70 Inspiring Cooking Quotes

In the heart of every kitchen lies a story waiting to be told, an adventure ready to unfold with each sizzle and simmer. Cooking is not merely a task but a profound expression of culture, creativity, and love. Whether you're a seasoned chef or a home cook just beginning to explore the magic of flavors, a dash of inspiration can transform your culinary journey. Dive into our curated collection of 70 inspiring cooking quotes that not only celebrate the art of cooking but also offer a sprinkle of wisdom and a pinch of joy to motivate you in the kitchen. Let these words ignite your passion for cooking, filling your culinary endeavors with purpose and delight.

1. “I cook with wine, sometimes I even add it to the food.” - W.C. Fields

2. “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

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

4. “Until I discovered cooking, I was never really interested in anything.” - Julia Child

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

6. “If you are careful,' Garp wrote, 'if you use good ingredients, and you don't take any shortcuts, then you can usually cook something very good. Sometimes it is the only worthwhile product you can salvage from a day; what you make to eat. With writing, I find, you can have all the right ingredients, give plenty of time and care, and still get nothing. Also true of love. Cooking, therefore, can keep a person who tries hard sane.” - John Irving

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

8. “Always start out with a larger pot than what you think you need.” - Julia Child

9. “I am more modest now, but I still think that one of the pleasantest of all emotions is to know that I, I with my brain and my hands, have nourished my beloved few, that I have concocted a stew or a story, a rarity or a plain dish, to sustain them truly against the hungers of the world.” - M.F.K. Fisher

10. “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

11. “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

12. “...I have become more interested than ever in the effect of a diet higher in 'greens' than it is in meat - both in terms of my own wellbeing and, more recently, those implications that go beyond me and those for whom I cook.” - Nigel Slater

13. “There is communion of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine drunk.” - M.F.K. Fisher

14. “There is a difference between dining and eating. Dining is an art. When you eat to get most out of your meal, to please the palate, just as well as to satiate the appetite, that,my friend, is dining.” - Yuan Mei

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

16. “I turned from my window. Suddenly it seemed odd for my neighbors on both sides to have visitors while I had none. For the first time, I felt lonely at 'Sconset."Let's cook," Frannie said energetically. "We will smell so good that they'll all come running." She picked up a bowl, filled it with apples from the barrel, and immediately began to cut them up. I put water to boil, got out cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, lard, flour, sugar, salt, saleratus, vinegar, and all the other things for apple pies. We both laughed happily. How easy it is, we thought, to make a decision, to implement a remedy, to act.” - Sena Jeter Naslund

17. “This explains why I've been making Recession Tea- letting a teabag steep for half the time it should so I can use it again for a second cup later.” - Suzan Colon

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

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

20. “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

21. “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

22. “There is no spectacle on earth more appealing than that of a beautiful woman in the act of cooking dinner for someone she loves.” - Thomas Wolfe

23. “Taking solitude in stride was a sign of strength and of a willingness to take care of myself. This meant - among other things - working productively, remembering to leave the house, and eating well. I thought about food all the time. I had a subscription to Gourmet and Food & Wine. Cooking for others had often been my way of offering care. So why, when I was alone, did I find myself trying to subsist on cereal and water? I'd need to learn to cook for one.” - Jenni Ferrari-Adler

24. “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

25. “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

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

27. “I understood that if ever one wanted to live with someone you cooked for them and they came running. But then it is my idea of hell these days, living with someone. The idea of sharing your life with someone is just utterly ghastly. I know why people do it, but it's never a good idea.” - Nigel Slater

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

29. “Decadent cooks go one step further and make sculptures of the food itself. If life is to be spent in pursuit of the extravagant, the extreme, the grotesque, the bizarre, then one's diet should reflect the fact. Life, meals, everything must be as artificial as possible - in fact works of art. So why not begin by eating a few statues?” - Medlar Lucan

30. “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

31. “if god had intended us to follow recipes, He wouldn't have given us grandmothers.” - Linda Henley

32. “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

33. “When the phone rang I was in the kitchen, boiling a potful of spaghetti and whistling along with an FM broadcast of the overture to Rossini's 'The Thieving Magpie,' which has to be the perfect music for cooking pasta.” - Haruki Murakami

34. “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

35. “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

36. “Zip it kiddo. Don't ever admit you know a thing about cooking or it'll be used against you later in life.” - Rebecca Wells

37. “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

38. “…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

39. “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

40. “Standing back and staring blankly at the glass, he realized he had no idea what it meant to preheat. Obviously he heated it prior to something, but to what?-Boyd” - Ais

41. “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

42. “...no one is born a great cook, one learns by doing.” - Julia Child

43. “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

44. “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

45. “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

46. “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

47. “I think preparing food and feeding people brings nourishment not only to our bodies but to our spirits. Feeding people is a way of loving them, in the same way that feeding ourselves is a way of honoring our own createdness and fragility.” - Shauna Niequist

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

49. “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)

50. “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

51. “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

52. “It turns out that Molly wasn't her mother's daughter in that respect. Charity was like the MacGuyver of the kitchen. She could whip up a five-course meal for twelve from an egg, two spaghetti noodles, some household chemicals, and a stick of chewing gum. Molly ...Molly once burned my egg. My boiled egg. I don't know how.” - Jim Butcher

53. “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

54. “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

55. “Dear Eloisa (said I) there’s no occasion for your crying so much about such a trifle. (for I was willing to make light of it in order to comfort her) I beg you would not mind it – You see it does not vex me in the least; though perhaps I may suffer most from it after all; for I shall not only be obliged to eat up all the Victuals I have dressed already, but must if Henry should recover (which however is not very likely) dress as much for you again; or should he die (as I suppose he will) I shall still have to prepare a Dinner for you whenever you marry any one else. So you see that tho perhaps for the present it may afflict you to think of Henry’s sufferings, yet I dare say he’ll die soon and then his pain will be over and you will be easy, whereas my Trouble will last much longer for work as hard as I may, I am certain that the pantry cannot be cleared in less than a fortnight” - Jane Austen

56. “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

57. “...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

58. “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

59. “I was lucky to live in the 20th century, when gefilte fish could be purchased in a jar.” - Barbara "Cutie" Cooper

60. “Cooking without wine is like sex alone. You may get the job done, but you don't really care once it's over.” - Andrew Grey

61. “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

62. “There are some things in life that shouldn't be given so much importance, if they don't change what is essential.” - Laura Esquivel

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

64. “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

65. “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

66. “The cooking was invigorating, joyous. For Julia, the cooking fulfilled the promises that Le Cordon Bleu had made but never kept. Where Le Cordon Bleu always remained rooted in the dogma of French cuisine, Julia strove to infuse its rigors with new possibilities and pleasures. It must have felt liberating for her to deconstruct Carême and Escoffier, respecting the traditions and technique while correcting the oversight. “To her,” as a noted food writer indicated, “French culinary tradition was a frontier, not a religion.” If a legendary recipe could be improved upon, then let the gods beware.” - Bob Spitz

67. “My favorite hobby is cooking and eating. There is nothing i can do well if i have not eaten well.” - Darnell Lamont Walker

68. “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

69. “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

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