164 Chefs Cooking Quotes

Following is our list of chefs cooking quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about cooking.

Quick Jump To

Famous Chefs Cooking Quotes

A great chef is an artist that I truly respect. - Robert Stack

A great chef is an artist that I truly respect. — Robert Stack

Chefs are nutters. They're all self-obsessed, delicate, dainty, insecure little souls and absolute psychopaths. Every last one of them. — Gordon Ramsay

Cooking is about passion, so it may look slightly temperamental in a way that it's too assertive to the naked eye. — Gordon Ramsay

Being a chef never seems like a job, it becomes a true passion. — Gordon Ramsay

I liked the energy of cooking, the action, the camaraderie. I often compare the kitchen to sports and compare the chef to a coach. There are a lot of similarities to it. — Todd English

Cooking is at once child's play and adult joy. And cooking done with care is an act of love. — Craig Claiborne

No one who cooks, cooks alone. Even at her most solitary, a cook in the kitchen is surrounded by generations of cooks past, the advice and menus of cooks present, the wisdom of cookbook writers. — Laurie Colwin

A good cook is like a sorceress who dispenses happiness. - Elsa Schiaparelli

A good cook is like a sorceress who dispenses happiness. — Elsa Schiaparelli

Cooking is like painting or writing a song. Just as there are only so many notes or colors, there are only so many flavors - it's how you combine them that sets you apart. — Sayings

If you want to become a great chef, you have to work with great chefs. And that's exactly what I did. — Gordon Ramsay

Cooking demands attention, patience, and above all, a respect for the gifts of the earth. It is a form of worship, a way of giving thanks. — Judith Jones

Chefs have a new opportunity - and perhaps even an obligation - to inform the public about what is good to eat, and why. — Rene Redzepi

You're getting to know who the great chefs are through their books. — Thomas Keller

There really is a camaraderie among chefs and a willingness to help out whenever we can. — Rocco DiSpirito

There's a bond among a kitchen staff, I think. You spend more time with your chef in the kitchen than you do with your own family. — Gordon Ramsay

Short Chefs Cooking Quotes

  • I'm sautéing emcees with fried rice up in the wok without the MSG and chopped celery. — Redman
  • A chef is a mixture maybe of artistry and craft. You have to learn the craft really to get there. — Wolfgang Puck
  • The most poisonous source in any kitchen is a chef's ego. — Marco Pierre White
  • ...no one is born a great cook, one learns by doing. — Julia Child
  • Great food needed more than chefs; it needed gourmet diners. — Nicole Mones
  • I always had a fantasy of being a chef, because I like kitchen life. — Geoffrey Rush
  • You don't have to cook fancy or complicated masterpieces - just good food from fresh ingredients. — Julia Child
  • Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all. — Harriet Van Horne
  • Are you casting asparagus on my cooking? — Curly Howard
  • To be a good cook you have to have a love of the good, a love of hard work, and a love of creating. — Julia Child

Chefs Cooking Image Quotes

Chefs cooking quote The only time to eat diet food is while you’re waiting for steak to coo.
The only time to eat diet food is while you’re waiting for steak to coo.

Simple Chef Quotes

No matter what it is you are cooking, buy the best ingredients you can afford. I don't care if it's a simple salad or Beef Wellington. A quality product stands alone and won't need any dressing up. — Joe Bastianich

My two rules of cooking: keep it fresh and keep it simple. — Michael Isabella

I think it's a universal truth that most chefs I know are happiest eating simple, unadorned good things. — Anthony Bourdain

'The chef on duty will constantly point out the time, name the next project, and finish with 'push!' The entire team then calls it back. It is a simple one, but it gives me goosebumps every time. — Jorge Hernandez

Cooking Quotes

Become familiar with your home, but know also about your neighbors. The young man who never went anywhere thinks his mother is the greatest cook. — Chinua Achebe

Mother Nature is the true artist and our job as cooks is to allow her to shine. — Marco Pierre White

Show me who your friends are, and I will tell you what you are. - Unknown Author

Show me who your friends are, and I will tell you what you are. — Unknown Author

Herbs are the friend of the physician and the pride of cooks. - Charlemagne

Herbs are the friend of the physician and the pride of cooks. — Charlemagne

If an architect makes a mistake, he grows ivy to cover it. If a doctor makes a mistake, he covers it with soil. If a cook makes a mistake, he covers it with some sauce and says it is a new recipe. — Paul Bocuse

Destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal. — E. O. Wilson

Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper. — Adelle Davis

Dear Mama, don't cry, your baby boy's doin' good, Tell the homies I'm in heaven, and they ain't got hoods. Seen a show with Marvin Gaye last night, it had me shook, Drippin' peppermint Schnapps, with Jackie Wilson, and Sam Cooke. — Tupac Shakur

The strawberry grows underneath the nettle And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best Neighbour'd by fruit of baser quality. — William Shakespeare

Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Unless he doesn't like sushi, then you also have to teach him to cook. — Auren Hoffman

Cooking Shows Quotes

The turnip is a capricious vegetable, which seems reluctant to show itself at its best. — Waverley Root

Even now, when I do a slide show of the Geek Squad story, the first slide is a photo of ramen noodles. Because for me, ramen noodles are the international symbol for struggle. — Robert Stephens

I taped my first series for PBS in 1982 at WJCT-TV in Jacksonville, Florida. The show, called 'Everyday Cooking with Jacques Pepin,' was about saving time and money in the kitchen - and it was a celebration of simple and unpretentious food. — Jacques Pepin

I remember when I was in college, I used to watch Julia Child's cooking show during dinner and joke with my roommates about becoming a TV chef. — Martin Yan

People want honest, flavourful food, not some show-off meal that takes days to prepare. — Ted Allen

I wanted to come up with a hybrid show of sorts that wasn't your traditional 'dump and stir' type of cooking show. — Sayings

I'm obsessed with cooking shows, even though they make everything look so easy when it isn't. — Joely Fisher

I would like to host a show, something like travel or cooking or something like that, something I'm really interested in, and so I'm pitching a couple television shows. — Trishelle Cannatella

You ever taste some damn chicken so horrible, that you wished the chicken would show up at your house and show your lady how to cook him? — J. B. Smoove

Sometimes shows suffer from having many cooks in the kitchen. — Nick Kroll

Cookery Quotes

Hunger finds no fault with cookery. — Vietnamese Proverbs

The art of cookery is the art of poisoning mankind, by rendering the appetite still importunate, when the wants of nature are supplied. — Francois FeNelon

Cookery is not chemistry. It is an art. It requires instinct and taste rather than exact measurements. — Marcel Boulestin

God sends meat and the devil sends cooks. — Thomas Deloney

to "set the standard for beauty in classical and modem cookery, and attest to the distant future that the French chefs of the 19th century were the most famous in the world. — Marie-Antoine Careme

In general, mankind, since the improvement of cookery, eats twice as much as nature requires. — Benjamin Franklin

Every investigation which is guided by principles of Nature fixes its ultimate aim entirely on gratifying the stomach. — Athenaeus

As in the fine arts, the progress of mankind from barbarism to civilisation is marked by a gradual succession of triumphs over the rude materialities of nature, so in the art of cookery is the progress gradual from the earliest and simplest modes, to those of the most complicated and refined. — Isabella Beeton

Not on morality, but on cookery, let us build our stronghold: there brandishing our frying-pan, as censer, let us offer sweet incense to the Devil, and live at ease on the fat things he has provided for his elect! — Thomas Carlyle

Cookery means…English thoroughness, French art, and Arabian hospitality; it means the knowledge of all fruits and herbs and balms and spices; it means carefulness, inventiveness, and watchfulness. — John Ruskin

Cooks In The Kitchen Quotes

When I'm old and gray, I want to have a house by the sea. And paint. With a lot of wonderful chums, good music, and booze around. And a damn good kitchen to cook in. — Ava Gardner

In cooking, as in all the arts, simplicity is the sign of perfection. — Curnonsky

The most used piece of kit in my kitchen is my saucepan. I use it every morning to cook my porridge in. The least used piece of equipment? I'd say a food mixer. I've never used it, I don't really know what they're for. — David Walliams

Some people like to paint pictures, or do gardening, or build a boat in the basement. Other people get a tremendous pleasure out of the kitchen, because cooking is just as creative and imaginative an activity as drawing, or wood carving, or music. — Julia Child

My wife is such a bad cook, if we leave dental floss in the kitchen the roaches hang themselves. — Rodney Dangerfield

Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans ... are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit. — Anthony Bourdain

This is my invariable advice to people: Learn how to cook- try new recipes, learn from your mistakes, be fearless, and above all have fun! — Julia Child

Here is a kitchen improvement, in return for Peacock. For roasting or basting a chicken, render down your fat or butter with cider: about a third cider. Let it come together slowly, till the smell of cider and the smell of fat are as one. This will enliven even a frozen chicken. — Sylvia Townsend Warner

