Michael Ruhlman » Kitchen Tools

Twenty/Wood Spoon Giveaway(with butcher’s string attached: need your help!)

Michael Ruhlman — Tue, 07 May 2013 15:07:21 +0000

I'm giving away a personalized Twenty and two awesome Spankettes in return for your ideas. Photo by Donna Turner Ruhlman.

Short version: I ask you, cherished reader, what book would you like me to write next? Update, 5/9, 8 p.m.: A winner has been chosen using randomizer: Aaron Weiss, a journalist and TV news director in Sioux City, Iowa. Thanks for commenting, Aaron, and for cooking with your family! Thank you everyone. Frankly, I was astonished by all the ideas and fascinated by the patterns. Still making my way through the nearly 500 comments. My favorite suggestion, got filtered out due to a spam issue, from regular reader and commenter, Bob Tenaglio: I’d call the book “Time; The Secret Ingredient You’ll Never See On Iron Chef,” and it ...
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Quiche Lorraine

Michael Ruhlman — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 14:00:13 +0000

Quiche is, as Thomas Keller called it, "the sexiest pie." Photo by Donna Turner Ruhlman.
I've been in LA on an entertainment project and to see the opening of my friend and collaborator Richard LaGravenese's new movie Beautiful Creatures. I'd never been to an opening before. But quiche has been on my mind, so I've been using travel time to work on some variations of this infinitely variable fat custard tart. If I had time I'd head to Bouchon in Beverly Hills, which makes perfect quiche. Bouchon, and working on that book, is where I learned that, while America was taught to make quiche in premade pie shells, this deprives the quiche of its true greatness: depth. In order to achieve that voluptuous texture, it has be about two ...
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Home Cooks’ Biggest Disadvantage

Michael Ruhlman — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 14:33:46 +0000

The single biggest problem in home kitchens. Photo by Donna Turner Ruhlman.
Dull knives. It's the single biggest problem in home kitchens. The. Single. Biggest. Problem. It's the main reason cooking seems more difficult than it should be. And I'll say this again, too. Guys and girls, the best Valentine's Day gift you can give your lover/cook, get his/her knives professionally sharpened or buy a good sharpener. Again: Nothing says "I love you" like a really sharp knife. I get mine—I use Wusthof, btw—professionally sharpened at a wet-grind sharpening place, and OpenSky found this astonishingly effective and easy-to-use sharpening "stone," called the DMT Sharpening Stone. (It's not really a stone, but rather a patented diamond-dust coated perforated steel sheet on rubber; see video below.) If you have to saw on a lemon rind to get the ...
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Made in the USA

Michael Ruhlman — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 17:52:54 +0000

From left: Donald Jackson, Ernest Tubbs, and Tavi Gargano, of Vocational Guidance Services, in Cleveland, with our made-in-China tools./Photo courtesy VGS.
ABC has a regular feature called "Made in America," which praises small businesses that make goods here. Advertisers have found that "Made in the USA" is a powerful marketing device. I myself have a feel-good response to anything made in this country. But what does it really mean? How critical is it? Steve Jobs said point-blank, and to the president, about manufacturing Apple products in China, "Those jobs are gone and they aren't coming back." Full stop. (Anyone interested in business and innovation, btw, should read Walter Isaacson's riveting biography of Jobs.) New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman makes the point regularly that the way to energize the U.S. economy is not by creating legions of workers ...
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Holiday Gift Week: Dalton-Ruhlman Products

Michael Ruhlman — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 15:57:51 +0000

Was it two years ago? Three? Donna and I had people over on New Year's Day and an old high school friend, Mac Dalton, said, "Michael, I gotta show you what I do. I make things. What do you want to make?" "This," I said, standing at my stove, and held up a spoon I'd awkwardly bent for basting. "I can make that," he said. And he did. Chef Jonathon Sawyer of The Greenhouse Tavern picked it this year as one of his holiday gift ideas for Food & Wine. I love these spoons. They're elegant just to have in your hand. We immediately started to make more useful kitchen tools. Here's our whole catalogue, available on my site. Another thing happened. I'd partnered with OpenSky, an Internet commerce site that finds really cool products, sends them to me, and asks me if I'd like to recommend ...
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Holiday Gift Week: Small-Ticket Items

