Ratio The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking

Ratio The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking

Ruhlman, who explained the basic ingredients, tools, and cookbooks essential to the home chef in The Elements of Cooking (2007), now offers an illuminating read on the magic numbers that lie at the heart of basic cookery. He divides the book into five parts (doughs, stocks, sausages, sauces, and custards). In each section he explains what essential properties make the ratios work and the subtle variations that differentiate, for instance, a bread dough (five parts flour, three parts water) from a biscuit dough (three parts flour, one part fat, two parts liquid). While making his case that “possessing one small bit of crystalline information can open up a world of practical applications” gets a little repetitive, it’s certainly a lesson worth taking to heart. This revealing and remarkably accessible read offers indispensible information for those ready to cook by the seat of their pants; with a handy grasp of these ratios (and a dash of technique), willing chefs should have no excuse to remain tethered to recipe cards and cookbooks.

User Ratings and Reviews

5 Stars Bird’s Eye View of Baking
Ratio is a book that should be read before opening any recipe book, especially on, say baking. Why? It gives an overview and an insight as no other baking text has done. It easily shows you the differences and similarities between different products (i.e. doughs), by varying just one component, such as amount of egg, sugar, or flour. Seeing the “big picture” lets you bake two different items at the same time, just by following the simple ratios of ingredients, and varying one part of a ratio. Baking is an art and science that requires proper ratios of ingredients to get best results. Many recipes have a hodgepodge of ingredients in odd measures-this is straighforward, you can double or halve recipes with ease.

Bonus:This is far from limited to baking. It also covers ratios for stocks, sausages’ fat to meat ratio, sauce preparation and ratios, custards and more.

I’ve compared the rations here to my recipes that work, and they are spot on. That means, Ruhlman did the hard work, and he frees you up to make things that come out right. What I really respect about him is that he gives the chef who had these ratios, to start with, full credit. Too many chefs snag ideas from others, and publish, not giving credit. Ruhlman has integrity.

I highly recommend this, not merely as a cookbook or recipe book-there hundreds out there, with pretty photos and abundant recipe variations. It’s because the author makes it so easy to get the “big picture” of cooking, and covers many different items, in cooking or baking. If you have the ratios, you can make some variations, and personalize things, if you choose. You benefit from this concise “Cliff’s Notes” on cooking and baking. You get the benefit of knowledge from other chef’s successes and failures, and you benefit by creating baked or cooked products that taste great.

4 Stars Almost getting teaching kitchen improv right: priceless
(This review originally appeared in a somewhat different form at my blog, OffSeasonTV at Blogspot.)

This book purports to be the latest and greatest in books claiming to teach how to cook without recipes, a trail blazed not all that successfully by authors such as Pam Anderson. Derived from a chart Ruhlman acquired from Chef Uwe Hestnar, at the Culinary Institute of America, it actually does a fairly creditable job of showing how certain aspects of cooking (particularly baking, charcuterie, and saucemaking) are based heavily on ingredient ratios (weight, by the way, not volume ratios, which are somewhat useless due to differences in ingredient density). Hestnar felt quite strongly (and presumably still does) that these ratios were the most critical things a professional chef needs to know, and that pretty much anything else is secondary.

As is often the case with books of this sort, Ratio oversells itself; anyone who’s spent a great deal of time studying politics can tell you that something that claims to be the utmost in simplicity seldom really is, and truthfully this book has a tendency to downplay technique (entire books can be and have been written on the subject, which really isn’t a very simple subject at all), as well as hyperfocusing on classical Franco-international cuisine. The question really comes down to this: how valid is Hestnar’s point, and can a non-cook learn to cook from Ruhlman’s book?

