60 Inspiring Cooking Quotes

In the heart of every culinary journey lies a spark of inspiration, a story waiting to be told, and a lesson ready to be learned. Whether you're an aspiring chef, a seasoned home cook, or someone who finds joy in the simple act of preparing a meal, the right words can ignite your passion for cooking. This curated collection of the top 60 inspiring cooking quotes promises to stir your culinary soul, fuel your creativity, and remind you of the deeper meaning behind the art of cooking. From celebrated chefs to timeless wisdom, these quotes serve as a testament to the transformative power of food and its profound ability to bring people together, evoke memories, and create new ones. Dive in and let these words of wisdom accompany you on your delicious adventures.

1. “The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found.” - Calvin Trillin

2. “The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking you've got to have a what-the-hell attitude.” - Julia Child

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

4. “He'd noticed that sex bore some resemblance to cookery: it fascinated people, they sometimes bought books full of complicated recipes and interesting pictures, and sometimes when they were really hungry they created vast banquets in their imagination - but at the end of the day they'd settle quite happily for egg and chips. If it was well done and maybe had a slice of tomato.” - Terry Pratchett

5. “Save the Planet...Buy Organic” - Nancy Philips

6. “in the abstract art of cooking,ingredients trump appliances,passion supersedes expertise,creativity triumphs over technique,spontaneity inspires invention,and wine makes even the worst culinary disaster taste delicious.” - Bob Blumer

7. “Tita knew through her own flesh how fire transforms the elements, how a lump of corn flour is changed into a tortilla, how a soul that hasn't been warmed by the fire of love is lifeless, like a useless ball of corn flour.” - Laura Esquivel

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

9. “The only thing that will make a souffle fall is if it knows you're afraid of it.” - James Beard

10. “Would it really be so bad if you slowed your life down even a teensy bit? If you took charge of the ingredients of your food instead of letting corporations stuff you and your family, like baby birds, full of sugar, corn products, chemicals, and meat from really, really unhappy animals?” - Catherine Friend

11. “There ain't a body, be it mouse or man, that ain't made better by a little soup.” - kate dicamillo

12. “Oh, I adore to cook. It makes me feel so mindless in a worthwhile way.” - Truman Capote

13. “I am more of an herb guy than a spice guy. It comes back to a certain conservatism I have regarding food. The French are not big on spices; they use more herbs. I know the spices used in European cooking and use them in moderation. I am not going to serve a dish that is wildly nutmegged!" David Waltuck, Chanterelle NYC” - Karen Page

14. “Every so often I would look at my women friends who were happily married and didn't cook, and I would always find myself wondering how they did it. Would anyone love me if I couldn't cook? I always thought cooking was part of the package: Step right up, it's Rachel Samstat, she's bright, she's funny and she can cook!” - Nora Ephron

15. “Because cooks love the social aspect of food, cooking for one is intrinsically interesting. A good meal is like a present, and it can feel goofy, at best, to give yourself a present. On the other hand, there is something life affirming in taking the trouble to feed yourself well, or even decently. Cooking for yourself allows you to be strange or decadent or both. The chances of liking what you make are high, but if it winds up being disgusting, you can always throw it away and order a pizza; no one else will know. In the end, the experimentation, the impulsiveness, and the invention that such conditions allow for will probably make you a better cook.” - Jenni Ferrari-Adler

16. “Without the Project I was nothing but a secretary on a road to nowhere, drifting toward frosted hair and menthol addiction.” - Julie Powell

17. “When I got home I peered down at the lobster to see how he was doing. The inner plastic bag was sucked tight around him and clouded up. It looked like something out of an eighties made-for-TV movie, with some washed-up actress taking too many pills and trying to off herself with a Macy's bag.” - Julie Powell

18. “I cook to inspire my husband to pay attention to me.” - Sonia Rumzi

19. “Good kitchens are not about size; they are about ergonomics and light.” - Nigel Slater

20. “Assuming mother's absence is only for a short time, don't be too concerned if you find yourself being more relaxed than she is over what the children eat. It is far better to maintain harmony and let mother cope with the problem later. You can use the excuse "You are only having this because Mummy's in hospital!".” - Nursing Mothers' Association of Australia