Always remember: If you're alone in the kitchen and you drop the lamb, you can always just pick it up. Who's going to know? — Julia Child

Fortunately, I knew the cardinal rule of getting on with one's fellow cooks. It applies in any kitchen and can be summed up in two short words: bust ass. — Jacques Pepin

French Cooking Quotes

I'm a breakfast type of guy. Don't get me wrong. I can cook, I'm kinda nice on the burner, but I enjoy making breakfast. I do it all... Scrambled eggs... French toast... Pancakes... Breakfast is my thing. — Ja Rule

The best way to execute French cooking is to get good and loaded and whack the hell out of a chicken. — Julia Child

Central heating, French rubber goods and cookbooks are three amazing proofs of man's ingenuity in transforming necessity into art, and, of these, cookbooks are perhaps most lastingly delightful. — M. F. K. Fisher

How can people say they don't eat eggplant when God loves the color and the French love the name? I don't under'stand. — Jeff Smith

God made only water, but man made wine. — Victor Hugo

My sisters like cooking at my place. It has a bit more room, and the food tastes a little bit better. A big pot of spaghetti and sauce, some warm French bread - works all the time. I think I've been eating pasta for 26 years. — Tom Brady

Sauces comprise the honor and glory of French cookery. They have contributed to its superiority, or pre-eminence, which is disputed by none. Sauces are the orchestration and accompaniment of a fine meal, and enable a good chef or cook to demonstrate his talent. — Curnonsky

Bouillabaisse is only good because cooked by the French, who, if they cared to try, could produce an excellent and nutritious substitute out of cigar stumps and empty matchboxes. — Norman Douglas

Sometimes, if you want to be happy, you've got to run away to Bath and marry a punk rocker. Sometimes you've got to dye your hair cobalt blue, or wander remote islands in Sicily, or cook your way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a year, for no very good reason. — Julie Powell

Just like becoming an expert in wine, you learn by drinking it, the best you can afford. — Julia Child

Home Cooking Quotes

Life is a combination of magic and pasta. — Federico Fellini

A recipe has no soul. You, as the cook, must bring soul to the recipe. - Thomas Keller

A recipe has no soul. You, as the cook, must bring soul to the recipe. — Thomas Keller

The most indespensible ingredient of all good home cooking: love for those you are cooking for. — Sophia Loren

Clean living keeps me in shape. Righteous thoughts are my secret. And New Orleans home cooking. — Fats Domino

History consists of a corpus ascertained facts. The facts are available to the historian in documents, inscriptions and so on, like fish in the fishmonger's slab. The historian collects them, takes them home, and cooks and serves them in whatever style appeals to him. — Edward Hallett Carr

As for butter versus margarine, I trust cows more than chemists. — Joan Dye Gussow

I like going out and I like being single, but a growing part of me would rather just stay home, cook food with someone I really like, and do nothing. — Aziz Ansari

Cooking is at once one of the simplest and most gratifying of the arts, but to cook well one must love and respect food. — Craig Claiborne

In an ideal world, I’m eating dinner at home before I have a DJ gig. — Hannah Bronfman

You will find that living in space can actually become a home, in spite of tools floating away. Alien to all you know, you will adapt and you will love it. — Peggy Whitson

Culinary Quotes

Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live. — Socrates

The so-called nouvelle cuisine usually means not enough on your plate and too much on your bill. — Paul Bocuse

We should look for someone to eat and drink with before looking for something to eat and drink. — Epicurus

A bottle of wine contains more philosophy than all the books in the world. — Louis Pasteur

Good food is the foundation of genuine happiness. - Auguste Escoffier

Good food is the foundation of genuine happiness. — Auguste Escoffier

So you can settle the fuck down. My mother used to say, "Primero comemos, entonces lo demás." That means, "first we eat, then we do everything else." — Brian Yorkey

The last taste of sweets is sweetest last. - William Shakespeare

The last taste of sweets is sweetest last. — William Shakespeare

If penicillin can cure those that are ill, Spanish sherry can bring the dead back to life. — Alexander Fleming

Be careful to trust a person who does not like wine. — Karl Marx

Most seafoods should be simply threatened with heat and then celebrated with joy. — Jeff Smith

Cooking Classes Quotes

This June, I'll travel once again to the Food and Wine Magazine Classic in Aspen, Colorado. For many years, my dear friend Julia Child and I have teamed up to teach classes together at the event; for the past seven years, my daughter, Claudine, has been my cooking partner on stage. — Jacques Pepin

