New Kitchen - need cookbook to try every recipe

FatDog · 10-15-2016, 01:06 PM

I am 10 weeks into an 8 week Kitchen remodel. Painters are actually working downstairs as I type this.

I decided I needed to break out of my rut of ... 8 meals I know how to cook. I was thinking of doing a "Julie and Julia" - find a cookbook and try to cook every dish. (If I cook 80% of the recipes in a cook book I will be happy.)

Now comes the problem. Many cookbooks are like music cd's - one or two hits and lots of crap fillers. Strange seafood dishes to fill out a category, obligatory pie & cake recipes without explaining techniques like "creaming" and using a pastry cutter to blend in chunks of butter for 1 recipe. This does not work.

I did some research and purchased "How to Cook Everything - The Basics". This is a great book for beginners. But there was a 2 page spread with 4 color photographs on how to boil water. (I am not kidding). I have heard Mark Bittman's other book "How to cook everything" starts with basic techniques, then re-uses them over and over again in later recipes. People say it is one of their most used books. Perhaps that would be a better choice?

I love Americas Test Kitchen books so I bought "Cooking for Two" on my Kindle. For some strange reason the ebooks do not have the same charm/stories/instructions as the tree-books. They are like "abridged" versions which is disappointing.

Below is my notes from searching for "Best cookbooks" with "*" characters if multiple sites recommend the same book. Do any of you have experience with these or can recommend others?

CRITERIA

Need books with 'sane' recipes for 2 adults.
Ingredients from California grocery stores
Open to all ethnic dishes, but hate to have to purchase exotic spices like Star Anis or special sugars/oils/vinegars that work in just 1 dish.
Reduced dairy is the only dietary concern. I tend to reduce cheese in most dishes

The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook - Deb Perelman **
Plenty - Vegetable cookbook - Yotam Ottolenghi *** -- PURCHASED
How to cook everything - Mark Bittman *** -- PURCHASED "The Basics"
A year in my Kitchen - Skye Gyngell

The Science of Good Cooking (Cooks Illustrated Cookbooks) **
Im just here for the food - Alton Brown (Beginners list)
The Cooks Illustrated Cookbook - 2,000 recipes from 20 years
The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Dinnertime

The Complete Cooking for Two Cookbook - Americas Test Kitchen -- PURCHASED

Jgelina - Travis Left : California Centric recipes
Big Bad Breakfast - John Currence

Cinisajoy · 10-15-2016, 03:06 PM

Hi. I love your enthusiasm.
I will be honest, I am not fond of Alton Brown or Ree Drummond. Your Cook's Illustrated is a good one.
Try to avoid celebrity cookbooks unless they are really cheap.
I am glad to see you have a good basic cookbook. My favorite basic cookbook is Good Housekeeping Illustrated Cookbook.
Now if you want good recipes for your region, buy a fundraiser cookbook.
If you have a Junior League in your town, call and ask if they have a cookbook. Alternatively call your local visitor's center and ask about cookbooks.
I find those cookbooks have the best and easiest recipes for the region. I kind of collect cookbooks.
I picked up 40 cookbooks yesterday. I buy mostly used from thrift stores and estate sales.

Though I guess I should be a sweetheart and warn you cookbook collecting can become an addiction.

And except for about a half a dozen cookbooks I own, I am trying to make at least one recipe from all of them.
(Sorry but the road kill cookbooks are just for fun, not cooking from.)
My collection is rather small. 1175 big cookbooks and 559 small cookbooks.

AnotherCat · 10-15-2016, 08:09 PM

If such a book is found, we at home here will be very interested as we have been buying and stealing cook books for decades looking for one.

I go along with Cinisajoy's suggestion of fundraiser or other community produced books as likely being the best to aim for. They tend to be more down to earth and be based on readily available ingredients. In my own country (I am not in the US) schools, women's groups, etc. produce them and a couple are well thumbed through in our house. Also, in my own country a local manufacturer of some basic ingredients produces a very good book of recipes all having readily available ingredients and is not ostentatious in those needs; it is in many households here and there may be something similar in your location.

Another alternative is to make up ones own recipe book by cruising through the many cooking/recipe sites on the internet, or picking the few attractive recipes out of chefs' wider compilation books, etc. We do the same for favourite recipes, with them going into a mixture of MSWord or OneNote files.