Michael Ruhlman — Sun, 25 Nov 2012 14:45:48 +0000

A great gift for the season. Photo by Donna Turner Ruhlman.
Kitchen tools need not be expensive to be valuable. The above Benriner mandoline is one of my most valued kitchen tools for uniform slicing, julienning, and making brunoise (a julienne turned into a dice). By far my most valuable electric device in my kitchen is the hand blender—I use Braun that seems to be unavailable, but I bought this Cuisinart version for my mom ($47) and it works well—these devices all do the job of pureeing soups and sauces, easy whisking, quick mayonnaise, and I make vinaigrettes in the cup attachment, which will even emulsify a great Caesar dressing will pureeing the garlic. Every kitchen needs a scale, the most reliable way of measuring, especially if you're baking (which is why more cookbooks are including, if not leading ...
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Holiday Gift Week: Big-Ticket Items

Michael Ruhlman — Sat, 24 Nov 2012 14:30:40 +0000

Lamb braising in my Le Creuset Dutch oven, which is a fantastic gift to give that special someone. Photo by Donna Turner Ruhlman.
It's time again for my picks for the big-ticket items, those expensive appliances and pots that are game changers, but real investments. I've just started a relationship with Le Creuset, the company that makes the best enameled cast-iron cookware on earth. My go-to pot is the 7-quart Dutch Oven (they're made in France and the company wants me to call them French ovens, which I find interesting since there really should no longer be a nationality attached to the thing; my preferred name for this one is "My Favorite Pot"). It's what I bought my beloved Dad long ago; now, sadly, I have two of them. My other favorite is the braiser, the ...
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Holiday Gift Week: My Favorite OpenSky Tools

Michael Ruhlman — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 14:30:08 +0000

Making a roux. Photo by Donna Turner Ruhlman.
I'm going to devote the next several days to my top picks for holiday shopping for kitchen tools, as I did last year. I'll have a day for big-ticket items, lower-priced tools, and my favorite cookbooks of the season. I'm starting with my favorite tools that OpenSky has sourced for me—first, the higher-priced items and then lower-priced items, and concluding with my top pick for every kitchen on my or anyone's Opensky page. The above Fagor induction burner is killer for so many reasons. It gets pans really hot really fast really efficiently. It's portable so you can use it anywhere that there's an outlet. We used it last night in the dining room to keep the gravy hot. It's a great extra burner for big cooking ...
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Le Creuset Giveaway: The Way to Braise

Michael Ruhlman — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 14:22:39 +0000

We're back with another cooking lesson and Le Creuset giveaway! This time with my favorite cooking method: braising. Why is it my favorite? Because it so definitively expresses what real cooking is: transformation. Great cooking is about transforming something that would be unpleasant to eat into something exquisite. In my view, grilling a steak is not cooking, it's heating. That's not to diminish grilling steaks—one of my favorite activities and foods to eat. It can be done well or poorly, but it doesn't transform food, which is what truly inspires me in the kitchen. To transform pork shoulder into a sausage is cooking. Whether caramelizing onions to develop their sweetness or toasting seasonings in a pan to grind and create a curry, that's cooking. And braising, transforming tough cuts of meat into meltingly tender mouthfuls of pleasure—that is cooking. In the above video, I talk about the ...
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Great Kitchen Tools

Michael Ruhlman — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 14:33:31 +0000

