The Slow Kitchen Podcast

Episode 36: "10 Restaurant Secrets That Make Home Cooking Feel Effortless"

• Season 1 • Episode 36

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0:00 | 14:55

Thanks for spending a little time with me in the kitchen today. I hope this episode inspires you to make cooking feel a little calmer, a little more joyful, and a whole lot less stressful.

In this episode we talked about:

  • Why the experience of preparing a meal can be just as nourishing as the meal itself.
  • How stress affects digestion by reducing saliva, digestive enzymes, and stomach acid, making it harder to fully enjoy and absorb our food.
  • Ten restaurant-inspired habits you can easily bring into your own kitchen.

Kitchen Challenge

Choose one habit to practice this week. Don’t try all ten. Notice how changing the way you prepare your meal changes the way you experience it.


My favorite kitchen essentials

🫒 Extra Virgin Olive Oil
I use fresh, high-quality olive oil every single day. Look for a harvest date whenever possible and store it in a cool, dark cupboard.

My super favorite high quality 700+ Polyphenol Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil medicinal brand: https://www.drcowansgarden.com/sllandrp

Type DRCOWANSGARDEN for 15% off!


🔪 Chef’s Knife
If I could only recommend one kitchen tool, this would be it. A sharp, comfortable chef’s knife makes cooking easier, safer, and so much more enjoyable. Global knives from Japan are perfect for women’s hands.


🥣 Bone Broth
I always keep bone broth in my freezer for soups, grains, sauces, and vegetables. It’s an easy way to add flavor, protein, and minerals.

My favorite brand: (Kettle & Fire Chicken Bone Broth + Kettle & Fire Beef Bone Broth)


🧂 Vera Sea Salt
A great mineral-rich sea salt adds flavor throughout cooking without needing large amounts.

The one I keep in my kitchen because it is free of micro-plastics and tested for chemicals.  Vera Salt is hand-harvested in the foothills of Spain at over 2000 feet above sea level. This pristine location, far from human activity and pollution, features an underground aquifer feeding a brine spring, rich in natural minerals like calcium, potassium, and magnesium. 

Use code "CATDILLONRHN" for 10% off

Mentioned in this episode
🎧 Episode 6: When Feeding Everyone Else Leaves You Depleted

If today’s conversation resonated with you, this episode is the perfect companion.
Join the Midlife Nourishment Collective
If you’re a woman over 50 who wants simple, delicious meals that support your metabolism, hormones, and bone health, I’d love to have you inside the Midlife Nourishment Collective.

🥗 Delicious recipes designed to nourish your microbiome, metabolism, hormones, blood sugar, and bones.

🛒 A drag-and-drop meal planner with smart grocery lists and Instacart integration to make healthy eating simple.

👩‍🍳 Live monthly cooking classes where food becomes your daily medicine.

📚 Evidence-based nutrition education on gut health, hormones, metabolism, bone health, healthy aging, and more.

💚 A warm, supportive community that helps you build sustainable habits—for your gut, your body, and your relationship with food.

Learn more by clicking here!