A USA book we do have and which is readily available and free, does not contain too many recipes, and is generally straightforward in respect of method and ingredients is Recipes and Tips for Healthy, Thrifty Meals, Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion, US Department of Agriculture ( http://origin.www.cnpp.usda.gov/Publ...RecipeBook.pdf ). It is a little PC and has quite a bit about planning meal menus for coming weeks, etc. which may be unwanted, but the recipes are fine :-).

Cinisajoy · 10-15-2016, 08:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AnotherCat

If such a book is found, we at home here will be very interested as we have been buying and stealing cook books for decades looking for one.

I go along with Cinisajoy's suggestion of fundraiser or other community produced books as likely being the best to aim for. They tend to be more down to earth and be based on readily available ingredients. In my own country (I am not in the US) schools, women's groups, etc. produce them and a couple are well thumbed through in our house. Also, in my own country a local manufacturer of some basic ingredients produces a very good book of recipes all having readily available ingredients and is not ostentatious in those needs; it is in many households here and there may be something similar in your location.

Another alternative is to make up ones own recipe book by cruising through the many cooking/recipe sites on the internet, or picking the few attractive recipes out of chefs' wider compilation books, etc. We do the same for favourite recipes, with them going into a mixture of MSWord or OneNote files.

A USA book we do have and which is readily available and free, does not contain too many recipes, and is generally straightforward in respect of method and ingredients is Recipes and Tips for Healthy, Thrifty Meals, Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion, US Department of Agriculture ( http://origin.www.cnpp.usda.gov/Publ...RecipeBook.pdf ). It is a little PC and has quite a bit about planning meal menus for coming weeks, etc. which may be unwanted, but the recipes are fine :-).

Oh yes, churches, schools, the fair, museums and assorted other organizations put out cookbooks. I have 100's of regional cookbooks.

meeera · 10-15-2016, 09:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FatDog

The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook - Deb Perelman **
Plenty - Vegetable cookbook - Yotam Ottolenghi *** -- PURCHASED

I was actually coming to rec these two, funnily enough, though I didn't know what you considered 'exotic' and what you didn't (star anise isn't 'exotic' to me). You'll need pomegranate molasses and a few other bits and pieces for the Ottolenghi recipes.

Another one to look at - Italian Home Cooking, by della Croce.

AnotherCat · 10-15-2016, 11:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FatDog

...I did some research and purchased "How to Cook Everything - The Basics". This is a great book for beginners. But there was a 2 page spread with 4 color photographs on how to boil water. (I am not kidding). I have heard Mark Bittman's other book "How to cook everything" starts with basic techniques, then re-uses them over and over again in later recipes...

...Below is my notes from searching for "Best cookbooks" with "*" characters if multiple sites recommend the same book. Do any of you have experience with these or can recommend others?...

I have had a search to see what we have among the books you listed. The only one is the Mark Bittman one which, as you say, is very introductory in a detailed way as to method, but the recipes are fine. If you are interested in international foods (you mention ethnic) then we have Bittman's The Best Recipes in the World; there are 1,000 recipes in it and by and large do not have ingredients that one has to hunt out or are expensive, or which are wasteful in that there will be specialty leftovers unlikely to be frequently used and which will not keep (e.g. many specialty spices and herbs). It may be worth looking at before buying.

Regarding Alton Brown and the book you list, I like his approach (many seem not to) probably because while at university one of our chemistry prof's ran a non-credit series of lectures for general interest on the chemistry of cooking. That changed my understanding of and approach to cooking dramatically. We do not have any of his books though, likely because there are hundreds of his recipes downloadable from www.foodnetwork.com : one can find him under the "Chefs" tab and we have a goodly lot of those with non ostentatious ingredients.

If you want something more adventurous you might like to look at Mary Berry's books, especially her general ones, and Paul Hollywood's baking ones. These are full of interesting and repeatable solid recipes, and although both are English cooks the ingredients are generally common ones (both these authors provide their recipes with both metric and imperial measurements): I am not British by the way so am not suggesting these from any sort of national pride :-).

A problem I find is that cook books are expensive and so well worth a browse in a book shop with a big selection before buying, if that is possible (even if intending to buy the electronic version).

