Culinary Confidence Quotes

Hopefully people will be inspired to cook. It's my mission to persuade people not to be afraid of cooking.

Learning to cook at school gave me the confidence to experiment in the kitchen when I left home in my late teens - I wasn't intimidated by it.

The best advice for building up confidence in the kitchen - start small. Don't go after the super intense Julia Child coq au vin recipe. Pick something simple and tackle it.

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.

Do not be afraid of cooking as your ingredients will know, and misbehave. Enjoy your cooking and the food will behave; moreover it will pass your pleasure on to those who eat it.

You want to be the baddest guy in the kitchen and you want the person next to you to know it.

Southerners have never been afraid of seasoning. It's kind of the other way around; our seasoning is afraid of us.

One thing I've told people with the holidays, cooking in particular - don't make something that stresses you out. If there's something you're intimidated to make, maybe just don't make it.

I'm not a trained chef. I'm a self-taught cook, and I want people to be like, 'Yo, I could do that! Maybe I didn't think to or maybe it seemed harder than it really is.'

If you're preparing a dinner for friends or a holiday dinner, make sure to only prepare recipes you are comfortable with and have cooked before. Cooking for others is not the time to try out a recipe for the first time. You end up spending all your time in the kitchen instead of enjoying your company.

With wine and food, the confidence of my own table, and the necessity of reassuring my wife, I grew by insensible degrees courageous and secure.

A complete lack of caution is perhaps one of the true signs of a real gourmet: he has no need for it, being filled as he is with a God-given and intelligently self-cultivated sense of gastronomical freedom.

I feel like I can teach anyone to cook a dinner.

I think anyone can bake, but I don't think I can bake well. I sort of feel like baking is just, like, chocolate and butter and sugar, and that is always nice, so I think anyone can bake, you can put those things together, and it will come out all right. The next level of that, I definitely can't do.

[I] had gotten to the point where I simply could not make a bad vinaigrette, this was not exactly the stuff of drama. (Even now, I cannot believe Mark would want to risk losing that vinaigrette. You just don't bump into vinaigrettes that good.)

I think egg boiling is the hardest thing I've ever done, but I can make a tiramisu anytime you want.

It was improv that really helped me start coming up with recipes and just believe in my instincts. That's why the first recipe I made up was 'I Ain't Chicken Chicken' because I finally felt bold and fearless in the kitchen, which was an entirely new feeling for me.

Even if you don't think you can cook well, you can cook better than the food industry.

I'm the joke of the family with cooking because I've never done it - primarily because I've been surrounded by people who are so good at it. Mum's brilliant. Boyfriends have always been good at it. I'm waiting for my inner chef to be released.

No matter what happens in the kitchen, never apologize.

If a dish doesn't turn out right, change the name and don't bat an eyelid. A fallen souffle is only a risen omelette. It depends on the self-confidence with which you present it.

I am an indifferent cook, but I can make pie.

There's nothing wrong with using frozen and canned food. There's nothing in this series I'm ashamed of. It's the way I cook.

Most men would feel shame if caught preparing with their own hands precisely such a dinner, whether of animal or vegetable food, as is every day prepared for them by others. Yet till this is otherwise we are not civilized, and, if gentlemen and ladies, are not true men and women. This certainly suggests what change is to be made.

I don't believe in twisting yourself into knots of excuses and explanations over the food you make.