The best, I mean the very best and most useful kitchen tools, are almost always the simplest. Yes, you've got the kitchen workhorse, the standing mixer, the food processor (I almost never use mine), the hand blender (my favorite small appliance). But really what I love most? Two really sharp knives. A thick flat hard surface that gets really hot. A heavy wood cutting board. And these: Rocks and sticks. Point is: fewer rather than more, simple rather than complex. (One clarification in the video that I failed to make clear at the time. For testing the temperature of frying oil, I use the chopsticks I save from Chinese take out, not really nice ones.) Once again, many thanks to Todd Porter and Diane Cu. I called them saints among us in the last "something to say" video. That was wrong. They're angels. Stay here! If you liked this post on I ...
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Pressure Cooker Beans 3 Ways At Once

Michael Ruhlman — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 15:34:25 +0000

American three-bean salad/Photos by Laura Pazzaglia
The guest post on pressure cooking eggs was so popular, I've asked the blogger Laura Pazzaglia of hippressurecooking.com for more posts. Here she comes through with an innovative way to cook three different types of beans, each requiring different cooking methods, simultaneously in a pressure cooker. There's some whacky shit in here, like freezing the green beans. But it's fascinating. Take it away Laura!—MR Beans x 3 by Laura Pazzaglia Pressure cook beans with three different cooking times at the same time with perfect results for each using the three heat-zones: boiling on the bottom (hottest), steaming (hot), and protecting beans from direct contact with steam in a foil wrap (warm).
A pressure cooked bean salad.
HOW: With steamer basket, aluminum foil ...
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Give the Gift of Sous Vide

Michael Ruhlman — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 13:58:21 +0000

Sous Vide cooking manual. Photo by Deborah Jones
Cooking sous vide, wrapped food submerged in warm to hot water, is a relatively new form of cooking now available to home cooks. The method truly does allow for transforming food in ways previously not possible with such precision. The best example of what it can do is short ribs. Short ribs cooked at 140˚ F. for 48 hours results in medium rare to medium meat, still pink, but completely tender. Pork belly cooked for that same time, then chilled is ready to be seared crispy when you’re ready to serve it. Chicken thighs and duck legs the same. Not only does sous vide give you precise control of the internal temperature of meat and fish, it gives you the convenience of preparing food in advance, ...
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Gift Week: Affordable, Useful Gifts

Michael Ruhlman — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 13:30:48 +0000

When it comes to small great gifts, kitchen tools can’t be beat. Items like the above Benriner mandoline, a tool you’ll find in just about every professional cook’s knife kit, is perfect. But there are many many ridiculous small brightly colored kitchen items out there tempting those who don’t cook with promises of ease and convenience . Last year my mom got me these pink silicone trussing bands —I do not recommend! This is the kind of stupid product that makes me crazy. But a great pepper mill, that’s something truly valuable—there are good ones and bad ones. Pugeot’s are excellent. This one from opensky is top of the line with an adjustable grind. The side towels I offer at opensky ...
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Gift Week: The Big Guns

Michael Ruhlman — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 12:30:28 +0000

This week’s posts will be devoted my personal kitchen tool gift guide, starting with the big guns. I got my first KitchenAid stand mixer 20 years ago as a Christmas gift from my mom’s boyfriend, Hap, and it was one of the best gifts I ever got. It’s the most used appliance in my kitchen. I’ve beaten the hell out of it, even flipped it off the countertop while trying to grind something particularly difficult. And it still runs. When Donna and I began doing photography for Twenty, we wanted something a little better to look at and so now use the above “Artisan” 5-quart model (linked to above). If you’re looking for that over-the-top gift for the one in your family who loves to cook, this can’t be beat. It’s what we tested all the ...
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OpenSky Giveaway: Kitchen Essentials!

