Michael Ruhlman

Michael Carl Ruhlman (born July 28, 1963) is an American author, home cook and entrepreneur.

He has written or co-authored more than two dozen books, including non-fiction, fiction, memoir, and books on cooking. He has co-authored many books with American chefs, such as Thomas Keller, Eric Ripert, Michael Symon and Jean-Georges Vongerichten.

Michael Carl Ruhlman was born in Cleveland, Ohio. He attended University School, a private, independent all-boys' day school in Cleveland's suburbs, and completed his undergraduate education at Duke University.

Ruhlman worked a series of odd jobs (his first job after college was copy boy at The New York Times) and traveled before returning to his hometown in 1991, to work for a local magazine.

While working at the magazine, Ruhlman wrote an article about his old high school and its new headmaster, which he expanded into his first book, Boys Themselves: A Return to Single-Sex Education (1996).

For his second book, The Making of a Chef (1997), Ruhlman enrolled in the Culinary Institute of America, taking a variety of classes but not graduating, to produce a first-person account—of the techniques, personalities, and mindsets—of culinary education at the prestigious chef's school. The success of this book produced two follow-ups, The Soul of a Chef (2000) and The Reach of a Chef (2006).

Ruhlman has also collaborated with chef Thomas Keller to produce the cookbooks The French Laundry Cookbook (1999), Bouchon (2004), Under Pressure (2008), and Ad Hoc At Home (2009), Bouchon Bakery (2012); with French chef Eric Ripert and Colombian artist Valentino Cortazar to produce the lavish coffee-table book A Return to Cooking (2002); and with Michigan chef Brian Polcyn to produce Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking and Curing (2005) and Salumi: The Craft of Italian Dry Curing (2012). In 2009 Ruhlman also collaborated with fellow Clevelander and Iron Chef Michael Symon on Symon's first cookbook Live to Cook.

Ruhlman is the winner of two James Beard Awards, the 1999 award for magazine feature writing and the 2012 general cooking award for his book Ruhlman's Twenty, and has been nominated seven other times by the foundation.