Lidia Bastianich Quotes

I make really good pasta sauce. The secret to getting it right is just patience and love.

I like to cook things very slowly.

'Iron Chef America' is so real. Imagine putting on television the whole process of making that food, the technique. It's all about technique. It doesn't even matter if you show the faces sometimes.

Turmeric or cinnamon? Nuts or raisins? The players may change, but the fundamentals of fluffy, fragrant pilaf are always the same.

I do make a really great bolognese, and the key is putting good 'ol wine in there.

In food, it's really, like, either you're right, or you're wrong. You know, people's taste buds kind of vary, but there's a technique. Either you do it right, or you don't.

Molecular gastronomy is not bad... but without sound, basic culinary technique, it is useless.

I'm brilliant at cooking my stepmother's scrambled egg recipe. The secret is to put eggs, butter, milk, and seasoning together in the saucepan, and to keep stirring with a wooden spoon under a low heat until the preferred consistency is reached.

It doesn't matter how precisely the onion is cut as long as the person chewing it is happy.

I think I can poach a pretty mean egg the old-fashioned way.

Blanching the cloves removes the harsh and bitter bite of raw garlic.

The key to sauces is having patience. I'm not a patient woman, but I learned with sauces that you have to get everything on a slow roll and layer the flavors. That's where you get robust tastes: it starts one way and ends another.

Taste as you go. When you taste the food throughout the cooking process you can make adjustments as you go.

Manage the heat, let the meat cook, and you'll get fantastic results.

Any opportunity I get to melt butter, I continue on to the 'noisette' stage.

I can make a delicious lasagna.

A perfect chutney needs patience. If you are cooking it, cook it on a low flame; the flavors come out the best that way.

I don't overcook, because you lose what's good in the food.

Eating is the secret to good cooking.

I make really good chicken soup, sort of from scratch. I don't make my own stock. I just use a base like a chicken stock, but everything else, all the ingredients, I do on my own.

As far away as you can get from the process of mechanisms and machinery, the more likely your food's going to taste good. And that - that is probably the largest thing I can hand to anybody is let your hands touch it. Let them make it.

My son loves my carbonara. I've tried to master that recipe - it's very simple but very delicate. Once prepared it must be eaten quickly.

I have a corn creamer that I love. It extracts pulp and juice from kernels, and I simmer that down into a creamed corn that has an almost mashed potato-like consistency. I add butter and hit it with chopped fresh chives at the end for an accent of color.

It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken.

I use the confit principle for chicken thighs. I season them with herbs and garlic, let them marinate, and then cook them in chicken fat.