Martin Yan Quotes

I found that preparation is everything when you cook.

There are only three questions that matter in the kitchen if you're cooking and not baking. The first is how good are your ingredients; the second is how much salt to add; and the third is how long to cook whatever it is you're cooking - the question of doneness.

In food, it's really, like, either you're right, or you're wrong. You know, people's taste buds kind of vary, but there's a technique. Either you do it right, or you don't.

I can do basics, but I'm not a proper cook. I can do a roast. I can stick a chicken in the oven with vegetables.

Cooking is about presenting flavors and other aspects of food in a way that makes best use of them and makes an engaging, satisfying meal. Taste necessarily comes into it along with technique. Some ingredients require cooking, cleaning or otherwise denaturing them, some are fine as they are.

I've been making sushi for 38 years, and I'm still learning. You have to consider the size and color of the ingredients, how much salt and vinegar to use and how the seasons affect the fattiness of the fish.

As a restaurateur, my palate is one of my most important tools.

Baking is too precise for me. I cook with a pinch of this or that.

I'm trying to learn how to cook.

Cooking is physical; it's easier to learn than playing golf. You chop food, you pan fry it - what else is there to it?

The process and organization leading up to cooking the egg can tell you a lot about the cook.

Fifty thousand dollars' worth of cabinets isn't going to make you a better cook; cooking is going to make you a better cook. At the end of the day, you can slice a mushroom in about three inches of space, and you can carve a chicken in a foot and a half. So it doesn't matter how big the kitchen is.

I'm brilliant at cooking my stepmother's scrambled egg recipe. The secret is to put eggs, butter, milk, and seasoning together in the saucepan, and to keep stirring with a wooden spoon under a low heat until the preferred consistency is reached.

If it doesn't taste good it doesn't go on the menu.

The best way to get anybody's attention is dinner. I have good kitchen skills and good grocery shopping skills.

I've taught myself how to use good, fresh ingredients and to prepare them as simply as possible by cooking only to enhance their intrinsic flavors.

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

I believe that anyone can cook a great meal. Basically all you need to do is get your hands on some fresh ingredients and not be afraid to make a mess in the kitchen.

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.

I don't cook, but I would love to learn.

From a young age, I understood the idea of balanced flavor - the reason you put ketchup on a hamburger. I was that kid who wouldn't eat something if there was something missing. I never really understood it until I began cooking professionally, balancing acids, sweets, spicy flavors and fat.

To be honest, I was the world's worst vegetarian. You see - I didn't really like vegetables very much. I'd spent most of my childhood terrified of them - horrid bland mushy things. It's only as an adult I realise that part of the problem is my mother's cooking - she hates using salt and has a tendency to overboil things. Thanks, Mum.

You are defined by your ingredients, by the way you touch them, by the flavors you draw from them.

As everyone knows, there is only one way to fry chicken correctly. Unfortunately, most people think their method is best, but most people are wrong. Mine is the only right way, and on this subject I feel almost evangelical.

I learned so much more prepping vegetables than I ever did in cooking school.