Master these 20 dishes and achieve gourmet chef status

This dessert with ice cream and meringue is not for the faint of heart. It’s got multiple layers and requires fire to finish. If you’ve never baked before, start by mastering something simpler instead of rushing into this beast. 

Gordon Ramsay has mastered beef Wellington, but he’s a Michelin-star chef, so don’t compare yourself to him. This dish requires multiple difficult steps with nuance, and if they aren’t followed correctly, you risk ruining the entire thing. 

If you’ve ever eaten a tasty homemade croissant, know that the person who made it is an excellent pastry chef. Making croissants from scratch is an incredibly long and tedious process that only those who enjoy spending copious amounts of time in the kitchen with rolling pins will enjoy or be good at. 

Turducken is a crazy dish. It’s chicken inside a duck inside a turkey, which requires mastering dealing with all three of those meats. This is an absolute treat for meat lovers if you prepare it well. If you aren’t quite sure what you’re doing in the kitchen, there are tons of ways it can go wrong. 

Consommé might look easy to prepare, but it’s not. It requires skill and knowledge far beyond preparing a regular broth or stock. Master other broths and stocks before trying consommé. 

There’s a reason you don’t often see éclair at bake sales or on your friend’s counter. These little pastries are not easy to make as they involve mastering doughs, piping, and glazing, none of which are easy for the average home baker. 

Macarons are not only time-consuming to make but also require a specific oven and environment to thrive. If you don’t have a convection oven or live in a humid climate, your macarons might not survive. 

A soufflé is so difficult to master because its main ingredient is egg, and baking an egg-heavy dish is tough. You’ve got to master multiple baking skills and have some knowledge of baking chemistry. But once you’ve got it down, a world of creativity is available to you. 

Béarnaise sauce is akin to hollandaise sauce, and like soufflé, it requires a lot of egg work. If you’re not careful, you can ruin your béarnaise sauce past the point of return, so be sure not to let your dish get too hot. 

Galantine is a meat dish that’s been poached and is often served in aspic that, at first glance, might make you wonder why it exists. But any chef worth their salt will tell you it doesn’t deserve all the hate it receives, given the level of skill required to make it. 

Lou Fassum is stuffed cabbage. It looks like a weird cake, and to some people, it is a weird cake. But to others, it’s a feat of culinary achievement, one that requires a painstaking, repetitive process that only the most accomplished and dedicated chefs are cut out for. 

Puff pastry can become easy once you’ve figured out how to work the dough, but if you’re not comfortable handling dough, you might struggle. If puff pastry dough is overworked, it loses its quality, so you’ve got to be careful and pay close attention when making it. 

Making sushi is a definite skill. You can certainly become more skilled in the art, but it requires practice. To get a leg up, work on your knife skills and learn how to make perfect rice. Those two elements will help you master this Japanese cuisine. 

Not only is duck pâté en croûte difficult to make, but it also requires lots of planning. It takes over 24 hours from start to finish because the stuffing needs to chill overnight. To make a good duck pâté en croûte, you need to be skilled at making stuffings and working with pastry. 

Any dish requiring a particular rice consistency is difficult to make, especially without a rice cooker. If you choose the right type of rice, making paella becomes easier, but it’s still a tricky recipe that will take some time to master. 

Making Gateau St. Honoré is tough because there are so many different pastry elements involved. Mastering one pastry is difficult, let alone four or more. There’s a reason pastry chefs go to culinary school for that particular aspect of dessert-making. 

Coq au vin is a French stew made with chicken, wine, mushrooms, bacon, and more tasty ingredients. It’s obviously delicious but requires patience, which is not always easy to attain. If patience is one of your virtues, you’ll master this dish quickly. 

Making mole, a traditional Mexican sauce served with various foods, from scratch requires lots of peeling, chopping, and simmering. It’s not worth the effort for some, but if you can master this, you’ll have the respect of many culinary peers.  

It might take you multiple tries to get liver just right. It’s a finicky piece of meat that has to be cooked fast and on high heat, which is the opposite of advice you often hear for meats. It seems easy because it goes so quickly, but a lot of damage can be done in just a few minutes if you’re not careful. 

Anything with layers of flaky pastry is not going to be easy to make, but the good news is that once you’ve mastered one, it’s easier to transition to another. To master Napoleons, get really good with a rolling pin and a piping bag.