Quotessence
Home / Topics / Cooking Quotes

Cooking Quotes

Browse 2470 quotes about Cooking.

Related topics

FoodCulinaryIfsPeopleThinkingKitchenEatingMenWayKnowsHomeChefArtDinnerWantGivingWellsTasteWorldMealsWineDishesFirstsNeedsShouldTwoYearsMeanRecipesChildrenCooking LoveVegetablesLittlesMadeKindMayThreeFeelsHas BeensIngredientsMeatRestaurantsHome CookingTablesBookBreadDrinkHumansImportantI CanLongLooksSimpleCultureHouseCookbookCookeryGood CookMindTogetherTryingEnjoyHandsMotherShowsCooking And LoveDonePersonsRealUseWritingCooking And EatingDifferentEndsHelpingJoySaidBigsFishesKidsPleasureBeefCuisineFlavorFunnyOnionsSoupAnimalAppetiteCareEggsPlatesSauceBelieveLastsSmellStillsAsksDoeIdeasmore

Cooking Quotes

“Our meals, the dishes we're creating, bring on new sensations---an awakening of sorts for certain people, albeit nostalgia or something else. Food brings on emotions---and we're doing things right if we're bringing them out in people." "Food is about balance of flavors and textures and taste, not emotion." Charles grips my shoulders. "Kate, when you cook, how are you doing it? With anger or with love?" "Probably a little of both sometimes," I gasp. "What are you saying? People are eating my emotions? Like in that movie with Sarah Michelle Gellar? Simply Irresistible? She was a chef, like me, with a flailing restaurant, and there was a rich guy, like you. And a crab." He snickers. "This is real life, not the movies. And I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.”

FoodEmotionsCookingIronyEvokeMovie ReferenceSimply Irresistible
Book:The Spice Master at Bistro Exotique
Create image

“Documenting what I do in the kitchen can feel like the task of recording almost nothing. But it is the nothing I am doing, and do almost every day, and have been doing every day for over a decade. It is the nothing that has been part of almost every social interaction of my life as an adult and through which I have come to know almost all the people I love. It is the nothing through which I have been sustained and transformed.”

FoodCookingFood WritingFood PreparationCooking Quotes
Book:Small Fires: An Epic in the Kitchen
Create image

“...but my favorite already-discovered aspect of critical thinking in cooking is the demand for thought experimentation when trying to innovate with food. For instance, today, I made you that crab salad (although the crab was actually just imitation crab), but anyways, I observed that there was this sweetness to the imitation crab, so I conducted a thought experiment with myself. I thought that the sweetness of the crab made the crab delicate, so I deduced that it would be best to use iceberg lettuce in the salad to enhance the delicacy of the crab, because iceberg lettuce is light and crisp, as opposed to cabbage, which is thicker and has a stronger and most likely overpowering flavor that may be incompatible with the delicacy of the crab. In that same thought experiment, I also thought that bell peppers would go well with the salad, because they also have a sweetness similar to the imitation crab, and they have a fresh flavor to them, so I thought it would compliment the crab. I also added that lite ranch dressing, because I knew that the lightness of the dressing would still be cohesively connected to the overall delicacy of the salad, and plus, a lot of the components in the salad were sweet, so the ranch balanced the ratio of sweetness to savoriness. Then, in the thought experiment, I reasoned that if I sprinkle sunflower seeds on it, the dish would be more elevated because of the nuttiness of the seeds. Overall, because of my experiment, the dish had most of the flavors that you and I wanted, but you did say that you wanted more vegetables to balance out the crab, so while we were eating, I conducted another thought experiment, where I thought, of course, about adding more vegetables, and I also thought about the possibilities of adding lemon juice or some citrus fruit like tangerines into my revised version of the salad.”

FoodCookingCritical ThinkingThought Experiment
Book:The Reformation
Create image

“Torture Cuisine by Stewart Stafford Kitchen death growls, Whipping that cream, Beating those eggs, Burning all the toast. Knifing diced cheese, Drawn, quartered ham, Straining tomato sauce, Crushed-down walnuts. Peeling potatoes naked, Then smashing them up, You say purée, I say mash, Turkey and chicken skewers. © Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.”

FoodCookingKitchenCulinaryIngredientsChefFood WritingCookGordon RamsayFood Poetry
Author:Stewart Stafford
Create image

“Isn't that the restaurant cookbook you used in Japan - the book with the infamous quinoa tambale recipe? I can't believe you remember that. Of course I do! No quinoa available in Japan so you had me smuggle a baggie of it from New Zealand. Don't talk like that [I whispered, as I saw heads turning everywhere.] Even though this is California, not everyone knows what quinoa is. Someone might think it is contraband - No, the truth is it's a biological weapon. [Hugh exploded in great honking laughter.”

FoodCookingFood For ThoughtIronyCaliforniaJapan
Book:The Samurai's Daughter
Create image

“Perhaps these nights in Edinburgh will become more frequent, and I'll be spending evenings alone more often than not. It's an unsettling thought. The Manse is different with Carrie in it. It keeps time better, it hides its other faces, the bathroom door stays closed and the boiler flame doesn't snuff out. It behaves like the mere pile of bricks it ought to be. God, I will have to cook. I head to the fridge and eye up the contents despairingly. It's by no means bare, but everything in it requires effort: chopping or prepping or frying or grilling or possibly all of those; Carrie would know. But the fridge door has been open too long; it begins a low accusatory beeping. I close it and consider my options. Fuck it. I can buy a microwave meal at the village shop.”