Michael Ruhlman — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 16:20:01 +0000

The giveaway from OpenSky includes all of the above: a signed copy of my new book, an awesome boos cutting board, all of our wood paddles and offset spoons, the most important knives you can own, and the most awesome and useful pot on the market.
The dastardly minds at OpenSky have created an extraordinary collection of kitchen tools to lure you into their clutches. You are hereby forewarned! But the fact is, they really are offering all of these great tools to one lucky winner who will get all of the above. All you have to do is follow me on OpenSky and you're entered. (For those who already follow me there, you are already automatically entered!) Click here for a chance to win these kitchen essentials at OpenSky. For those of you not familiar with OpenSky, it's ...
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The Birth of a Product—Bamboo Scrubber

Michael Ruhlman — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 14:13:42 +0000

The New Dalton-Ruhlman Bamboo Scrubber/Photos by Donna Turner Ruhlman

This one was all Mac. Mac Dalton who, at a New Years All Day Eat and Drink party at our house, arrived early and shoveled the walk, dry-humped guests at random ("Cut it out, Mac" was the typical response), helped me cook and feed thirty people laughing the entire time, dropped trou to show us his favorite Christmas gift (Scooby Doo boxers), and single handedly did every dish and glass in the house at the end of the night (and at parties like that you use every single glass available). That's Mac.
He did one other thing that day. He said, "Hey, Michael. I gotta show you what I do. I make things. I can make anything, what do you want to make?" I picked up the offset spoon, one ...
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The Trio Spanker Bundle

Michael Ruhlman — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 13:37:28 +0000

One of the amazing and gratifying facets of internet e-commerce and communication, is that when I and my business partner Mac Dalton created the coolest wood paddles around we were told loud and clear that we hadn’t done enough. We had a small one and a humongous one, the awesome Spanker, but there was nothing in between. Now there is, thanks to you: The Spankette, created for readers who asked for it. You were right, and we got it right, we hope: the Spankette is the perfect all-purpose flat-edged wooden spoon for daily cooking, stirring that bolognese sauce, that mushroom risotto, gently scraping the bottom of the pan as you stir to prevent scorching and sticking. And they’re beautiful, as Donna’s photo below shows.
The paddle trio: The Spanker, The Spankette, and The Spankie.
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The Importance of Sharp Knives

Michael Ruhlman — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 14:29:28 +0000

Photo by Donna Turner Ruhlman
OpenSky's knife sharpener offer to people who follow me there forced me to think about sharp knives (I had to write the copy). Normally, I only think about sharp knives when they aren't. Here's the fact: the biggest problem in home kitchens is dull knives. There is no greater hindrance to the person in the house who does the cooking than dull knives. Almost without fail, every friend's kitchen I go to, there is not a sharp knife to be found. The only kitchens I've been in where there are sharp knives, are the big fancy ones where no one cooks. And my mom's. Because she only uses those crappy ceramic knives, so her nice Wusthofs, used on my once- or twice-a-year visits remain pristine. (OpenSky has ...
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Lessons of Guacamole

Michael Ruhlman — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 13:22:17 +0000

All photos by Donna Turner Ruhlman (click them to go to her site)

This is not just a guacamole recipe and preparation, it's a broader lesson about aromatics and acid and using seasonal foods. It's avocado season, so they're really good now! And they will be all summer long. Avocados are one of my favorite fruits; they're kind of like butter, a ready made sauce—all you have to do is adjust texture and add flavors. I recently offered this mortar and pestle to followers on OpenSky (more on OpenSky here), and it makes a gorgeous service piece in addition to being a practical cooking tool. I mash garlic and salt to a paste, then add minced shallot (yes shallots!). Then I add lime ...
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Introducing Ruhlman.com Kitchen Tools!

Michael Ruhlman — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 15:24:07 +0000

Who would have thought I'd have a future with the man showing off his new Scooby Doo underwear in my kitchen at a New Year's Day celebration? Yet here we are! Mac Dalton and I have conspired to create a small number of cooking tools that were either hard to find, non-existent or that we simply love.
The man with the Scooby Doo boxers
This is a big experiment for us. With little capital, we're starting slow to gauge interest and are thus producing in limited numbers. We'll be introducing more new tools as they become available. It's important to say that these are not products some company has asked me to endorse or put my name on. We've created these tools based ...
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