Cinisajoy · 10-15-2016, 11:48 PM

If the OP has a thrift store, that is a great place to find cookbooks cheap.

pwalker8 · 10-16-2016, 08:00 AM

It does seem odd that there aren't very many quality cook books in ebooks given that there are literally thousands of them out there. I only have five (Betty Crocker, Better Homes and Gardens, James Peterson's book on sauces (pretty good), The Food Lab and The Flavor Bible) and the last three are more for experimenting with recipes than anything else.

One of the things that I do is keep my favorite recipes in an app for easy access. I use Paprika Recipe Manager, which is available both on the mac and iPad (I like to enter on the mac and use the iPad when I cook). I have an old collection of cookbooks (obligatory Betty Crocker plus an assortment of ethnic and local cookbooks) plus family recipes that have been passed down.

The major issue that I have with most famous chief cookbooks is that they assume you have the wide array of ingredients that are common in restaurants, which tends to make most of the dishes kind of expensive to fix. The other big issue is most cookbooks tend to assume a family of four. Apparently, singles and couples aren't the target audience.

I use the web a lot for recipes. I will also note dishes that I like in various restaurants and see what I can find that matches those.

I think that one of the major things about cookbooks is that there are a lot of fads that come and go pretty quickly. Also, cooking tends to be a very individualist thing.

ametzler · 10-16-2016, 10:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FatDog

I am 10 weeks into an 8 week Kitchen remodel. Painters are actually working downstairs as I type this.

I decided I needed to break out of my rut of ... 8 meals I know how to cook. I was thinking of doing a "Julie and Julia" - find a cookbook and try to cook every dish. (If I cook 80% of the recipes in a cook book I will be happy.)

Now comes the problem. Many cookbooks are like music cd's - one or two hits and lots of crap fillers. Strange seafood dishes to fill out a category, obligatory pie & cake recipes without explaining techniques like "creaming" and using a pastry cutter to blend in chunks of butter for 1 recipe. This does not work.
[...]

I have immensely enjoyed "The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science". It is simply is a good read. It does away with many historical misconceptions and tries very hard to explain things. It is available as e-book, take a look at the sample chapter and decide whether you like it.

BenG · 10-16-2016, 10:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ametzler

I have immensely enjoyed "The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science". It is simply is a good read. It does away with many historical misconceptions and tries very hard to explain things. It is available as e-book, take a look at the sample chapter and decide whether you like it.

Or read Kenji's articles on the Serious Eats website.

http://www.seriouseats.com/the-food-lab

Angst · 10-28-2016, 01:59 PM

Here's my go-to cookbook. Warning: you must like bacon.

The Bachelor's Guide: To Ward Off Starvation

pwalker8 · 10-28-2016, 05:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Angst

Here's my go-to cookbook. Warning: you must like bacon.

The Bachelor's Guide: To Ward Off Starvation

Sounds interesting (and something worth getting for some family members who's idea of cooking is the domino's app on their smart phone). If it comes out as an ebook, I'll get it.

pwalker8 · 10-28-2016, 05:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Sounds interesting (and something worth getting for some family members who's idea of cooking is the domino's app on their smart phone). If it comes out as an ebook, I'll get it.

ok, I broke down and both that one and Man meets stove as pbooks. I figure I'll leaf through it and then give them to my niece and nephew (my sister takes after my father when it comes to cooking. Me, I like to eat good food, so I learned to cook early in life. Plus I find cooking fun and relaxing. )

FatDog · 11-17-2016, 12:41 AM

Ok - new question. What do you do to organize your recipes - especially for your e-reader.

I have heard a lot of good things about "Paprika" recipe manager. It has a built-in browser you use and it will import recipes from most web pages. One woman uses her mac to enter, categorize & write notes, but uses her tablet in the kitchen. They have Windows, Android, Mac and Kindle versions.

A woman in my cooking class at Sur La Table says I should use Pinterest and simply create boards. The beauty of a web-based solution is it is also cross-platform.

Note: Tonight I tried the Pioneer Woman - Braised Short Ribs and Serious Eats Polenta. The meat was great, but the polenta took a long time and was rather tasteless. I followed the Serious Eats - Food Lab recipe. (The Pioneer Woman added a lot of cheese to hers.)

Being able to make notes about techniques & results is a valuable feature in a recipe manager.