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SPEAKER_00

Hello and welcome back to the Slow Kitchen podcast. I'm Kat Dylan, registered holistic nutritionist, former chef, and someone who believes that how we prepare our food is just as important as the food itself. If you're a woman in midlife who's juggling work, family, changing hormones, cravings, and a never-ending to-do list, I'm so glad you're here. Have you ever noticed that when you eat at a really great restaurant, you somehow slow down, you linger, you savor, and the food just seems to taste better and you leave feeling more satisfied. Well, that's not an accident. Restaurants spend a lot of time creating an experience, not just a meal. And over the years, I've realized there's a few things that we can borrow from professional kitchens that make cooking at home a lot less stressful and a whole lot more enjoyable. One thing I learned from working with women over the years is this stress does not stop at the kitchen door. We carry it with us when we're chopping vegetables, stirring the soup, when we're making the salad, and when we're sitting down to eat. And when we're stressed, our body isn't thinking about digesting, it's thinking about surviving the day. We produce less saliva, fewer digestive enzymes, and often a lot less stomach acid. We rush, we barely taste our food. And then we leave the table wondering why we still want something sweet or why we feel bloated even though we didn't eat that much. I've talked about activating your rest and digest nervous system before meals, but today I want to approach it from another angle. As a former chef, I've learned that restaurants aren't serving food. They're creating an experience. Every detail, from the lighting to the music, from the pace of the meal to how your plate arrives at the table. It's all designed to help you settle in and enjoy what's in front of you. So today I thought I'd share 10 simple things I've carried from professional kitchens into my own home. They're not complicated, don't cost much, but they've completely changed the way I cook, eat, and the way I feel around food. And before we jump in, would you do me a quick favor? If you're enjoying this podcast, I'd love for you to hit subscribe. And while you're there, leave a rating and review. It really helps more women discover these conversations. All right, let's head into the kitchen. Number one. One of the biggest surprises people have when they come to my house is that dinner often starts before I even leave for my afternoon walk with the dogs. Not because I'm cooking early, because I'm preparing. Professional kitchens have a French term for this, Mise en place. It simply means everything in its place. I learned about Mise en Place in culinary school, but I truly understood it at my first job after graduation at Cafe Japango in San Diego. It was one of those restaurants that people came from all over the place to experience incredible sushi, pan-Asian cuisine, amazing cocktails in a kitchen that never stopped moving. I worked the dinner shift and I'd knew within minutes whether the lunch crew had set us up well. If the herbs were chopped, the sauces were stopped, and everything was organized, the evening flowed. Of course, I have to do my own prop, but if not, anyway, you felt the rush before the first order even came in. And once service started, there was no stopping to chop or to make another sauce. We had a saying, of course, in many kitchens, you're in the weeds, right? So does that sound a little bit like 5:30 at your house? That's exactly why I love Miss Plas. Even now, before I take my dogs for an early evening walk, I will often pull out my cutting board, my chef's knife, get my towels out, I'll chop some garlic and onions, I'll set out my spices and my herbs, and sometimes I'll whisk together a quick vinaigrette using nothing more than a few tablespoons as my measuring guide, maybe a couple of ramekins, or I'll toss garlic and herbs into my olive oil so the flavors have a chance to mingle while I'm gone. Nothing is actually cooking, but everything's feeling calm. And five or 10 minutes of that prep often saves about 20 minutes of chaos when I get home. More importantly, it saves my nervous system. How many evenings have you started sauteing onions only to realize you forgot to mince the garlic? And suddenly you're digging through drawers, something is burning, you're frustrated, and dinner feels just like one more thing that's happening to you instead of something that you're enjoying. Preparation isn't about creating a perfect chef station. It's really about giving yourself a calmer experience. It allows your brain to stop multitasking and start anticipating the meal. And that's exactly the kind of signal that begins moving us towards rest and digest. Number two, one lesson every chef understands is that great food begins with great ingredients and doesn't mean expensive all the time, it means thoughtful. If there's one ingredient I'd encourage you to upgrade, it's your olive oil. Think of olive oil as fresh fruit juice because that's exactly what it is. Would you leave fresh orange juice beside a hot stove for a month? No, probably not. Well, olive oil deserves the same respect. Instead of only looking at the expiration date, look for a harvest date. Fresh olive oil has a beautiful, grassy, peppery flavor that slowly disappears over time. Heat and light are the enemies of healthy fats. Your olive oil deserves a cool, dark cupboard. Number three. The same thing goes for your condiments. Maybe the fridge. Also flip your bottle over. Let's say soy sauce. If it contains water, soybeans, wheat, and salt, you probably get a naturally brewed soy sauce. If it lists corn syrup, caramel color, hydrolyzed soy protein, and a long list of ingredients you can't even pronounce, you're tasting a chemistry lab instead of fermentation. Little upgrades like these don't just improve flavor. They make healthy foods something you can actually look forward to eating. Number four. Every six months, I become that person standing in front of the spice cupboard, opening every jar and smelling it. Paprika, cumin, coriander, curry, cinnamon. If I can't smell it, it doesn't get to stay. Ground spices lose their flavor much faster than people realize. Whole spices last a bit longer, but eventually they lose their magic too. Healthy food