Kitchen Tools
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Recipes
Category Archive
Cooking On the Road (Tools I Traveled With)
If you're on the road and will be cooking in unfamiliar kitchens, what are the essentials you cannot afford to be without? Thomas Keller once told me he always brought three things, kosher salt, string, and his pepper mill. Everything else, a restaurant kitchen was likely to have. But what about when you're traveling to a rental house, as I did last week. A rental house you count on providing you with one crappy non-stick pan, a small plastic cutting board, a cheap pot just big enough to cook a box of spaghetti in, and an array of dull and serrated knives.
Donna photographed the tools I brought with me to Key West to cook 9 consecutive dinners for 16 people. A ...
Posted in Technique, Tools, Travel, Uncategorized 15 Comments
Waiting For Donna
Race week in Key West is a massive boondoggle for me. I wake, look out at the water, drink coffee, write until noon, personal writing, then head to the house where I cook for 12 to 16 people every night.
I straighten the kitchen, throw away a few forgotten red plastic cups with limes floating in them, make a list, do some shopping, prep what can be done ahead (make some sauces, or a stock, pick and blanch green veg). Then I go back to my room at The Galleon, condos right on the docks, and have some coffee and write and re-write some more.
The boys return from being on the water and I put ...
I straighten the kitchen, throw away a few forgotten red plastic cups with limes floating in them, make a list, do some shopping, prep what can be done ahead (make some sauces, or a stock, pick and blanch green veg). Then I go back to my room at The Galleon, condos right on the docks, and have some coffee and write and re-write some more.
The boys return from being on the water and I put ...
Posted in Food Adventure, Food Culture, Food Writing, Travel, Writing Tagged key west, photos, refection, writing 15 Comments
Key West—Gone Fishin’
Working in the morning and cooking in the afternoon, and no time to post! Been having fun cooking nightly for a houseload of hungry sailors on a generous budget. Last night was steak and lobster and smashed potatoes and salad.
Cooking mussels tonight, then wahoo (never cooked before, it will be interesting), saffron rice cooked in lobster stock (that I made this afternoon), asparagus, salad, and grilled baguettes. As they are true to the sailing culture, the crew go in for liquid desserts which makes it easy for the cook!
I also brought the Polyscience immersion circulator, it came in handy for the surf and turf last night. We worked together to get the lobsters all done expediently. I killed them first, Doug Moose separated the bodies and dropped them in ...
Posted in Food Adventure, Seafood Tagged cooking on a boat, crew, I'm on a boat, immersion circulator, key west, lobster, polyscience, seafood, surf and turf 16 Comments
An Amazing Response to Staple Meals
Wow, what an amazing glimpse into what people are eating. A lot of stir fries, a lot of curries, pastas, pot roasts, and eggs, American and international. There are so many ideas in the previous post I feel like I should do something with them, make them more accessible.
Of course, people who read this blog are people who care about food and who love to cook already. My goal has always been to encourage people who don’t cook, to know that cooking is not as difficult as people too often think it is. All these great suggestions are more proof of this.
Thank you all for reading and posting and sharing your meals.
I’m currently in Key west cooking for a ...
Posted in american regional cuisine, Chicken, Main Courses 18 Comments
Ruhlman’s Twenty Giveaway!
What’s Your Best Staple Meal?
[Update 1/16: Winners have been chosen; their dishes are at the bottom of this post.]
Two and a half years ago, I wrote a post on staple meals because I’m fascinated by what people eat at home when they don’t want to think about what to make, what their go-to, middle-of-the-week meal is, because they are invariably quick, efficient, economical, and well, good enough to eat once a week forever. (I think they also tell us a lot about who we are).
The woman who has been cutting my hair for 12 years, three kids 16 and younger, husband not always at home, an “I don’t have a lot of time” mom. She makes chicken legs on a small rotisserie, and will do ...
Posted in Books, Chicken, From Scratch, Giveaway, Kitchen Tips Tagged giveaway, staple meals 603 Comments
Dry-Cured Ham at Home

Ham, dry-cured for eight months, removed from bladder (this photo by iPhone, the ones below are by Donna)
Posted in Appetizers, Books, Butchery, Charcutepalooza, Charcuterie, Salumi Tagged brian polcyn, Craig Deihl, Cutetello, Italy, pork, Salumi 20 Comments
Literary Interlude: Ann Patchett’s Getaway Car
A Review
Looking to check out a new media format, the Kindle Single, I came across Ann Patchett's long essay The Getaway Car.
I bought it for $3 and was reading away on my sleak Kindle Fire moments later. (Impulse purchasing = Danger!)
In this case, the purchase was well worth it. The highly regarded novelist tells her story—every writer has a different one. Patchett, in easy, conversational prose (it kind of reads like a long email to an acquaintance), traces her course from a girl who knew she wanted to be a writer pretty much since she became conscious of being conscious, through college, the Iowa writing program, skipping over a brief marriage, work as a waitress at TGIFridays where she made up stories in her head, to teaching ...
Posted in Uncategorized, Writing 31 Comments
Chicken-Fried-Pork-Belly Caesar Salad
[A fellow Twitter hound tweeted this post from last May and I thought, it's always a good time for more pork belly! Back to regular posting next week—M.R.]
It is time again to bring out The Chicken-Fried Pork Belly Salad, which I created in August 2007 in the midst of my fury at the chief icon of American restaurant food: The Chicken Caesar. Today's post was sparked by Sam Sifton's NYTimes magazine column on the Caesar salad, which addresses the fact that few dishes are truly authentic, and he uses the Caesar salad as an example.
For me putting a chicken breast on a perfectly good Caesar is an emblem of American mediocrity, a lack of imagination, and our fear of food (The Shame of the Chicken Caesar Salad). ...
Posted in Uncategorized 6 Comments
Top Posts of 2011
The economy struggled but cooking and writing about food sure didn't! My colleague Emilia and I decided to have a look at the most popular—or most viewed is perhaps the better phrase—posts from this site this year. By far the most exciting blog event of the year was Cathy Barrow's and Kim Foster's Charcutepalooza. What an amazing thing happened, and all because of that catchy hashtag on Twitter. This would not have happened without Twitter. Congrats to all who participated and who pushed themselves to cook in unfamiliar and often difficult ways! Special congrats to Cecilia, who blogs at One Vanilla Bean, and Peter, who blogs at Cookblog, as the two year's end finalists. Good luck to you both!
Top ruhlman.com posts from ...
Posted in Appetizers, Article, baking, Books, Bread App, Charcutepalooza, Charcuterie, Technique, Writing Tagged 2011, 2012, Charcutepalooza, january bread month, New Years, Top Posts 11 Comments




















