1.
I love the culture of grilling. It creates an atmosphere that is festive but casual.
Bobby Flay
2.
A molcajete is a stone mortar and pestle from Mexico. They're great for grinding spices and making salsa and guacamole because they give everything a nice coarse and rustic feel. I've never collected anything, but I think I might start collecting these because each one is decorated differently.
Bobby Flay
3.
Go vegetable heavy. Reverse the psychology of your plate by making meat the side dish and vegetables the main course.
Bobby Flay
4.
Brushes are crucial for applying glazes, sauces, and oils. The pastry brushes that you find in homestores can be pricey so pay a visit to your local hardware store and pick up a few paint brushes which are less expensive and work equally as well.
Bobby Flay
5.
I was hired as a sous-chef at a restaurant on the Upper East Side. The chef liked to drink - some mornings we would find him sleeping. Two weeks after its opening, I became the chef. I was 20 years old, and way over my head. I had to hire the cooks and do the menus.
Bobby Flay
6.
A grill is just a source of heat. Just like a stove, it is very user-friendly.
Bobby Flay
7.
'The Food Network' was just starting in New York, and I was getting lots of attention from Mesa Grill. They had no money, so if you couldn't get there by subway, you couldn't be on. It wasn't like TV was something I really wanted to do - but I knew it would be great publicity for my restaurants.
Bobby Flay
8.
Cooking is a subject you can never know enough about. There is always something new to discover.
Bobby Flay
9.
I'd love to visit Thailand just for the street food and the energy of a city like Bangkok.
Bobby Flay
10.
I love using gas grills because they are easier to heat and it's much easier to control the flames with a gas grill than with a charcoal fire. Grilling is not just about lighting a fire.
Bobby Flay
11.
Take risks and you'll get the payoffs. Learn from your mistakes until you succeed.
Bobby Flay
12.
Grilling takes the formality out of entertaining. Everyone wants to get involved.
Bobby Flay
13.
I probably use my chef's knives more than any other tool in the kitchen. I'm not married to a particular brand, because they all work, they all have sharp blades.
Bobby Flay
14.
I can't be on the cheeseburger diet all the time.
Bobby Flay
15.
Lime juice makes things taste fresher. I use it for drinks, salsas, relishes, soups, and sauces. You want some give to your limes - firmness means the inside is dry - and they'll stay softer longer if you don't refrigerate them.
Bobby Flay
16.
Grilling outside with my parents at the Jersey shore. We would grill lobster and corn in the summer.
Bobby Flay
17.
There are so many great things about this business. Almost everybody is on the same team. It is all for one-friendly competitiveness. No one is out to hurt anyone.
Bobby Flay
18.
If you aren't nervous about your passion, you aren't passionate about it.
Bobby Flay
19.
Everybody says, 'I have problems overcooking steak on the grill,' but just take it off earlier! Grilling is really common sense. It's very simple. You should think of a grill as a burner - it just happens to have grates. You shouldn't be intimidated by it.
Bobby Flay
20.
When people pile seven things onto one burger, it drives me nuts!
Bobby Flay
21.
I can't grill vegetables, shellfish or steaks without tongs. Don't bother with those long-handled grilling tongs normally found in the BBQ section of your home store. Get intimate with your grill and opt for the regular stainless steel tongs.
Bobby Flay
22.
Don't underestimate the importance of having enough room to work. Grilling is much more relaxing when you are not trying to juggle a whole collection of plates and bowls as you do it. If your grill doesn't have enough workspace - and they almost never do - set up a table right next to your grill.
Bobby Flay
23.
I still love making hamburgers on the grill. I guess whenever I eat them childhood memories come up for me.
Bobby Flay
24.
Basically, there are two things we know: Everybody has less time, and the general public is demanding better food - better in terms of quality and better in terms of flavor.
Bobby Flay
25.
I prefer lump charcoal over briquettes but I do use both for different reasons and different recipes and sometimes I combine them both when I really want the woodsy aroma from the lump charcoal and long, even heat from the briquettes.
