Customer Reviews

Cooking Know-How: Be a Better Cook with Hundreds of Easy Techniques, Step-by-Step Photos, and Ideas for Over 500 Great Meals

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This cookbook rocks!! Finally I have found a cookbook suitable for my husband, the man who thinks he can cook but can't, the man who refuses to follow directions, and the man who wants a picture to go with every situation in life. This cookbook has it all. It breaks down the recipes into easy to follow, understandable steps, and even tells the rule-breaker in your life how to break the rules and get away with it: by giving him variations. Fancy that! I'm also sending it to my son in college who is teaching himself to cook on the internet, because even techies need a hard copy, especially when the pictures are so mouth-watering. Two thumbs up.

This book is a fabulous resource for anyone who wants to learn to cook, develop their basic cooking skills, and expand their cooking chops beyond their present comfort zone. I sure wish this book had been in my hands when I began cooking just over a year ago. While I did learn a lot by watching good cooking shows on the Food Network, this book has many wonderful benefits that I will use as I go forward.

Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough have provided a way for us to see dishes as families of dishes and exactly how they use the same cooking process despite some differences in the proteins, vegetables, spices, and liquids.

As just one example, you can look at the Vindaloo recipe. Since the dishes are organized alphabetically you can easily find this dish in the back of the book. The recipe begins with a bit of a background on what a Vindaloo is and proceeds with the five cooking steps you will use in making the dish. As you read through these steps you will develop a strong conception of what the dish is and how it is done. Then you get a table that lists the five steps in a column and the varieties in rows. You get recipes for Vinaloos with lamb, duck, chicken, goat, pork, veal, venison, and beef. These tables are very easy to read and make it easy for us to see the similarities and differences between the recipes and we get a better sense of why the different proteins use different approaches.

Each section also contains side-boxes with helpful tips that are relevant to that recipe and can be used in many other cooking situations. The book focuses on helping you develop your repertoire of cooking techniques. There are many instructive sequences like the three photos and tips on how to make a chile paste (on page 91) as part of making chili.

There are more than 500 recipes in the book and hundreds of techniques you can learn to become a more able cook. As just one example, look through the chapter on bean soups. There are six steps, but along the way I learned about the different cooking times the various kinds of beans have, why you want to include beans with similar cooking times if you want a mixed bean soup, why soaking beans is helpful, how to cook beans if you don't have time to soak, and how to minimize the gastric distress they are famous for. There are then eight recipes for varieties of bean soup: Southern Black-eyed Pea, Black Bean, Persian-Inspired, Lima Bean, Cranberry Bean with Spare Ribs, Italian-Style White Bean, Minestrone, Spiced Adzuki with Dried Pears. Obviously, each of these can also be turned into several sub-varieties as well with just a few changes here and there.

There are beautiful photos of how the dishes should look when you make them properly and I always find these aspirational pictures most helpful. Lucy Schaeffer deserves lots of praise for the quality of the photos she took for this really cool book.

Treat yourself to this book, get a copy for your friends who are beginning their culinary explorations, and be sure to use it often. Terrific!

Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI

this is a perfect cookbook for anyone, new or experienced in the kitchen. the format is perfect and makes for a quick check on how to prepare a dish. I have been cooking for many years, taken loads of cooking classes and am considered a good cook, but I use this book repeatedly. Great buy!!

From the very first chapter, it's clear this is no ordinary cookbook. The authors do a splendid job of breaking down the creation of absolutely fabulous dishes into simple, manageable steps. And the bonus is they show how each technique can be applied to so many exquisite variations. I highly recommend this book to anyone who has even the slightest interest in cooking.

I ordered this cookbook about a year ago and it has become my cooking bible. It is literally the best cookbook I have ever owned. The format is easy to read and easy to use. I love the fact that this book teaches you the technique for a recipe and you can use your own creativity to make the dish your own. Many other cookbooks use ingredients that are hard to come by or unrecognizable to the home-chef, this book uses easy ingredients and is super easy to follow. The curry recipe is one of my favorites. I have used this technique more than a dozen times.

I wish these 2 would write another Cooking Know-How book so I could continue my culinary education.

The easy, entertaining style of this cookbook makes it very enjoyable reading. Not to mention the fabulous recipes and techniques which will carry over into one's general cooking know-how. My husband says that reading this book is like going to a good cooking school! "Cooking Know-How" ranks high on our list, along with the authors' "Ultimate Cook Book", "Cooking for Two" and others.

This book will join The Ultimate Cookbook as one of my most used cookbooks. More than just providing recipes, it teaches technique. What I love about this book, is that it gives you inspiration to be creative while giving guidelines on how to do it. It teaches you how to do a number of fabulous meals, and then guides you through step by step. Also provides variations so that you never get bored.

It's a cool cookbook. The step-by-step directions are really easy to follow whether you're a new cook or an experienced one. We recently tried the macaroni & cheese recipe. It was delicious.

Besides the fact that Cooking Know-How is just flat interesting to read, the next best thing is that there are pictures to go along with many of the steps. How many times have I wondered if I was doing something correctly? Well, with this book small steps are carefully described and frequently photographed. This insures success for the old-hand as well as the new cook.

These books are going to be my standard birthday present this year. Everyone is trying to cut down on going out to eat so much, and this book makes that a lot more attainable. Some recipes are fast, like Fish Fillets with Pan Sauce, but for a good result, proper technique is essential. And some recipes call for more time, like the Biryani, and I can hardly wait to try it.

These guys clearly know their way around a kitchen, and I appreciate the care and clarity with which they write. It makes me want to cook more.

Great Cookbook. Explains the basics rather than only giving recipes. Would highly recommend to other novice cooks out there.