This is what people don't understand: obesity is a symptom of poverty. It's not a lifestyle choice where people are just eating and not exercising. It's because kids - and this is the problem with school lunch right now - are getting sugar, fat, empty calories - lots of calories - but no nutrition.
Recipes tell you nothing. Learning techniques is the key.
I think the most effective way to run a kitchen is to teach, not to just yell.
Every chef should have an understanding of pastries or desserts.
Once you have your basics down, you can start breaking the rules.
I know from personal experience, if a chef yelled at me in a kitchen, the first thing I'd want to do is hit them with a pot.
It's my belief that cooking is a craft. I think that you can push it into the realm of art, but it starts with craft. It starts with an understanding of materials. It starts with an understanding of where foods are grown.
In an ideal world for me, school lunch would be free for everybody.
People are not hungry because we dont produce enough. People are hungry for political reasons.
Most cooks try to learn by making dishes. Doesnt mean you can cook. It means you can make that dish. When you can cook is when you can go to a farmers market, buy a bunch of stuff, then go home and make something without looking at a recipe. Now youre cooking.
I think steak is the ultimate comfort food, and if you're going out for one, that isn't the time to scrimp on calories or quality.
Men with shaved heads are always better. Just ask my wife.
Too often, chefs just want to experiment - they want to use liquid nitrogen before they know how to use heat.
Asian food is very easy to like because it hits your mouth very differently than European food does. In European food, there may be two things to hit - maybe sweet and salty, maybe salty-savory, … but Asian kind of works around, plus you have that distinct flavor that’s usually working in Asian food.
You have to know the classics if you want to cook modern food.
'Chef' doesn't mean that you're the best cook, it simply means 'boss.'
One of the first jobs I ever had was opening clams in a seafood restaurant, so I'm pretty quick at it.
Im not a fan of grilling meat, since that tends to dry it out, and I find grill marks leave a bitter taste. A good steak house will offer different options for preparation, and I would ask them to broil or pan-roast the steak and finish it with butter. It ends up a dark chocolate color and stays very juicy.
I have very good knife skills. I learned to butcher on my second job - I was 18 years old. Every other day we would break down six legs of veal.
We're adults. We're the ones who should teach the kids what's good to eat. I don't think the government should ever regulate what we eat at home, but we're feeding them in school with tax dollars. Quite frankly, if my tax dollars are being spent to feed kids, I'd rather feed them better food.
I know how to make sausage, and now that I've seen how laws are made, I'll stick with sausage.
I hate okra and grated mountain yam for the same reason. They're both slimy.
With conglomerates selling companies to liquidators, who close down plants and move to non-union areas, it's about time progressive union leaders step in to stop such job-losing tactics... ESOP should become a part of future bargaining packages!
I'd like to see 'Top Chef: Amateur'. Sometimes we have an amateur chef on the show and they just can't cut it against the pros but there are some great stories there.
A couple of months ago, I was down in Florida for the Food and Wine Festival. And this journalist grabbed me and said, 'How does it feel to be a TV guy? You're no longer in the restaurant business.' And I laughed. I asked him, 'How long do you think it takes me to do a season?' He said, 'Well, 200 days.' And I was like, '200 days? Try 20!'
