“If you have a bet­ter prod­uct than I do, you can be a bet­ter chef than I am. Per­haps the quick­est way you can become a bet­ter cook is to buy bet­ter ingre­di­ents.” — Thomas Keller, Ad Hoc at Home

As some­one who loves to cook and eat, I can attest that great ingre­di­ents make a huge dif­fer­ence. When I’m shop­ping for gro­ceries or pick­ing out pro­duce at the farmer’s mar­ket, I try to choose the fresh­est and most fla­vor­ful options. It might take a lit­tle bit more time and effort, but it’s well worth it because the end result is so much better.

A sweet, juicy toma­to in a sal­ad or sand­wich will add a depth of fla­vor that can­not be achieved with a taste­less, out-of-sea­son super­mar­ket toma­to. Sim­i­lar­ly, using high qual­i­ty herbs, spices, vine­gars and oth­er ingre­di­ents can take a dish from ordi­nary to extra­or­di­nary, adding depth and complexity.

If you want to ele­vate your cook­ing and take it to the next lev­el, start with great ingre­di­ents. Your taste buds will thank you!

To more eas­i­ly locate prod­ucts sold by sup­pli­ers rec­om­mend­ed by Thomas Keller, Car­la Lal­li Music, Joshua McFad­den, Samin Nos­rat, among oth­ers, I cre­at­ed a cus­tom Google search engine. I also includ­ed taste test reports from Amer­i­ca’s Test Kitchen, Cooks Illus­trat­ed and Cooks Country.

(Note that I have no finan­cial inter­est in any­one using this tool — it’s sim­ply some­thing I made for myself that I found use­ful, and I’m shar­ing it in case it’s help­ful to any­one else.)

The cus­tom search pulls results from these sites:

• amer​i​c​as​testk​itchen​.com/​t​a​s​t​e​_​tests
• anson​mills​.com
• blue​bird​grain​farms​.com 
• bob​sred​mill​.com
• chef​shop​.com
• chocos​phere​.com
• cookscoun​try​.com/​t​a​s​t​e​_​tests
• cook​sil​lus​trat​ed​.com/​t​a​s​t​e​_​tests
• dartag​nan​.com
• delau​ren​ti​.com
• del​later​ra​pas​ta​.com
• food​sof​na​tions​.com
• gui​t​tard​.com
• hay​den​flour​mills​.com
• katz​farm​.com
• jacob​sen​salt​.com
• kingarthur​bak​ing​.com
• lev​il​lage​.com
• mar​kethall​foods​.com
• pen​zeys​.com
• pur​cell​moun​tain​farms​.com
• ran​chogor​do​.com
• reluc​tant​trad​ing​.com
• span​ishtable​.com
• spar​rowlane​.com
• thes​pice​house​.com
• tien​da​.com
• true​foods​mar​ket​.com
• world​spice​.com
• zinger​mans​.com