Customer Reviews

New Cook Book (Better Homes & Gardens New Cookbooks)

5 star:		(146)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

You need a basic cookbook. This is it.

No frills. No essays about the enduring history of kumquats, and how they saved Milwaukee 1,000 years ago. None of that. Just a cookbook with lots of helpful tips, to be used by ordinary people.

What do you get? A good old fashioned cookbook filled recipes you'll actually use, with ingredients you've seen before.

From this cookbook, I've made yeast donuts, breads, BBQ ribs, various sauces, and more. My copy has a few stains on it; good eating makes small messes. I like to think of the stains as battle scars.

Buy if you can the ring-bound version, as it will nicely open as you cook. I have the paperback edition, and use a bag of sugar to keep it open (place the sugar at the top of the open spine).

Helpfully included are photos of meat cuts, so you know pork ribs from beef ribs. There is a similar chart of grains and pastas.

Also, there are general instructions for preparing fruit-pie fillings, methods for cooking meat, and how to can produce. There's shopping tips, nutritional charts, measuring techniques.

Ever wonder the difference between cubing and dicing is? That, and many more great tips are explained here.

I fully recommend "Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book" for any basic kitchen cooking need you have. However, I am sorry, but detailed kumquat information will need to be found elsewhere.

Anthony Trendl
http://anthonytrendl.blogspot.com

If I had to cut my extensive (over fifty) cookbook collection back to just one book this would be the "keeper!" When my beloved twelve-year old copy of this cookbook finally fell apart I purchased the 11th edition thinking I would mostly be replacing what I already had and knew well.

There was so much new and useful information included in the eleventh edition I wished I'd let go of my old copy earlier. I am especially fond of the nutrition analysis included with each recipe and the tips for making recipes lower in fat. The prep-times included with each recipe were also a new, and very useful, feature to me. Plus the editors upgraded the book to reflect the wider availability of formerly "exotic" fruits and vegetables now in the everyday market.

The fledgling cook will find everything needed to confidently accomplish any task from hard-boiling an egg to properly setting the table for a family meal or a buffet-style party. Pesky, but common, cooking terms like "al dente" and "crisp-tender" are explained in a straight forward manner in the cooking basics section where you will also find great tips for stocking a pantry or purchasing the basic cooking equipment you might need when just starting out.

Useful features for all levels of cook are scattered throughout the text. For example, there is a full-page photograph of different pastas with the name under each (finally! I now know the difference between Gemelli and Fusilli!). Also very useful are the extensive illustrative photos of retail cuts of meat cross-referenced to the wholesale cut and listing the best way to cook each cut.

One of my favorite things about the hardcover cookbook is the three-ring binder format. This makes it possible to lay the book flat on the counter or prop it up nearby with, or without, a cookbook stand. It also makes it easier to add your own notes right alongside your favorite recipes.

I love to give this cookbook as a gift to a young person just starting out -- inside a big crockpot or tied together with some fun kitchen tools.

This is not the only cookbook I have but the only one I use. It is reliable and proven by time. My parents had one when I was little and I loved looking at the pictures. My dad taught me how to cook using it. When I got married, it was a wedding present. I have since bought several new additions and have given one to each of my children as they have moved away from home. Everything you need to know is in there from the basics like measuring, storage and definitions to more complex recipes. Even though I am a grandmother now, I still like the pictures. Nice to know what some things are supposed to look like :o)

When I was married, my mother insisted I could not survive without this book. Little did I know then, but she was absolutely right! For someone who was skilled only at burning food in the kitchen two years ago, I can now make satisfying meals for my entire family. The cookbook not only offers receipes, but great information about time preparation, how to properly prepare and store foods, and how to make good decisions about substitutions. There are lots of pictures to help cooks know what is the difference between exotic fruits and the various pastas, not to mention the difference between stiffly beaten eggs and lightly beaten eggs. Most importantly, the recipes are very easy to prepare and are very tasty.

I asked my mother to get me this when I moved into my own apartment. She taught me, for I was the attentive son, how to cook from her edition of this book, and this was the first gift I got when I moved out on my own.

