I’ve been getting into cooking more and more lately (nothing terribly fancy, I’m still learning!). As such, I’ve been looking for some good, trustworthy, and delicious happiness containing cook books.
So, what are your favorites and why?
I picked up The America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook a few months ago and I’m loving it. It’s packed with relatively simple recipes that always produce a good result. Lots of helpful descriptions and tips in the book. If you’re starting to cook, I highly recommend it.
Plus it’s a binder…so you can take pages out if making more than one thing. Great for making a pie when the crust and filling are on two separate pages.
The Joy of Cooking. Not the newer ones, get one published in the 70s or even earlier. The ones published the 70s were the last ones that were all Irma Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker’s work. Great all-around book, not only for classic recipes, but to learn about ingredients and techniques.
Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook. Bulletproof recipes.
From the same creators, their The New Best Recipe and The New Light Recipe cookbooks. These aren’t in binders, however, but are standard hardcovers.
Seconding an older copy of The Joy of Cooking as a reference work. For a newer reference work, try Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything. (He has a vegetarian version as well.)
Julia Child’s The Way to Cook is an excellent instructional work. Lots of cooking technique information here.
Michael Ruhlman’s Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking is a great explanation of how to get beyond being reliant on recipes. Learn the basic “formulas” behind major recipe types*, get an idea (from his sample recipes and suggestions) how to develop them into yummy food, and suddenly you gain more confidence in your cooking abilities.
- Or just put them up on your fridge - there are only two pages of these ratios.
I could go on, but those are my current favorites for general use.
To Serve Man
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Hands down. I seriously love this cookbook.
Delicious recipes, clear and easy-to-follow directions, and assumes you have a somewhat sophisticated palate but not a lot of kitchen experience. You’ll find recipes with influences from all over the world.
Pretty much anything by Madhur Jaffray on Indian cooking (I don’t find her pan-Asian stuff as interesting).
This one has spice stains all over the pages from multiple usage… She breaks Indian food down to make it easy to cook, and tells you what easily available ingredients can be used to replace other stuff.
Also anything by Keith Floyd, especially Floyd on France, God rest his drunken little soul. I cook Floyd a lot of the time when I have a dinenr party planned and want to impress. He believes food should be enjoyed - taste good rather than simply be presented well. And he doesn’t think taste should give way to crappy health considerations. If that is what you want, you can also try the Two Fat Ladies stuff…
Seconding these. Both are my go-to references. I own dozens and dozens of cookbooks. These are the ones that fall open to specific places.
I think it depends on what you’re planning on using the cookbook for.
As far as cookbooks I actually cook from, ditto on **Joy of Cooking **and **Better Homes **. They’re both in heavy rotation at my house - I use them if I want a basic recipe that I can use as a starting point (most of my pancake recipes, for example, are adapted from the basic recipe in Joy), and they’re my bibles as far as referencing techniques, cooking times and other basic info. Both of my editions are from the 70s… I know newer editions came out after that, but as was pointed out upthread, they’re not nearly as good.
In terms of cookbooks I can curl on the couch to read and enjoy, but don’t really cook from all that often, you’d have to pry my copy of **Baking with Julia **from my cold dead hands. Also, anything by Claudia Roden, James Beard, Dorie Greenspan or Peter Reinhardt is automatically on my curl-up-and-read list. Jeffrey Steingarten is also tremendously interesting to read, though his books really don’t qualify as cookbooks so much as short essays on food - the recipe or two at the end of each is just a bonus.
Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Anything is great if you’re not a very skilled cook, but if you’ve got a couple of years experience, I wouldn’t consider it particularly useful. Most of the recipes are so-so, and can be easily improved with just a couple extra ingredients or steps. Another book of his, though, The Best Recipes in the World, is truly excellent, and highlights a lot of great recipes you might not normally think about. I just made a spinnach and chickpea soup, and it was delicious.
Bittman’s truly got a great attitude towards cooking, and it suits this bachelor just fine. He writes in the introduction that he doesn’t mind long cooking times, just so long as it doesn’t demand too much of his attention. Too many cookbooks, I’ve found, are written by chefs who expect you to have a full two days to spare on dinner.
My absolute top favorite book is Conscious Cuisine by Chef Neff. He breaks down classic recipes, and finds ways to cut calories in 1/3 without sacrificing the smallest bit of flavor, by substituting buttermilk with yogurt, sugar with bananas or prunes, etc etc. Truly a brilliant chef, and I’ve often fantasized of leaving my PhD program to study under him.
If you’re seeking comfort/church lady food, you need some of those fund-raising cookbooks put together by local PTO’s, Baptist Churches, and family reunion committees.
