Elements of Cooking: Translating the Chef's Craft for Every Kitchen Book

In The Elements of Cooking, New York Times bestselling author Michael Ruhlman deconstructs the essential knowledge of the kitchen to reveal what professional chefs know only after years of training and experience. With alphabetically ordered entries and eight beautifully written essays, Ruhlman outlines what it takes to cook well: understanding heat, using the right tools, cooking with eggs, making stock, making sauce, salting food, what a cook should read, and exploring the most important skill to have in the kitchen, finesse. The Elements of Cooking gives everyone the tools they need to go from being a good cook to a great one.

The New York Times - Sam Sifton

Ruhlman's Strunk-and-White-style guide to the language and grammar of the kitchen is a great help, particularly to anyone—most of us, really—whose brow would furrow if a date pointed to a menu and asked brightly, "What's salpicon?" (Oh, darling: It's a French term for diced meat or fish bound with a sauce and used as a filling.) A deeply opinionated rundown of the essential knowledge all cooks and food people need