What do you guys suggest?

Cinisajoy · 11-17-2016, 01:06 AM

I will answer either tomorrow or Friday.
It is midnight here.

10-15-2016, 01:06 PM	#1
FatDog Witless protection Agent Posts: 290 Karma: 1002898 Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Los Angeles Device: Kindle	New Kitchen - need cookbook to try every recipe I am 10 weeks into an 8 week Kitchen remodel. Painters are actually working downstairs as I type this. I decided I needed to break out of my rut of ... 8 meals I know how to cook. I was thinking of doing a "Julie and Julia" - find a cookbook and try to cook every dish. (If I cook 80% of the recipes in a cook book I will be happy.) Now comes the problem. Many cookbooks are like music cd's - one or two hits and lots of crap fillers. Strange seafood dishes to fill out a category, obligatory pie & cake recipes without explaining techniques like "creaming" and using a pastry cutter to blend in chunks of butter for 1 recipe. This does not work. I did some research and purchased "How to Cook Everything - The Basics". This is a great book for beginners. But there was a 2 page spread with 4 color photographs on how to boil water. (I am not kidding). I have heard Mark Bittman's other book "How to cook everything" starts with basic techniques, then re-uses them over and over again in later recipes. People say it is one of their most used books. Perhaps that would be a better choice? I love Americas Test Kitchen books so I bought "Cooking for Two" on my Kindle. For some strange reason the ebooks do not have the same charm/stories/instructions as the tree-books. They are like "abridged" versions which is disappointing. Below is my notes from searching for "Best cookbooks" with "" characters if multiple sites recommend the same book. Do any of you have experience with these or can recommend others? CRITERIA Need books with 'sane' recipes for 2 adults. Ingredients from California grocery stores Open to all ethnic dishes, but hate to have to purchase exotic spices like Star Anis or special sugars/oils/vinegars that work in just 1 dish. Reduced dairy is the only dietary concern. I tend to reduce cheese in most dishes The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook - Deb Perelman * Plenty - Vegetable cookbook - Yotam Ottolenghi * -- PURCHASED How to cook everything - Mark Bittman * -- PURCHASED "The Basics" A year in my Kitchen - Skye Gyngell The Science of Good Cooking (Cooks Illustrated Cookbooks) ** Im just here for the food - Alton Brown (Beginners list) The Cooks Illustrated Cookbook - 2,000 recipes from 20 years The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Dinnertime The Complete Cooking for Two Cookbook - Americas Test Kitchen -- PURCHASED Jgelina - Travis Left : California Centric recipes Big Bad Breakfast - John Currence

10-15-2016, 03:06 PM	#2
Cinisajoy Just a Yellow Smiley. Posts: 19,161 Karma: 83862859 Join Date: Jul 2015 Location: Texas Device: K4, K5, fire, kobo, galaxy	Hi. I love your enthusiasm. I will be honest, I am not fond of Alton Brown or Ree Drummond. Your Cook's Illustrated is a good one. Try to avoid celebrity cookbooks unless they are really cheap. I am glad to see you have a good basic cookbook. My favorite basic cookbook is Good Housekeeping Illustrated Cookbook. Now if you want good recipes for your region, buy a fundraiser cookbook. If you have a Junior League in your town, call and ask if they have a cookbook. Alternatively call your local visitor's center and ask about cookbooks. I find those cookbooks have the best and easiest recipes for the region. I kind of collect cookbooks. I picked up 40 cookbooks yesterday. I buy mostly used from thrift stores and estate sales. Though I guess I should be a sweetheart and warn you cookbook collecting can become an addiction. And except for about a half a dozen cookbooks I own, I am trying to make at least one recipe from all of them. (Sorry but the road kill cookbooks are just for fun, not cooking from.) My collection is rather small. 1175 big cookbooks and 559 small cookbooks. Last edited by Cinisajoy; 10-16-2016 at 07:08 PM.

