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How to Cook Everything: 2,000 Simple Recipes for Great Food,10th Anniversary Edition Hardcover – October 3, 2008
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Mark Bittman's award-winning How to Cook Everything has helped countless home cooks discover the rewards of simple cooking. Now the ultimate cookbook has been revised and expanded (almost half the material is new), making it absolutely indispensable for anyone who cooks—or wants to. With Bittman's straightforward instructions and advice, you'll make crowd-pleasing food using fresh, natural ingredients; simple techniques; and basic equipment. Even better, you'll discover how to relax and enjoy yourself in the kitchen as you prepare delicious meals for every occasion. Look for a new, fully revised edition of HOW TO COOK EVERYTHING, 20th anniversary ed, with full color photos and updated recipes, coming in October 2019!
"A week doesn't go by where I don't pull How to Cook Everything down from the shelf, so I am thrilled there's a new, revised edition. My original is falling apart!"
—Al Roker
"This new generation of How to Cook Everything makes my 'desert island' cookbook choice jacked up and simply universal. I'll now bequeath my cookbooks to a collector; I need only this one."
—Mario Batali
"Mark Bittman has done the impossible, improving upon his now-classic How to Cook Everything. If you need know-how, here's where to find it."
—Bobby Flay
"Mark Bittman is a great cook and an incredible teacher. In this second edition, Mark has fine-tuned the original, making this book a must for every kitchen."
—Jean-Georges Vongerichten
"Throw away all your old recipes and buy How to Cook Everything. Mark Bittman's recipes are foolproof, easy, and more modern than any others."
—Isaac Mizrahi
"Generous, thorough, reliable, and necessary, How to Cook Everything is an indispensable reference for both experienced and beginner cooks."
—Mollie Katzen, author of the Moosewood Cookbook
"I learned how to cook from How to Cook Everything in a way that gives me the freedom to be creative. This new edition will be my gift to new couples or for a housewarming; if you have this book, you don't really need any others."
—Lisa Loeb, singer/songwriter
- Print length1056 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHoughton Mifflin Harcourt
- Publication dateOctober 3, 2008
- Dimensions8.5 x 2.5 x 9 inches
- ISBN-100764578650
- ISBN-13978-0764578656
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Today's favorite kitchen companion—revised and better than ever.
Mark Bittman's award-winning How to Cook Everything has helped countless home cooks discover the rewards of simple cooking. Now the ultimate cookbook has been revised and expanded (almost half the material is new), making it absolutely indispensable for anyone who cooks—or wants to. With Bittman's straightforward instructions and advice, you'll make crowd-pleasing food using fresh, natural ingredients; simple techniques; and basic equipment. Even better, you'll discover how to relax and enjoy yourself in the kitchen as you prepare delicious meals for every occasion.
"A week doesn't go by where I don't pull How to Cook Everything down from the shelf, so I am thrilled there's a new, revised edition. My original is falling apart!"
—Al Roker
"This new generation of How to Cook Everything makes my 'desert island' cookbook choice jacked up and simply universal. I'll now bequeath my cookbooks to a collector; I need only this one."
—Mario Batali
"Mark Bittman has done the impossible, improving upon his now-classic How to Cook Everything. If you need know-how, here's where to find it."
—Bobby Flay
"Mark Bittman is a great cook and an incredible teacher. In this second edition, Mark has fine-tuned the original, making this book a must for every kitchen."
—Jean-Georges Vongerichten
"Throw away all your old recipes and buy How to Cook Everything. Mark Bittman's recipes are foolproof, easy, and more modern than any others."
—Isaac Mizrahi
"Generous, thorough, reliable, and necessary, How to Cook Everything is an indispensable reference for both experienced and beginner cooks."
—Mollie Katzen, author of the Moosewood Cookbook
"I learned how to cook from How to Cook Everything in a way that gives me the freedom to be creative. This new edition will be my gift to new couples or for a housewarming; if you have this book, you don't really need any others."
