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kottke.org posts about Ratio

iPhone app for cooking with ratios

Michael Ruhlman is turning his Ratio cookbook into an iPhone app.

The best-selling cookbook […] is soon to be an iPhone app that will help you calculate amounts of ingredients in all the fundamental culinary preparations. When you know a ratio, you don’t know a recipe, you know 1,000. And this application does all the calculating for you.

Nice move…an iPhone app is perhaps a better expression of the subject matter than a book.


Cooking with ratios

Michael Ruhlman announces that his newest book is available for sale. It’s called Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking.

We have been trained in America to believe that we can’t cook unless we have a recipe in hand. I am not saying recipes are bad or wrong โ€” I use them all the time; there are plenty of recipes in the new book โ€” but when we rely completely on recipes, we cooks do ourselves a grave disservice. We remain chained to the ground, we remain dependent on our chains. When you are dependent on recipes, you are a factory worker on the assembly line; when you possess ratios and basic technique, you own the company.

With this book, Ruhlman aims to to improve the home cook’s comfort level in the kitchen and provide a blueprint for a way of cooking that is less restrictive and more improvisational than following recipes. I haven’t seen Ratio yet, but Ruhlman’s “…of a Chef” trilogy are some of my favorite books. If you want a signed copy of Ratio (or any of his other books), you can order one directly from his site.