Comments on: Don’t Know How To Cook, But Want To Learn? Here Are The Only Two Books You’ll Ever Need

By: Wren

Wren — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 01:11:04 +0000

I had to laugh when I saw Joy of Cooking mentioned because of a debate that raged aout this book among a circle of foddies. We started talking about cookbooks and it seemed everyone owned JoC. Then one of the guys asked, “Ok, so we all HAVE it, but how many of us have actually cooked from it?” The table went silent. The majority of us had gotten the book as a wedding, Christmas or birthday gift. Two people bought it for themselves. Only ONE of us had ever made anything from it. (Same went for our Julia Child cookbooks, although we didn’t all have the same ones.)

My choices for a beginning adult cook would have been the Bitmann book, Sally Schnieder’s A New Way of Cooking or Alton Brown’s I’m Just Here for the Food. For those who don’t care how or why and just want to know how much of what, the Fannie Farmer and New York Times Cookbooks.

For young folks (teenagers) who don’t want to be talked down to, Marion Cunningham’s Learning to Cook with Marion Cunnigham is very good.

By: Neil

Neil — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 21:50:26 +0000

The joy of cooking (1962 edition, hardcover, with two ribbon bookmarks bound into it) was the best 10 cent find I ever came across at a yard sale.

Another good, all purpose cookbook is The Fanny Farmer Cookbook. A huge paperback thing with hundreds of classic recipes and instructions.

By: michael bash

michael bash — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 12:01:33 +0000

I can only marvel that a person of such limited ability and experience in the kitchen should take the step to recommend cookbooks. Advise me on investing and other matters economic, but how do you have the courage (arrogance?) to choose among a plethora of cookbooks many of which you’ve never heard of muchless read? I appreciate what you’re doing; i read you every day, but celebrity does not bestow expertise. Stick to what you know, and leave other topics to those who know them.

By: Fred

Fred — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 01:55:58 +0000

During the last turn down in the economy I was a laborer for a small construction outfit. It was wise at that time to update your current house instead of moving. I upgraded dozens of kitchens and baths. Every house had a copy of “The Joy of Cooking” There is a reason for that and now its a game for me to spot this book in every house I enter. I have a second edition that I am very proud of.

By: dlm

dlm — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 23:50:28 +0000

Has anyone tried the Supper Clubs where the ingredients are chopped and ready for you — you just follow the recipes for 6 – 12 dishes? And what about hiring a good cook or chef to teach you the basics?

By: Molly

Molly — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 11:44:38 +0000

I love recipezaar as well and belong to seveal yahoo groups devoted to food. My best recipes come from the internet.

By: A in NC

A in NC — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 17:45:28 +0000

I second the recipezaar suggestion. I use it all the time. Especially good for REAL homemade things like pita bread, homemade sesame tahini (did you KNOW you could make your own), yogurt, tortillas, the list goes on and on!

By: anonymous

anonymous — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 19:54:40 +0000

I second the Alton Brown suggestion.

By: fandd

fandd — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 01:19:57 +0000

I am so late to this party, but I have to mention my favorite cookbook – Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book. My parents gave me a copy when I moved out on my own and it has saved me plenty of times.

By: Hoepfulgirl

Hoepfulgirl — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 22:12:39 +0000

Thank you for this! I am trying to expand my cooking skills! I will check them out.

By: Trent

Trent — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 03:03:00 +0000

bluewyvern: Exactly. It is a great “first” cookbook because it focuses on the basics and the framework of how to do all of that jazzy stuff. The adventurous stuff can come later when you can do the basics with ease – that way, you don’t waste three hours making a plum sauce when you don’t even know how to prepare the basic dish.

By: bluewyvern

bluewyvern — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 02:46:31 +0000

I was very glad to see that you recommended How to Cook Everything. When I moved out into my first apartment, that was the book that my mother pulled out of her cookbook collection and passed on to me, and it has been invaluable. Apart from the recipes, which are straightforward and great, the sections on cooking techniques and how to buy and prepare different kinds of meats and produce are wildly helpful. I often have trouble finding this kind of thing on the internet — what I need is basic tutorials on how to cook a particular meat or dish, not a hundred different variations on the same (garlic-crusted! With plum sauce! Cajun kick! With organic pine nuts, saffron threads, and pickled baby octopus eyes, available at one of three upscale specialty Asian markets worldwide!).