I tell a student that the most important class you can take is technique. A great chef is first a great technician. 'If you are a jeweler, or a surgeon or a cook, you have to know the trade in your hand. You have to learn the process. You learn it through endless repetition until it belongs to you. — Jacques Pepin

All sorrows are less with bread. — Miguel de Cervantes

Cooking done with care is an act of love. — Craig Claiborne

All the homeschooling parents I know meet on a regular basis with other families. They organize field trips, cooking classes, reading clubs and Scout troops. Their children tend to be happy, confident and socially engaged. — Quinn Cummings

I'd love to learn to cook. I think the ladies like a guy who can cook. Also, there are lots of available ladies at cooking classes. Can you tell I'm single? — Will Estes

No one who cooks cooks alone. — Laurie Colwin

I took cooking classes when I was younger; girls weren't interested in me, and I thought I may be alone for the rest of my life. — Michael Jordan

Sister Maria Martinez whom I believe I've mentioned before has been giving me cooking classes. Today I learned how to bake mean banana bread. The secret apparently is half a cup of dark rum. — Adele Griffin

Lots of the cooking classes open to non-professionals are too low level for experienced foodies, or don’t offer enough hands-on training. — Homaro Cantu

Italian Cooking Quotes

A fruit is a vegetable with looks and money. Plus, if you let fruit rot, it turns into wine, something brussel sprouts never do. — P. J. O'Rourke

I made lemon spaghetti in an early season of 'Everyday Italian,' and to this day people still come up to me and say they love it. It's very, very simple. Basically, you cook the pasta and mix together Parmesan cheese, olive oil, lemon juice and zest and pour it over the pasta. — Giada De Laurentiis

I can't stand people that do not take food seriously. — Oscar Wilde

I always knew that food and wine were vital, with my mother being Italian and a good cook. — Robert Mondavi

I love cooking. I like to make lasagna - its authentic Italian-style. I also do a great chicken recipe for a barbecue. — Sullivan Stapleton

The tradition of Italian cooking is that of the matriarch. This is the cooking of grandma. She didn't waste time thinking too much about the celery. She got the best celery she could and then she dealt with it. — Mario Batali

I just signed to do my next book with Ecco Press, a new primer or encyclopedia. This will be my take on what classic Italian cooking is. — Mario Batali

There's an old joke that you know you're in heaven if the cooks are Italian and the engineering is German. If it's the other way around you're in hell. — David Byrne

I love the simplicity, the ingredients, the culture, the history and the seasonality of Italian cuisine. In Italy people do not travel. They cook the way grandma did, using fresh ingredients and what is available in season. — Anne Burrell

If your mother cooks Italian food, why should you go to a restaurant? — Martin Scorsese

People Writing About Chefs Cooking

Name Quotes Likes
Read quotes by Gordon Ramsay

Gordon Ramsay
quotes on food, good food and chefs

178 1189
Read quotes by Julia Child

Julia Child
quotes on love, cooking and marriage

170 1656
Read quotes by Robert Stack

Robert Stack
quotes on leadership, intelligence and life

37 330
Read quotes by Todd English

Todd English

20 218
Read quotes by Craig Claiborne

Craig Claiborne
quotes on life, leadership and love

13 255
Read quotes by Laurie Colwin

Laurie Colwin
quotes on life, education and love

41 180

More Chefs Cooking Quotes

When we no longer have good cooking in the world, we will have no literature, nor high and sharp intelligence, nor friendly gatherings, no social harmony. — Marie-Antoine Careme

I am not a chef. I am not even a trained or professional cook. My qualification is as an eater. — Nigella Lawson

One of the greatest pleasures of my life has been that I have never stopped learning about Good Cooking and Good Food — Edna Lewis

I don't like food that's too carefully arranged; it makes me think that the chef is spending too much time arranging and not enough time cooking. If I wanted a picture I'd buy a painting. — Andy Rooney

Kitchens should be designed around what's truly important-fun, food, and life. — Daniel Boulud

I am the emperor of Germany, but you are the emperor of chefs. — Wilhelm II

Food is life, life is food. If you don't like my approach you are welcome to go down to McDonalds. — Keith Floyd

A good apprentice cook must be as polite with the dishwasher as with the chef. — Fernand Point

Always start out with a larger pot than what you think you need. — Julia Child

To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demi-glace, or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living. — Anthony Bourdain

