“Over the years, I've discovered that lessons in cooking come in two forms. There are the lessons that you never fully learn; skills that you get better and better at, but never quite perfect. Then there are the lessons that you only need to learn once because the results of not following them will literally scar you for life.”

American chef and food writer

J. Kenji López-Alt is an American chef and food writer known for bringing a scientific approach to home cooking. He wrote The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science, which grew out of his Serious Eats column of the same name. The book became both a critical and commercial success, reached the New York Times Best Seller list, and won the 2016 James Beard Foundation Award for Best General Cooking cookbook. His work often explains why recipes behave the way they do, while showing how science can make familiar American dishes more reliable.