Cooking for Dummies is actually a very useful book for beginners. My brother-in-law has a copy, which he doesn’t read, but that’s beside the point. I read a few chapters, and even though I’ve been puttering in the kitchen since my early teens, I learned a bit. Of course, I like their style. The “Dummies” books break information up into categories and visually separate information quite well. It starts out explaining some simple information about tools, then ingredients, and then you progress through “exercises”–easy meals all the way through Thanksgiving dinner.
Darn it, missed the edit window. I’ll give you egg separating for free:
It means separating the yolk from the white. You put the yolk in one bowl and the white in another. You generally do this because the recipe only needs one part of the egg. Or different parts of the recipe need different parts of the egg. It’s usually because the white will be whipped for some reason, or the yolk (high in fat) is needed for richness.
You can do this one of two ways.
Old fashioned, but requires a bit of skill:
- wash hands
- crack egg into bowl
- fish out yolk with fingers and put in another bowl.
Or they make things called “egg separators” which you put over a bowl and crack an egg into. It catches the yolk but lets the white run out into the bowl.
In nerd speak: (which I assume you’ll understand since you reference programming) this is probably a level 3 skill. 
You’ll want to master skills like Cracking Eggs, Touching Gross Sticky Things, and Beating Eggs before tackling this.
[QUOTE=beanpod]
Darn it, missed the edit window. I’ll give you egg separating for free:
It means separating the yolk from the white. You put the yolk in one bowl and the white in another. You generally do this because the recipe only needs one part of the egg. Or different parts of the recipe need different parts of the egg. It’s usually because the white will be whipped for some reason, or the yolk (high in fat) is needed for richness.
You can do this one of two ways.
Old fashioned, but requires a bit of skill:
- wash hands
- crack egg into bowl
- fish out yolk with fingers and put in another bowl.
Or they make things called “egg separators” which you put over a bowl and crack an egg into. It catches the yolk but lets the white run out into the bowl.
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I use the shells to separate. My fingers are too clumsy and would break the yolk membrane.
You can also use a slotted spoon.
How to Cook Without a Book, by Pam Anderon is fabulous. She has different sections on different techniques, gives a basic recipe with technique and variations on the theme, but once you get the hang of the technique and basic recipe, can go do infinite variations. It’s a great book.
For example, she has a basic stir-fry recipe (with 4 or 5 sauces you can use), followed by about 10 variations on the original theme. From memory, I can tell you that you would use about 3/4 to 1 pound of meat, 1 pound of veg, 1 onion, 1 TBS ginger, 1 TBS garlic. Marinate the meat in soy sauce and rice wine while you chop. The meat gets cooked in two batches and removed. The onion goes in, followed by the garlic and ginger. Then the faster-cooking of whatever veggies you picked, then the other veg. Meat goes back in, throw in whatever sauce you picked, and then a slurry of cornstarch and chicken broth to thicken the sauce. There really are infinite variations here.
And she does this same thing with pan-seared meats (and provides sauces, relishes, and flavored butters you can serve with them), steam-sauteed veggies, pastas with vegetables, etc. And every dish is written with the idea that you can make it on a weeknight, when you don’t have much time.
I use this book all the time.
Funny, they always slide off tools for me. Whatever you get used to, I guess.
What you’re saying is, you don’t want cookbooks or recipes–you want books on food.
So, go down to the library and simply browse the “Food” section in the stacks. There’s tons of stuff in there. It’s generally around the 641s, or you could just ask the reference librarian to steer you in the right direction. Yeah, there are cookbooks in there, but there are also fascinating books on cooking itself, and on the various foods, and the history of food, and other stuff that has nothing to do with actual recipes. And it’s all exactly what you’re looking for.
[QUOTE=Maus Magill]
That’s two editions ago. The newest one isn’t bad. The one before that, OTOH…
But As I said above: for the novice cook, Joy isn’t a good fit. It’s like suggesting a shop guide to someone who wants to put some air in their tires.