shouldn't taste flat. Fresh herbs and spices are one of the easiest ways to create satisfaction without adding sugar or relying on a lot of fat or heavy sauces. Sometimes people tell me they're bored with healthy eating. And my question is usually, when was the last time you replaced your spices? Number five, one of the biggest differences between home cooks and restaurant chefs, well, chefs taste everything constantly. A pinch of salt, taste. A squeeze of lemon, taste. Again, cooking isn't about blindly following a recipe. It's really a conversation with your food. It's very relational. And can we talk about salt for a second? Please don't fear it. Choose a beautiful sea salt or a mineral-rich salt. I'll link you one up in the show notes that I've been using that's tested by third-party certification that's pure and clean. Season in small amounts throughout your cooking instead of dumping it all in at the end. Seriously, your tongue is one of the best kitchen tools you'll ever own. Trust it. Number six. All right. I almost always have some broth in my freezer. It adds incredible flavor, but it also adds nourishment. Instead of cooking rice in water or steaming your vegetables in a little bit of water, use broth, use bone broth. Making soup, start with a really good stock. If you're using a quality bone broth, you're also adding in protein, collagen, and minerals while making everything taste richer. One little ingredient and a huge payoff. Number seven. All right, I know it's tempting. One pan, everything in, we've done it. But here's what happens: your vegetables fail to roast, they steam. Your chicken doesn't brown, it turns pale and rubbery. And chefs know that the space creates air circulation and also caramelization. And caramelization creates flavor. Sometimes patience is really an ingredient. Cook in batches if you have to. Your taste buds will thank you. Number eight. People are always surprised when I say this. One of the healthiest investments I have ever made wasn't a supplement. It was a chef's knife. Way back. I'm still cooking with the same knives for 30 years. And when I worked in restaurants, our knives weren't just tools, they became extensions of our hands. We sharpened them, we cared for them, we respected them. You don't need 18 knives, but you need one beautiful chef's knife that feels good in your hands. A dull knife slips, it crushes tomatoes, it bruises herbs, it makes chopping vegetables feel like work. And when cooking feels like work, we stop cooking. We get bored, we get annoyed. Invest in one good knife and learn how to keep it sharp. That's a whole topic on its own. So I'll save it for a future show. I promise you'll enjoy being in your kitchen so much more. Number nine. All right. Chefs are always thinking ahead, not because they're meal prepping all the time, but they're working smarter. If I'm roasting vegetables tonight, I'm roasting extra. If I'm grilling chicken, tomorrow's lunch is already halfway finished. Maybe it becomes a salad, maybe it becomes tacos, maybe it's a bowl. Future you deserves a little kindness. And I think that's one of the most loving things that we can do for ourselves. Number 10. Creating an atmosphere worth slowing down. This might be my absolute favorite. Restaurants don't just serve food, they really create ambiance, a feeling. One of my happiest places has always been sitting in a little Japanese restaurant with soft Japanese music playing in the background, or walking into a cozy Italian restaurant where Italian music is floating through the room. Everything matches the food, the culture, the pace, the energy. And then every once in a while you sit down somewhere beautiful, and classic rock is blasting through the speakers. Now, don't get me wrong, I like rock music, just not while I'm trying to savor grilled salmon. Our brains are constantly taking in sensory information. And music changes our pace. Lighting changes our mood, and even the plates we eat from, colors in the plates, they influence how satisfied we feel. At home, I'll often turn on jazz, acoustic guitar, or a soft cafe playlist, I'll light a candle, maybe use a cloth napkin, pour sparkling water into a beautiful glass, not because company's coming, but I really feel like I deserve that experience too. Have you ever noticed that restaurants rarely use bright fluorescent lighting? Well, I know you know there's a reason for that, but softer lighting naturally encourages us to linker. It tells our brain that there's no rush. Now I'm not suggesting you install dimmer switches tomorrow, but maybe tonight you can light a candle. Remember that cooking isn't another task. It's such an act of care for yourself. And somewhere along the way, we've turned dinner into another to-do list item. Cook, eat, clean, repeat. But after decades in kitchens, I've learned something different. The meals that people remember aren't usually the fanciest ones. They're the ones where someone slowed down enough to care. And that's really what all of these little habits have in common. Not perfection, presence. Because when cooking becomes enjoyable, eating becomes enjoyable. And when eating becomes enjoyable, we become more satisfied. We slow down and digest better. We reconnect with one of the most beautiful parts of being human: sharing and preparing food. So here's your invitation this week. Don't try all 10 of these. Pick one, just one. Maybe it's chopping your vegetables before your afternoon walk. Maybe it's replacing those tired spices or putting on a dinner playlist that makes your kitchen feel like your favorite little cafe. Notice what changes, not just on your plate, but in your body. Because sometimes the healthiest thing about dinner isn't another superfood. Sometimes it's the experience that you create around it. Thank you so much for spending these few minutes with me. If today's episode made you smile or give you one idea you'd like to try, I'd love it if you'd share it with someone who could use a little more joy in their kitchen. You'll also find a link in the show notes to episode six when feeding everyone else leaves you depleted, because I think it pairs beautifully with today's conversation. Until next time, slow down, nourish yourself well, and remember the kitchen doesn't have to be another place where you rush. It can truly become the place where you come home to yourself. See you next time.