21. “We had this big grill at his house, and I remember, one night he said, 'Sam, tonight you're feeding us,' He showed me how to push on the middle of the steaks to see how done they were, and how to sear them fast on each side to keep the juices in." "And they were awesome, weren't they?" "I burned the hell out of them," I said, matter-of-fact. "I'd compare them to charcoal, but charcoal is still sort of edible.” - Maggie Stiefvater

22. “Sentinel meeting tonight,” Ria told her. “At Lucas's place.” “Time?” ...“Seven. Sascha's doing dinner.” “God save us all.” Sascha had decided she liked cooking. Unfortunately, cooking didn't like her back.” - Nalini Singh

23. “The repetitive phases of cooking leave plenty of mental space for reflection, and as I chopped and minced and sliced I thought about the rhythms of cooking, one of which involves destroying the order of the things we bring from nature into our kitchens, only to then create from them a new order. We butcher, grind, chop, grate, mince, and liquefy raw ingredients, breaking down formerly living things so that we might recombine them in new, more cultivated forms. When you think about it, this is the same rhythm, once removed, that governs all eating in nature, which invariably entails the destruction of certain living things, by chewing and then digestion, in order to sustain other living things. In The Hungry Soul Leon Kass calls this the great paradox of eating: 'that to preserve their life and form living things necessarily destroy life and form.' If there is any shame in that destruction, only we humans seem to feel it, and then only on occasion. But cooking doesn't only distance us from our destructiveness, turning the pile of blood and guts into a savory salami, it also symbolically redeems it, making good our karmic debts: Look what good, what beauty, can come of this! Putting a great dish on the table is our way of celebrating the wonders of form we humans can create from this matter--this quantity of sacrificed life--just before the body takes its first destructive bite.” - Michael Pollan

24. “Something must be done about the food.” Seeing his speculative glance Clare laid down her fork and gave him a warning scowl. “Yes, I’m a good cook, but I will not have time to work in the kitchen. And don’t try to convince me that a mistress also has to cook for her lover.” “I wasn’t thinking of wasting your valuable time in the kitchen.” He smiled mischievously. “But a mistress can do interesting thing with food. Shall I describe them?” “No!” “Another time, perhaps.” - Mary Jo Putney

25. “Wandering across the vast room, I stopped at a set of shelves as high as the ceiling, and holding about six hundred volumes - all classics on the history of Soalris, starting with the nine volumes of Giese's monumental and already relatively obsolescent monograph. Display for its own sake was improbable in these surroundings. The collection was a respective tribute to the memory of the pioneers. I took down the massive volumes of Giese and sat leafing through them. Rheya had also located som reading matter. Looking over her shoulder, I saw that she had picked one of the many books brought out by the first expedition, the Interplanetary Cookery Book, which could have been the personal property of Giese himself. She was pouring over the recipes adapted to the arduous conditions of interstellar flight. I said nothing, and returned to the book resting on my knees. Solaris - Ten Years of Exploration had appeared as volumes 4-12 of the Solariana collection whose most recent additions were numbered in the thousands.” - Stanislaw Lem

26. “…food is capable of feeding far more than a rumbling stomach. Food is life; our well-being demands it. Food is art and magic; it evokes emotion and colors memory, and in skilled hands, meals become greater than the sum of their ingredients. Food is self-evident; plucked right from the ground or vine or sea, its power to delight is immediate. Food is discovery; finding an untried spice or cuisine is for me like uncovering a new element. Food is evolution; how we interpret it remains ever fluid. Food is humanitarian: sharing it bridges cultures, making friends of strangers pleasantly surprised to learn how much common ground they ultimately share.” - Anthony Beal

27. “The fire alarm went off. Fire engines came racing; we all rushed out on the gravel drive, everyone thinking it was us. In fact, one of the elderly residents of Saltram had left a pan on the oven in her flat. Apparently this happens all the time. The tenant in question is appearing as an extra -- playing one of the cooks.” - Emma Thompson

28. “Bought marmalade? Oh dear, I call that very feeble.” - Julian Fellowes

29. “Give two cooks the same ingredients and the same recipe; it is fascinating to observe how, like handwriting, their results differ. After you cook a dish repeatedly, you begin to understand it. Then you can reinvent it a bit and make it yours. A written recipe can be useful, but sometimes the notes scribbled in the margin are the key to a superlative rendition. Each new version may inspire improvisation based on fresh understanding. It doesn't have to be as dramatic as all that, but such exciting minor epiphanies keep cooking lively.” - David Tanis