—Lisa Loeb, singer/songwriter
Exclusive Recipe Excerpts from How to Cook Everything
• >Grilled or Broiled Chicken Kebabs
• Roasted Shrimp with Herb Sauce
• Warm Spicy Greens with Bacon and Eggs
• Author Tip: 7 Ways to Vary Chicken Kebabs [PDF]
>
10 Reasons You Need the New How to Cook Everything (even if you already have the original)
1. The 2000+ simple recipes will make cooking at home easier, so you can spend less and eat better.2. With 1,446 new recipes and variations such as Beer-and-Butter Chicken Wings, Roasted Corn Chowder, BLT Salad, Paella with Chicken and Chorizo, Caramelized French Toast, and Popcorn Brittle, this book provides a whole new array of recipes.
3. The many new techniques covered in this edition will help you to expand your repertoire of kitchen skills to include frosting a cake, grinding your own chili powder, or even de-boning a quail.
4. Your husband, wife, brother, sister, son, daughter, or best friend needs a little help in the kitchen (okay, maybe a lot). The new How to Cook Everything contains more expert advice like “12 Must-Have Kitchen Tools,” “Super-Easy 3-Ingredient Soups,” and “The Basics of Cutting.”
5. You trust Bittman’s no-nonsense opinions and can’t wait to read the thousands of new ones packed into this edition. He’ll even help you to select the best inexpensive fish (ex. mackerel is versatile, tasty, healthy, and plentiful; tilapia can taste kinda muddy).
6. The index of “Essential Recipes” points you to Bittman’s favorite dishes in each chapter, so there’s less reason to be intimidated by all those recipes.
7. There are more helpful lists in the new How to Cook Everything than ever before. Bittman shows how to jack up the basics with easy ideas like “4 Ways to Thicken a Sauce”, and “Infinite Ways to Season or Serve Any Grilled or Broiled Chicken Dish.”
8. With this edition’s brand new charts, it’s absurdly easy to look up the cooking times for grains, heat factor for chiles, and other need-to-know information about everything from herbs and spices to flour and noodles.
9. You know it’s cheap, easy, and fast to serve your family boneless chicken breasts every week, but sometimes you run out of ideas. That’s why you really need all the new recipes, variations, and other suggestions for chicken breasts like “11 More Ways to Vary Grilled or Broiled Boneless Chicken.”
10. There are plenty of new illustrations which incorporate more detail than many photos. They’ll show you how to use a pastry bag, how to eat crabs, and even how to puree soup using an immersion blender (it’s is way less messy than a regular blender).
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From School Library Journal
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Review
“…the best-value all-in-one volume available...even with more of everything to cook, this massive tome is navigable. Whether the first edition is on their shelves or not, home cooks of all skill levels will want to get this one.” (Publishers Weekly, September 1, 2008)
From the Inside Flap
How do you update a classic? For his bestselling, award-winning How to Cook Everything?the modern bible of home cooking?Mark Bittman started from scratch, going page by page, recipe by recipe, carefully blending the best of the beloved original with appealing new recipes and fresh, current information. The result is an even more useful and authoritative cookbook, ready to inform, inspire, and guide new and accomplished cooks alike?the single book to turn to for every kitchen endeavor.
Bittman has added hundreds of new dishes, and completely updated the remaining recipes and every line of guidance. New features abound: Each chapter now opens with "Essential Recipes," a section that highlights the core dishes for every cook's repertoire, such as building blocks for simple soups or ten ways to cook any seafood. He has also expanded the chapters on vegetables and fruits, grains, beans, and desserts. New charts will help you customize recipes with a variety of flavors and ingredients, and new how-to illustrations bring the total to nearly 400. With this revision, Bittman also tags fast, make-ahead, and vegetarian recipes with icons for easy menu planning.
The new How to Cook Everything provides a lifetime's worth of quick, simple, and delicious options. Its 2,000 recipes and variations cover everything from Pad Thai and Carrot Salad with Cumin to Simplest Whole Roast Chicken, Six Ways and Traditional Apple Pie. All of the recipes are easy to prepare?more than half can be completed in 30 minutes (many in even less time)?and none requires special equipment or fancy techniques. Throughout, the emphasis is on fresh, widely available ingredients and healthy, uncomplicated preparations.
As always, Bittman's recipes are instantly appealing, uniquely accessible, and refreshingly straightforward. And many of the special features you loved in the original are still here, too, fully updated. Bittman's thoughtful and inspiring sidebars and lists (like "Twenty-Five Pasta Sauces You Can Make in Advance") and suggested menus for every occasion make How to Cook Everything more valuable and indispensable than ever?the one cookbook you need for fast and flavorful home-cooked food every day of the year.
