33 min
Riley Redfearn: Chef Riley's Journey from Fast Food to Fine Dining Inside The Pressure Cooker
-
- Food
Chef Riley Redfearn falls in love with the chaotic kitchen and aspires to become an expert in watermelon carving and fruit displays.
"My biggest inspiration, I'd have to say, is definitely my wife and kids. They want to make me be a better husband, dad, chef, man all around. So I know that I got to get up every day and bust ass. So that way they'll have a good future ahead of them."
Riley Redfearn is a chef at a casino in Las Vegas. He specializes in watermelon carvings and fruit displays. He has four children and has been in the culinary industry for over 10 years.
This is Riley Redfearn's story...
Riley Redfearn is a chef who recently got promoted to the position of Garde Manger chef for a casino. He got his start in cooking in high school working in fast food, but fell in love with it after getting a job in a kitchen and going to culinary school. He is now a father of four and specializes in watermelon carvings and fruit displays. He is currently working on learning how to ice carve and plans to continue advancing in his career.
In this episode, you will learn the following:
1. What it's like to work in a fast-paced and chaotic kitchen environment
2. How to become a better cook or chef
3. What goes into planning and executing large scale events
Resources:
Chef Riley on Instagram
Here is the book Riley referenced.
The Art of Charcuterie by the CIA
Other great books on making your own Charcuterie:
Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing
In The Charcuterie: The Fatted Calf's Guide to Making Sausage, Salumi, Pates, Roasts, Confits, and Other Meaty Goods
Great Resource for Equipment and Ingredients for making your own cured meats:
The Sausage Maker
Other episodes you'll enjoy:
Mario Orozco
Suki Otsuki
Lady Line Cook, Hanalei Souza
Connect with me:
Instagram
YouTube
Website
Loved this episode? Leave us a review and rating here
Or on Apple Podcasts or Spotify
Transcript
[00:00:03]
Welcome to Inside the Pressure Cooker, where cooks and chefs share their stories of. Life inside the kitchen.
[00:00:12]
It Amazed me how chaotic it was, but everything was so in sync and just flowed amazingly. And I just found it amazing that we could just cook for a living. I love to hear what got people into kitchens, because we all started somewhere, right? And it's not just fast food that doesn't necessarily count, but that first experience in a real kitchen where that shell shock kind of hits you, but you're in awe of the whole experience, and you're just amazed by its beauty, and you're just sticking to it immediately. It really is almost like a drug where you're just like, oh, shit, man.
[00:01:03]
It's like, I need more of this. That's pretty much what happened to Riley. I get it. And I know so many of you out there as well get that. So it's a pretty cool story to hear from him.
[00:01:15]
Keep listening.
[00:01:19]
All right, we're here with Riley. Riley, give me your 32nd elevator pitch. Who are you? Chef Riley. I'm the Garma jerry chef for a casino for their banquet department.
[00:01:34]
I specialize in watermelon carvings and fruit displays, or acute displays. Father of four and husband. That's pretty much me summed up. Right. How old are your kids?
[00:01:49]
I have almost eight year old. She'll be eight in a week. And then I have a five, a two year old and a nine month old. So you've got your hands full. Yeah, things are very hectic.
[00:02:06]
All right, so tell me a little bit about what you're doing right now with the casino, the garmage. How did you get into that? Yeah, so I just recently got promoted to that position a couple of weeks ago, actually. But I had worked in our banquet department before out here and just kind of played around with that stuff a little bit. Just kind of making all of our fruit displays and stuff just a little bit nicer looking and wasn't ever really too much of a serious thought, but I always enjoyed doing it, so I kind of kept playing around with it.
[00:02:39]
And
Chef Riley Redfearn falls in love with the chaotic kitchen and aspires to become an expert in watermelon carving and fruit displays.
"My biggest inspiration, I'd have to say, is definitely my wife and kids. They want to make me be a better husband, dad, chef, man all around. So I know that I got to get up every day and bust ass. So that way they'll have a good future ahead of them."
Riley Redfearn is a chef at a casino in Las Vegas. He specializes in watermelon carvings and fruit displays. He has four children and has been in the culinary industry for over 10 years.
This is Riley Redfearn's story...
Riley Redfearn is a chef who recently got promoted to the position of Garde Manger chef for a casino. He got his start in cooking in high school working in fast food, but fell in love with it after getting a job in a kitchen and going to culinary school. He is now a father of four and specializes in watermelon carvings and fruit displays. He is currently working on learning how to ice carve and plans to continue advancing in his career.
In this episode, you will learn the following:
1. What it's like to work in a fast-paced and chaotic kitchen environment
2. How to become a better cook or chef
3. What goes into planning and executing large scale events
Resources:
Chef Riley on Instagram
Here is the book Riley referenced.
The Art of Charcuterie by the CIA
Other great books on making your own Charcuterie:
Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing
In The Charcuterie: The Fatted Calf's Guide to Making Sausage, Salumi, Pates, Roasts, Confits, and Other Meaty Goods
Great Resource for Equipment and Ingredients for making your own cured meats:
The Sausage Maker
Other episodes you'll enjoy:
Mario Orozco
Suki Otsuki
Lady Line Cook, Hanalei Souza
Connect with me:
Instagram
YouTube
Website
Loved this episode? Leave us a review and rating here
Or on Apple Podcasts or Spotify
Transcript
[00:00:03]
Welcome to Inside the Pressure Cooker, where cooks and chefs share their stories of. Life inside the kitchen.
[00:00:12]
It Amazed me how chaotic it was, but everything was so in sync and just flowed amazingly. And I just found it amazing that we could just cook for a living. I love to hear what got people into kitchens, because we all started somewhere, right? And it's not just fast food that doesn't necessarily count, but that first experience in a real kitchen where that shell shock kind of hits you, but you're in awe of the whole experience, and you're just amazed by its beauty, and you're just sticking to it immediately. It really is almost like a drug where you're just like, oh, shit, man.
[00:01:03]
It's like, I need more of this. That's pretty much what happened to Riley. I get it. And I know so many of you out there as well get that. So it's a pretty cool story to hear from him.
[00:01:15]
Keep listening.
[00:01:19]
All right, we're here with Riley. Riley, give me your 32nd elevator pitch. Who are you? Chef Riley. I'm the Garma jerry chef for a casino for their banquet department.
[00:01:34]
I specialize in watermelon carvings and fruit displays, or acute displays. Father of four and husband. That's pretty much me summed up. Right. How old are your kids?
[00:01:49]
I have almost eight year old. She'll be eight in a week. And then I have a five, a two year old and a nine month old. So you've got your hands full. Yeah, things are very hectic.
[00:02:06]
All right, so tell me a little bit about what you're doing right now with the casino, the garmage. How did you get into that? Yeah, so I just recently got promoted to that position a couple of weeks ago, actually. But I had worked in our banquet department before out here and just kind of played around with that stuff a little bit. Just kind of making all of our fruit displays and stuff just a little bit nicer looking and wasn't ever really too much of a serious thought, but I always enjoyed doing it, so I kind of kept playing around with it.
[00:02:39]
And
33 min