Her copy, she told me, came from her parents.

It's a must-have. The recipes are easy-to-follow, first of all. I learned how to follow recipes by using this book with my mother.

One of my first-ever on-my-own cooking experiences came from this book, the orange chicken. I'm still alive and well-fed, and everyone loved that meal. So the book works.

When I hosted my first dinner party a couple weeks ago, a Thanksgiving feast, no less, this book taught me easy ways to do EVERYTHING required. I knew how to make the turkey, where to insert the meat thermometer, what spices to add to the mashed potatoes.

This book helps you get every meal just right. It's essential, an heirloom, a tradition and a must for everyone who cooks.

My 1970s edition of this cookbook was a surefire guide to simple, straightforward homecooking. The current edition has lost the charm -- and many of the best recipes -- of the original without gaining compensatory sophistication.

Take, for instance, biscuits: old editions had the best basic biscuit recipe. The new biscuits require a special trip to the market for ingredients. Yet the cookbook held onto horrors like chop suey!

The recipes over-emphasize canned and packaged ingredients and under-emphasize basic cooking techniques that might allow the aspiring cook to figure out how to substitute convenience ingredients for more complicated recipes. It's very much a cookbook for people who want to reproduce the food at the local supermarket deli, at twice the cost.

That said, there aren't many basic, put-food-on-the-table-every-night cookbooks out there. If you need to smack some chicken and rice on the dinner table every night of your life, you could do worse.

This book is absolutely fabulous. My husband gave it to me for Christmas, in an attempt to get me back into the kitchen, and it worked. Already I've taken the opportunity to go through the binder several times, and it contains a wealth of information, whether you're a gourmet cook, or a novice like myself. The cooking techniques in the beginning of the binder are especially helpful, and I've taken a lot of wonderful tips to help ensure the success of the recipies. My husband encourages everyone to try the Canadian Bacon Cheeseburgers. They're delicious.

This book would make a perfect gift for someone who is not yet feeling quite "at home in the kitchen." It is a basic, straight-forward, simple to understand cookbook with lots of facts on planning menus and proper nutrition. We have often heard the saying of an inexperienced person in the kitchen, "He or she would not know how to boil water!" Well, this book will tell you how to do such simple things as boil an egg and have it come out the way you want it - softboiled or hardboiled. There is a section dealing with various cuts of meats that will help the reader to understand which ones make great stews and pot roasts, and which ones provide the more tender, lean oven roasts. If you have a sweet tooth, you will learn everything from how to make a pie crust (easier said than done the first time around) for that scrumptous apple pie, to how to make some of your favourite candies. This book comes highly recommended and is one you will likely keep in your kitchen even after you have gathered experience and progressed to more complex, detailed recipes.

I think this book tops what i would consider other contenders for this type of all-in-one cookbook (joy of cooking and fannie farmer) I love that this book has pictures...missing from the other two books I mentioned. It's a nice LARGE general, basic cook book.

A perfect gift for a person setting up an apartment for the first time, learning how to cook, going off to college (altho sometimes cooking options in college are limited).

I love the extra help sections...how to do things... techniques... examples etc. All around books tend to be at a disadvantage when they try to be all things to all people. While I dont think there is any substitute for regional and specific food type/cooking method/ ethnic cuisine cook books, I also think there is an important place in everyones home for a general all purpose cook book. ( For times when you want to know the *basics*...how long to cook something, for example.)

I have been dissapointed with the fannie farmer cookbook and the joy of cooking... this book would be my number 1 choice for a favorite general cook book for everyones kitchen

This is probably the best cookbook in print for novice and experienced cooks. It's written in plain English, has exceptional recipes, includes standard cooking instructions as well as more complicated dishes, and it's well categorized and indexed. I bought this book when I moved into my first apartment many years ago, and I still refer to it regularly. The ringbound format is so convenient! Coupled with The Joy of Cooking (older version), a new cook needs no more expensive volumes on the shelf.