Cooking Efficiency Quotes

The secret of a successful restaurant is sharp knives.

I may find something that looks interesting and then go on to alter the recipe by adding spices, things of my own. I also look for time-saving recipes, dishes that can be prepared ahead and stored.

I know I can cook, but the place where I cook... it's a mess! I'm very disorganized.

Organizing ahead of time makes the work more enjoyable. Chefs cut up the onions and have the ingredients lined up ahead of time and have them ready to go. When everything is organized you can clean as you go and it makes everything so much easier and fun.

Copper is a superb cooking metal, conducting heat so evenly it has unparalleled control, especially at low temperatures.

Only bake one type of thing at a time. Even when it seems like you're killing two birds with one stone, baking multiple recipes at the same time in one oven presents a tricky balancing act.

I like refried beans. That's why I wanna try fried beans, because maybe they're just as good and we're just wasting time. You don't have to fry them again after all.

Frying gives cooks numerous ways of concealing what appeared the day before and in a pinch facilitates sudden demands, for it takes little more time to fry a four-pound carp than to boil an egg.

In the restaurant business, there's the concept of pivot. Pivot to the stove, pivot to the refrigerator.

I want to bring things up to room temperature, especially poultry, before I cook it because I want it to cook faster so that there's less moisture loss.

I am good at just looking in the kitchen and getting stuff on the table and keeping the mess minimal. There's an art to the drudgery.

The wisest advice I ever received regarding the kitchen came from my mother: 'Do the dishes while you're cooking.'

Remember for stir-frying not to use a wok bigger than 16 inches. Once it has food in it, you won't be able to work very efficiently.

In a professional kitchen, the idea is to have your cooks not moving much while they're cooking. You want them to stay in the same spot.

Just because I am a chef doesn't mean I don't rely on fast recipes. Indeed, we all have moments when, pressed for time, we'll use a can of tuna and a tomato for a first course. It's a question of choosing the right recipes for the rest of the menu.

Don't use a different dish for every single ingredient. If you've got three ingredients that go in at the same time, put them all in the same plate. That way you have just one plate to dump in.

I always think if you have to cook once, it should feed you twice. If you're going to make a big chicken and vegetable soup for lunch on Monday, you stick it in the refrigerator and it's also for Wednesday's dinner.

Getting into the habit of switching a timer on will, I promise, save you from any number of kitchen disasters.

Do the dishes while you're cooking.

I have this concept that I call 'Combo Meals.' The idea is that I start with the kids' meal and then add a few more ingredients, and it becomes the adult meal. This way I'm not making two entirely separate dishes. I'm just simply adding on to what I'm already making.

Most of cooking is the labor of chopping. Give yourself a break. Pretend you're on a cooking show and have all your ingredients lined up for you.

You can get bogged down in a recipe that's got a lot of steps and a million ingredients, and it takes all day to make. And then you realize, you've just got one dish. For Thanksgiving, you want an abundance of choices, and so you want dishes that you can put together really quickly, but that doesn't mean less flavor.

You can make real food in 20, 30 minutes, but we've convinced ourselves that it is a rocket science. It's a shame. It's the media and the food industry: they've fed our panic around time.

Repeatedly opening the oven - or worse, taking out the turkey to baste it - slows down the momentum of cooking.