Slicing a warm slab of bacon is a lot like giving a ferret a shave. No matter how careful you are, somebody’s going to get hurt.
Cooking is an observation-based process that you can’t do if you’re so completely focused on a recipe.
Laughing brains are more absorbent.
The kitchen’s a laboratory, and everything that happens there has to do with science. It’s biology, chemistry, physics. Yes, there’s history. Yes, there’s artistry. Yes, to all of that. But what happened there, what actually happens to the food is all science.
I say grace. I’m a big believer in grace. I happen to believe in a God that made all the food and so I’m pretty grateful for that and I thank him for that. But I’m also thankful for the people that put the food on the table.
A home cook who relies too much on a recipe is sort of like a pilot who reads the plane’s instruction manual while flying.
There are no bad foods, only bad food habits.
I’m a filmmaker who decided to go to culinary school. All I picked up was the fact if I didn’t understand what was going on with every single ingredient, I could be qualifying for, like, the lunch food job at my daughter’s school.
I had kicked around the idea for Good Eats when I was directing commercials.
A pie dough comes together exactly like a biscuit only there is very, very little liquid and no leavening involved. Other than that, the same rules apply. My best advice: handle the dough as little as possible.
If you really love stuffing, wait until the turkey comes out of the oven, add some of the pan drippings to the stuffing, and bake it in a dish. That’s called dressing, and that’s not evil – stuffing is, though.
Now my wife may think she’s locked me out of the kitchen but MacGyver’s not my patron saint for nothing.
So on one hand, honey is an amazingly sophisticated and efficient food source. On the other hand, it’s bee backwash.
I looked for a very long time, knowing that it had to happen, but it took me a long time to find someone with the same background and whatnot and I finally found him.
The only unitasker allowed in my kitchen is a fire extinguisher.
My college degree was in theater. But the real reason, if I have any success in that milieu, so to speak, is because I spent a lot of years directing, I spent a lot of years behind the camera.
I only really fake it anymore with sommeliers who are being really snotty to me and I don’t want to take their grief and so I try to do something to kind of throw them off or put them on the defensive, even if I don’t know what I’m talking about.
Seriously. I’m not very bright, and it takes a lot for me to get a concept – to really get a concept. To get it enough that it becomes part of me. But when it happens I get real excited about it.
Good service can save a bad meal, but there is no level of food that can save bad service.