Category Archives: Ratios

Snickerdoodle Fix

By Michael Ruhlman | Published: September 29, 2011

Snickerdoodles/photo by Donna Turner Ruhlman

It turns the stomach, the kind of email Marlene sent me over the weekend. Marlene who runs the cooking site CooksKorner said that one of Ruhlman's Twenty recipe testers, Matthew Kayahara, had done a 4x recipe of the cookies in the book (page 161), the basic cinnamon-sugar cookie, and it was badly out of whack. Indeed, when Marlene checked what was in the book, she found that the published recipe contained three times the amount of granulated sugar it should have. It's a book writer's nightmare. It also reminds me what a great thing an ebook is or an app that updates on your device automatically. But there is some small recourse. I can announce the error here and publish a correction. Here it is, the tested and true snickerdoodle recipe, based ...

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Also posted in baking, Books, Desserts, Recipes | Tagged cookies, snickerdoodles, twenty | Comments closed

Salted Caramel

By Michael Ruhlman | Published: June 29, 2011

Salt on Caramel = Heaven/Photo by Donna Turner Ruhlman

Been so busy recently have scarcely had time to post. Just got back from taking James to camp :( My chief videographer and dessert innovator. I was in Boston talking salt on Simply Ming. I was in NYC working on confections with Bouchon Bakery head chef Sebastien Rouxel and putting together a pitch for a chef drama with some friends. I came home to find a great new ice cream book from Ohio's own Jeni Britton Bauer! Salt, sweets, ice cream, and an unused photo donna shot for the new book due out in fall: salted-caramel! Of course. Caramel is one of those awesome no brainer dessert sauces that more people ought to do at home. Takes 10 minutes tops, uses inexpensive ingredients, and ...

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Also posted in Desserts, Recipes, sauce | Tagged columbus, ice cream, James Ruhlman, jenis splendid ice cream, ratio, recipe, salted caramel sauce | Comments closed

What makes a great cooking app?

By Michael Ruhlman | Published: May 26, 2011

We've just released the Bread Baking App for iPhone/Pod/Touch

In the headlong rush to turn everything into an app, we have created amazing apps (shazam is truly amazing) and ridiculous apps (won't name names). The publishers of cookbooks and chefs are among them. Some publishers (S&S, my last publisher) are not entering the market; smaller more agile ones are (Chronicle, by chance publishing my next book). But what makes a valuable app? Since teaming up with Will Turnage, VP of technology and invention for the digital media firm R/GA, I’ve been creating apps for the iPad and smartphones and so have been thinking about how to proceed. They take a lot of time and work and so far, return on investment is spotty (except in the games department). My goal is to create only ...

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Also posted in baking, Bread, Bread App, Kitchen Technology, Recipes, Technique | Tagged apple, bread baking basics, droid, iPhone bread app, itouch bread app, ratio, sideways.com, Will Turnage | Comments closed

Chicken-Fried Pork Belly Caesar Salad

By Michael Ruhlman | Published: May 24, 2011

Chicken-Fried Pork Belly Ceasar/Photo by Donna Turner Ruhlman

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). But Sifton, while he makes the unconscionable error of failing to include my Chicken Fried Pork Belly Casear in his ...

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Also posted in Appetizers, Charcutepalooza, Charcuterie, Pork!, Recipes, Technique | Tagged chicken fried pork belly caesar salad, new york times, pork belly, salad, Sam Sifton | Comments closed

Homemade Pasta

By Michael Ruhlman | Published: May 17, 2011

Mixing pasta dough/Photos by Donna Turner Ruhlman

How-to-make-pasta instructions almost always include putting flour on your counter or board, forming a well and cracking your eggs into the well. I almost always wind up with egg white on my shoe when I do this. It only dawned on me while working on the pasta dough ratio for Ratio that this well method was completely unnecessary and that I would never have to wipe egg white off my shoe again. The dough is thoroughly mixed and kneaded till smooth so how you incorporate the eggs isn't critical. I imagine the original reason for the well method was that it saved on cleaning a bowl, but I would rather clean a bowl than my shoe and floor. The well method ...

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Also posted in Pasta, Recipes, Technique | Tagged how to make pasta, Pasta Slideshow, ratio, ratio app | Comments closed

Veal Stock Contest!

