From El Bulli to Your Kitchen 6 | El Bulli Family Meals 7 | The El Bulli System 8 | Cooking at Home 12 | Essential Ingredients 29 | Family Meal Scenes 32 | Basic Recipes 39 | Meals 61 | Glossary and Index 377

Elbulli's Staff Meal Recipe Revealed for the First Time!
Ferran Adria's first and only book
Home cooking book.

Michelin Guide 3 stars
Selected as 'World's Best Restaurant' 5 times!
El Bulli, the legendary restaurant that rewrote the history of 21st century gastronomy.
The real secret there was the dinners all the staff gathered for?
The never-before-seen 'Staff Mill' from El Bulli is revealed!

July 2011.
The global food industry was shocked.
Because the world's best restaurant, El Bulli, suddenly announced its closure.
Ferran Adria, who brought Spanish cuisine, previously overlooked, to the forefront of gastronomy and was called an icon of innovation and creativity beyond cooking.
His unstoppable pace finally came to a halt.
This was the moment when El Bulli, which had been operating strictly, opening only for six months of the year to prepare a new menu every year and serving only dinner to about 50 people a day, disappeared into history.
The whole world literally sighed.
As if responding to everyone's regrets when El Bulli's time stopped, Ferran published El Bulli's achievements in a book.


Among the books he has published, “Family Meal: Home-Cooked Recipes from El Bulli Ferran Adria” holds a special significance.
This book, a collection of dinner recipes from the El Bulli staff, is Ferran's only home-cooked recipe book.
The 75 employees of El Bulli ate dinner together every day, calling it the "Family Meal."
Not only was the entire staff like a family, but it was also very important for everyone to sit down and eat together.
Ferran believes that great cooking begins with a good meal, and he prepares each meal right from the start.
Working in one of the world's best restaurants, it was unacceptable not to have the best food.
Even among Michelin-starred restaurants, few serve a proper staff meal like El Bulli.


This book is a selection of 93 El Bulli staff meals, organized into 31 courses.
It is composed of a course meal from appetizers to main course and dessert, making it perfect as a special occasion meal.
As chefs from all over the world gather, the recipes are not limited to Spanish food, but include dishes from all over the world, including Mexican and Japanese menus.
With photos of every step of the recipe, not missing even the smallest details, anyone can easily create a wonderful El Bulli dinner.
By following this book, you will be able to apply the system of a restaurant kitchen to your home, and you will find that systematic cooking is not difficult.
Ferran Adria says confidently.
"If you haven't been able to eat well with a certain food, it's because you haven't tried it properly."
This book will guide you into El Bulli's kitchen, as if you were taking a one-on-one cooking class with Ferran.


A young man washing dishes in the kitchen,
Creating the pinnacle of modern cuisine

Ferran Adria is considered the most important chef since Auguste Escoffier (1894-1935), the maestro who established modern cuisine and is called the father of all chefs.
He had never received formal training and had no particular interest in cooking, so his only experience holding a knife was his time as a cook.
El Bulli, which was an ordinary restaurant serving French cuisine until the 1970s, has maintained three Michelin stars for 14 years since Ferran took over the kitchen in 1984 and has been named the 'World's Best Restaurant' five times.
These records, which are hard to believe were achieved by one restaurant, are just a few of the adjectives that accompany his ever-evolving cuisine.
His cooking, which is still a work in progress, may resemble that of Escoffier, who spoke of art and creation.
It is no coincidence that the number of dishes he invented during his 20 years leading the El Bulli kitchen is the same year Escoffier was born (1864).


For Ferran, cooking was a kind of 'language'.
What he was trying to perfect was not cooking itself, but everything cultural: beauty, creativity, harmony, happiness, poetry, humor.
His cuisine, which sought to create something that had never existed before in the world, inevitably required a completely new language and grammar.
He broke down all the ingredients into their molecular units, creating entirely new dishes in which the texture, structure, and flavor of the ingredients were rearranged.
His culinary style, known as molecular gastronomy, began in the 1990s and has been the subject of criticism and ridicule in the conservative culinary world.


