Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

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!

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.

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.

I am 25 years old and I have been cooking independently for only about 3 years, but I knew almost all the tips and tricks that this book touts as "keys" to good cooking. Not to be too negative, the book has a lot of good advice, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who loves cooking because the amount of new information will be a disappointment. I bought the book for my mother, who loves to read about food and cooking, but I can't bring myself to give her this book because it's just too simplistic.

This might be a good idea if you're just starting out in the kitchen, otherwise keep looking!

If "On Food and Cooking", McGee's magnificent previous book, was at times too scientific or even esoteric, "Keys to Good Cooking" is just too basic, even obvious. The book may be a great addition to someone that is a total novice to cooking, but it is misleading to a wide audience who relied on McGee's reputation since his previous book appealed to a more knowledgeable or at least very curious crowd regarding that what was taking place during the process of cooking and transformation. Furthermore, the book has inaccuracies that are not excusable coming from a food/cooking authority such as McGee - one example, page 31: tartaric acid and cream of tartar being one and the same thing. "Keys to Good Cooking" seems more a scheme to make money taking advantage of the author's well deserved reputation rather than a serious guide to making the best of foods and recipes.

I enjoy using McGee's "Keys to Good Cooking. its information is useful, clear, and fairly copious, and as usual it debunks commonly held myths. the book takes the perspective of focusing on ingredients or types of ingedient and then the different means of preparing them and how any method affects the taste and texture. since I do more experimentation than recipe following, McGee's approach works well for me. it presents alternative ways to consider the taste or texture problem I am trying to solve, and so far has steered me in fruitful directions.

if I could own just one book by McGee, it would still be the justly famous [[ASIN:0684843285 On Food and Cooking], which is a hard act to follow. nonetheless, I find the new volume a welcome addition and I refer to it frequently.

one warning about the Kindle edition, however: the publisher made the index flat text without hyperlinks, so you can see what's in the book, but you can't get there from here. this is *REALLY* irritating; perhaps later editions will correct this lunacy.

I must state at the outset that I was terribly disappointed by Professor McGees' latest book. I was expecting something novel, something that contained more information on the science of cooking, but found a book which contained only the very basic knowledge on the subject. Having already read his great book on Food&Cooking, this disillusionment was only natural. Whereas the former book was a real gemstone, this last one was comparatively rudimentary to me. But I persevered all the same and read the book cover to cover in only three sittings (530 pages). I realized that I enjoyed reading it as it was very well written and the information was organized quite cleverly.

Did I learn anything new? Honestly, hardly. But than I realized that this book was not targeting audiences who are seasoned and have scholarly knowledge on food&cooking like me. The target clientelle of the book is the novice and the less scholarly. And believe me there is a huge customer potential in that area both among amateurs and professional chefs. I am sure that only a very small proportion of chefs in the world have the scientific knowledge presented in his book `On Food and Cooking' and a great majortiy of them definitely need a neat compilation like this book. Also, many amateur cooks will find the technical information in the book useful. It is compact, well-written and deliberately light on scientific stuff which could have put off many people. I also believe that this is a good introductory book for students of culinary art schools. Overall I reccommend the book to all those who do not feel themselves confident on the basics of kitchen science. But seasoned and scholarly readers like me should certainly stay away from it and should not be fooled by the fact that it was written by Professor McGee.

I'd like to point out that a lot of the reviewers (so far) are fans of McGee's earlier book. Since that book is aimed at scientists and experienced cooks, that's who the reviewers are. This new book is aimed at a completely different audience -- typical household cooks.

So if you're a typical household cook, please don't be scared off by critical reviews from more advanced chefs. And if you're an advanced chef, could you also comment on its usefulness to the rest of us? Thanks...

Keys to Good Cooking: A Guide to Making the Best of Foods and Recipes
A disappointing collection of blurbs and information along with some misinformation. formatted in a highly repetitive way. Too little information to even consider it basic for a beginner. I love reading and using cookbooks and seldom fail to find even ONE tidbit or technique that I can use. Sorry to be so blunt but this was not even fun to read. Glad I found it at the library and didn't waste money.

This is a book I'm going to keep in mind if I want to give something to a teenager interested in cooking, or maybe to a young person on their way off to college, or heading to their first apartment.

Likewise, if I ever meet an extraterrestrial, I think this would be a very useful tome for explaining our food and food preparation for them. It contains useful bits like definitions of what Celery is, or Waffles, that extraterrestrials would probably find indispensable.

However, if you are over the age of 19, originally from planet Earth, or someone who has *ever* cooked, well, *anything*, this book will insult your intelligence.

I can't believe it was published for an adult demographic.