Keys to Good Cooking: A Guide to Making the Best of Foods and Recipes [Hardcover]

Harold McGee (Author)

Book Description

Release date: October 28, 2010

The answers to many kitchen conundrums in one easy-to-use volume, from the author of the acclaimed culinary bible On Food and Cooking.

From our foremost expert on the science of cooking, Harold McGee, Keys to Good Cooking is a concise and authoritative guide designed to help home cooks navigate the ever-expanding universe of ingredients, recipes, food safety, and appliances, and arrive at the promised land of a satisfying dish.

A work of astounding scholarship and originality, Keys to Good Cooking directly addresses the cook at work in the kitchen and in need of quick and reliable guidance. Cookbooks past and present frequently contradict one another about the best ways to prepare foods, and many contain erroneous information and advice.

Keys to Good Cooking distills the modern scientific understanding of cooking and translates it into immediately useful information. Looking at ingredients from the mundane to the exotic, McGee takes you from market to table, teaching, for example, how to spot the most delectable asparagus (choose thick spears); how to best prepare the vegetable (peel, don't snap, the fibrous ends; broiling is one effective cooking method for asparagus and other flat-lying vegetables); and how to present it (coat with butter or oil after cooking to avoid a wrinkled surface). This book will be a requisite countertop resource for all home chefs, as McGee's insights on kitchen safety in particular-reboil refrigerated meat or fish stocks every few days. (They're so perishable that they can spoil even in the refrigerator.); Don't put ice cubes or frozen gel packs on a burn. (Extreme cold can cause additional skin damage)-will save even the most knowledgeable home chefs from culinary disaster.

A companion volume to recipe books, a touchstone that helps cooks spot flawed recipes and make the best of them, Keys to Good Cooking will be of use to cooks of all kinds: to beginners who want to learn the basics, to weekend cooks who want a quick refresher in the basics, and to accomplished cooks who want to rethink a dish from the bottom up. With Keys to Good Cooking McGee has created an essential guide for food lovers everywhere.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

No matter how creative the chef, every great dish relies on proven science, and this compendium of well-researched data is a textbook for proper food preparation. Curious Cook columnist for the New York Times and author (On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen), McGee will banish any romantic notions about cooking with his fast-draw expertise. Keys is a companion guide designed to be used in conjunction with cookbooks. With chapters devoted to Kitchen Tools, Heat and Heating Appliances, and Cooking Methods, McGee's 101 approach takes nothing for granted, but will surprise readers with lesser known insights, such as that salted water reduces the loss of flavorful and nutritious substances during boiling and that foil should not be used to wrap acidic foods or nonaluminum metal pans. McGee breaks down methods with basic tips--in pan-frying, for instance, warming meats to room temperature and drying food surfaces ahead are important factors for success that are often left out of recipes. Descriptions of foods from common fruits to cultured dairy products and seed legumes are detailed but not trivially so, with McGee summarizing the safe handling, purchase and storage, preparation, and basic characteristics. With an eminently pragmatic approach to cooking and a user-friendly précis of a lifetime's devotion to the kitchen, this is an invaluable addition to food literature. (Nov.)
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Review

“Mr. McGee might have called this encyclopedic work "The Kitchen Home Companion," since it offers indispensable information on how to make the most of any recipe—a user's manual that enables home cooks to achieve maximum results… the enjoyment it affords will be found on the table.”

(Wall Street Journal )

"If you want to know virtually anything about the "why" of cooking, read Harold McGee. Along the way, he'll teach you the "how."

(ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH )

“McGee’s writing is broad, yet detailed at the same time, scientific, but comprehensible.”

(CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR )

“A great addition to any cookbook library. It picks up where many cookbooks leave off. The "How's" and "Why's" of a dish's success - or failure - are often a mystery, but McGee sheds light on many of those mysteries to make us more informed in the kitchen and ultimately, better cooks.”

(SEATTLE WEEKLY )

“McGee will banish any romantic notions about cooking with his fast-draw expertise… With an eminently pragmatic approach  to cooking and a user-friendly précis of a lifetime’s devotion to the kitchen, this is an invaluable addition to food literature.”

(PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 576 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The; 1ST edition (October 28, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594202680
• ISBN-13: 978-1594202681
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (40 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #190,290 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Harold McGee writes about the chemistry of food and cooking, and the science of everyday life. He has worked alongside some of world's most innovative chefs, including Thomas Keller and Heston Blumenthal. He lives with his family in California.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

103 of 111 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A solid reference - November 3, 2010

By Andrea Gillin

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Having read and purchased McGee's other titles I did not expect this one to be terribly different. That is to say that his books tend to be chock full of information without many pictures. I consider myself an experienced cook and baker, and still find this information very helpful when a question arises about why something happens in cooking the way that it does. If you are the type that prefers lots of pictures, even humor, then Alton Brown is probably your best go to source. Although McGee himself is not without humor - it was the famous scene from "Blazing Saddles" that sent him in this direction food science, but this book is pretty cut and dry. On the front jacket cover the chapters and their contents are listed nos. 1-24, breaking down the subject matter from 'Basic Kitchen Resources' to 'Nuts and Oil Seeds' and much more. I, however, prefer to judge a book by its index and this book has a decent one. Whoever handled the indexing for this title did a fairly thorough job, but missed the boat by not cross-referencing, which I personally think is critical in a book of this nature. Maybe that was a decision on the publisher's part rather than the indexer, but I feel like something's missing. All in all, this is an excellent reference. If you're like me and consider Hester Blumenthal's "In Search of Perfection" your idea of leisure reading then this book will be right up your alley. If not, use it strictly as a reference, because I don't think any decent cookbook collection should be without McGee's books!

137 of 153 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing November 4, 2010

By Jackal

Format:Hardcover

I really liked the author's On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, which is a five star book. That book was more detailed about food than cooking, so there was definitely room for improvement on the cooking side. However, this is not really what his new book accomplishes. Instead, in my mind, it is a dumbed down version of the old book (i.e all science and explanation of why is totally gone). It is organised around different cooking tasks, like making meringues and cooking rice, and you do get more direct advice than in the author's previous book. This is all good. Sadly, the book is mostly targeted to the eager-to-learn novice or the less experienced. If you have cooked for a couple of years and read the author's previous book, you are likely to find the simple stuff quite tedious. I advice you look at chefs that are also good technicians, Pepin comes to mind. There you will learn tons of useful stuff. A scientist trying to provide similar advice is borderline ridiculous. You will find several entries in which you don't learn anything new. Check out the three short video tips that are posted on top by amazon. If you find these three examples really useful, you should probably buy the book.

The above could have been forgiven, if the book had a decent layout. The old book was crammed with information and had a well-suited typographical layout. The current book has wide margins, spacious line spacing and quite a large font size, not to mention the puke greenish-blue highlights. We get something that looks like it went straight from Microsoft Word to the printing press; loads of italic and bold, bullets with huge indents... I do not understand the publisher's thinking at all. It is not a coffee table book, because it has no pictures and is full of practical advice. It is not a practical tool to have in the kitchen because it is thick as a brick. For some reason, the publisher made the book as bulky as possible. With the same layout as the old book, the number of pages would shrink with 60% percent.

The following doesn't really apply to this book, but since my review is featured, it might be helpful to you dear reader: If you want more information about cooking (as opposed to ingredients) than is found in On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, I highly recommend Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking.

48 of 51 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars An excellent summary of his previous works November 22, 2010

By Dr Garry

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I'm going to disagree with some other reviewers here. I have been been reading Mr McGee for many years, and regard myself as a huge fan.
Few of his previous works would be suitable for the everyday cook. This one is. How many people would wade through his earlier erudite discussions of protein strings, just to get a practical morsel for the kitchen? Few indeed.
This is a book that distills Mr McGee's work into a single practical volume. It may be "the size of a brick", but so what? Nor do I find the typography and layout disconcerting. I think they are ideal: they send you to the essential points immediately.
I have sent this book to some of my friends who would never read even think to peruse Mr McGee's previous opuses. But I am sure they will at least leaf through this one.