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But you have to admit, by the time he’s finished he’ll know everything there is to know about air, how it works in tires, how many types of tires there are, what to do when the valve stem breaks… 
It’s the other white meat…that we don’t talk about
[QUOTE=Shalmanese]
I would also recommend On Food and Cooking which is a brilliant exposition about what goes into a lot of scientific aspects about the scientific side of what’s happening to the food but what’s crucially missing is that much of food is about what’s happening in the mouth and brain and it doesn’t deal with that.
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This is a great book, truly a classic that belongs in every well-stocked kitchen, but it’s pretty advanced, and I wouldn’t suggest it to the beginner.
Rather, I’ll point friedo to a different title, The Basics: The Foundations of Modern Cooking, published just a few months ago. It’s a smallish book, a tad bigger than a typical paperback, organized with a concept on each page, accompanied by a (beautiful) photograph. The first part of the book is cooking terminology (what does “julienne” mean?), the middle is basic (foundational) recipes for soup stock and the like, and then it gets into some advanced stuff in the later pages. It works a lot like a primer, and would be a good “starter” encyclopedia for the beginning cook.
[QUOTE=Bosstone]
That said, Alton Brown’s I’m Just Here For The Food is excellent for beginners (at least, this beginner thinks so). It takes cooking step by step and explains a lot of the common things one does in the kitchen regardless of the food involved. Yes, there are recipes, but they’re more like homework problems than the actual content, taking what was taught in the section before it and applying it to an actual dish.
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Agreed on all counts. I got this book for Christmas and it’s been great. It does have recipes, but they’re there to illustrate principles.
[QUOTE=shamrock227]
The Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook is my cooking bible. …I think it’s an absolute essential in every kitchen.
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Ditto.
And I separate eggs by breaking one and dumping the contents into my hand, keeping my fingers loosely closed. White slips through; yolk stays trapped. Meryl Streep did it in The Hours and I picked it up.
[QUOTE=gigi]
And I separate eggs by breaking one and dumping the contents into my hand, keeping my fingers loosely closed. White slips through; yolk stays trapped. Meryl Streep did it in The Hours and I picked it up.
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Eww. Salmonella City.
[QUOTE=friedo]
Eww. Salmonella City.
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Not really. Assuming that you don’t have a lowered immune system, the chances of you catching salmonella from (even uncooked) eggs is actually fairly low, provided that you don’t hold the eggs at room temperature in mixed batches (i.e. multiple eggs out of their shell in a bowl). And, assuming you simply remember to wash your hands, the chances of getting salmonella from this method drops darn near close to nil.
I eat runny yolks, meringues, mousse, etc with no ill effects.
That’s how I separate eggs as well (i.e. through the fingers). Just wash up before and after. And make sure to buy the eggs in the carton stamped “no salmonella here, nope, we promise, really truly, pinky swear.” You’ll be good to go.
And when you’re in the middle of cooking and realize you need a couple of eggs you should never have your iguana fetch them even if it’s more convenient.
Just carefully crack and split an egg, use the shell to seperate. It’s an original tool, folks. The shell… two perfectly scale bowls and seperations. Like sloshing a solute between two beakers, folks. You’ll spend a lot less time seperating the yolk in this fashion as well.
[QUOTE=devilsknew]
Just carefully crack and split an egg, use the shell to seperate. It’s an original tool, folks. The shell… two perfectly scale bowls and seperations. Like sloshing a solute between two beakers, folks. You’ll spend a lot less time seperating the yolk in this fashion as well.
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I used to do that but the white through the fingers is even quicker and doesn’t require as much dexterity.
And I wash my hands compulsively when cooking so I think I am OK as far as salmonella is concerned.
I’ve never tried the white through the fingers, but I’m about 90% sure I’d bust the yolk and suddenly have to plan for one or more scrambled eggs.
I like the shell as separator. It works very well for me.