How to Cook the Italian Way (While Cutting Costs and Waste)

Italian cooking has always been rooted in resourcefulness. Long before operators worried about labor shortages and shrinking margins, Italian cooks were stretching ingredients, minimizing waste and letting technique do the heavy lifting.

5 Italian Cooking Principles for Better Kitchen Operations

Buy the Best Ingredients You Can Afford

Not every operation can make pasta, bread and sauces from scratch. That’s OK. Focus on quality where it matters most. Upgrade your pasta, olive oil, cheese or tomatoes, and let those ingredients shine. As Chef Angelo Masarin of the Florida-based, multi-unit restaurant concept Salumeria 104 puts it, “If we’re serving fish, it needs to be the best quality fish and prepared with simple ingredients.”

Keep It Simple

Italian food doesn’t have to be complicated. Some of the most beloved dishes are made with just a handful of ingredients. “It could be three ingredients and still be super delicious,” says Executive Chef Drew Keane of Gibsons Italia in Chicago. Resist the urge to add ingredients just because you can.

Master the Technique

Simple dishes leave nowhere to hide. A great cacio e pepe or aglio e olio depends more on execution than ingredient count. Keane developed a “pasta glue” made from overcooked pasta blended with starchy pasta water to help stabilize sauces and prevent them from breaking during service.

Waste Nothing

Italian cooking means using every part of a plant or animal. Save vegetable trim for stock, turn bread into breadcrumbs and repurpose charcuterie scraps in soups, sauces and fillings. “No scrap belongs in the garbage,” says Chef Adam Pflueger of Toscano's Italian Grill in Puyallup, Washington. 

Cross-Utilize Everything

Every ingredient should work multiple jobs. Lobster shells become risotto stock. Focaccia heels become chicken parmesan breadcrumbs. Extra seafood becomes cioppino. The more ways you can use a product, the more value you create from every purchase.

Hear more stories from Italian operators on how they cut costs, reduce waste and lean into true hospitality.

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