The Elements of Cooking

New York Times bestselling author Michael Ruhlman deconstructs the "essential knowledge all cooks and food people need" (The New York Times Book Review) in this indispensable cooking reference for home cooks, serious food lovers, and aspiring chefs, revealing 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.

Michael Ruhlman is the author of award-winning cookbooks and nonfiction narratives. He is the author of chef Thomas Keller’s seminal The French Laundry Cookbook as well as the highly successful series about the training of chefs: The Making of a Chef, The Soul of a Chef, and The Reach of a Chef. He is also the author of The Elements of Cooking and Ratio. Ruhlman has worked at The New York Times and as a food columnist for the Los Angeles Times. He has attended the Culinary Institute of America and is the author of eighteen books—about food and cooking, and also such wide ranging subjects as a pediatric heart surgeon and building wooden boats. Michael lives with his wife in New York City and Providence, Rhode Island.