Top 60 Claire Saffitz Quotes

I made my first Yule Log as a culinary student in Paris, complete with the traditional chestnut filling, silky chocolate buttercream, and almost-too-adorable mushrooms. Since then, I’ve tweaked and updated both the recipe and the process – and I’ve definitely learned tips and tricks to make it easier.

Generally I don’t find that basting does a lot of anything! I think what makes the most difference is treating the turkey ahead of time with a dry brine. It really does provide a very moist result.

For baked goods where lightness is a prized attribute – almost all cakes, some cookies – it’s important to start with room-temperature butter.

Of all the quirky, inexplicable, reindeer-embellished holiday traditions out there, making your own Yule log might take the cake.

Even as a little kid I knew that spinning a dreidel on the floor for literal pennies was a sad consolation for the joys of trimming a Christmas tree.

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.

No stuffing is complete without chopped onion and celery – they’re the building blocks. If you want to deepen the flavor, consider adding leeks, sage, and/or hardy greens.

The problem with traditional pie weights is you never have enough and they’re expensive. Common substitutes like dried beans just aren’t heavy enough to do the job. Our genius solution? Small steel balls that fit inside ball bearings and that can be purchased at any hardware store.

Canned chickpeas have terrific range, which is why I make sure I always have at least a can or two lying around at home. They puree easily into a smooth and creamy hummus or crisp into crunchy little nuggets as a component of a sheet tray dinner.

Sometimes there is dogma in baking and sometimes there is not – you just have to know when to break the rules and when to follow them.

I have made cassoulet more times than is advisable – first in culinary school, once with a friend for a dinner party, and at least half a dozen times in the BA Test Kitchen.

When I was a kid, my idea of heaven on a hot summer day was fresh cut-up watermelon, Breakstone’s cottage cheese, and a sprinkle of salt.

I love the Grub Street Diet. I am particularly fascinated by what people eat; I think it says a lot about people.

Usually, turkey burger recipes result in something so lifeless and tasteless that drowning one in ketchup (that most perfect and delicious of condiments) doesn’t help much. Part of the problem is calling this food a ‘burger’ at all, because it’s never going to satisfy the way juicy, salty, medium-rare beef will.

As a kid, I was overly studious, overly serious, very academically driven. It was important to me on a cellular level to do well. And then I went to college at Harvard, and I relaxed a little bit.

Why crown your own rack of pork when a butcher could do it for you? To start, it’s way easier to brine two individual racks than a giant round crown (and yes, you definitely want to brine the meat).

I brought babkallah to a party and people freaked. They hovered over like it was a newborn baby, oo-ing and ah-ing. Its beauty didn’t prevent them, however, from devouring the entire thing within minutes. It makes a lovely hostess gift, as it’s both novel and delicious.

Even though they have long shelf lives, chemical leaveners will lose potency over time. If the only box of baking soda you have around is the one that’s been absorbing odors in your fridge for the last few years, it’s probably a good idea to get a new box just for baking.

When making tartare, keep everything chilled as you go, including the mixing bowl and plates. Presentation matters, too: The meat should be fridge-cold when served and cut as precisely and neatly as possible.

You must pre-bake the bottom crust of a custard pie, but this is a tricky step in the pie-making process. Without the presence of filling the crust can slump down into the plate as it bakes, necessitating pie weights to help keep its shape. Then, once you remove the weights to blind bake the crust, the bottom puffs.

Heaven is a bowl of creamed herring and onions. Ditto whitefish salad. But the real object of my desire for all things gilled is gefilte fish.

Cooking has always been work.

When making any pureed soup, don’t blend all the liquids and solids together at once. Hold back some liquid at first and use it to thin the soup as needed. You can always add more liquid, but there’s not much you can do to fix a too-thin soup.

Serve as a sweet brunch treat or with tea in the afternoon. No one would turn it down as dessert after a big holiday meal, either. You’ll find there’s no bad time for babkallah.