Bobby Flay
26.
I wasn't passionate about food until I'd been cooking for a while. I started long before food became part of the mainstream media. I just wanted to cook, period.
Bobby Flay
27.
Charcoal or gas. Both give excellent results, so choose the one that best suits your style of cooking.
Bobby Flay
28.
When I'm on television, I think that I appeal to the everyday guy, 'cause that's who I am. The guys who go to the football games on the weekends are my viewers, for sure.
Bobby Flay
29.
I don't have a long family history of good cooks in my family.
Bobby Flay
30.
Do you want to make a tamale with peanut butter and jelly? Go Ahead! Somebody will eat it.
Bobby Flay
31.
I think cookies are sort of the unsung sweet, you know? They're incredibly popular. But everybody thinks of cakes and pies and fancier desserts before they think cookies. A plate of cookies is a great way to end dinner and really nice to share at the holidays.
Bobby Flay
32.
One of the things that happens in my house on the holidays is after dessert, we sit down to a very ambitious men-versus-women game of Trivial Pursuit. It's brutal. And there's a trophy.
Bobby Flay
33.
Don't try to be the next Rachael Ray or Bobby Flay, we already have those people. We want someone who is going to make their own mark on 'Food Network.'
Bobby Flay
34.
Chipotles to me are a one-of-a-kind pepper because they're smoked jalapenos, so they're fiery and they're smoky. It's good to use chipotles in salsas or soups or condiments - that works really well. To me, they always really pick up anything you put them in.
Bobby Flay
35.
My partner and I are looking at several locations on Park Avenue South and Midtown for a new restaurant space.
Bobby Flay
36.
I guess I fell into cooking.
Bobby Flay
37.
Even if the chef has a good business head, his focus should be behind kitchen doors. A business partner should take care of everything in front of the kitchen doors.
Bobby Flay
38.
My contribution I hope is to get people to eat full-flavored food. If I could come away with that alone, that would be a fantastic accomplishment. I'm also very proud of being a very American chef.
Bobby Flay
39.
It's important to have balance in your life between work and play.
Bobby Flay
40.
Obviously, the easiest recipes are the most successful when it comes to the home cook, because they're not intimidated by them. If I'm doing 'Boy Meets Grill,' and I do something very simple like grilled hamburgers or steaks or chicken, those are the most sought-after recipes.
Bobby Flay
41.
Cook ingredients that you are used to cooking by other techniques, such as fish, chicken, or hamburgers. In other words be comfortable with the ingredients you are using.
Bobby Flay
42.
The first time I was cooking for my wife, Stephanie, way before she was my wife, I actually put three chickens on the rotisserie and I closed the grill, which is really a bad idea. But I just wasn't thinking very straight that day. And I looked outside and I saw, like, smoke and flames.
Bobby Flay
43.
I want to go to college and go back to Georgetown. It's a really cool place.
Bobby Flay
44.
For me, it's all about moderation. I don't kick things out of my diet, like carbs. But I'm not going to eat fast food.
Bobby Flay
45.
You have to have your face in the food. These days people think a tattoo and a bottle of Sriracha equals success.
Bobby Flay
46.
An instant-read thermometer is your best bet for making sure that meat and fish are cooked to the proper temperature.
Bobby Flay
47.
When I’m hiring a cook for one of my restaurants, and I want to see what they can do, I usually ask them to make me an omelette.
Bobby Flay
48.
When I go to a restaurant, I eat three-quarters of the food in front of me. That cuts my calorie intake by 25 percent.
Bobby Flay
49.
If my daughter wants to get into this business, I would support that decision. She's going to have a hard time not being in it. She loves food and she's around it all the time.
Bobby Flay
50.
I was not such a great student, .. So, when I graduated high school, I went to work cooking. I cooked a little at home, but back then, cooking wasn't really a profession that you aspired to, unless your family was in the business. I looked at it as a job. My first job was at Joe Allen's, and I remember there was a photo over the bar of the Triple Dead Heat from the 1944 Carter Handicap.
Bobby Flay