Quotes by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt - Page 2

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.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt /
Faster
Meat
Steak
Temperature
Cooked
Gently
Transferred
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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.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt /
Agents
Milk
Powerful
Protein
Sauce
Smooth
Concentrated
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I like to think of deviled eggs as a suit. The egg white and filling are like the jacket and pants - they're the main attraction, and the part that the egg is largely going to be judged by.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt /
Attraction
Filling
Judged
Pants
White
Egg
Jacket
Main
Suit
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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.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt /
Diverse
Japan
Pennsylvania
Political Spectrum
Steel
Immigrant
Spans
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Ham and cheese between two slices of bread do not make a great sandwich. But add some creamy mayonnaise, maybe some bright pickles, and some crunchy vegetables, and we got a decent lunch going on.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt /
Add
Bread
Cheese
Decent
Ham
Lunch
Mayonnaise
Pickles
Vegetables
Bright
Sandwich
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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.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt /
Pizza
Neighbors
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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.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt /
Engaged
Finished Product
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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.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt /
Boston
New York City
City New Living
Eats
City Living New
Ten Years
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Like regular table salt, MSG can also help boost our perception of other existing flavors. Tomato soup with a pinch of MSG tastes a little more tomato-y. Add a dash to beef stew to make it taste beefier.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt /
Beef
Boost
Perception
Salt
Soup
Stew
Dash
Existing
Flavors
Pinch
Tomato
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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.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt /
Buffalo
Lunch
Testing
Wings
Chicken
Recipe
Trap
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Your goal when searing a steak is to make sure that the temperature and evaporation buckets are as small as possible, so that you can rapidly fill them up and move on to the important process of browning.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt /
Buckets
Steak
Temperature
Fill
Move On
Rapidly
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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.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt /
Gross
Bowl
Combine
Mash
Plate
Pour
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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.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt /
Excess
Wipe
Butter
Layer
Rub
Thin
Towel
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There's no question that resting meat helps it to retain juices, though the exact degree to which it does so is up for debate. I've tested dozens of steaks over the years, and I've found significant variation.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt /
Debate
Meat
Tested
Variation
Dozens
Exact
Juices
No Question
Resting
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Batters are made by combining some sort of flour - usually wheat flour, though cornstarch and rice flour are not uncommon - with a liquid and optional leavening or binding ingredients, like eggs and baking powder.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt /
Baking
Binding
Combining
Eggs
Flour
Ingredients
Liquid
Optional
Powder
Rice
Uncommon
Wheat
Though
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So, the first step to opening a restaurant is, don't. Opening a restaurant is a series of putting out fires every single day. I mean, even once you're open, it's still a series of putting out fires. Step one: don't.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt /
Opening
Every Single Day
Fires
First Step
Single Day
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Air is the enemy of most foods and can increase their rate of spoilage. By transferring them to smaller containers, you not only minimize air contact, but you also help keep your fridge organized and easy to navigate.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt /
Contact
Increase
Navigate
Organized
Rate
Foods
Fridge
Minimize
Smaller
Transferring
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The perception of juiciness involves a complex jumble of things, including how quickly juices are squeezed out of meat fibers by our teeth, how much saliva we produce, and the ratio of liquid fat to water-based liquid.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt /
Liquid
Meat
Perception
Saliva
Teeth
Fibers
Involves
Juices
Ratio
Squeezed
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There was a lightbulb moment as soon as I walked in the kitchen and started working. I love the physical action. I love the whole idea of feeding people and bringing people together over food. I love the craft involved.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt /
Feeding
Craft
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For creamy sea urchin pasta recipes, the typical process is to saute garlic, shallots, and chilies in olive oil, then add the pasta and pour in a sauce made from raw sea urchin roe blended with softened butter or heavy cream.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt /
Cream
Garlic
Olive Oil
Pasta
Recipes
Sauce
Sea
Typical
Blended
Butter
Olive
Pour
Raw
Roe
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In those rare cases in which you have a dull knife and cooking to do, but no ceramic in sight, the top edge of a rolled-down car window will work just as well. Even a smooth stone or slab of concrete outside can work in a pinch.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt /
Cases
Concrete
Sight
Window
Rare
Edge
Pinch
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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.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt /
Bottom
Contact
Cups
Harder
Plates
Sharpening
Floor
Metal
Piece
Rim
Stone
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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.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt /
Plans
Calculate
Identify
Promote
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Steel is dense, which means that, for a given volume, it can hang on to more thermal energy than aluminum can. On the other hand, aluminum is highly conductive, which means that it can transfer heat from one place to another very rapidly.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt /
Dense
Heat
Steel
Thermal
Volume
Rapidly
Transfer
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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.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt /
Black
Chile
Noodles
Sauce
Seeds
Soy
Vinegar
Aware
Became
Bowl
Brought
Friend
First
Crisp
Ma
Sesame
Shower
Tossed
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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.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt /
Bits
Milk
Pasta
Scorching
Stirring
Technique
Burnt
Directly
Pan
Route
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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.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt /
Bits
Brussels
Meat
Pork
Toss
Bacon
Crisp
Cured
Oven
Roast
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Traditional cooking techniques inevitably form a gray band of overcooked meat around the outer edges of a steak. Sous vide, thanks to the gentle heat it uses, eliminates that gray band, producing a steak that's cooked just right from edge to edge.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt /
Band
Form
Gentle
Gray
Heat
Meat
Steak
Thanks
Traditional
Cooked
Edge
Inevitably
Outer
Producing
Techniques
Uses
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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.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt /
Function
Adding
Time Your Energy
Batter
Constructed
Direct Contact
Time Energy Your
Fried
Hard Time
Item
Layer
Thus
Tough Time
Transferring
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No matter how many great things you say about Jacques Pepin, there's always more. Through his books and videos, he taught me the importance of technique in the kitchen, but, more significantly, he showed me what it means to be a great teacher and educator.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt /
Teacher
Educator
Great Teacher
Importance
Matter
Taught
Technique
Great Always Me
Teacher Great Me
Books
Jacques
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I love fresh-from-the-vine summer tomatoes almost more than any other food I can think of, and when I come home with a big haul from the farmers market, I'd like those tomatoes to be at peak flavor and texture for the whole week, until I can replenish them.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt /
Flavor
Haul
Texture
Tomatoes
Love Home Food
Peak
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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.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt /
Vacation
Fancy
Memories
Pancakes
Pleasant
Simple
Sunday
Sunday Morning
After
Diner
Once A Week
Relive
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Once you start thinking of different dishes in terms of how they're heated, you quickly realize that the key to successfully pulling off a big meal is to diversify. If you plan on five casseroles and a turkey, you're gonna run out of oven space. Don't do it!