I train my chefs completely different to anyone else. My young girls and guys, when they come to the kitchen, the first thing they get is a blindfold. They get blindfolded and they get sat down at the chef's table... Unless they can identify what they're tasting, they don't get to cook it. — Gordon Ramsay

There’s no sight on earth more appealing than that of a woman making dinner for someone she loves. — Thomas Wolfe

Maybe one of the only things I do well: I cook like a maniac! I would be a chef if I weren't an actor. — Ian Somerhalder

Learning about issues such as sustainability and locavorism are things that you need to have as part of you as a chef because it will make you cook more delicious food. — Rene Redzepi

A good chef has to be a manager, a businessman and a great cook. To marry all three together is sometimes difficult. — Wolfgang Puck

Young chefs, famous chefs, home cooks, and everyone who loves food and cooking-we all depend on Larousse Gastronomique. It is the only culinary encyclopedia that is always up-to-date. — Daniel Boulud

In the orchestra of a great kitchen, the sauce chef is a soloist. — Fernand Point

The pressure on young chefs today is far greater than ever before in terms of social skills, marketing skills, cooking skills, personality and, more importantly, delivering on the plate. So you need to be strong. Physically fit. So my chefs get weighed every time they come into the kitchen. — Gordon Ramsay

Cooking is an observation-based process that you can't do if you're so completely focused on a recipe. — Alton Brown

The person who's receiving the food cooks as much as the chef. They have a very important role to play... There's no other activity that the person who receives it can destroy the work, can participate in how it's being done. It's emotional. Sometimes journalists are going to have to start talking more about the diners than the chefs. — Ferran Adria

There's only one cook in the kitchen, only one chef. I let the soloists do their thing - you've gotta let a man do a solo the way he wants - but as far as picking the tunes and working on the arrangements, I take full responsibility for it. — Gregg Allman

Omelets are about technique. Now, different people make it different ways, but, if you're a chef in Europe, an omelet has to be cooked on the outside, with just a simmer of color, and the inside has to be soft. It should be cooked like a steak - medium rare. — Wolfgang Puck

You can't go into the chef's office of any serious kitchen and not see a copy of Larousse. A must-have for professional and home cooks alike. — David Chang

Male egos require constant stroking. Every task is an achievement, every success epic. That is why women cook, but men are chefs: we make cheese on toast, they produce pain de fromage. — Belle de Jour

Pastry is different from cooking because you have to consider the chemistry, beauty and flavor. It's not just sugar and eggs thrown together. I tell my pastry chefs to be in tune for all of this. You have to be challenged by using secret or unusual ingredients. — Ron Ben-Israel

Cooking requires confident guesswork and improvisation-- experimentation and substitution, dealing with failure and uncertainty in a creative way — Paul Theroux

My grandfather was a chef for a Baron in Sicily before he came to America. I grew up with him. I used to do my homework at one end of the kitchen table while he cooked at the other end. — Vincent Schiavelli

You don't have to be a chef or even a particularly good cook to experience proper kitchen alchemy: the moment when ingredients combine to form something more delectable than the sum of their parts. — Erin Morgenstern

It's very tempting to have a nanny and live in a gated community and have a chef - I'd love to have a few dinners cooked for me. But I don't want that for my children. When they're older, if people say to them, 'Did you have a chef?' I want them to be shocked by the question. — Kate Winslet

A lot of people love the idea of improvising but are terrified of it, so I tried to make a book that was not a chef's book about improvising but a real home cook's book with a real home cook's pantry, supermarket ingredients, that sort of thing. — Sally Schneider

Now everybody thinks that once you do Top Chef, then 13 weeks later you're a chef. Nobody wants to learn to cook anymore. — Wolfgang Puck

The idea of old was to conform yourself to a style of cooking, it was not to create a style of cooking. Now the chef is so much into 'I want to sign that dish and say I am the one who made that dish. — Jacques Pepin

The restaurant chefs in Spain are breaking ground, but in terms of the everyday cooking in Spain I still hear people coming back and saying they were disappointed. I think it's because they're expecting the chef stuff. — Sally Schneider

In Conclusion

Which quotation resonated with you best? Did you enjoy our collection of chefs cooking quotes? Or may be you have a slogan about chefs cooking to suggest. Let us know using our contact form.

Citation

Feel free to cite and use any of the quotes in this collection of chefs cooking quotations. For popular citation styles(APA, Chicago, MLA), please use this citation page.

Embed HTML Link

Copy and paste this HTML code in your webpage