Why Michael Voltaggio Calls The French Laundry Cookbook His Favorite Cookbook Of All Time

Professional chefs are just like us — they have well-loved, dog-eared, and sauce-stained cookbooks that they turn to again and again. Speaking to Food & Wine, American chef, restaurateur, and "Top Chef" winner Michael Voltaggio shared his all-time favorite: "The French Laundry Cookbook." In Yountville, deep in California's wine country, famed chef and restaurateur Thomas Keller opened The French Laundry to great acclaim in 1994, and it's been nearly impossible to snag a dining reservation ever since. Serving a multi-course menu that changes constantly, Keller pioneered upscale French cooking with a California spin and earned three Michelin stars for his efforts.

Published in 1999, "The French Laundry Cookbook" is an award-winning compilation of 150 recipes served at The French Laundry throughout its history, now possible to recreate by the home cook. Unlike other cookbooks focused on ease and speed, "The French Laundry Cookbook" is a high-end cookbook that skips no steps, no matter how exacting. This means that while taxing, Keller gave chefs at home a chance to achieve what he has: impeccably focused, intricately prepared, absolutely delicious food. "The French Laundry Cookbook changed everything in America," Voltaggio said. "It wasn't just a book, it was a new standard, a new goal line for everyone else to aim for."

Even the best cookbooks can become a bit repetitive. Food trends become trends for a reason, and you're probably happy to have another preparation for Brussels sprouts or butternut squash soup in your arsenal. But "The French Laundry Cookbook" is an opportunity for home cooks to think bigger and bolder. "It was unlike any other book by an American chef," Michael Voltaggio emphasized to Food & Wine. "You opened it and it made you start dreaming immediately about what you could do."

From technical tips on creating the perfect beurre monté to precise preparations for salmon cornets and olive oil-poached cod, "The French Laundry Cookbook" has been training a new class of chefs for over two decades, all in the comfort of their own kitchens. "The scary part is that now people cook out of it regularly at home," Voltaggio says. "The other day I gave a regular customer a vacuum-sealed bag of our short ribs, with instructions on how to simmer them in a pot of hot water on his stove. He replied, 'Can't I just put it in my immersion circulator?'" Sous vide cooking might be an intimidating place to start, but with Voltaggio's favorite cookbook in hand and Thomas Keller's coveted insights, you can't really go wrong honing your culinary skills.