My Books

My first book, a year in the life of the traditional all-boy day school I attended that actively advocates for single-sex education for boys and young men. Ruhlman "follows a diverse handful of students and a couple of standout teachers as a novelist would, to establish major characters, and the crises and themes of the year develop like plot lines." NYTimes.

I spent a year at the Culinary Institute of America learning to cook, then wrote a reported memoir about it. I had no idea at the time it would change my life.

Chosen by The NYTimes as one of the 25 most influential cookbooks of the past 100 years, The French Laundry Cookbook is a treasure trove of cooking technique, philosophy, recipes, and photography from one of the country's most celebrated restaurants and chefs.

A narrative of three American chefs, the story of their lives as chefs, and an exploration of American culinary culture. Anthony Bourdain described it as "an adventure story, a hold-your-breath-while-you-turn-the-page thriller that's also an anthropological study of the culture of cooking."

An exploration of the people who build plank-on-frame boats and the ancient art and craft of building wooden sailing vessels, via a year at the Gannon & Benjamin boatyard on Martha's Vineyard.

I joined Le Bernardin chef Eric Ripert on four seasonal destinations to explore cooking and art. More than just a cookbook!

I spent a year in an elite pediatric cardiac surgical unit led by a virtuoso surgeon, Roger Mee, to see inside the harrowing world of repairing children's hearts. Caroline Leavitt called the book "astonishing" and "thrilling" in The Boston Globe.

I wrote this book with Thomas Keller and Jeffrey Cerciello, which explores the French Bistro cuisine prepared by this elegant, casual restaurant.

Brian Polcyn and I wrote this book on the craft of charcuterie--pates, terrines, sausages, cured meats--in 2005, and it remains the "bible" of this culinary specialty, according to chefs throughout the country.

Fascinated by houses, suburbs and their development, I wrote this account of renovating a century-old house in Cleveland Heights, one of the first streetcar suburbs in the country.

The third in my "of a chef" series explores the ongoing reach of chefs in our food culture.

This is an opinionated glossary of cooking terms and includes eight essays on the craft of cooking aimed at enhancing any cook's skills in the kitchen.

The third of the Thomas Keller cookbooks, this explores and codifies the techniques and temperatures used in cooking sous vide.

Michael Symon gained fame in Cleveland at his restaurant, Lola, which I wrote about in The Soul of a Chef. He would go on to open many restaurants and become beloved television host. This is his first cookbook.

The fourth in the Thomas Keller series focuses on home cooking, with recipes from his restaurant, Ad Hoc. It won the 2010 James Beard Award for general cooking cookbook.

When you understand that recipes don’t contain a list of ingredients, but rather amounts of one ingredient relative to the others, you will have opened up a new world of cooking. Understanding the ratios of our basic preparations—bread is 5 parts flour, 3 parts water; a pie dough is 3 parts flour, 2 parts fat, 1 part water, and so on—allows you to cook without recipes, which leads to infinite variations on your favorite preparations.

I describe and define the 20 basic techniques that you need to cook anything. Whether it’s how to use an ingredient (salt, water, egg) or an action (sauté, braise), or a general category (soup, sauce)—understanding these “techniques” is the first step in becoming a great cook. Winner of the 2011 James Beard Award for general cooking.

I have been a proselytizer of fat, in our fat phobic country, for years. But my expertise had been limited to butter, pork fat, and duck fat. When my old neighbor, Lois Baron, announced that the High Holy Days were near and she must go make her schmaltz, I knew it was time to explore this old and valuable fat with Lois as my guide. This is a short book on how to make schmaltz, along with ten traditional recipes and ten contemporary ones. 

The follow-up to Charcuterie, Salumi dives deep into salting and dry curing all parts of the pig as it has been done in Italy for millennia: how to cure your own pancetta, coppa, guanciale, lomo, prosciutto, and salami.

The fifth in the Thomas Keller’s series focuses on all the preparations in the baker’s craft, from bread to pastries. Each recipe is a master class in baking.

The hardest chapter to write in Ruhlman’s 20, was the egg chapter—there were simply too many uses for this ingredient, this miracle in the kitchen. So I decided to explore all the ways we use eggs in the kitchen, breaking it down in a flow chart: cooked in shell or out, whole or separated, yolk only, white only. More than 75 recipes exploring the different ways we can use the egg. (A James Beard Award finalist.)

The first in a series of how-to books for novice cooks on the basic cooking techniques, this one on roasting.

The second in a series of how-to books for novice cooks on the basic cooking techniques, this one on braising.

My first fiction, this collection of three novellas explores love and marriage in middle-age.

The third in a series of how-to books for novice cooks on the basic cooking techniques, this one on sautéing.

This nonfiction book explores the modern-day grocery store, an astonishing creation. All the food you could ever want under one roof, 40,000 grocery stores from coast to coast. How does it all get there? How do grocery stores operate, how do they make money, why is the milk always at the back of the store (not why you’ve been led to believe)? Here I try to wrap my arms around a kind of business that most of us take for granted, and why we shouldn’t.

My third collaboration with Detroit chef and all-around BMF, Brian Polcyn, dives deep into three subspecialties of the craft of charcuterie: how to make pâté, how to confit, and how to make rillettes.

Chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten transformed American cuisine with his Asian-infused new French Cuisine, most notably at Restaurant Lafayette in NYC. Hailing from a middle-class family in Alsace, France, he has gone on to build nothing short of a restaurant empire. This is the story of how he did it, and what he believes all cooks should know.

The sixth book in the Thomas Keller series illuminates the dishes from Keller’s two Michelin 3-star restaurants: The French Laundry in Yountville, CA, and per se, in New York City. As with all the books in this series, photography is by Deborah Jones and worth the price of admission.

Alsatian chef, Gabriel Kreuther, made a huge splash when he opened The Modern at NYC’s MoMA museum. He went on to create his eponymous restaurant which features high-end Alsatian cuisine. This cookbook explores both the “peasant” cuisine of his homeland as well as the extraordinary dishes served at his Michelin-starred Manhattan restaurant.

I choose 10 classic dishes (roast chicken, lasagna, paella) and show not only how to perfect them, but also the many techniques we learn about cooking when we understand, in-depth, a single dish.

The craft-cocktail world is now awash in exotic and intricate cocktail recipes. But the classic cocktails are what we invariably return to. This book looks at the main families of cocktails and the ratios (recipes) that simplify these classics.

This Young Adult novel (for ages 15 and up) tells the story of Theo Claverback, a privileged jock in 1980s Shaker Heights, OH, who breaks his leg. The break leads him to pursue work in the kitchen of an upscale French restaurant. Here he not only falls in love with a girl, he falls in love with cooking and restaurants, even one controlled by the mob. 

My fourth collaboration with Detroit chef, Brian Polcyn, this book is all about savory pies—meat, fish, and vegetable pies—an emerging American craft.