The godfather of modern cooking, British chef Marco Pierre White is an unlikely ambassador for supermarket convenience products. Celeste Gorrell Anstiss finds out these may well be the secret to creating a world-class winter warmer.
Shop-bought stock is one of those sneaky products that finds its way into the shopping trolley despite the guilt of knowing it wouldn't have been that hard to boil the bones from last week's roast. It's not the sort of purchase a former Le Gavroche chef would usually encourage - especially one with the skills to earn three Michelin Stars and the attitude to land a lead role on Hell's Kitchen.
But Marco Pierre White is not afraid to fess up. He doesn't bat an eyelid when he tells me that the famous London Le Gavroche churns through stock concentrate in bulk containers. There, he says, it's added to just about everything, and apparently that's nothing he's ashamed of.
Pierre White worked at Le Gavroche when its kitchen was run by the famous Roux brothers, who were at the top of their game despite having no formal training. Pierre White says they were not compromised by the ingredient snobbery emerging in many of today's chefs.
"It's not about cutting corners, it's about flavour. Great technical ability is what you need to create flavour. The Roux brothers didn't have that, at least not in a classical sense."