But it didn't take long for his genius and creativity to be proven.
He made us question again what ‘cooking’ is and expanded the realm of ‘taste’ that we can experience through food.
It showed a new era of taste that brought out not only the five senses of sight, taste, hearing, touch, and smell, but also the sixth sense.
He did not cling to his own experiences and knowledge, but rather broke down and expanded his own boundaries, and craved new information and knowledge.
I believe that collaboration with experts from various fields such as science, history, and industrial design is essential in the culinary process, and that collaboration with the food industry and the scientific community in particular has brought about fundamental advancements.
As he said, "Creation also involves teamwork," the originality of El Bulli, which left its mark on the history of gastronomy, was not achieved simply by Ferran alone.
The reason he is great is not because he makes himself great, but because he is a person who tries to create a 'system'.
In one interview, when asked how a good chef can become a great chef, he immediately answered that it is the system's role.
El Bulli's current position may also be due to the elaborate system he has meticulously crafted over time with countless people. "Family Meal" differs from El Bulli's other "masterpieces" that showcase his dazzling achievements.
What this book shows is that there wasn't just one genius there, but a brilliant team of 75 people who ate dinner together every day and prepared to welcome guests.


The best cooking begins with the best meal.
Learn the secrets of everyday cooking from the world's best chefs.

El Bulli has developed a process system to cook the 'Family Meal' without mistakes and has refined it to near perfection over many years.
No matter who prepared the food or how many servings, we always managed it systematically to ensure that the taste and quality were consistent and that no problems arose during the cooking process.
Every month, El Bulli creates a menu sheet that informs the menu for that month, along with details on the type of ingredients, their uses, and availability.
This only changes in unexpected circumstances, such as when a supplier brings in unannounced materials.
Unless there are special circumstances, all food is prepared on the same day.


Between 2pm and 6pm, we alternate between preparing the mise-en-place (all the preparations for dinner, including the preparation of ingredients) and the family meal for our guests.
The mise-en-scène will be finished by 6:25.
After the family meal, everyone puts away their dishes and drinks coffee.
Ferran remains at the table until the end.
If there are any issues during the preparation process, talk to Eugenie about it.
At 7pm, the doors of El Bulli finally open.
El Bulli's kitchen is always filled with a relaxed yet tense atmosphere.
The highlight of this book is that it captures the vivid kitchen scenes of El Bulli.
In particular, unlike other foreign cookbooks, each recipe is accompanied by friendly process photos, and it captures the feeling of being made right in the El Bulli kitchen, rather than artificially produced photos.


Ferran did not create any new recipes for this book.
We have tried to use ingredients that are readily available around the world as much as possible, and have also provided alternatives for ingredients that are difficult to obtain.
The recipes in this book are designed to serve 2, 6, 20, and 75 people, and were prepared precisely to suit those needs. One of our El Bulli chefs actually went to the market to find ingredients and prepared two servings at a time, double-checking each recipe.
Above all, the design is outstanding, designed to reduce mistakes that beginners make when trying to cook multiple dishes at once.
The book's unmissable strengths include the "Full Shot" of ingredients, which shows all the ingredients needed for a course meal at a glance, and the "Timeline" menu, which organizes the cooking order of the entire course meal according to the time required.
When preparing multiple dishes at once, you can prevent mistakes such as leaving out ingredients, misjudging the cooking order and serving cold dishes to guests, or having to wait a long time at an empty table.


Before introducing the main menu, we first introduce the ingredients that are prepared in advance and serve as the basis for various dishes, such as tomato sauce, pesto, chicken stock, and fish stock, followed by recipes using these ingredients.
From grocery shopping tips to selecting and managing ingredients like meat, fish, dairy, fruits and vegetables, herbs and spices, and tips on sauces and seasonings, we've got you covered.
The 31-course meal will cover the fundamentals of Western cuisine, loved around the world, from the Spanish delicacy gazpacho to the traditional French soup vichyssoise, pasta, and gratin.
You can also find recipes for global cuisines like Mexican, Thai, and Japanese, adapted to the tastes of chefs from around the world.
Ferran's carefully selected 93 recipes are not just for filling a meal.
It is food for the happiness and satisfaction of the eater rather than the convenience of the maker.
He said.
"For me, 'Family Meal' is more than just a book; it's a way of understanding life."