Customer Reviews

Gluten-Free Cooking For Dummies

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I was pleasantly surprised that the book goes far beyond gluten-free cooking tips and recipes. I have read Korn's other 3 books, and all have been tremendously helpful, and even inspiring. The gluten-free diet can be a shocker (give up your beer, your bread, your tasty baked treats, etc.), but the author somehow makes it easy to understand the nuances of this tricky diet. You feel like you are getting one-on-one expert advice in an easygoing, relaxed style. It's weird, but you feel like you know the author after reading the book. The book is even funny.

For anyone starting out on a gluten-free diet, any of Korn's books are winners. If you also like to cook, this is a double dose of education. You will probably refer to it often. Highly recommended on all counts.

Gluten-Free Cooking for Dummies is an OK cookbook, but suffers from an overly chatty and opinionated voice, and in some ways is too advanced and specialized in recipe selection.

Pros: Many recipes, covering a fairly broad selection of recipes. Coverage of most of the basics of adapting from gluten-cooking to gluten-free-cooking, and lots of introduction and supplementary material. Includes a basic GF flour recipe for use or adaptation to virtually all baking projects.

Cons: Very opinionated writing voice, with a lot of sneering at other people's opinions or habits. Strangely for a cookbook, Korn wastes ink talking about how she hates to measure! The recipes do have measurements for those of use she likes to dislike, who actually do want to use a standard amount, but she tends to sneer at the idea. (Measureless cooking using "glops" and "dashes" would be adventurous, since one person's dash is different from another's.)

While there are many recipes, there are some strange choices of dishes; the one that really stands out is the no-sauce pizza. Sauce is generally gluten-free, and the basic American pizza has sauce, so why not do a basic pizza; I'm sure it's easy enough to adapt and just add sauce, but why not give the basic pizza and the specialized one, too?

There's a strong pro-vegetarian, pro-organic ingredient, pro-Paleolithic diet stream running through, and I found it distracting and annoying. Take out all of this unnecessary material and she might have found space to address more basic cooking for the newly gluten-free types who are not used to cooking for themselves in the first place.

So, good information, some very good ideas and material, with some bad writing, annoying voice, and apparently little editorial reigning in.

The book has a lot of good info in it as to how to cook and live gluten free. However the book does not mark in the recipes which items you need to make sure are gluten free (it notes early in the book that there are "some items" that you will need to make sure are gluten free, the other GF cooling books i have bought and used have marked every item in the ingredients list.

It is a good starting point, and the BBQ meat loaf (page 210 if i recall correctly) is AMAZING, but the other recipes in the book i have tried so far have been pretty bland, maybe i just so far have chosen the wrong ones but compared to the other GF cook books ive used this has a much lower percentage of great recipes

-matt

There are some good basics here for those of us with celiac disease and gluten intolerance. But I did find some of the snarky comments and opinons unnecessary.

I purchased this book for my future mother-in-law because I own several "For Dummies" books myself. Don't be fooled by the title, even if you think you are incredibly smart and know all there is to know about Celiac Disease, this book could still teach you a few new things.

The "For Dummies" books are easy to use as reference books because they are so well indexed and also easy to understand as they lack difficult to understand technical jargon without explanation.

My mother-in-law has been living with Celiac Disease for a very long time and has learned to live with it and cook meals for herself. However, after going through this book, she said she had a million post-its marking things in the book already and had already learned about tons of things she wasn't aware of. She also said that she was going to tell her father and other family members who also have the disease, as it is hereditary.

In addition to the great, detailed info the book contains, it also has some very delicious recipes. Just yesterday, I made several of the soups which are all yummy and am now addicted to the South of the Border cheeseball recipe which I make into a dip.

In closing, for the price and the content, you wouldn't be a dummy to purchase this book, I highly recommend it! Have a great day!

I enjoyed the first half of the book, and was excited to see the recipes, but when I got to the recipes they weren't consistent with the first author's philosophies on gluten-free cooking.

I purchased this book in order to have a good general reference with recipes to make when friends who have Celiac's disease eat over.

The book is more than just a cookbook as it contains advice and tips for making a gluten free home. For instance in the beginning of the book the author cautions that you must make sure your kitchen is glutenized--you have to think about cross-contamination. Since I'm not making a lifestyle change and wanted to just cook for gluten free friends, I didn't think about things like toasting a gluten free piece of bread in a toaster that had toasted flour based products!

I made a few of the recipes including Poached Salmon Piccata (very good), Spinach Pie (very good too), and a really good lemon bar.

The recipes are easy to follow and the ones I tried were both visually appealing and tasted good--at least my gluten free friends had no complaints.

I actually bought this book for my daughter, as her boyfriend must make the choice to live gluten-freee-his entire life. The information was very helpful for my daughter and educating her on the best choices for meals each and every day. Thanks for the enless recipes...

I am anxious to try some of the gluten-Free meals shown here. They sound good and when you dont know how to cook without gluten a person needs all the help they can get.

This book is a must have for anyone with Celiac Disease or Gluten Intolerance. It enables you to cook and eat like a "normal" person.