30. “Invest in what's real. Clean as you go. Drink while you cook. Make it fun. It doesn't have to be complicated. It will be what it will be.” - Gwyneth Paltrow

31. “TV cookery is very like internet porn - the overwhelming majority of its audience will never ever get to act out what's happening on screen.” - skint foodie

32. “If God had created celery, it would only have two stalks, because that's the most that almost any recipe ever calls for.” - skint foodie

33. “I have a lot of time for vegetarians (though apparently not all of them have a lot of time for me), and that's because I respect anyone with principles about food.” - Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

34. “For a moment, or a second, the pinched expressions of the cynical, world-weary, throat-cutting, miserable bastards we've all had to become disappears, when we're confronted with something as simple as a plate of food.” - Anthony Bourdain

35. “I mean really, how could an artistic individual stay grounded in the nitty-gritty of how many minutes per pound meat has to stay in the oven when trying to fathom the creative philosophy behind the greatest artistic minds of the world?” - E.A. Bucchianeri

36. “While the egg yolks cooled, he directed the beaters at the egg whites, setting the mixer on high speed that sent small bubbles giggling to the side of the bowl, where a few became many until they were a white froth rising up and then lying down again in patters and ridges, leaving an intricate design like the ribs of a leaf in the wake of the beaters” - Erica Bauermeister

37. “Gran follows recipes by looking at picture—to the eye, delicious; to the tongue, boiled socks. Makes you wanna cry really.” - Simon Cheshire

38. “I want them to bite into a cookie, and think of me, and smile. Food is love. Food has a power. I knew it in my mind, but now I know it in my heart.” - Jael McHenry (The Kitchen Daughter)

39. “In fact, people who posses not magic at all can instill their home-cooked meals with love and security and health, transforming ingredients and bringing disparate people together as family and friends. There's a reason that when opening one's home to guests, the first thing you do is offer food and drink. Cooking is a kind of everyday magic.” - Juliet Blackwell

40. “In the back of the fridge I checked out some stewed apples destined to fester. I examined them closely and reckoned they had only a day to go, even by my standards. I spooned the apples into tiny bowls, tossed in some dried fruit and sprinkled them with crumble topping. Delicious, they said that night, scraping the bowls so clean they hardly needed to go in the dishwasher. The fools.” - Helen Brown

41. “Her cuisine is limited but she has as good an idea of breakfast as a Scotchwoman."[Sherlock Holmes, on Mrs. Hudson's cooking.]” - Arthur Conan Doyle

42. “This is the body's nurse; but since man's witFound the art of cookery, to delight his sense,More bodies are consumed and kill'd with itThan with the sword, famine, or pestilence.” - John Davies of Hereford

43. “A lighthearted prayer for Thanksgiving:May you have turkey in seasonCranberries for squeezin'Gravy (within reason)And leftovers worth freezin'!Amenby Merrill Miller of Scottdale, PA” - Mary Beth Lind

44. “She turned and smiled. “Kitchen-sink pasta.”“My favorite. But you really ought to come up with a better name for it than kitchen-sink pasta. Sounds only slightly more appealing than bathtub gefilte fish.”She shuddered. “Who in god’s name would make bathtub gefilte fish?”“I dated a Jewish girl whose grandmother made it,” I laughed.” - Leesa Freeman

45. “To begin cooking duck at one in the morning is one of the finest acts of madness that can be undertaken by a human being who is not mad.” - Manuel Vázquez Montalbán

46. “...As the evening wore on (the supper did not end until seven in the morning), the public were admitted to watch the festivities from the balustrade, and were offered biscuits and refreshments to keep them going through the night....One of the lawyers was so upset by the evening that he got up to leave, proclaiming: 'They will send you to the madhouse and strike you from the list of members of the Bar.' Grimod responded by locking the doors to the apartment and preventing any further guests from leaving. Coffee and liquers were taken in an adjoining room lit by 130 candles while the guests were entertained by a magic-lantern show and some experiments with electricity performed by the Italian physicist Castanio. M Rival tells us that many of the guests fell asleep.” - Giles MacDonogh

47. “C'è un alone di stregoneria in tutta la cucina; la scelta degli ingredienti, il modo in cui vengono mescolati, grattugiati, sciolti, le infusioni e come si insaporiscono, le ricette prese da vecchi libri, gli utensili tradizionali” - Joanne Harris

