Are you as comfortable in the kitchen as you are in your blue jeans? Would you like to be?

Comfortable in the Kitchen, Meredith Laurence, the Blue Jean Chef, helps you settle into your comfort zone in the kitchen with tips, tricks, explanations of cooking techniques, and over 200 recipes. Meredith shares her knowledge acquired from years working in cooking schools, test kitchens and restaurants in France, Canada and the USA. Her delicious, easy-to-follow recipes, interesting tips and informative explanations will help make any cook more comfortable in the kitchen and inspire new meals.

Comfortable in the Kitchen is designed to teach basic techniques and then strengthen skills, each chapter contains basic recipes that will give you a solid understanding of how the dish works, and four other recipes that build on that technique, but use different ingredients to create a unique and delicious meal. Once you've mastered the basic recipe and practiced the variations, you'll be comfortable enough with the dish to improvise and make it your own! For example, start with the magically simple Basic Roast Chicken. Next, spice things up with Jerk Spiced Roast Chicken, Chipotle Orange Roast Chicken, Summer Ale Chicken with Caramelized Onions, and Five-Spice Roast Chicken.

With chapters on Soups and Salads, Sandwiches and Snacks, Meat and Poultry, Fish and Seafood, Vegetables, Breakfast, and Desserts and Treats, Meredith will help you cover all your bases.

We spend a lot of time in the kitchen. You might as well get comfortable!

Meredith Laurence's profile page

Meredith Laurence, the Blue Jean Chef, has worked in numerous capacities and settings in the food world. After graduating from the New England Culinary Institute, she first honed her skills in two Michelin-rated restaurants in Les-Baux-de-Provence, France. She then went on to work as a line cook at Zuni Café in San Francisco and at Café Rouge in Berkeley, California.

Meredith set out on a different culinary path when she returned to teach at the New England Culinary Institute in Vermont, instructing professional culinary students during the day and home cooks in the evenings. Having found her real passion for teaching home cooks, she moved back to San Francisco to teach and manage at two HomeChef® cooking schools (now Viking Culinary Arts Centers). At the same time, Meredith worked in the world of food and product consulting at the Center for Culinary Development, where she acquired an expertise in creating and testing recipes. For the last thirteen years, she has worked as the Blue Jean Chef® on live television doing on air cooking demonstrations, giving QVC customers advice on cooking and equipping their kitchens.

Meredith is the USA Today bestselling author of six cookbooks. The first book, Blue Jean Chef: Comfortable in the Kitchen, received rave reviews, and helped home cooks broaden their repertoire and become more versatile with a variety of cooking techniques in the kitchen. In her follow-up books in the Blue Jean Chef series, Comfortable Under Pressure, Delicious Under Pressure, and Fast Favorites Under Pressure, Meredith offers easy-to-read instructions for pressure-cooking and provides a wide variety of recipes for the pressure cooker, along with clear instructions and tips. In her latest collection, Meredith makes the Air Fryer a must-have appliance by creating even more flavorful, easy and unexpected recipes in Air Fry Everything and Air Fry Genius.

As the Blue Jean Chef, Meredith’s belief is that being comfortable in the kitchen is key to successful and enjoyable cooking. How comfortable? Well, as comfortable as you would be in your blue jeans, relaxing with friends.