Customer Reviews

The Absolute Beginner's Cookbook: or, How Long Do I Cook a 3-Minute Egg?

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The book teaches you everything you need to know from how to hard-boil an egg to stir frying broccoli. It makes are great gift of any beginning cook.

Recipes include breakfast foods, eggs, breads, soups, sandwiches, salads, main dishes, vegetables, desserts, & appetizers. There is no gourmet fare here, just the delicious uncomplicated meals for everyday people.

Some of my favorite desserts are the apple dumplings & easy lemon chiffon pie. I enjoyed the oven pot-roast, meatballs, chili, & pork chops as well. I know I will never get bored with 8 different potato recipes.

I also loved the one-step lasagna. It's great because you don't have to cook the noodles before baking, making it quick & easy to make. The never-fail cheese soufflé & salmon pate will impress dinner guests without hours of frustration.

This is overall an excellent cookbook. It's simple, easy to follow, and has good recipes. Not great but good. That being said, this is NOT a book for the absolute beginner. It assumes that you know a lot of basic terminology and technique, which is really stupid considering the title.

The book is marketed for people who don't know how to boil water, and yet on the very first page it tells you to fill a saucepan with cold water and immerse an egg. A SAUCEPAN? I don't know about you, but when I was a beginning cook, I called that particular item "a pot" -- the word saucepan is correct, but you'd need to be a culinary sort of person to know that a saucepan is not a pan at all, that is, not an object which is wide and round but only an inch deep. A novice cook sees the word PAN and thinks of a skillet\spider\frying pan. Most people do; it's an understandable error.

I gave my sister this book and asked her what she'd do when confronted with the instruction to fill a saucepan with cold water and immerse an egg. She went into the cupboard, took out a 14" frying pan about half an inch deep, filled it with water, and stuck the egg in. The egg was about three times as high as the sides of the pan. My sister isn't stupid, she just doesn't know that a saucepan is actually a small pot. Nobody who buys a book titled "How Long Do I Cook a Three-Minute Egg?" is going to know that!

After this, the book goes on with such instructions as, "dice the vegetables finely" ... um, dice? What does dice mean? Oh, it means to chop up? How was I supposed to know that? Into what shape do I chop? How big should the shapes be? How thin is finely? The book says nothing, so if you're unfamiliar with a fine dice, you're screwed.

After that, here's the book telling us "allow to simmer for half an hour" without ever bothering to mention what simmer means. Is it high heat? Low? The same heat I was cooking on before? Does it mean there are bubbles in the liquid? Again, no explanation whatsoever.

As I stated, this is a great book, but I cannot stress enough how it is NOT FOR BEGINNERS.

I bought this book as a gift for my grandchild who wants to start cooking. As I looked though it, I was pleased at its contents. It has the basics explained well with recipes that are simple but not so simple as to be boring. Actually my daughter has used it (mother of the child I bought it for)and was pleased with the recipe she used. I would recemmend this book to anyone interested in beginning cooking.

My mother valued her solitude in her kitchen, and so I didn't know a thing about cooking when I decided to make my new girlfriend dinner. Thanks to this cookbook, the first meal I ever cooked was a cheese souffle, and because of the book's never-fall recipe I looked like a culinary genius. It's now seventeen years later and I'm married to that woman, and both of us still return to this book. When my two children are ready to cook I'll be buying them copies.

I bought this book approximately 17 years ago when I was fresh out of mom and dads, and trying not to starve. I learned a lot from this book (the lasagne recipe is great) and past roommates still comment on the book (calling for certain recipes.)
I'm now pretty comfortable in the kitchen but I still pull this cookbook out for one of its many easy recipes. ( The chicken wellington is easy to prepare and showy enough to impress.) My 10 yr old is now leafing thru it asking to make dinner! Hope this helps!

I BOUGHT THIS BOOK FOR MY STEP-FATHER WHO IS 78 YEARS OLD.
HE HAS NEVER COOKED (FROM THE OLD GENERATION). BUT MY
MOTHER IS REALLY SICK SO HE TOOK OVER ALL OF HER DUTIES.
HE USES IT ALL THE TIME. NO MORE FROZEN DINNERS, HE IS
COOKING REAL FOOD.

This was the first cook book I got when I moved out on my own 20 years ago and I still refer to it. (I swear I still can't remember the temp or time for a baked potato). I also peep back in for my lasagna. I made the linguini with clam sauce and it was the *^$#...I was really proud of myself.

It's perfect for my boyfriend who is learning to cook and asked for "cooking for dummies" but I saw this book and the excerpt I read was great so I got it instead.

While not a complete beginner, I am easily intimidated when it comes to cooking. This book breaks everything down into simple terms that anyone can follow.

This book was listed "As New" and it most certainly exactly came as listed.. I was most satified and would certainly use Amazon for my next book purchase.Thyank you.