By Michael Ruhlman | Published: April 19, 2011

Photo by Donna Turner Ruhlman (click to see more pix on her site)

Regular readers know I’m a veal stock evangelist. Veal stock is one of those magical ingredients that can transform a mediocre cook into an ohmyfuckinggodthisfoodisamazing cook. Really, it’s that powerful. My first piece for Gourmet magazine was about veal stock. My veal stock recipe is in the Gourmet cookbook. In Elements of Cooking, a 242-page book about food and cooking, there is but a single recipe: veal stock. I once asked Jacques Pepin about veal stock and he said he didn’t much make it. Ingredients weren’t at his store in Connecticut. I found this amazing, until I realized something important! It was Jacques Pepin! He doesn’t NEED veal stock. He could probably make Miracle Whip taste good. But for the rest of us? ...

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Also posted in aromatics, Challenege, Donna Turner Ruhlman Photography, Giveaway, ruhlman products, stock | Tagged Aki Kamozawa, Alex Talbot, giveaway, ideas in food, Mr. Veal Stock, pantry, stock, utilization, veal stock, veal stock contest, what do you do with veal stock | Comments closed

A New Ratio: Biscotti

By Michael Ruhlman | Published: March 16, 2011

Biscotti, photo by Donna Turner Ruhlman

Biscotti is the perfect accompaniment mid-morning when I'm into my fifth or sixth cup of coffee. I drink coffee all morning long and I'm able to do so because I don't use one of those horrible drip machines, but rather what I think of as my personal 1956 Lincoln Continental of a coffee machine. The problem has always been that I've never really liked biscotti. Maybe because I've only ever had the stuff that comes in a gift basket from Gallucci's (a store I adore). Or the one time I tried to make it myself. It was rock hard and tasteless, so I figured I'd done a perfect job. But a while back, someone asked for a biscotti recipe, perhaps even a ratio. My able colleague Emilia Juocys was ...

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Also posted in baking, Desserts, Guest Post, Recipes | Tagged baking, biscotti ratio, biscotti recipe, cooking, emilia juocys, ratio, recipe | Comments closed

Bread Baking Month: Multigrain Boule

By Michael Ruhlman | Published: January 3, 2011

Mulitgrain Bread/Photo by Donna Turner Ruhlman

A multigrain bread recipe will open the new year for a reason. Will Turnage (aka @wubbahed), Donna and I finished and submitted to Apple last week a bread baking app for iPad. It's time finally to act on a fascinating email I got from a baker in North Carolina about bagel making. And Shuna privately but with her own inimitable force and clarity begged to differ on my take on English Muffins. And just yesterday a reader emailed, pleading for a good all-purpose gluten-free bread recipe. So it's now officially bread baking month here, when the cold and early darkness are subdued by a hot heart and hands-on kitchen work. (And yes, kneading should be a part of the process—it's part of the goodness of bread, ...

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Also posted in Bread, Bread App, Recipes | Tagged baking bread at home, bread app, how to make bread, making multigrain bread at home, multigrain bread ratio, multigrain bread recipe from scratch, recipe for multigrain boule, whole grain bread recipe | Comments closed

Chipotle-Corn Ciabatta

By Michael Ruhlman | Published: October 15, 2010

Photo by Donna Turner Ruhlman (for more, click photo to go to her blog)

Do we need a recipe for Chipotle-Corn Ciabatta? I'm in the process of developing bread recipes, all kinds, working with sourdough, whole grain, the powerfully flavored rye, but I began with some basic flavored breads. This is one of my favorites because I am crazy for chipotles, and am devoted to corn, which goes great with chipotles. Cilantro on top of that? Good for color but optional if cilantro tastes like soap to you but I love it. This is just the basic 5:3 bread ratio with flavors I love. (For more on basic bread ratio, or any of my ratios, you can of course read this book.) But really, you can flavor it any way you want to. I like ...

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Also posted in Bread | Tagged bread baking, bread ratio, ciabatta | Comments closed

How To Brine Chicken (Quick Brine Recipe)

By Michael Ruhlman | Published: October 7, 2010

Photo by Donna Turner Ruhlman

How to brine chicken, quick chicken brine recipe—why do we need quick? Because usually when I realize I need to brine something it's too late to make and cool the brine, and then go through the hours of brining. I always brine chickens that I intend to fry. Always. Well, almost always, sometimes, the urge comes too fast and powerfully even to do this, but normally I have at least four hours before I need to get the chicken floured and plunked into the fat. Here's what I do when I need to brine fast . As I write in Ratio: The Simple Codes etc., my ideal brine is 5%. That means 50 grams of salt in a liter of water, 1 ounce of salt for every ...

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Also posted in Brines, Chicken, Kitchen Tips, Recipes | Tagged Brine, brining technique, chicken recipe, quick brine | Comments closed

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