Customer Reviews

How to Cook Everything, Completely Revised 10th Anniversary Edition: 2,000 Simple Recipes for Great Food

5 star:		(134)
4 star:		(22)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I got my copy of the new edition of How to Cook Everything the other day and am beyond thrilled. I own the old yellow edition and have cooked from it far more than any other book, so I knew the new book had a lot to live up to. Well, it by far exceeded my expectations. While the book still feels familiar, it also feels new and improved. The essential recipe sections beginning each chapter are a great way to find the basics. But even the basics have changed. For example, Mark's roast chicken recipe, which I've used and liked in the past (though I still love Barbara Kafka's) has changed. He suggests you heat the pan before putting the chicken in and placing the chicken breast side up (instead of side down as he suggested in his old book). The heat of the pan helps cook the thighs faster so the breasts don't dry out. It worked perfectly the first time I tried it. Beyond the basics, there are just so many new recipes in here. The variations, lists, and charts that Mark is famous for seem even more plentiful than before, and there are tons of beautiful new illustrations. I'm so excited to cook with this new edition and foresee a day when it's pages will be stained with grease and flour just like the old edition. But I still can't get rid of the old one. It's like a good friend. I'll just put the new one on the shelf right next to it, red by yellow, and know that I can always count on them.

If you have room in your heart for only one cookbook, this is the one. With 2000 recipes it really does have everything. With variations. It's got vegetables from A to Z, with several recipes for each, primers on meat, fish and fowl, on stocking the kitchen and preserving your tools.

Bittman, author of the Minimalist column in the New York Times, has overhauled the original to reflect the changing times. Almost half the material is new, showcasing more international dishes, more vegetarian fare, and a tighter organization. Best known for keeping it simple - fine food, with minimal fuss - Bittman would like to see the home cook spend an hour a day cooking but most of these dishes can be made in half that time.

If the dishes are inspirational, the organization is breathtaking. Organized by course, each chapter begins with "essential" recipes, the "building blocks," and icons accompany every recipe, indicating fast (under 30 minutes), make ahead, or vegetarian. Charts and sidebars abound, offering ideas for using different techniques with similar ingredients or the same technique with different ingredients.

As always with Bittman, the watchword is variation, the goal is inspiration. Cooks of all levels of experience and interest will spend hours with this book and never run out of new ideas and new tricks.

In addition to the typical American basics, I love that this cookbook includes recipes for international and less than every day foods. There are plenty of suggestions for varying recipes and I find his "quick" versions of many recipes helpful and well suited to work night dinners. The recipes tend to be fairly easy while using mostly fresh and healthy ingredients. I find so many things that sound delicious that I have a hard time deciding what to try first. Bittman explains techniques and ingredients clearly enough for real beginners, while going into enough depth that even more experienced cooks can learn something. I am already buying a second copy to send to my daughter at college.

I too was surprised at all the five star reviews, because as others have pointed out, the individual recipes are not always the best for the task. Specifically, I needed a pie crust recipe today. Bittman suggests using all butter, which is fine, but that makes an extremely short crust -- not the most ideal for a quiche, for instance. Check Julia Child, Alton Brown, Better Homes and Gardens ... you will find that they all suggest the addition of a proportion of vegetable shortening to make the crust tender. I improvised since I basically needed the proportions of flour/fat, but for a novice baker the crust would probably be a bit disappointing.

It's a nice idea to create a book that would supplant all your other cookbooks (and I can't believe John-George Vortigern said to throw away all your other cookbooks, and why does Lisa Loeb have the authority to review a cookbook, she's a rock star), but in fact one person can't make everything well. From what I have seen, he hasn't taken the best of the best to make up this volume. It's too easy to turn to this book and get a mediocre result, without realizing you could have made it better using another source. A good cook should use a few different sources, with a couple of well-tested basic books such as Better Homes and Gardens or America's Test Kitchen, or even Joy of Cooking to have core recipes on hand.

This book is not only a wonderful resource; it is a rather significant achievement. The book is useful and helpful for beginning and developing cooks as well as a handy reference for experienced culinary professionals. Much of this usefulness flows from the way Mark Bittman has organized the book around 102 Essential Recipes. He then shows you other dishes and variations that build on or can be adapted from the core recipe. For example, on page 508 he has a nice recipe for Baked Macaroni and Cheese (which I made and my family loved). He then provides four variations and then six mac-and-cheese combos. So much of learning to cook is developing the ability to see how dishes relate to each other and gaining a sense of what you can do with them even without a specific recipe or permission from some authority to do something different. You gain understanding and freedom through experience and seeing connections. This book fosters the development of this understanding and way of looking at food.

You can tell the core recipes because they have a white star inside a red circle by the recipe title. The author also uses three other handy symbols (all in red circles). F means that the meal is fast and can be made in less than thirty minutes. M means you can make the dish ahead (or at least to significant degree of completion) of when it will be needed. V means it is a vegetarian recipe.

I like the way Bittman takes care to explain things to the reader without condescension. He assumes that someone using the book will need to know, for example, what basic pots and pans he should have or what her basic set of knives should be. Every beginning cook needs to learn how to use knives safely and what core ingredients should be in their pantry. Bittman explains all this and so much more. He also uses helpful diagrams to explain to how carve chickens, prepare fish, peeling and deveining shrimp, dice veggies, and so forth. The book also has many tables to help you get at the core types of ingredients such as apples, spices, herbs, and so much more. This is a cooking resource, not just a collection of recipes.