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10-15-2016, 08:09 PM	#3
AnotherCat .... Posts: 1,547 Karma: 18068960 Join Date: May 2012 Device: ....	If such a book is found, we at home here will be very interested as we have been buying and stealing cook books for decades looking for one. I go along with Cinisajoy's suggestion of fundraiser or other community produced books as likely being the best to aim for. They tend to be more down to earth and be based on readily available ingredients. In my own country (I am not in the US) schools, women's groups, etc. produce them and a couple are well thumbed through in our house. Also, in my own country a local manufacturer of some basic ingredients produces a very good book of recipes all having readily available ingredients and is not ostentatious in those needs; it is in many households here and there may be something similar in your location. Another alternative is to make up ones own recipe book by cruising through the many cooking/recipe sites on the internet, or picking the few attractive recipes out of chefs' wider compilation books, etc. We do the same for favourite recipes, with them going into a mixture of MSWord or OneNote files. A USA book we do have and which is readily available and free, does not contain too many recipes, and is generally straightforward in respect of method and ingredients is Recipes and Tips for Healthy, Thrifty Meals, Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion, US Department of Agriculture ( http://origin.www.cnpp.usda.gov/Publ...RecipeBook.pdf ). It is a little PC and has quite a bit about planning meal menus for coming weeks, etc. which may be unwanted, but the recipes are fine :-).

10-15-2016, 11:48 PM	#7
Cinisajoy Just a Yellow Smiley. Posts: 19,161 Karma: 83862859 Join Date: Jul 2015 Location: Texas Device: K4, K5, fire, kobo, galaxy	If the OP has a thrift store, that is a great place to find cookbooks cheap.

10-16-2016, 08:00 AM	#8
pwalker8 Grand Sorcerer Posts: 7,196 Karma: 70314280 Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Atlanta, GA Device: iPad Pro, iPad mini, Kobo Aura, Amazon paperwhite, Sony PRS-T2	It does seem odd that there aren't very many quality cook books in ebooks given that there are literally thousands of them out there. I only have five (Betty Crocker, Better Homes and Gardens, James Peterson's book on sauces (pretty good), The Food Lab and The Flavor Bible) and the last three are more for experimenting with recipes than anything else. One of the things that I do is keep my favorite recipes in an app for easy access. I use Paprika Recipe Manager, which is available both on the mac and iPad (I like to enter on the mac and use the iPad when I cook). I have an old collection of cookbooks (obligatory Betty Crocker plus an assortment of ethnic and local cookbooks) plus family recipes that have been passed down. The major issue that I have with most famous chief cookbooks is that they assume you have the wide array of ingredients that are common in restaurants, which tends to make most of the dishes kind of expensive to fix. The other big issue is most cookbooks tend to assume a family of four. Apparently, singles and couples aren't the target audience. I use the web a lot for recipes. I will also note dishes that I like in various restaurants and see what I can find that matches those. I think that one of the major things about cookbooks is that there are a lot of fads that come and go pretty quickly. Also, cooking tends to be a very individualist thing.

10-28-2016, 01:59 PM	#11
Angst Cannon Fodder Posts: 2,878 Karma: 52253556 Join Date: Jan 2009 Location: Probably a library Device: PRS-350, Kindle DX, Kindle Paperwhite	Here's my go-to cookbook. Warning: you must like bacon. The Bachelor's Guide: To Ward Off Starvation

11-17-2016, 12:41 AM	#14
FatDog Witless protection Agent Posts: 290 Karma: 1002898 Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Los Angeles Device: Kindle	Ok - new question. What do you do to organize your recipes - especially for your e-reader. I have heard a lot of good things about "Paprika" recipe manager. It has a built-in browser you use and it will import recipes from most web pages. One woman uses her mac to enter, categorize & write notes, but uses her tablet in the kitchen. They have Windows, Android, Mac and Kindle versions. A woman in my cooking class at Sur La Table says I should use Pinterest and simply create boards. The beauty of a web-based solution is it is also cross-platform. Note: Tonight I tried the Pioneer Woman - Braised Short Ribs and Serious Eats Polenta. The meat was great, but the polenta took a long time and was rather tasteless. I followed the Serious Eats - Food Lab recipe. (The Pioneer Woman added a lot of cheese to hers.) Being able to make notes about techniques & results is a valuable feature in a recipe manager. What do you guys suggest?

11-17-2016, 01:06 AM	#15
Cinisajoy Just a Yellow Smiley. Posts: 19,161 Karma: 83862859 Join Date: Jul 2015 Location: Texas Device: K4, K5, fire, kobo, galaxy	I will answer either tomorrow or Friday. It is midnight here.