The unglamorous habits that make an ordinary home cook reliably good: read the recipe first, get your prep done, salt in layers, control the heat, and taste as you go. Not chef theatre, just the code of a working kitchen.
6 chapters · 27 rules
This is the plain, hard-won code of a home kitchen that runs well: a short list of habits that separate food that merely gets made from food that tastes like someone was paying attention. Each rule is stated as an instruction, reasoned honestly, given a way to practice it, and marked with the times it bends. None of it requires fancy equipment or a professional pedigree. It requires doing a few boring things consistently until they become the way you cook.
For the home cook who follows recipes competently but wants to stop guessing, whose food is fine but never quite crosses over into good. It suits beginners building their first real habits and confident cooks who would like a plain checklist to argue with. No restaurant ambitions required, just the wish to cook dinner well and enjoy doing it.
Added the chapters on heat and on the calm-kitchen habits, plus worked guides for pan temperature and resting. Rewrote the salt chapter around layering and tasting after reader questions.
Expanded the prep and knife chapters and added the pantry rules.
Initial publication — prep, salt, and the basics of not ruining dinner.
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