Canned chickpeas are my tried-and-true pantry fallback for those days where I get home late with no game plan and no energy to cook. More than just about any other canned bean, they retain their shape and texture really well.

Having those people that you trust implicitly is so important.

The mild creaminess of cottage cheese makes it a perfect blank canvas for almost any flavor combination, savory or sweet. Since it’s so soft, I usually try to give it some textural contrast in the form of something crunchy. Brightening it up with acid is also a must.

Turkey burgers receive a fair amount of disparagement, and it’s not unfounded.

It’s the ingredients you choose (Chorizo? Sure! Rye bread? Why not?) that will make your stuffing stand out.

I don’t discriminate when it comes to dumplings. Give me a generous plate of pretty much anything wrapped in a starchy, doughy casing and I will dive in with pleasure. But one star in the dumpling universe shines brighter than the others: the humble pierogi.

True marshmallow – and I’m not talking about those ones from a bag – is nothing more than an Italian meringue set with gelatin.

Pierogies are textbook comfort food.

Cassoulet requires a few ingredients you won’t find in the typical supermarket.

Always bake in the center of the oven. A pan placed too close to the bottom of the oven will receive more heat radiating from the oven floor, baking it faster from the bottom. The reverse is true of something baked on the top rack. Always bake in the center for the most even baking and browning all around.

Don’t get attached to any one idea. Nothing is too precious.

Butter that is too warm won’t aerate properly when beaten with sugar, leading to a decidedly un-fluffy result.

Pate a choux is a mixture of simple ingredients – flour, water, milk, eggs – but the proper technique is essential. Unlike other doughs, the pastry is pre-cooked on the stovetop before being enriched with eggs, piped, and baked.

Because deep-frying requires a high volume of oil, it’s okay to reuse the oil a couple of times for economy’s sake. When the color or smell of the oil starts to change, it’s time to discard.

For a while I thought I would work in museums, so my first job after college was an internship at the 9/11 Museum. I quickly found out that I did not want to do that. So I signed up for culinary school, and directly following culinary school, I went to graduate school at McGill.

The holy grail of recipe developing is the recipe that turns out so much more impressive than you would expect from the effort it took to produce.

The first time I ever deep-fried something, I was terrified. I was making yeasted jelly donuts, and I was so nervous that I fried them, unblinking, with a pounding heart and sweaty palms.

I know very little about my great grandparents, who came through Ellis Island in the early twentieth century, settled in Baltimore, and spoke only Yiddish.

For reasons that aren’t quite clear I derive a weird and almost inappropriate pleasure from making a cake that looks like a decomposing log. Essentially, that’s what a Buche de Noel is supposed to look like, complete with meringue ‘mushrooms’ poking out of the chocolate buttercream ‘bark.’

People are always asking me baking questions – from strangers DMing me on Instagram, to friends I don’t otherwise talk to anymore texting me, to my own mother and sister calling me on the phone demanding answers.

Gluten – the elastic strands that give bread its chewy texture – forms when certain proteins in flour interact with water, which is desirable in bread, but not tender cake.

Deep-frying properly requires you to keep the oil at a precise temperature range depending on the food. If you’re frying in more than an inch of oil you really should invest in a deep-fat thermometer so you can monitor the temperature and know when to adjust the heat.

If anything betrays my Ashkenazi Jewish heritage – besides the Casper-the-friendly-ghost-like skin tone – it’s my love of fishy fish.

When the urge to bake strikes, it strikes hard and fast. You want to get in the kitchen and start breaking eggs right away, so it can be real buzzkill to find out that the recipe you’re using calls for room-temperature butter.

Only advanced bakers should endeavor to adapt non-vegan recipes to be vegan, or gluten-full recipes to be gluten-free. There are all sorts of tips and tricks when it comes to subbing vegan ingredients for eggs and dairy, but it’s tricky to say the least.