Plain cooking lessons that make dinner less mysterious.
The Chef's Notes Podcast is a practical cooking course in audio form, built around clear explanations of what to buy, how to prepare it, and why the steps matter. It suits home cooks who want useful instruction more than polished kitchen theater.
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The Chef's Notes Podcast approaches cooking as a craft that can be explained patiently, one ordinary decision at a time. It favors method over spectacle. Recent episodes move through beef tenderloin fabrication, fish tacos with mango salsa, roasted vegetable paninis without a press, homemade sushi, basic fish cookery, salads, starches, and pantry staples. The common thread is confidence. When a technique sounds intimidating, the show breaks it down into parts that a home cook can see and repeat. A whole tenderloin becomes fat, sinew, connective tissue, a chain, and usable trim. Sushi becomes rice, fish or vegetables, nori, and the question of what level of mastery is actually necessary at home. Fish becomes less about fear and more about not overcooking it. Salads are sorted into green salads and everything else before the show turns to greens, texture, garnish, and balance. The teaching style is direct. It defines terms, gives reasons, and circles back to the practical result. There is room for small human asides, including missed posts, recording mistakes, weather complaints, and the business of a cookbook release, but the center stays on food. Chef Ben appears as the recurring named speaker, often tying advice to personal-chef work and everyday shopping. The result feels closer to a kitchen lesson than a dinner-party conversation. It is especially useful for cooks who want to understand why a step exists before adding it to muscle memory. The show does not pretend every dish needs chef-level obsession. It is comfortable saying that some standards matter in restaurants while a simpler, satisfying version is enough at home. That makes it approachable without becoming flimsy. The best moments come when familiar ingredients get treated with serious attention: onions as the backbone of flavor bases, potatoes chosen by texture, greens matched to the rest of the salad. It is practical, measured, and quietly opinionated. For PlayNext listeners, it sits in the recipe-tutorial lane with a strong basic-cooking-course spine.
Made for: Home cooks, beginners, and practical learners who want clear reasons behind everyday kitchen steps. It also suits confident cooks looking for refreshers on ingredient choice, basic technique, and unfussy substitutions.
What sets it apart: The show stands out by treating small kitchen details as teachable decisions, not throwaway tips. It explains the why behind tenderloin trimming, eggplant salting, fish cookery, sushi anxiety, salad structure, and pantry staples in a steady lesson format.
The Chef's Notes Podcast is all about food! This companion podcast to chefsnotes.com shares recipes, cooking tips, stories and more. Entertaining. Informative. And, Delicious. When you need a recipe, think Chef's Notes. chefsnotes.comRanked 9th in Top 20 Chef Podcasts by Feedspot.com
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Chef Ben makes basic cooking knowledge legible through precise explanations, practical buying advice, and experience grounded in the realities of kitchen work.
Chef Ben turns kitchen confidence into a series of concrete, manageable decisions. Cooking vocabulary, pantry staples, knife handling, and equipment buying receive patient explanation, with enough detail to show why a technique or purchase matters.
A Swiss peeler and a proper pinch grip may be the kitchen upgrade you actually needed.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Chef Ben makes knife safety feel practical through sharpness, grip, and control.
Basic Knife Skills, Free Basic Cooking Course frames knife safety around sharpness, technique, and control. Chef Ben opens with the idea that a sharp knife is a safe knife, tying the point to scars on his hands and saying his injuries came from poor use or a blade that was not…
A steady, practical guide to beans, potato textures, and onion-based flavor foundations.
This single-episode review treats basic ingredients as choices worth slowing down for, following the host through beans, potato types, and onions in a way that stays close to what home cooks actually buy and use.
A chef's Montreal-to-Yukon pivot becomes a family story of work, illness, and home.
Chef Ben's story turns on a single choice that splits life in two. He leaves a band and Montreal to focus on cooking, and the path that follows is plain enough to track: diner shifts, the Yukon, a Red Seal, a wife, and a son.
A practical buying guide that favors durable basics over flashy kitchen sets.
Chef Ben keeps the focus on practical kitchen basics, weighing what deserves a place in the drawer and what is not worth the money. His guidance on knives is the sharpest point: skip low-end blocks and spend a little more on tools that will hold up.
A direct kitchen-vocabulary lesson that keeps the terms tied to actual cooking use.
This episode treats recipe language as a genuine hurdle and starts with the core basics: saute, reduce by half, julienne, binder, filet, garnish, glaze, gram, grill, and gratin.
Samin Nosrat and Hrishikesh Hirway answer listener voicemails about pandemic-era pantry cooking.
Samuel Goldsmith interviews chefs and food writers, closing each chat with Quick Fire Questions.
Kitchen answers, food stories, sharp curiosity.
Food stories from the working kitchen.
Cookbook craft from the kitchen side.
The host begins a multi-part lesson on basic ingredients and pantry staples.
Chef Ben shares a recipe for fish tacos with mango salsa to cure winter blues, along with a cookbook promotion.
Chef Ben turns to basic kitchen equipment and breaks down how to use it, how to buy it, and whether it is worth owning at all.
Chef Ben opens by saying cooking has its own vocabulary.
He quits the band.
Chef Ben presents a spicy bowl recipe featuring marinated beef and chipotle lime sauce.
Chef Ben hosts an episode of Food in 5, continuing the Kitchen Clueless cooking course with a focus on basic knife skills.
Chef Ben teaches how to clean and fabricate a whole beef tenderloin, sharing tips from his personal chef experience.
Chef Ben explains why flour, egg, and breadcrumbs create a stronger coating for fried eggplant.
Chef Ben shares a recipe for fish tacos with mango salsa to cure winter blues, along with a promotion for his new cookbook.
Chef Ben teaches how to make a roasted vegetable panini without a panini press, including salting eggplant.
Chef Ben demystifies sushi making, breaking it down into simple steps for home cooks.
The host discusses why people limit their fish choices and how better cooking knowledge can expand seafood options.
This episode teaches basic cooking skills, focusing on preparing starches like potatoes and rice as essential components of a balanced meal.
Chef Ben teaches the basics of understanding salads, focusing on green salads and their components.