Michael Ruhlman

Ratio Smart Phone App: Video Demo

At last, we've put together this basic video demonstration of Ratio: The Smart Phone Application (built by Will Turnage, designed by Leah McCombe) so that people can see what it does and how it works. I love the application because it's truly useful. If I'm making hamburgers or meatloaf, it will give me the amount of seasoning I need depending on how much meat I have. If I only want a few cookies, not two dozen, it will create the recipe for me. If I find I only have one egg, but still want to make a blueberry muffin, it calculates the amount based on one egg. If I want to whip up a last minute caramel sauce it tells me how. If I want to know even the basic proportions of a stock, it's there for me. It's also a great ounces-to-grams converter. This application will be of special value to anyone who works in a kitchen and to any and all culinary students. And you chefs, authors, and bloggers who develop your own recipes, this application provides the trunk from which a thousand variations branch off. I hope you'll have a look! This is version 1.0.1, with all bugs taken care of. Will and Leah are working on the Droid version now! Here are some comments and reviews about the application: Russ Parsons, in the LATimes Blog: "Michael Ruhlman wrote a really good book earlier this year called Ratio. Now he's gone out and turned it into an even better iPhone application. ... And though [his] approach may seem a little mechanistic in a cookbook (what if you happen to want a cookie with a different texture than the one chosen?), it's sheer genius in an app, where the expectations are different. Think of 'Ratio, the App' as a combination culinary pocket calculator and aide-memoir." Chicagoist: "This application is so good it almost makes us regretting buying the book first. ... At $4.99, it's a steal." From the Village Voice Blog: "While Ruhlman's app enters an already crowded market for cooking-related iPhone applications, with its gee-whiz calculations, it has the potential to be one of the most useful. The home cooking world may finally have its own version of Turing Bombe, complete with pretty colors and custard icons." Click here to see go to its iTunes page. All comments and criticisms welcome.

Scottish Shortbread

Seventeen years ago, my friend Stephanie began a Burns‘ night celebration, in honor of her Scottish heritage, and we carry it on still, an occasion to gather a group, once all in Cleveland but now half dispersed. We tour the highlands, as it were, and I address the haggis— “Fair fa your honest soncie face/Great [...]

Why I Cook, Part IIThe Cooking Imperative

I was honored to be asked to speak at our local TEDxCLE last Friday where I was allowed to try to explain why I think cooking is important. There’s a great book out now that argues that our ancestors became human only after we began cooking for ourselves and our families. I believe it’s still [...]

Gremolata(with Wine-Braised Beef Short Rib)

I’ve had braised beef short ribs on my mind for the past couple weeks, working on a preparation for the current book, another for an OpenSky promotion, and also because we’ve got ten people coming for dinner on Saturday, and short ribs are the wintertime choice for entertaining! It’s bleak and cold and wintery here, [...]

Cultured Butter at Home

Have had butter on my mind for the past two weeks (I often have butter on my mind, but it’s been acute recently), and when my thoughts turned to Indian food the combination resulted in the desire to make ghee. Ghee, the Indian version of clarified butter, is traditionally made with cultured butter that’s cooked [...]

How To Make Grits(Sauteed Grits with Sausage and Poached Egg)

Over the weekend I was working on a recipe based on the traditional low country dish, shrimp and grits. I’d found excellent grits from this company at my grocery store, I tapped my friend and former instructor Eve Felder for her recollections of growing up in Charleston, and I made shrimp and grits for Donna, [...]

New Site Design!

The bright colors and bright minds I found in Ixtapa convinced me that I needed to brighten and clean up my blog. The grays and and boxes were heavy and that combined with this winter that’s already too long, made me hunger for a lot of clean white space. So I asked my friend Joe [...]

Why I Cook

I posted yesterday on twitter that I began cooking because I was hungry but continued to cook because I loved to eat, and it got me thinking. There are so many different reasons to cook, as a number of twitters pointed out. Self-defense was a good one! And with the state of our processed food, [...]

Vanilla Sugar

James and I made popovers Sunday morning and sprinkled them with vanilla sugar, and this sugar made the popovers appealing in a surprisingly effective way. Like fleur de sel on caramel. It brought the flavors and textures together without overtly calling attention to itself. When I’d posted a while ago in a recipe to discard [...]

Creme Anglaise: Cream or No Cream?

“There’s no cream in anglaise sauce,” the beachcomber said. He spoke with what sounded like genuine disdain. “What do you mean there’s no cream?” said I, waves lapping at my ankles, cold mojito in hand. “There’s no cream.” “How do you know?” The man paused as if this were self-evident. “Alice told me.” The man was David Lebovitz, for many [...]

Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations In the Hudson Valley

Photo by Keith Farris/CIA Tonight at 10 pm eastern, Travel Channel. I haven’t seen any of the footage from this and so am a little nervous about what was going on with the High Tea and that little boat ride. Original post here. All comments welcome.

Buttermilk Dinner Rolls

I almost never tear recipes out of magazines, but leafing through Saveur on the 8 a.m. Houston to Cleveland flight, this recipe caught me because I’d been wanting a soft, comfort-food, James-friendly dinner roll, the kind of Parker House roll that’s slightly sweet and yeasty and soft as a pillow. Turns out this recipe comes from [...]

Your Kitchen Needs a Scale!Special Opensky Offer $1.99

Over the weekend I made a recipe I tore from the recent issue of Saveur. I don’t use many recipes but I’ve been looking for a flavorful, soft, comforting roll to make and this one enticed. Maddeningly though, it called for 5 cups of flour. Normally when I make bread, I set the mixing bowl on [...]

What Salt Should I Use?

After my minor salt rant, a number of people asked which salt to use and what I thought about various salts. There are a mind-numbing array of salts out there, even big blocks of salt you can cook and serve on. But, with apologies to Mark Bitterman, whose work and business I truly admire, I [...]

Apple-Cinnamon Granola

This granola smelled so good when it was baking it actually drew Donna out of bed early on a weekend morning—she’s a winter bear and not easily extracted from within the comforter. So I had to post, even though I’ve already posted on granola. This uses the same technique of creating a sweet fruity sauce [...]

Lemon-Tarragon Brine for Roasted Chicken

I normally don’t brine chicken. I roast a chicken about once a week and it’s a step I just don’t think about since salting the bird before I roast it works perfectly fine. Also, I don’t like the skin of a brined and roasted bird—it’s too thin and dehydrated. But on Sunday, I had the [...]

Chicken and Dumplings

I lead my too-stupid-to-cook post with Donna’s roast chicken photo (a spur of the moment shot while I finished the meal) because roast chicken is the iconic home meal. It’s delicious, satisfying, economical, and easy. But why I love roast chicken is that it keeps on giving if you’ll let it. I almost always throw [...]

Salt. Is It Good Or Bad?

The salt issue. People keep bringing it up as though it’s news. A new report says reduce your salt by 1/2 teaspoon a day and you will be more healthy (as though that alone would do it). The fact is, we have struggled to make our food so inexpensive that we’ve basically decided to grow cardboard, which, [...]

Food Blogger Camp

If you’d have told me four years ago that I’d be tweeting from a beach in Mexico, while at a blogger camp, discussing social media, SLRs and SEOs, twaudio and animoto, I’d have looked at you as if you were flapping your arms and hopping on one leg. I wouldn’t have been able to respond—I’d have [...]

Wishing You Good Fortune with Spring Rolls

This will be my last post before MR get’s back home, but it’s been a lot of fun and certainly won’t be the last time, so let me know what you’d like to see in the future. I’ll try to answer any dangling questions left from the week and am leaving you with a weekend project. [...]