48. “In normal life, "simplicity" is synonymous with "easy to do," but when a chef uses the word, it means "takes a lifetime to learn.” - Bill Buford

49. “Somewhere close behind air and water is the need for food.” - L.J. Martin

50. “But don't blame me for the food. My wife knows a hundred and one ways to incinerate a cow, and as far as I can tell she's still experimenting.” - Jojo Moyes

51. “Sometimes it's good just to be seduced by the particular cheeses spread out in front of you on a cheese counter.” - Nigella Lawson

52. “I have come to the conclusion that just as the Japanese live to work, Asians live to eat.” - Anastacia Oaikhena

53. “I don't believe in twisting yourself into knots of excuses and explanations over the food you make. When one's hostess starts in with self-deprecations such as "Oh, I don't know how to cook...," or "Poor little me...," or "This may taste awful...," it is so dreadful to have to reassure her that everything is delicious and fine, whether it is or not. Besides, such admissions only draw attention to one's shortcomings (or self-perceived shortcomings), and make the other person think, "Yes, you're right, this really is an awful meal!" Maybe the cat has fallen into the stew, or the lettuce has frozen, or the cake has collapsed -- eh bien, tant pis! Usually one's cooking is better than one thinks it is. And if the food is truly vile, as my ersatz eggs Florentine surely were, then the cook must simply grit her teeth and bear it with a smile -- and learn from her mistakes.” - Julia Child

54. “She said she doesn't like your cooking. She said she'd rather eat a microwave dinner from the convenience store instead of something you cooked. Do you get it? Hm? Why are you being such a crybaby? Save the salt from your tears for seasoning.” - Kanoko Sakurakouji

55. “A yummy mummy is a dedicated and loving mom who embodies a healthy lifestyle while retaining a sense of the person she was before having kids.” - Marina Delio

56. “His dreams were full of bloodshed. He ran and ran, but wherever he fled, his mother's people and his father's people were in battle with each other. And then Shaftali and Sainnaite both turned on him crying out "No one of your heritage will ever cook for us!""So what?" he replied, absurdly. "At the rate you're killing each other, there soon will be no one to cook for!” - Laurie J. Marks

57. “Well, in a world where so few of us are obliged to cook at all anymore, to choose to do so is to lodge a protest against specialization—against the total rationalization of life. Against the infiltration of commercial interests into every last cranny of our lives. To cook for the pleasure of it, to devote a portion of our leisure to it, is to declare our independence from the corporations seeking to organize our every waking moment into yet another occasion for consumption. (Come to think of it, our nonwaking moments as well: Ambien, anyone?) It is to reject the debilitating notion that, at least while we’re at home, production is work best done by someone else, and the only legitimate form of leisure is consumption. This dependence marketers call “freedom.” - Michael Pollan

58. “If a cook can't make soup between two and seven, she can't make it in a week.” - Anthony Trollope

59. “I didn't start cooking until I was thirty-two. Until then, I just ate. - Julia Child” - Kathleen Flinn

60. “Fanfare for the MakersA cloud of witnesses. To whom? To what?To the small fire that never leaves the sky.To the great fire that boils the daily pot.To all the things we are not remembered by,Which we remember and bless. To all the thingsThat will not notice when we die,Yet lend the passing moment words and wings.So fanfare for the Makers: who composeA book of words or deeds who runs may writeAs many who do run, as a family growsAt times like sunflowers turning towards the light.As sometimes in the blackout and the raidsOne joke composed an island in the night.As sometimes one man’s kindness pervadesA room or house or village, as sometimesMerely to tighten screws or sharpen bladesCan catch a meaning, as to hear the chimesAt midnight means to share them, as one manIn old age plants an avenue of limesAnd before they bloom can smell them, before they spanThe road can walk beneath the perfected arch,The merest greenprint when the lives beganOf those who walk there with him, as in defaultOf coffee men grind acorns, as in despiteOf all assaults conscripts counter assault,As mothers sit up late night after nightMoulding a life, as miners day by dayDescend blind shafts, as a boy may flaunt his kiteIn an empty nonchalant sky, as anglers playTheir fish, as workers work and can take prideIn spending sweat before they draw their pay.As horsemen fashion horses while they ride,As climbers climb a peak because it is there,As life can be confirmed even in suicide:To make is such. Let us make. And set the weather fair.Louis Macneice” - Louis MacNeice