The book includes essays about the importance of fundamentals in cooking such as heat, salt and stock, along with a reference guide to cooking terms. Much of the insight in the book is based on his previous food-related experiences at the Culinary Institute of America and from working with celebrity chefs.  2009, he published "Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking", a book that explores basic preparations—bread, pie dough, custards—and explains that knowing the proportions of the ingredients by weight can free users from strict adherence to recipes. Ruhlman has eagerly embraced social and digital media in his mission to encourage more people to cook food for themselves and their friends and family, creating, with digital media expert Will Turnage, the Ratio App for smart phones, and Bread Baking Basics for the iPad and Kindle Fire. In 2011, he published "Ruhlman's Twenty: 20 Techniques, 109 Recipes, a Cook's Manifesto", a book distilling cooking to its 20 basic techniques. Ruhlman's "Twenty: The Ideas and Techniques that Will Make You a Better Cook" won the 2012 James Beard Foundation Award in the general cooking category and the International Association of Culinary Professionals cookbook award in the Food and Beverage Reference/Technical category. In the mid-2012, Ruhlman published "Salumi", a follow-up to Charcuterie about Italian dry-cured Italian meats, which he wrote with Brian Polcyn. The "Bouchon Bakery" cookbook, another collaboration with Thomas Keller and the TKRG team, was released in the fall of 2012. Ruhlman also released his first Kindle single book called "The Main Dish" which is about his long journey to become a food writer and then "The Book of Schmaltz: A Love Song to a Forgotten Fat" a single-subject cookbook devoted to the ingredient called schmaltz; rendered chicken fat flavored with onion which is popular in Jewish cuisine. "Schmaltz" was released as an app in December 2012 and was published as a hardcover book in August 2013. Spring, 2014, Ruhlman published "Egg: A Culinary Exploration of the World’s Most Versatile Ingredient". In late 2014, he published "Ruhlman's How To Roast: Foolproof Techniques and Recipes for the Home Cook", the first in a series of short books devoted to cooking technique rather than recipes. The second, "How To Braise", was published in the spring of 2015.