Stella Culinary School

Stella Culinary School is a cooking podcast run by Jacob Burton, who says on air that he is the executive chef at the hotel property that houses The Shore Room. It works like a classroom that keeps wandering into the kitchen. Some episodes teach. Some are interviews. Some are two cooks comparing notes on the job. The teaching is anchored to the F-Step curriculum, a lecture series whose first two parts cover flavor structure and sauce making. In 'Taste Vs. Flavor, Black Pepper Corn Sauce, & Hipster Bone Broth - Your Questions Answered!', Burton takes listener questions on that material. One answer builds chicken soup from the ground up: reduce a stock to concentrate it, braise chicken thighs in it, simmer small-diced vegetables until they soften, then return the diced meat. Seasoning, he explains, is where stock becomes broth, and stock itself stays a foundational ingredient rather than a finished dish. He patiently separates two words that store shelves treat as nearly interchangeable. Sous vide is a subject the show comes back to. Burton presents his conversation with Jason Logsdon as a follow-up to an earlier technical breakdown of the method, one that went into wet bulb temperatures and how heat travels differently through air and water. With Logsdon the talk turns practical. Chuck roast and tri-tip, cooked low and slow, come up as stand-ins for a well-marbled ribeye that even a professional chef cannot eat every night. Chicken gets a food-safety explanation: held long enough at a lower temperature, it can be as safe as chicken brought to a higher temperature for an instant. The third mode is industry talk. Sous chef Sean Munshaw, who has worked alongside Burton for about a year and a half, joins him in the studio for an episode titled 'Thanksgiving Tips & Industry Talk with Sous Chef Sean Munshaw'. Together they describe Pip's Pass, a restaurant within a restaurant: an eight-seat chef's counter inside The Shore Room with a single seating of a multi-course tasting menu on Friday and Saturday nights. The point, as they put it, is freedom to chase ideas beyond what the room already offers, from scratch pizza dough and a burger to Greek Mediterranean flair. It shows how a hotel kitchen makes room to experiment. Burton keeps the register friendly and leaves room for small jokes. Time with his sous chef has gone by so fast that he compares it to a midlife crisis. He also points listeners to the Stella Culinary forum and Facebook group, a voicemail line for questions, an email newsletter and a written edition of the F-Step curriculum. Episodes sign off with a reminder to cook with passion. For the teaching, start with the questions episode. For life inside a working restaurant, start with the Munshaw episode.