Open your refrigerator, your freezer, your kitchen cupboards, and look at the labels on your food. You'll find 'natural flavor' or 'artificial flavor' in just about every list of ingredients. The similarities between these two broad categories are far more significant than the differences.
You don't need Montreal steak seasoning on everything.
I was eating some candy and looked on the wrapper, and it said made from natural and artificial flavors. You could just say flavors.
Growing up, I thought salt belonged in a shaker at the table and nowhere else.
The key factor in the vodka category is smoothness, and smoothness is what our vodka has.
The Romans brought with them spices such as ginger, pepper and cinnamon, and herbs including borage, chervil, dill, fennel, lovage, sage and thyme, all of which have remained staples of the British kitchen.
I got this powdered water - now I don't know what to add.
As soon as you wanna take away the flavor of anything, just fry it.
You can add things to savoury dishes as you cook, but sweet dishes are more challenging.
My least favorite ingredient to cook with is black pepper.
Stock is everything in cooking, at least in French cooking. Without it, nothing can be done. If one's stock is good, what remains of the work is easy; if, on the other hand, it is bad or merely mediocre, it is quite hopeless to expect anything approaching a satisfactory result.
Sugar is my friend, not my love. I always season sugar with a bit of acid or salt. Listen to your tongue.
I use ginger like garlic. I love it for steaming fish and making barbecue sauces or roasted chicken.
My family makes these vinegars - out of everything from grapes to peaches and cherries. We go through the whole process with the giant vat and drainer, label them, and give them as Christmas presents.
You can easily put together your own favorite spice blend, whether that's a salt and pepper mixture or you're adding herbs to it or Creole spice. Just watch out for the sodium content. That why I encourage you to make your own.
I like rice, as long as they let me put my own stuff on it. You can bring me white rice or brown rice; just let me doctor it up.
The quantity of spirits which they distill in Boston from the molasses which they import is as surprising as the cheapness at which they sell it, which is under two shillings a gallon; but they are more famous for the quantity and cheapness than for the excellency of their rum
I think that if you grind your spices and keep them in small batches, you can use them in endless ways. The key thing is to have a spice mill or a coffee grinder, and to keep your spices cold and in tightly lidded boxes.
Chocolate is one of the backbones of the pastry kitchen. It is one of the most important ingredients in our pantry. It is very versatile, it is complex, and it is extremely temperamental.
There are powdered salts, chunked salts, salts shaped in different ways with various additives to work perfectly with processed foods. All of them are geared to increase allure.
The centuries last passed have also given the taste important extension; the discovery of sugar, and its different preparations, of alcoholic liquors, of wine, ices, vanilla, tea and coffee, have given us flavors hitherto unknown.
Spices, of course, are essential.
I love a bit of garnish.
It's important to salt the tomatoes before draining them because that helps pull out the water. Fresh herbs, some garlic and pepper will also enhance the flavor.
Chefs don't use white pepper just to avoid spoiling the whiteness of pommes puree or bechamel. It has a more peppery aroma, with sharpness and sweetness, too.
