes, like aerated chocolate soufflé–ish dessert, as reducing air pressure inside the jar causes bubbles within the dish to grow. Blumenthal has also toyed with amplification to enhance the sounds, such as the crispy crunch, created during eating certain foods.
A firm believer in low-temp, ultra-slow cooking, Blumenthal believes a joint of meat should be cooked for up to 24 hours in order to retain the the fat content while preventing collagen molecules from re-forming within the meat, making it tough and chewy.
Multi-sensory cookery
Ultra-slow cooking doesn’t melt fat or release many juices, which means that making gravy from the meat isn’t possible because the meat is so moist – Blumenthal believes gravy to be unnecessary.
Blumenthal is celebrated for his multi-sensory approach to cooking. His fascination with this art began when he was 16 and his parents took him to the two Michelin starred L’Oustau in Provence.
Heston Blumenthal on memorable meals
Development is where my heart is focused because eating is the only thing that we do that involves all the senses. We eat with our eyes and our ears and our noses.
You think about some of the most memorable meals you’ve ever had; the food will be good but it will often be about locating a mental memory and taste is inexorably linked to all the other senses and memory, so ultimately it is all about taste.
It still surprises me that more people are not focusing on this area because it’s so obvious – eating is a complete sensory experience. It’s the only thing we do that engages all of our senses. What I try to do is play with this idea to extend and deepen one’s interaction with food.
The chef’s chef
Blumenthal is currently working with an Oxford University psychologist to understand the relationship between our senses and food enjoyment. In January 2006, he was awarded an OBE by Queen for his services to British Gastronomy. His personal awards list is extensive and includes:
- GQ Chef of the Year
- Good Food Guide Chef of the Year
- AA Guide’s Chef’s Chef of the Year award
- OBE for services to British Gastronomy.
He’s written numerous cookery books and cooked for us countless times on television. Where else can you find Blumenthal when he’s not in the kitchen? On Twitter and Facebook, of course!
