Culinary Knowledge Quotes

Cooking is an act of love, a gift, a way of sharing with others the little secrets -- 'piccoli segreti' -- that are simmering on the burners.

I was always a good cook from my mum showing me when I was a young lad, but hiring a chef helped me to understand food better.

As a chef, if I can taste something, I can basically figure out what's in it.

My philosophy from day one is that I can sleep better at night if I can improve an individual's knowledge about food and wine, and do it on a daily basis.

Something you need to do three times a day, seven days a week, and something you need to stop worrying about. If [kids] don't know how to cook, they go to junk, and then the junk becomes addictive, and then all of a sudden they're left with no choice.

I want to empower people who might have lost their way in the kitchen or never known their way around it in the first place. And just go, this is a thing you can do, you can do this, and if you want I can show you how.

You know, I used to think I was a foodie, and then my wife went to culinary school and basically explained to me that I was just a guy that likes to eat.

Goodness, how much there is to learn about food!

I'm an absolute connoisseur of cheeseburgers and like to think that I can detect even mere percentages of shift in fat content in ground meat in a burger and can actually name the temperature to which it was actually cooked to the degree if I'm, you know, really on my game.

There was an extensive collection of cookbooks in the well-stocked library, and he took to pouring over these in the evenings.

I find that most home cooks don't get vinegars. They're misunderstood, mostly due to the factory-made red wine vinegar that everyone commonly cooks with... that, and the giant gallon of white distilled vinegar that we all use, mostly to clean and disinfect things!

My parents both worked full time. I remember a lot of simple meals. Everything I know about cooking is self-schooled.

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

It's very important to me that people who are actual chefs and other professionals in the culinary world, understand that I'm not, and have never held myself out as being, like a CIA trained chef.

If you learn a recipe, you can cook the recipe. If you learn the technique, you can cook anything.

It's just about asking why. We as cooks historically have been very, very technically proficient but not technically informed as to why we do what we do. Modernist cuisine is about that knowledge.

I love Alton Brown's show 'Good Eats,' about the chemistry of food. It's really thoughtful.

I wanted to write a food book, but I'm not a chef or an expert on culinary matters, to put it mildly.

It's more useful to have knowledge about cuts of meat than a lot of money.

The critic has to do more of what the book critics and art critics have done in the past. Which is give you a context for understanding the restaurant, give you a better way to appreciate it, give you the tools to go in there and be a more informed diner who can get more pleasure out of the experience.

I have been collecting recipes and information for over 20 years, but three years ago, my editor said to me, 'You're a walking encyclopedia of food, so why don't you do an encyclopedia?'

I'm a home cook, and I'm constantly embarrassed by twentysomethings who really do know the mechanics of cooking. How to build a sauce.

All other areas of my life, I'm hopeless. I can't even be certain how to boil an egg.

When you don't know how to cook, you just say, 'I need something quick,' and then you fry something up. Now that I cook, I think, 'Do I want to have fried fish, baked fish, or grilled fish?'