The competitors on Top Chef seem to endlessly complain when they have to work with an ingredient that they didn't make from scratch, repeating ad nauseum that they feel such things - namely, processed foods - are far beneath them. But using commercial ingredients isn't beneath all chefs, not even ones like Jean-Georges Vongerichten and David Bouley. Vongerichten serves his Two-Flavored Stir-Fried Shrimp in a sauce of Hellmann's Mayo and condensed milk. Bouley uses Heinz Ketchup in several sauces, including the one served with his Braised Hawaiian Yellowtail appetizer. Other secret ingredients in chefs' pantries include Gravy Master, Kraft Singles, canned creamed corn and Dr. Pepper.

How are high-end, starred chefs getting away with using ingredients that you could find at a convenience store? The answer is that they don't advertise it the same way that they highlight grass-fed beef and organic tomatoes on their menus.

The reason they use such ingredients is that the flavors produced with them are good ones. A contributing factor to the flavor is the fact that there is a distinctive familiarity to the ingredients, which adds a pleasing undertone to many additional flavors, although the carefully honed corporate recipes are designed to taste good anyway. And for most chefs, the taste of the finished product is the ultimate goal, and if the extra bit of brightness provided by Heinz in a sauce or the color and texture from Kraft Singles melted in to an otherwise gourmet mac & cheese is the things that takes a dish over the top for a diner, it is worth using. Vongerichten and other note that there is a tradition, albeit a quiet one, in French cuisine for chefs to use "everything from ketchup to monosodium glutamate to perk up their dishes," so there is nothing new about such additions.

There are some, however, who say that there is another factor at work here, a "rebellion" against the "Alice Waters school of cooking," which demands everything be seasonal, fresh and made from scratch. Chefs in favor of integrating more ingredients say that this is progress, helped along by the popularity of molecular gastronomy, which warmly accepts the potential of unconventional ingredients, unusual techniques and reimagined presentations at the dinner table. Chefs against these "shortcuts" say that it is not progress, but "backsliding."

The issue is whether you feel a need to know exactly what you're eating because you strongly feel a certain way about food you should be eating and why. If the ingredients were so easily identifiable, their use would be common knowledge for the average diner. Most people will still eat something that tastes good, whether it has from-scratch mayo or Hellmann's. And so it comes down to a matter of taste, but not one of flavor.

[via the WSJ]