Charlie Trotter Quotes

Brussels sprouts are misunderstood - probably because most people don't know how to cook them properly.

The only good things I've seen emerge from a steamer are tamales, couscous, and dumplings - maybe the occasional artichoke or delicate fish fillet. But baby turnips with their tender greens still attached should be boiled in water as salty as the sea until their flesh is silky and soft.

Steaming offers no opportunity for either seasoning or developing the brown, crisp textures that sauteing and roasting afford.

Most people only use their griddles for pancakes, but you can sear vegetables like sliced zucchini or mushrooms, thinly sliced meats like chicken or pork, or thinly sliced fish or squid.

Just-poached vegetables show off their natural attributes and taste fresh and light in a way you never get with roasting or frying.

A lot of people who want to cook with less fat are surprised by that. You can cook vegetables in a little water in a covered pan and then throw the fat into the residual liquid to coat them.

With wok cooking, you chop things up into little pieces for maximum surface area, so they can cook in minutes, if not seconds. Sauteing is energy efficient; baking is not.

Cook ingredients that you are used to cooking by other techniques, such as fish, chicken, or hamburgers. In other words be comfortable with the ingredients you are using.

In certain European cuisines, vegetables are cooked a long time. I take the term 'al dente' and use it for vegetables.

The vulgar boil, the learned roast, an egg.

I love to roast vegetables - carrots, fennel, and so on. I also love to mash or puree pretty much any vegetable!

One of the worst things you can do if you're worried about breast cancer is to cook beef, pork, fish or poultry at a high temperature - which includes frying, grilling and roasting.

My mother very rarely skipped a Thanksgiving turkey. And yet, none of them ever tasted quite the same, landing somewhere on a sliding scale of succulence. She'd try new methods.

There are two proper ways to use garlic: pounding and blooming. Neither involves a press, which is little more than a torture device for a beloved ingredient, smushing it up into watery squiggles of inconsistent size that will never cook evenly or vanish into a vinaigrette. If you have one, throw it away!

If you eat broccoli steamed or boiled, it's not very exciting, but you can roast it with things like turmeric and make it amazing. It's all about how you cook something and what you pair it with.

Recipes tell you nothing. Learning techniques is the key.

No self-respecting Southerner will eat something baked, broiled, grilled, stewed, poached, sauteed, or flambeed when it can be deep fried.

I need to have better knife skills... for vegetables.

Outdoor cooking is not just about hot dogs and hamburgers. There are so many styles of food you can make.

People are very phobic about fish. And if they do cook fish, they fry it, which kills all the flavor.

I dislike cloyingly sweet desserts - sweet is not a flavor - so I suggest dialing back the sweetness and focusing on what the dessert is about, whether it is a ripe fruit, chocolate, etc.

When summer squash is freshly picked, all it needs is a little olive oil, salt, pepper, and maybe a hit of lemon juice.

A homegrown tomato, you're never going to taste anything like it. There is nothing close to it, the sweetness. And strawberries: The ones you get in the store are so hard; but you get a homegrown strawberry, it just melts, I'm telling you.

I don't know how to cook lettuce.

I attempted to beat a Michelin-starred master chopper at prepping vegetables and making stuffing. He was doing it by hand, I was using a blender. It was bloody close too, he just beat me.