By: Valencia

Valencia — Mon, 28 May 2007 04:03:58 +0000

I agree that The Joy of Cooking is not the best cookbook for beginners. The internet is my source for recipes that create great meals.

By: Rob in Madrid

Rob in Madrid — Sun, 27 May 2007 06:10:47 +0000

Trent would love if you gave more ideas on eating on a budget. There is a myth in America that you can’t eat healthy on a budget (hense the reason why the poor are so fat). But in talking to many of our friends who spend much less on food than us and eat very well made me realize that is wrong. Problem is it takes time to re think your cooking and eating habits.

By: RookieMom Heather

RookieMom Heather — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 02:00:23 +0000

I love Best Recipe but I’m a true believer in the The Best 30-minute Recipe for quick tips and hints around the kitchen.

By: Frank

Frank — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 22:46:10 +0000

Ironically, one of the books that helped me learn to cook when I was first starting out was “How to Cook Without a Book” by Pam Anderson. The author (an executive editor at CI) presents simple combinations of ingredients and a cooking method to cover a large variety of the foods we eat. Everything from stir fries to homemade pasta sauces are covered, and the recipes are geared for weekday cooking.

By: Amy

Amy — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 20:20:19 +0000

How to Cook Everything is absolutely the best book for a beginning cook. It’s not the recipes, Bittman explains how and why they’re tasty, and teaches a whole approach towards cooking that’s straightforward and flexible. His new book “Best Recipes of the World” is also a very good choice – even more focused on basic techniques, but incorporating flavors from a greater variety of sources.

The Joy of Cooking is a good reference book if you’re interested in becoming a more serious cook. Their discussions about ingredients and dish components (stock, piecrust, etc.) are really helpful, and exhaustive. But if your goal is just to put something tasty on the table for your family every night, you’re probably not that interested in reading about the difference between broth and stock, or how to choose a perfect endive. And, as pointed out above, their recipes tend towards the complex and multistep.

I have mixed feelings about The New Best Recipe. One the one hand, the recipes work. Period. If you follow the steps exactly (and they’re all very clearly explained), you’ll get a great dish. For beginning cooks, this can be incredibly reassuring. But, many times you can get something 90% as good for 50% the effort, and reading the book as your first introduction to cooking could leave you feeling that it’s a much more tiresome and labor-intensive process than it actually is. If you want to figure out which way you’ll react, you can get a trial subscription to their website archive (www.cooksillustrated.com) and see how you like the recipes there, since it’s also a pretty expensive cookbook as these things go.

Two online (and free!) resources that I use all the time are Epicurious (www.epicurious.com) and the Williams-Sonoma website, which has an extensive online recipe collection. Both allow you to search by ingredient, which is very useful if you want to figure out what to do with a random collection of ingredients sitting around in your refrigerator, or if you shop like I do based upon what’s fresh and on sale any particular week. They also have a wide variety of recipes from quick and easy to super-fancy for company. And, of course, free.

By: dani

dani — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 15:22:47 +0000

I love, love, LOVE my “how to cook everything”. It’s not just about the recipe Bittman presents, but the little boxes where he tells you how to jazz things up, or easy substitutions…For me, who grew up with a mother making overcooked fish, italian dressing on chicken, and campbell’s soup casseroles, it’s been invaluable in teaching me how to COOK WELL.

By: donna

donna — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 01:10:45 +0000

The Silver Spoon is a great cookbook. It had everything I could possibly think of making. But I also love Mitchell Davis’ Cook Something and Kitchen Sense books. They are real gems. I refer to them all the time. Another good one that has paid for itself many times over is Brilliant Food Tips And Cooking Tricks: “5,000 Ingenious Kitchen Hints, Secrets, Shortcuts And Solutions
It is great when you forget an ingredient and are wondering what to sub for it.

By: Debbie

Debbie — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 19:15:35 +0000

I knew someone would bring up Joy of Cooking in the comments, but I didn’t know half the commenters would. This is the worst cookbook I’ve ever seen for beginners. It makes cooking seem very complicated. For example, if they had a chicken casserole recipe, they couldn’t just have a chicken casserole recipe. They’d also refer you to the chicken stock recipe, the white sauce recipe, and the three-page treatise on selecting the best chickens based on which clucking noise they make when you poke them on the wing.

I’m barely even exaggerating, and you know it. People who grew up cooking or watching people cook don’t realize just how much knowledge is involved, even in cooking from a recipe.