Thirding both of these. The Better Homes and Gardens book is great.
Seconding this one. I love these books, because they’re real recipes, submitted by people who’ve used them forever.
My favorites to cook from are old church fundraising cookbooks. These contain favorite recipes of regular folks, that they use in their own homes. The recipes usually contain easy to obtain and inexpensive ingredients and the recipes are usually very simple. You just have to keep in mind that the submitters of said recipes are not chefs or authors and the instructions can sometimes be a little vague for the beginning cook.
Beaten to the punch!
I don’t own it (yet) but I routinely check this out http://www.amazon.com/Grill-Chris-Schlesinger/dp/0756617413 from the library- also Steve Raichlen’s BBQ Bible- I am happiest when I am BBq/grilling!
I realize that there’s a stigma against the newest editions of Joy of Cooking, but I gotta say that I LOVE the recent edition I have. The recipes are fantastic. I always cross-reference two or three recipes before cooking any new dish, but I’d say 90% of the time I wind up using the Joy recipe unaltered or with only one or two simple tweaks.
I will second, third, and fourth “The Joy of Cooking” and “Better Homes and Gardens.” I collect cookbooks for the reading enjoyment and for their ideas, but I refer to these all the time. If you’re a novice cook, the recipes are well-tested and have stood the test of time; and if you’re an experienced cook, they offer great insight about techniques, ingredients, and starting points that you can personalize. (I knew that “The Joy of Cooking” was a must-have when I noticed that my grandmother - an awesome Southern cook who owned and operated her own restaurants for decades - had a lovely grease-splattered copy on the shelf in her kitchen.)
And again, those little self-published church and Junior League fundraiser cookbooks can be fabulous. As mentioned earlier, the recipes aren’t necessarily tested in a professional kitchen, but they are very often tested in the best of laboratories: a cook’s family, friends, fellow church members, etc. In fact, “my” pecan pie and pecan tassie recipes are both from a Junior League cookbook, and I’ve received marriage proposals based on tasting both!
Finally, I’ll put in a plug for really good regional cookbooks. I’m so Southern (US) that I’m related to myself (to borrow from comedienne Brett Butler,) and I absolutely adore “A Gracious Plenty,” by John T. Edge of Ole Miss’ Southern Foodways Alliance. http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/south/register/99/fall/code/02.htm I don’t know precisely where you’re from, but once you’ve gained some confidence in the kitchen, I’d highly recommend branching out from “basic” cookbooks to those that emphasize the types of cooking that you already know and love. (After you’ve gained a bit of experience, you can pretty much tell at a glance whether a new recipe will work for you and your tastes, techniques, and preferences.)
Okay, I prefaced the last paragraph with “finally,” but I lied. I really enjoy Alton Brown’s FoodTV show “Good Eats” because it emphasizes the “why” of cooking. Want to know how to make a chewy cookie instead of crunchy? Covered, including the science of “why.” How to cook seafood? Ditto. Each episode covers one ingredient or cooking technique, and is fascinating to me. Even when I already understand the “how” of using a certain ingredient or cooking method, I love learning about the science of “why.”
I should add that Tidewater on the Half Shell, which I recommended/linked to in my first post, is also a Junior League cook book. Got it as a wedding gift and there isn’t a bad recipe in there.
Agreed. I know most people hate the “new” JoC that was released in '97, but the new edition (the 75th anniversary edition published in '06) is based on the structure and style of the 1975 version, and brings back most of the old recipes (only re-tested and ensured to work with today’s ingredients).
About the only cookbook you’ll ever need-as you get better, you modify the recipes to suit your tastes.
I love the America’s Test Kitchen stuff (my personal favorite is The Quick Recipe, even though it sent me to the emergency room once. I used the same recipe last Christmas to cook pork tenderloin for 40, though) but in my opinion the most guaranteed “will absolutely definitely turn out” cookbook I own is Mastering the Art of French Cooking. That shit is tested. It isn’t always easy or even to my taste, but you never have to question it - if you follow the directions, it will assuredly turn out the way it’s supposed to. And you learn stuff with every recipe.
I have a ton of ethnic cookbooks that I adore even if I rarely cook from them - I’ve made several things from Memories of a Cuban Kitchen that have turned out phenomenal, though. Need to make those empanadas again.
I also own a terrific crockpot cookbook, Slow Cooker Ready and Waiting. It’s not like the other slow cooker cookbooks - you can’t just dump some stuff in in the morning and eat it when you come back from work. Most of them require significant prep and take less than 8 hours, but they knock it out of the park. My Alsatian bratwurst and sauerkraut thing from that one is universally acclaimed, and I’ve never had anything from it that’s been less than fantastic.