Top 55 J. Kenji Lopez-Alt Quotes

It’s good to recognize your flaws, but it’s also good to recognize your skills.

Many call for cooking pasta directly in milk, a technique that works okay, but it can lead to scorching if you’re not super careful with stirring. I prefer the evaporated-milk route because it ensures a clean pan with no burnt bits on the bottom.

Making sea urchin pasta is a lot like a toddler playing with Play-Doh: There are a million right ways to do it, and most of them are salty and delicious.

My first restaurant job was Knight of the Round Grill.

I have very strong opinions about bagels.

You’d think that being that guy who always has pizza to give away would make you really popular with the neighbors, but I’ve had people turn down free pizza after I’d offered it to them too many times.

The good news is that even if your early crepes have funny lumps and bulges or aren’t paper-thin, they’re still gonna be plenty edible and delicious.

No matter how your breading or batter is constructed, it serves the same function: Adding a layer of ‘stuff’ around the item being fried means the oil has a tough time coming in direct contact with it, and thus has a hard time transferring energy to it.

Pancakes are simple. They’re diner food. They’re what you make on a Sunday morning with the kids. Crepes are fancy. They’re French-bistro food. They’re what you make once a week after your Parisian vacation because you want to relive some pleasant memories.

Kids do gross things. For several months, mine would combine everything on her plate into a single bowl, pour her drink on top of it, then mash it up and eat it with her hands. It didn’t matter what it was.

A tender beef roast with a well-browned exterior is about as easy to pair with wine as a dish can be. You have your pick of just about any medium- to full-bodied red wine, from any place.

I came from a family of scientists. My father is a microbiologist and my grandfather is an organic chemist. I had a very science- and math-heavy childhood.

You can cook a limited number of sous vide recipes in a beer cooler, but if the person you’re buying for wants to start cooking like the pros, they’ll need a dedicated circulator that’s designed to maintain the temperature of a water bath to within one degree.

Book proposals are written like business plans. You need to identify your market, see what the competition is in the space, calculate how many books you think you can sell, work on building a platform to sell them and promote them.

See, tomato skins are really good at keeping tomato juices inside the tomato, but they have one defect: Moisture can escape from the tops, where the tomatoes were attached to the vine.

But if you’re from New York and you grew up here, you have it built into you – what a slice of pizza is supposed to be – in a way that people from outside of New York don’t.

My love of buttered popcorn has never been a secret. It runs deeper than a bottomless jumbo tub, free refills and all. It’s my favorite food.

I had developed the initial opening menu on my own in my home kitchen before we had even hired any sort of kitchen staff. And I’m pretty methodical, so I had a recipe booklet written out, everything done in metric units, something that anybody could look at and replicate.

I wasn’t meant to be a cook. It’s a profession I accidentally fell into one summer between college semesters while looking for an easy job as a waiter. Nobody would hire me as a server, but one restaurant, in desperate need of a prep cook, told me that if I could hold a knife, I could have a job.

Mapo tofu is my favorite food in the world. We always have tofu at home. Like, a lot of it.

Tri-ply pans try to split this difference by sandwiching a layer of aluminum in between two layers of steel. They heat evenly and store plenty of energy. Tri-ply pans are also more sturdily constructed than disk-bottom pans, which have aluminum disks attached only to their bottoms.

I found, when I was working in restaurants, that I did have this sort of natural curiosity about why things work.

Organizing your fridge for maximum efficiency – in terms of food shelf life, food safety, and easy access to the things you reach for most – should be a top priority.

I like to cook my crepes in a little butter, which gives them a nice, golden-brown color and lacy-looking surface. I rub a thin layer into a preheated skillet, then wipe out all the excess with a paper towel.

Most ceramic plates, bowls, and cups have an unglazed rim around the very bottom, where the piece was in contact with the floor of the kiln. This unglazed ceramic is harder than metal and can be used just like a sharpening stone.

Different hot sauces fulfill different needs, and I wouldn’t want anyone to live in a world in which each fridge held only one bottle.

If you want to get really crazy, Brussels sprouts love cured pork. Crisp up some bacon, pancetta, or chorizo in a skillet; save the crisp bits; use the fat to roast the sprouts; then toss them together with the meat when they come out of the oven.

The key to a successful Thanksgiving is planning. Know what needs to get done, when it needs to be done, and how much effort and time it’s going to take you.

A fridge is basically just a big, cold box with a few shelves in it, right? Well, that’s true, but where you store food in the fridge can have quite an impact on its shelf life.

The texture of Mexican crema is thinner than that of regular American sour cream, but it also has a more distinct tang to it.

Ten inches is a very versatile size for a skillet. It’s the ideal vessel for sauteing vegetables for a small family or searing a couple of large steaks, pork chops, or pieces of fish.

Typically, the thinner the gauge of a pan, the more intense the hot and cool spots that form on its interior, which can lead to uneven cooking.

2015 was simultaneously the year in which I consumed the most popcorn of my life and the year in which I received the most praise from my dentist.

People should eat what they like, even if it’s some jalapeno and cheese-covered monstrosity with blueberry cream cheese.

If you want your kids to have fun learning about food, you need to let them explore it in their own way. Let them figure out for themselves what textures and flavors go well together. Who knows, maybe they’ll invent the next French-fry-dipped-in-a-Frosty trend.

Kids want to know things – it’s just a matter of keeping them engaged with cooking in a way that provides these learning points, while also giving them some degree of control over the finished product.

I first became aware of Lao Gan Ma chile crisp at a potluck baby shower in 2016, where a friend brought a bowl of chilled hand-pulled noodles that he tossed with black vinegar, soy sauce, sesame seeds, scallions and a ladleful of the sauce.

Cooking for a family, and specifically cooking to stimulate exploration of new flavors and textures, has led to mealtimes that are both healthier and more exciting.

I am very proud to come from a diverse family. My mother is an immigrant from Japan and my father is from a steel town in Western Pennsylvania. My family spans across the political spectrum.

One of the handiest features of crepes is that you can cook the pancakes all the way through and refrigerate them, to be reheated and stuffed later.

A tempura batter has a lifespan of only moments before the flour becomes too saturated with water and a fresh batter must be made.

Evaporated milk is a highly concentrated source of milk protein micelles – bundles of proteins that can act as powerful emulsifying agents – which help to keep the sauce creamy and smooth.

In its pure crystalline form, MSG can be added to soups, stews, sauces, and stocks to add a rounded, savory flavor.

As a recipe tester, it’s really easy to fall into the trap of eating only what I’m testing. Sometimes this is okay, but other times it means four straight days of Buffalo chicken wings, lunch and dinner.

The higher the temperature you use to cook, the faster energy is transferred, and the less evenly your meat cooks. Conversely, the more gently a steak is cooked, the more evenly it cooks.

Historically, almost every cookbook and chef have taught that when you’re cooking a piece of meat, the first step should be searing.

I started freelancing for Serious Eats while I was still living in Boston. I was born there, grew up in New York City, but went back to Boston for school, and then I lived in Boston for about ten years.

Here’s what I think, though this theory is hardly unique to me: Kids aren’t picky because they really care about particular foods; they’re picky because it offers one of the few opportunities in their heavily guided and chaperoned lives to express opinions and exercise control.

Sometimes even a well-rested steak will lose juices when you cut into it. Sometimes a completely un-rested steak won’t spill a drop. But as a general rule, resting meat for about one-third of its total cooking time guarantees that more juices will stay inside than on your cutting board or plate.