Daniel Humm Quotes

I use the confit principle for chicken thighs. I season them with herbs and garlic, let them marinate, and then cook them in chicken fat.

There's no way I'm going to stand up for bad ingredients. We love seasonal ingredients. It's a false dichotomy to say that modern cooking is at odds with that, but some people want to have a great ingredient and no technique.

I pride myself in figuring out how to elevate a dish with a little preserved lemon or, then, a sprinkle of Maldon salt.

Manage the heat, let the meat cook, and you'll get fantastic results.

'Iron Chef America' is so real. Imagine putting on television the whole process of making that food, the technique. It's all about technique. It doesn't even matter if you show the faces sometimes.

Eating is the secret to good cooking.

Simple ingredients can be used to make elegant dishes with just a little extra attention to detail.

Good-quality nuts, toasted in a little butter and salt, make a magical addition to many salads.

I always pan-fry sprouts - it retains texture and enhances flavour.

Undercook swordfish, and you get rubber. Overcook it, and you lose the fat and succulence.

I always have a good quality extra virgin olive oil. A cheap quality oil will end up cheapening your dishes. And I love sweetening my dishes with maple syrup. It has a bit of a bitter kick at the end that works wonderfully in savory dishes.

I concentrate in my work on preserving and displaying the original flavor from each ingredient in a dish.

I like to cook things very slowly.

Blanching the cloves removes the harsh and bitter bite of raw garlic.

If you don't treat an ingredient and its flavors with respect - if you drown it in oil, for instance - you'll spoil it.

The simpler the food, the harder it is to prepare it well. You want to truly taste what it is you're eating. So that goes back to the trend of fine ingredients. It's very Japanese: Preparing good ingredients very simply, without distractions from the flavor of the ingredient itself.

Since truffle oil and caviar aren't always in the budget, learning to tweak and enhance just a few ingredients and flavor combinations can help you transform those ordinary ingredients into the extraordinary!

No matter what it is you are cooking, buy the best ingredients you can afford. I don't care if it's a simple salad or Beef Wellington. A quality product stands alone and won't need any dressing up.

As soon as you wanna take away the flavor of anything, just fry it.

I've thrown vanilla beans into mustard. Nothing crazy or grainy, just normal dijon. It's great for duck. Smear some of that right on the duck, coupled with some roast plums, and it all comes together in that savory over sweet over savory over sweet way we all love.

Like turning potatoes or making a bearnaise sauce by hand, forming a cornet - essentially a DIY pastry bag - from parchment paper feels like one of those things culinary students do once or twice and then never again.

Lowbrow ingredients don't equal inexpensive or not tasty food. In fact, it requires even more skill to make something simple into something spectacular.

A perfect chutney needs patience. If you are cooking it, cook it on a low flame; the flavors come out the best that way.

Generally I don't find that basting does a lot of anything! I think what makes the most difference is treating the turkey ahead of time with a dry brine. It really does provide a very moist result.

If I'm doing an olive oil tasting, I would do a very lean bread: an Italian style or pita bread. You want the flavor of the oil to shine; you don't want the bread or anything else to mask it.