Michael Ruhlman Quotes & Sayings

If you could choose to master a single ingredient, no choice would teach you more about cooking than the egg. It is an end in itself; it's a multipurpose ingredient; it's an all-purpose garnish; it's an invaluable tool. The egg teaches your hands finesse and delicacy. It helps your arms develop strength and stamina. It instructs in the way proteins behave in heat and in the powerful ways we can change food mechanically. It's a lever for getting other foods to behave in great ways. Learn to take the egg to its many differing ends, and you've enlarged your culinary repertoire by a factor of ten. — Michael Ruhlman

People, you have six senses! The last one is common! Use it! — Michael Ruhlman

A kitchen is a good place to be, almost always the best place in the house. — Michael Ruhlman

Stories
from the literature of our culture to descriptions of our days to the lunatic's ravings
appear to be hardwired into us. Even in sleep we tell ourselves stories through our dreams, and it's been shown that those who are prevented from doing so cease to function. — Michael Ruhlman

Living in this world will change you," she confides. "It makes me value life. When a friend has a healthy baby, I don't think it's normal; I think it's a fucking miracle. — Michael Ruhlman

Food is about community. It's about the earth and really taking care of the earth. — Michael Ruhlman

Everything is relative but there is a standard which must not be deviated from, especially with reference to the basic culinary preparations. A. Escoffier The Complete Guide to the Art of Modern Cookery — Michael Ruhlman

Only when a chef changed the way you saw the world, through cooking, did food truly become art, and that was rare indeed. — Michael Ruhlman

More troubling is that when faced with an array of complex options," the article says, "consumers tend to throw reason out the window and pick a product based on what's easiest to evaluate, not what's most important, says Sheena Iyengar, director of the Global Leadership Matrix Program at the Columbia (University) Business School. 'We stick to the familiar or go by price because we don't want to deal with so many choices and scrutinize label claims or nutrition information,' she says. — Michael Ruhlman

Always look for sparrows before you look for canaries. — Michael Ruhlman

We better take care of the earth or we're gonna have shitty food, and having shitty food is no fun. — Michael Ruhlman

Recipes are not assembly manuals. Recipes are guides and suggestions for a process that is infinitely nuanced. Recipes are sheet music. — Michael Ruhlman

In the kitchen, the egg is ultimately neither ingredient nor finished dish but rather a singularity with a thousand ends. — Michael Ruhlman

Old-Fashioned Pound Cake (Creaming Method) — Michael Ruhlman

I love this book! There are very few cookbooks published today that add something truly new and distinctive to the literature of food and cooking. Jennifer McLagan's Fat is a smart, thoughtful book that ultimately asks us to understand our food better. — Michael Ruhlman

I buy onions every time I'm in the grocery store, not because I need them, but because I fear not having an onion when I do need it. Not having an onion in the kitchen is like working with a missing limb. — Michael Ruhlman

I believe it's a cook's moral obligation to add more butter given the chance. — Michael Ruhlman