The way the author writes the recipes is especially helpful. He does not use the cryptic shorthand seen in so many recipes. The steps he provides are careful explanations of not only what you should do, but they also include explanations of why you need to do it and if something might be unclear he also tells you how to do it. Sometimes he even includes alternative approaches in the steps of a recipe. The recipes read as if he were talking to you as a friend and sharing with you so you can share in the fun he is having. Each recipe also tells you the yield in servings and the amount of time you should plan on spending to make the dish. He also lets you know when most of the time making the dish is actually in unattended mode.

You should also go to the back of the book for some other handy resources. These pages all have a red edge. He offers a series of menu ideas for Breafast and Brunch, Lunch, Dinner, and Celebrations. He also lists the 102 Essential Recipes on page 974 and 975. He then provides his own top 100 fast recipes, his top 100 make-ahead recipes, and top 100 vegetarian recipes. On page 982 he provides a list of specialty resources you can use for items you might need if they aren't available in your area. Of course the book has an index, which is extremely useful. Inside the front and back covers are some handy bits of conversion and temperature information.

Does the book really tell you how to cook everything? Pretty much. Remember, this isn't about cooking every possible dish in the universe, but of providing ways of handling a vast range of ingredients to get wonderful and easy to prepare dishes. I didn't find dishes with foie gras or caviar in the book. But they might well be there and I just missed them. However, it is insignificant either way. This subtitle is spot on: "Simple Recipes for Great Food" and that is what you need to know in approaching this wonderful book.

I recommend this to everyone who loves food and wants to begin cooking or develop their repertoire of dishes from the few they use over and over again. Take the plunge and you can thank me later. This book would also be a terrific gift to kids and grand kids setting up their own house or apartment. Learning to cook will not only be cheaper than eating out or ordering in, it will be far healthier. And it offers much more opportunity for healthy socializing than the usual stuffing of faces in front of a glowing tube.

Strongly and fervently recommended.

Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI

I gave away my first edition of this book as soon as I got the new one. Much to my dismay, I discovered that the entire beverages chapter has been omitted from this new book.

As someone who was banished from the kitchen by my mother (except for dish-washing chores), I have always had lots of questions about what to do and when for the kinds of dishes I like. My wife was similarly banished so we are like the blind leading the blind. Our mothers' culinary skill caused us to appreciate great home-cooked food, but unable to provide it for ourselves. As a result, we are fond of cookbooks where you toss a few ingredients together and get something tasty in a few minutes. We also look forward to restaurant meals where great flavors are experienced beyond what our mothers gave us.

That seemed to me like where we would stay until I found the Completely Revised Tenth Anniversary Edition of How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman. With this book, I can create almost anything I used to enjoy at my mom's house or in a restaurant. I also feel confident about achieving those results because this book answers my unanswered questions.

I was astonished to see how many flavors I like in sauces can be created very easily. Wow!

In addition, I can now look forward to healthier eating by knowing what ingredients are being used rather than relying on so many prepared ingredients.

Thank you!

If you already know how to make great recipes from scratch, you won't be as impressed by this book as I am. In fact, you probably won't need it.

To use a metaphor, this book isn't the ultimate cook book. It's the step-up cookbook for those who have mastered the simplest kitchen preparations but want to learn how to do more and create the kind of results that you don't experience in 90 percent of American kitchens.

Enjoy!

First of all whoever put this book together did not read through it very well. Sentences are cut off and incomplete. I would recommend people with little or no cooking experience do not buy this book. Many recipes need adjusting or maybe some steps or ingredients are just plain missing. Also in the back index there is not a lot of cross referencing and sometimes hard to locate a recipe. I've tried several recipes, many needing adjustments so I end up looking up other recipes either on-line or in other books I own. There have been a few winning recipes but not enough for me to recommend this book to others.

Im 20, in college, and hungry.

I want to eat hommade food, but am fairly clueless how to do it.

This book is VERY detailed, with tips, directions, pictures you name it. So dumb people like me can understand :)

The only fault to this book is that it is soooo big! Its hard to know where to start, but once you do you're bound to learn, and get better.

The recipes are simple too, with explanations to allow room for cooking things the way YOU like it.

The only cookbook I've bought, but I don't feel the need to buy anything else.

Despite the fact that I own the original yellow-cover version of How to Cook Everything in soft cover, I decided to download the revised edition onto my Kindle. I'm very pleased that I did. Mark Bittman is one of my very favorite cookbook authors and I follow his weekly articles and blog in the NY Times religiously. The original How to Cook Everything is my go-to cookbook whenever I need some inspiration and a good, solid weeknight recipe for dinner that has maximum flavor, minimum ingredients, and can be whipped up in less than an hour.

The Kindle version is great! I have other cookbooks on Kindle that have very poor formatting -- no searchable recipe index with links to the recipes, no internal links to take you to associated recipes, no real e-book navigation tools. Bittman's book has all this and more. It is extremely well formatted for the Kindle, and it is easy to both browse and to find specific recipes. I also downloaded Rick Bayless's "Everyday Mexican" and it was so lacking is useful e-book formatting, that I had to ask for a refund. It was practically useless as an e-book cooking reference. HTCE is the exact opposite and, as such, is well worth the rather high price of the e-book version. Thanks to the publisher and to Mr. Bittman for taking the time and effort to make this e-book as practical a cook's tool as it is an encyclopedic one, the one cookbook every serious cook should have in her/his arsenal.