Samin Nosrat

Cooking is part artistry, part chemistry.

My general ratios for measuring salt are simple: 1 percent salt by weight for meats, vegetables, and grains, and 2 percent salinity for water for blanching vegetables and pasta.

food can only ever be as delicious as the fat with which it’s cooked.

A few secret drops of lemon juice will produce creamier, more tender scrambled eggs.

For gentle heat on the stove, use a slightly different kind of bain-marie, heated by steam rather than hot water. You don’t need the whole setup known as a double boiler; you can simply place a large bowl over a pot of barely simmering water, in order to gently heat eggs and dairy to room temperature for use in baking, to melt chocolate, to make certain sauces that contain egg, such as béarnaise and hollandaise, or sabayon, a classic stovetop custard. Just as the heat of a bain-marie protects custards from overcooking in the oven, it also protects them on the stove.

The gentle heat of a bain-marie is also handy for keeping starchy or temperamental cooked foods such as mashed potatoes, creamy soups, hot chocolate, and gravy warm until serving, without the risk of burning them

Stewing and Braising

the key to any good stew or braise is the passage of time

it’s time in braising and stewing, along with water and the implicit gentle heat, which allows for the connective tissue in the tough cuts of meat to transform into gelatin, leaving meat tender, luscious, and moist

The difference between the two methods is minor: braises involve larger pieces of meat—often on the bone—and minimal cooking liquid, while stews are made with smaller pieces of meat cooked with chunky vegetables, typically served together in the plentiful cooking liquid