Well, Hestnar’s not wrong. Certainly a lot of this book comes down to the interactions of the chemical components of food; mayonnaise, for example, and its dependence on egg yolk as an emulsifier is an extreme example, since it really takes very little yolk to emulsify oil and vinegar (indeed, Ruhlman quotes a 20:1:1 ratio for oil/vinegar/yolk), but the ratio in question is extremely squishy compared to the rather strict 5:3 ratio of flour to water for a standard loaf bread (hardcore bakers will recognize that as a baker’s percentage of 66%). And indeed these ratios are fairly important for the subjects that Hestnar’s chart covers — too little liquid will create a gloppy sauce, and too much will create a hard-to-handle bread dough (although this is something you actually want for a ciabatta). And fat ratios make the difference between a bread dough and a pastry dough.

But as I said, I do think it’s oversold. The simple fact is that these ratios really aren’t as general as Ruhlman wants to think; they cover only certain parts of the culinary arts, and are mainly of use for troubleshooting purposes outside the realms the book covers. And Ruhlman’s work only covers classical French-based cuisine; there isn’t a tomato sauce to be found in here, for example, nor any discussion of rice or other grains (if cooking rice isn’t ratio-driven I don’t know what is). But what is in here is quite useful, and it does promote the use of weight measurements in the American kitchen, something people seem to be afraid of. It’s an interesting read, and I do recommend it, but as a guide to improvisational cooking it only does half the job.

5 Stars The only cook book I ever finished reading because of its content
This book has a few qualities that I have found lacking in most cook books

1) It is well written it is a joy to read.

2) It gives recipes with variations and moves from the simple to the complex so that beginners and professionals alike can learn from it.

3) Every thing can be done in a majority of kitchens.

4) Cooking times and temperatures have been well thought out and tested.

5) Tips on salvaging recipes in with common problems are addressed.

6) Fundimentals are taught instead of a nice story and a recipe.

7) The book gives a definition of all kind of things such as Stock, Cookies, Breads , Vinagretes, Saugages, custards, Pancakes and many more. But the definitions by ingredent ratios tell you what a food is and then with varitations you can add taste and complexities.

I never ever ever found a cook book that has done this or even tried to do it. But this book does it well and consisely.

I cook a lot of French, German and Italian food and this book has application in all areas. It is mostly french cooking inspired but it is applicable to all fields. Even things that I am good at such as stocks and sausages, were made more clear to me by this book. Every other cook book I have looked at has been the source of a good recipe or two but never has one so broadly and elegantly presented what food types are and how to make them.

This book not only is about ratios but is heavly involved in technique and the techniques have all been tested. This man loves food and is not shy to stress what it takes to go from good to great to unbelieviably good food.

I am inspired to bake and use thicking rouxs because they make sense to me now. I have always depeneded on slow reductions before to add taste and flavors but this has opened my eyes to things that seemed to hard to do in the past.

4 Stars Changed the way I cook-wish there was more
I LOVE this book, the ratios work! I haven’t been able to put it down since I downloaded it to my Kindle. It is extremely freeing to go into the kitchen, armed with a ratio and whip up a batch of biscuits (which were wonderful even without chilling the dough), muffins, (also excellent) and bread(wonderful). I’m sure ratios are not new to professional chefs, however this book makes this information available forthe home cook.A rmed with just the knowledge of the correct ratios and a good understanding of technique you can do anything. This is NOT a book for beginners and it is not a “how to cook” book. I am an experienced, avid baker, and an average, less avid meal cook. Many of the instructions assume you are knowledgeable about cooking basics, there are many “cook until done” type instructions. The book does not purport to be a “how to cook” book. But if you are an experienced cook and know how to judge when a cookie or bread is done, this book will change the way you cook. The goal is to open the world of ratios to those cooks who want to expand their expertise beyond recipes. I have always been very “recipe dependent” but no more, this concept has freed me up to do what I want in the quantities I want. This has definitely changed the way I cook. I’ve made smaller batches, tried my own variations and everything works. The ratios rely on weighing ingredients so it is best to have a kitchen scale in order to make the ratios work. I have 2 caveats: You can’t see the charts well on the Kindle edition, and I wish there were more ratios.

4 Stars speedy delivery
the speedy delivery we have come to expect from Amazon.com which is what keeps me coming back to amazon.

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