Grant Crilly is the Executive Director and cofounder of ChefSteps. Grant is a classically trained chef and, prior to ChefSteps, he worked on the award-winning cookbook series Modernist Cuisine and cooked at various restaurants, including L’Astrance in Paris, Busaba in Mumbai, and Mistral Kitchen in Seattle.

Grant Crilly

A good oysters Rockefeller is hard to beat: perfectly cooked oysters, lots of tender greens, a touch of cream, and a crunchy crumb topping.It’s not a complicated dish, but to get it right, you have to focus on the details, starting with selecting the right size oysters. For cooked oysters, I like getting ones that are just a little too big to comfortably shoot raw; a longer cooking time gives the topping time to crisp up and brown, and since oysters shrink a little during the cooking process, they end up being the perfect size once they come out of the oven. The goal with roasted oysters is to heat them through to the point that they firm up to a custardy texture that you can easily bite through, like a cheesecake or [f 149] <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/guides-tools/the-egg-calculator">sous vide egg</a>. I aim for a final internal temperature of [f 115], and pull them from the oven when they’re just shy of that mark to account for carryover cooking.For the greens, any tender but sturdy greens will work—spinach is the classic, but chard or foraged greens like miners lettuce are fantastic as well—but the key is to use a light hand with the cream and a heavy hand with the greens (I like a lot of greens). You want the sweet, sweated-down allium flavor to come through with the greens. A little Pernod adds a background anise note that helps brighten them up a bit, too.To top it all off, I make a crunchy crumb topping of crushed up oyster crackers mixed with Parmesan. Since they’re going in an air-fryer, the topping will be crispier than if they were baked and they’ll cook more evenly than if they were broiled, but to help out on both fronts I like to enrich the topping with the butter used to sweat the shallots and garlic.This recipe is a part of The Road to Cooking with Grant Crilly, a ChefSteps series that offers intimate portraits of some of the most exciting culinary experts in the country, and explores how their journeys have shaped their approach to cooking.

Oysters Rockefeller