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt /
Dishes
Pulling
Heated
Meal
Oven
Successfully
Turkey
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Tempura chefs are sort of like the Jedi of the cooking world: They must deftly perform with the utmost skill and precision, using extremely dangerous tools, all while maintaining a calm, serene demeanor. It is an elegant technique, from a more civilized time.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt /
Civilized
Demeanor
Elegant
Maintaining
Precision
Serene
Technique
Tools
Chefs
Jedi
Skill
Utmost
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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.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt /
Beer
Buying
Dedicated
Recipes
Temperature
Bath
Cooler
Designed
Pros
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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.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt /
Flavors
Have Fun
Invent
Trend
Textures
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Like broccoli, their closely related cousins, Brussels sprouts benefit from extremely high heat and browning, to the point of a near-char, in order to intensify their sweetness and bring out their unique nutty flavor without turning them overwhelmingly sulfurous.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt /
Broccoli
Flavor
Heat
Nutty
Related
Sweetness
Closely
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I was very involved in back of the house, and finding good people is by far the hardest thing. So, when you're living in a place like New York or San Francisco, where the cost of living is so high, finding great people is very hard. Even finding remotely reliable people.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt /
Cost
Good People
Great People
Hardest Thing
Involved
San Francisco
Good Great People
Finding
Francisco
Good Great Living
Good Great Good People
Reliable
San
The Hardest Thing
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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.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt /
Methodical
Opening
Replicate
Staff
Units
Initial
Menu
Recipe
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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.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt /
Exercise
Offers
Particular
Picky
Theory
Unique
Guided
Express
Foods
Hardly
Opinions
Opportunities
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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.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt /
Energy
Heat
Plenty
Steel
Two
Also
Try
Attached
Between
Constructed
Difference
Layer
Split
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So in order to make a large volume of sausage, you need to have a dedicated refrigerated room, where you can grind and mix and stuff and everything, because if sausage mixture gets too warm while you're forming it, it doesn't bind properly, and your sausages end up crumbly and dry.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt /
Dedicated
Dry
Grind
Sausage
Volume
Warm
Bind
Forming
Mix
Properly
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Every since my wife, Adri, got pregnant with our now-eight-month-old daughter, Alicia, I regularly get asked what my plans are for feeding her. How can someone who writes about food and tests recipes for a living meet the picky and precise needs of an infant without losing his mind?
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt /
Daughter
Feeding
Infant
Losing
Mind
Needs
Picky
Plans
Precise
Pregnant
Recipes
Tests
Wife
Living
Since
Asked
Every
Without
How
Got
Her
His
Meet
Regularly
Writes
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There are a number of things that can cause your fridge to break down or lose power: electrical shorts or surges, clogged ventilation, et cetera. So it's possible that even with your temperature dial adjusted to the correct position, your fridge might be far warmer than it should be.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt /
Electrical
Shorts
Temperature
Adjusted
Correct
Dial
Fridge
Warmer
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Brussels sprouts are unique creatures. When cooked poorly, they can give off a strongly sulfurous aroma that many find unpleasant. But if you can crack through that aroma and release the natural sweetness hiding underneath, then you're rewarded with one of the most delicious vegetables around.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt /
Brussels
Delicious
Hiding
Release
Sweetness
Vegetables
Cooked
Crack
Poorly
Rewarded
Strongly
Underneath
Unpleasant
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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.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt /
Cutting
Guarantees
Meat
Steak
Board
Drop
General Rule
Juices
One-Third
Plate
Resting
Spill
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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.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt /
Desperate
If I Could
Meant To Be
Profession
Server
Summer
Waiter
Accidentally
Meant
Cook
Hire
Prep
Restaurant
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Over the years, I've discovered that lessons in cooking come in two forms. There are the lessons that you never fully learn; skills that you get better and better at, but never quite perfect. Then there are the lessons that you only need to learn once because the results of not following them will literally scar you for life.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt /
Cooking
Following
Lessons
Perfect
Results
Scar
Skills
Life Better Will
Quite
Forms
Discovered
Fully
Literally
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I take my daughter to the San Mateo farmers market every Saturday morning, and despite repeated advice to the contrary, I usually do it on an empty stomach. Bad mistake. I wind up buying far more produce than our small family can eat within a week, which means I'm constantly trying to figure out ways to pack more vegetables into a single meal.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt /
Daughter
Family
Advice
Buying
Despite
Empty
Empty Stomach
Mistake
Produce
Saturday
Saturday Morning
Single
Stomach
Vegetables
Wind
Within
Bad
Constantly
Far
Figure
Small
Market
Meal
Pack
Repeated
San
Ways
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J. Kenji Lopez-Alt Quotes - Page 2

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