Michael Ruhlman | Translating the Chef’s Craft for Every Kitchen

Happy Friday, all. Reposting this cocktail as I’ve been ordering it recently and enjoying it immensely. It remains a perfect cocktail for a chilly spring evening. I love how various flavoring components (bitters, vermouths) become different cocktails when you change the spirit. How the Manhattan becomes a Rob Roy when you change the bourbon to scotch (as opposed to a lame-sounding “Scotch Manhattan”), or how a Martini becomes a … um, never mind about that #lostcause (Paulius, can we hope for Darwinian selection here?). I love the elasticity of a solid cocktail, how the addition of apple brandy turns a Clover Club into a Pink Lady. Here, one of my favorite cocktails, the Negroni, becomes a Boulevardier when bourbon replaces the gin. A couple of recent essays (Tmagblog, Imbibe) have wondered why this cocktail isn’t Read On »

It’s bacon time again! I don’t know why but I’ve been getting a lot of bacon questions in my email recently, so thought I’d address a few issues I haven’t before. Of course, I’ve long commented on the fact that curing your own bacon is no more difficult than marinating a steak. Mix all the ingredients together and put them in a plastic bag with the meat. Use the recipe below. The aromatics, the bay leaves and everything else below can be considered optional. But there are other strategies. You could make a brine if you feel more comfortable with that. For those of you concerned about reaching the right salt and pink salt levels, you could use a technique called equilibrium brining, which I first read about in Nathan Myhrvold’s Modernist Cuisine. To Read On »

Mom’s Day is important. Dads, sons, and daughters, undervalue it at your own peril. It’s May 8th. For those of you with wives and moms who love to cook, Mac Dalton and I have put together a special bundle we think all cooking moms will appreciate (no meat grinders and stuffers and smokers!). Moms, if you’re the ones reading this, feel free to send to husbands (we can be slow on the uptake). We’ve decided to include the bamboo scrubber for the giver of this gift—if Mom is doing the cooking, you’ll find this comes in handy after. The Mom’s Day Bundle— 2 spankettes (the best wood spoons EVER) Badass (aka Egg) spoon A set of offset basting-tasting spoons A small bamboo scrubber (no more sponges gunked up with cheese, dough, egg, scorched milk!) An Read On »

Another dish I love from Ruhlman’s Twenty, is perfect for early spring when the nights (here at least) are still cool. I love it for its counter-intuitiveness—boiled beef tenderloin? Actual poached to rare and served in cooking liquid flavored by the root vegetables (celery and beef are always a great pair). But what makes this dish special is the lemon vinaigrette, seasoned with garlic, cracked coriander seeds (it’s fine to leave some seeds whole, as they give an intriguing crunch and flavor burst), and the amazing umami ingredient, fish sauce. I began making a version of this in the early 1990s after reading a similar recipe in The New York Times, but I can’t seem to find it. It’s important to use fresh beef stock; anything else would ruin the elegant flavor and texture of the Read On »

Reposting this method because, well, just the name of the dish is inspiring: butter-poached shrimp. Butter-poached shrimp and grits. Mmmm. Butter-poached lobster, not uncommon in French haute cuisine, was popularized in America by Thomas Keller in The French Laundry Cookbook and at that restaurant. “Lobster loves gentle heat,” he told me then. It’s not much of a leap for the thrifty-minded cook to reason that shrimp, too, love gentle heat. That’s why, in the butter chapter of my book Ruhlman’s Twenty, I showed how to use butter as a cooking medium (one of the many amazing ways butter can be used as a tool). This dish is absolutely killer. The shrimp stay very tender, rich and tasty with the butter; the grits are then enriched with the shrimp butter. Leftover butter can be used to saute shrimp Read On »

The Boulevardier

Bacon Time

Poached Beef Tenderloin

Shrimp & Grits