QUOTES by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt
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We host Thanksgiving in my mother's apartment in New York. I don't know if you've seen many New York apartment kitchens, but they are not known for spaciousness.
Quote by -J. Kenji Lopez-Alt
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.
Quote by -J. Kenji Lopez-Alt
Anyone who understands evolution knows that it doesn't necessarily lead from simpler to more complex life-forms. Rather, it leads to life-forms better suited to their environments.
Quote by -J. Kenji Lopez-Alt
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.
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I've tested every imaginable brand of popcorn and popcorn-popping product I could get my hands on.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Now, normally I do all my research on existing recipes before I start working on my own version.
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Like a good grilled cheese, a good quesadilla is one that takes its time cooking, for a thoroughly melted interior and nice, even browning.
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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.
Quote by -J. Kenji Lopez-Alt
It's good to recognize your flaws, but it's also good to recognize your skills.
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Though hot sauce preferences are personal, I'm pretty open to all styles. All except stunt sauces, that is - you know, sauces that are primarily designed to test your machismo.
Quote by -J. Kenji Lopez-Alt
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.
Quote by -J. Kenji Lopez-Alt
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.
Quote by -J. Kenji Lopez-Alt
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.
Quote by -J. Kenji Lopez-Alt
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.
Quote by -J. Kenji Lopez-Alt
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.
Quote by -J. Kenji Lopez-Alt
My job on that first day, like for most green cooks, was official kitchen gofer. Whatever any other cook needed doing, I did it.
Quote by -J. Kenji Lopez-Alt
Symbols have power and meaning and can mean different things to different people at different times and in different contexts.
Quote by -J. Kenji Lopez-Alt
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.
Quote by -J. Kenji Lopez-Alt
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.
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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.
Quote by -J. Kenji Lopez-Alt
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.
Quote by -J. Kenji Lopez-Alt
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.
Quote by -J. Kenji Lopez-Alt
The key characteristics of a tempura-style batter are extreme lightness of color and texture: Good tempura should be pale blond with an extraordinarily lacy, light, and crisp coating.
Quote by -J. Kenji Lopez-Alt
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.
Quote by -J. Kenji Lopez-Alt
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.
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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.
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Kombu isn't the only food rich in glutamic acid, though it may be the richest.
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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.
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The texture of Mexican crema is thinner than that of regular American sour cream, but it also has a more distinct tang to it.
Quote by -J. Kenji Lopez-Alt
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.
Quote by -J. Kenji Lopez-Alt
The higher the surface area-to-volume ratio of a given amount of meat, the more efficiently it will freeze and the less damage it will suffer.
Quote by -J. Kenji Lopez-Alt
Generally, if two ingredients sound like they're going to taste bad together, they're probably going to taste bad together.
Quote by -J. Kenji Lopez-Alt
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.
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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.
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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.
Quote by -J. Kenji Lopez-Alt
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.
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I found, when I was working in restaurants, that I did have this sort of natural curiosity about why things work.
Quote by -J. Kenji Lopez-Alt
Well, my mom is Japanese. She moved to the U.S. when she was a teenager. And so, her food is - she did all of the cooking at home for the most part.
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I mean, my family liked eating, but I was one of those kids who, you know, I hated fish until I was probably in my early 20s. When I went to college, I had no idea how to cook.
Quote by -J. Kenji Lopez-Alt
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.
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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.
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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.
Quote by -J. Kenji Lopez-Alt
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.
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