FoodCookingChoresMeal Preparation
Book:The Missing Years
Create image

“This may have looked like a cookbook, but what it really is is an annotated list of things worth living for: a manifesto of moments worth living for. Dinner parties, and Saturday afternoons in the kitchen, and lazy breakfasts, and picnics on the heath; evenings alone with a bowl of soup, a or a heavy pot of clams for one. The bright clean song of lime and salt, and the smoky hum of caramel-edged onions. Soft goat's cheese and crisp pastry. A six-hour ragù simmering on the stove, a glass of wine in your hand. Moments, hours, mornings, afternoons, days. And days worth living for add up to weeks, and weeks worth living for add up to months, and so on and so on, until you've unexpectedly built yourself a life worth having: a life worth living.”

InspirationalFoodEatingCookingFood And Drink
Book:Midnight Chicken: & Other Recipes Worth Living For
Create image

“She made it, she made it all, and she made it well. She stood with arms akimbo in her Connecticut garden; she strode her kitchen as a colossus. In our small world, she was the great, ever-giving Mother, maker of mysterious soups, magical stews, peerless fluffy loaves of bread, shiny fruit tarts glowing like family jewels, crispy-juicy brown hunks of roasted meat, vegetables cooked so crunchy-tender that your teeth wept, portages of cream, sauces of jus, mysterious dishes of rice and herbs, salads that slayed you, all from produce grown in my mother’s own meticulously kept garden, or from ingredients sourced with an alchemist’s care. My mother was a witch in the kitchen and a Demeter in the garden. We hated her for it.”

FoodCooking
Book:A Certain Hunger
Create image

“She made it, she made it all, and she made it well. She stood with arms akimbo in her Connecticut garden; she strode her kitchen as a colossus. In our small world, she was the great, ever-giving Mother, maker of mysterious soups, magical stews, peerless fluffy loaves of bread, shiny fruit tarts glowing like family jewels, crispy-juicy brown hunks of roasted meat, vegetables cooked so crunchy-tender that your teeth wept, pottages of cream, sauces of jus, mysterious dishes of rice and herbs, salads that slayed you, all from produce grown in my mother’s own meticulously kept garden, or from ingredients sourced with an alchemist’s care. My mother was a witch in the kitchen and a Demeter in the garden. We hated her for it.”

FoodCooking
Book:A Certain Hunger
Create image

“Trailing veils of steam, Grandma came and went and came again with covered dishes from kitchen to table while the assembled company waited in silence. No one lifted lids to peer in at the hidden victuals. At last Grandma sat down, Grandpa said grace, and immediately thereafter the silverware flew up like a plague of locusts on the air. When everyone's mouths were absolutely crammed full of miracles, Grandmother sat back and said, "Well, how do you like it?" And the relatives, including Aunt Rose, and the boarders, their teeth deliciously mortared together at this moment, faced a terrible dilemma. Speak and break the spell, or continue allowing this honey-syrup food of the gods to dissolve and melt away to glory in their mouths? They looked as if they might laugh or cry at the cruel dilemma. They looked as if they might sit there forever, untouched by fire or earthquake, or shooting in the street, a massacre of innocents in the yard, overwhelmed with effluviums and promises of immortality. All villains were innocent in this moment of tender herbs, sweet celeries, luscious roots. The eye sped over a snow field where lay fricassees, salmagundis, gumbos, freshly invented succotashes, chowders, ragouts.”

FoodCookingDinnerGrandmaSpeechless
Book:Dandelion Wine
Create image

“Now through her aching, Helen felt a flicker of peace as though Mum was there, placing a hand on Helen’s shoulder and saying, “Come now. The world is always a brighter place on a full stomach. Help me—it will go faster that way.” In the stillness of the kitchen they used to work, Helen’s light hair and Mum’s dark bent over the bowl. Mum would not prod or fill the silence with chatter, but used the recipe to call Helen back to herself. She would pop a currant into her daughter’s mouth, or gently instruct her to smell the cinnamon, and for Helen, the world would come into focus.”

MotherFoodAnxietyDaughterCookingCalmMotherhoodSensesCalmnessPanic Attack
Author:Corinne Beenfield
Create image

“Now, I was unemployed in Beijing, and my former ambition seemed like the pollution that smudged the sky, a great green cloud composed of a billion different particles of fear and uncertainty. Without a career I hardly knew who I was anymore.”

HistoryFoodTravelEatingCookingFranceBeijingTravelogue
Book:Mastering the Art of French Eating: Lessons in Food and Love from a Year in Paris
Create image

“Yet, running just beneath the surface of food industry feminism was an implicit anti-feminist message. Then as now, ads for packaged foods are aimed almost exclusively at women and so reinforced the retrograde idea that responsibility for feeding the family fell to mom. The slick new products would help her do a job that was hers & hers alone.”

WomenFeminismFoodCookingAdvertising
Book:Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation
Create image

“Is there any more feudal, soul eradiating experience than standing before the little window on a microwave oven watching the carousel slowly revolve your frozen block of dinner? Time spent this way might be easier than cooking but it is not enjoyable & surely not ennobling. It is to feel spiritually unemployed, useless to self & humanity.”

TimeFoodCookingHomemadeFoodie
Book:Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation
Create image

“Think you're not an artist? Of course you are! Everyone has something special to offer. Go for it! Creative expression is what makes a meal, in a word, Beautiful. Go ahead and find your creative voice in food and feel the power it has to transform your dining experience.”

ArtFoodCookingFoodie
Book:The Plantpower Way: Whole Food Plant-Based Recipes and Guidance for The Whole Family: A Cookbook
Create image