Learn the ratio and the reason, not just the recipe.
In a Turkish shepherd's salad, there is three times as much oil as lemon. In a Persian Shirazi salad, there is three times as much lemon as oil. On this site, every number comes with its reason. If you know the reason, you can decide without a recipe.
Continue where you left off
Chef's Essentials
The numbers a chef keeps in mind, and the reasons behind them, on seven short pages. Each card is one page: its most used number and the questions it answers.
0.8–1.2%salt by weight of the dish
Salt ratios and salt math
Open the page →3 : 1oil : lemon in shepherd's salad
Basic ratios and household measures
Open the page →74 °Csafe internal temperature for poultry (165 °F)
Heat thresholds and food safety
Open the page →Salt firstthe first check when a dish tastes wrong
Fixing taste and the order of ingredients
Open the page →1 cmthe size of a dice cut
Cutting, doneness and timing
Open the page →7 resultsfour for texture, three for flavor
What do you want? From result to technique
Open the page →2× → 4×twice the thickness, four times the time
Kitchen math
Open the page →One pattern, six ratios
This is how the rules in Chef's Essentials work in recipes. Six salads follow the same pattern: chopped vegetables, salt, acid and oil. What changes is the ratio of oil to acid, and when the ratio changes, the taste of the salad changes with it.
Every page opens with a note
The note gives no instructions. It tells you why the page was written.
An egg never hides what the fire said.
The last thing a pilaf asks of you is to do nothing.
Salt does the same work every time. The choosing belongs to the cook.
Recently added and up next
Finished work is listed with its date. Upcoming work has no date, because we do not promise what is not done.
Recently added
Up next
- Start, week 3: chicken sauté and green beans in olive oil
- Start, week 4: white bean stew and milk pudding
What else is on the site?
Every section below is live. The list grows as new sections go live.