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; Anniversary, Revised edition (October 3, 2008)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 1056 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0764578650
- ISBN-13 : 978-0764578656
- Item Weight : 4.65 pounds
- Dimensions : 8.5 x 2.5 x 9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #269,359 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #144 in Heart Healthy Cooking (Books)
- #411 in Cooking, Food & Wine Reference (Books)
- #1,219 in Quick & Easy Cooking (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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About the author

Mark Bittman is the author of thirty acclaimed books, including the How to Cook Everything series, the award-winning Food Matters, and the New York Times number-one bestseller VB6: Eat Vegan Before 6:00. For more than two decades his popular and compelling stories appeared in the New York Times, where he was ultimately the lead food writer for the Sunday magazine and became the country’s first food-focused Op-Ed columnist for a major news publication. Bittman has starred in four television series, including Showtime’s Emmy-winning Years of Living Dangerously. He has written for nearly every major newspaper and magazine in the United States, and has spoken at dozens of universities and conferences. His 2007 TED talk has more than four million views; in 2015 he was a distinguished fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. He is currently teaching at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, editing Heated, an online food magazine, and writing a book about understanding food. He can be found at markbittman.com, heated.medium.com, @bittman on Twitter, and @markbittman on Instagram.
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I am very much a scatter brain and the directions were simple to follow and it is very inspiring for the home cook like myself. At heart Bittman is a minimalist which basically means he will try to use the fewest ingredients possible and focusing on technique which i can appreciate, often times cookbooks will slather on the ingredients and i just feel overwhelmed and dont even want to cook anymore...
What made me appreciate this book more is that it was one of the top general cookbooks in the last 25 years according to cooking light magazine. I became curious and purchased some of the other books on that list such as Jamie Oliver's Cook with Jamie, Gourmet Today, Radically simple and also purchased a highly rated Cooks illustrated cookbook by America's test kitchen. While those do have their strengths and weaknesses I just feel that Bittman's book is more engaging, more versatile and will be my #1 gift for anyone who wants to cook or is mildly curious. When I talk about it being engaging and versatile, some examples are found on page 513, it has a list of 32 pasta dishes that can be made when you are boiling the pasta, page 516 has a list for "12 alternative pasta toppings", page 520, "27 vegetable and legume dishes to toss with pasta" and many more. Every few pages, he gives great ideas how recipes in one section blend with another recipe in another section in the book. Since I am scatter brained at times, to have a list of different options is an enormous help, I have yet to find this in any other cookbook. There are probably around 100 of these, it is really helpful when you find yourself in a culinary rut so to speak and are overwhelmed going through recipe after recipe, it's nice to know cause something may just jump out to you!
I'm trying to keep this short but I simply cannot say enough good things about this book, the only downside is that I dont think there are that many adventurous recipes. If there were I dont think I would try them that much as I simply dont have all day to cook so I just wanted to point that out as it seems most cookbooks now a days pride themselves on being "different" at the risk of having recipes that actually work.
The bottom line is that if you want to start a cookbook collection or if you like to cook or anything else in between, this will most likely become your #1 resource for years to come. As a younger guy (28) and recently married hoping to start a family one day, I hope to raise my kids with some of the great recipes in this book! I didnt grow up on recipes like some older people did with Joy and Fannie Farmer, but I am growing with this book!
Hope this helps!!
After borrowing Joy of Cooking, Better Homes & Gardens, Betty Crocker, Fannie Farmer, Cook's Illustrated and Good Housekeeping from the library, I narrowed it down to this book and Joy. I spent weeks cooking with both of them. Then I added straight technique books like The Science of Good Cooking, 12 Recipes, On Food and Cooking and even How To Cook Everything Fast. None of them could beat this one for ideas to customize the given recipes.
Bittman's got the standard chapters, Appetizers, Soups, Grains, Meats, Fruits/Vegetables, Breads, Desserts and more, including a chapter on Sandwiches, which I find a nice inclusion. He begins each chapter with tips on identifying, handling, and buying the food. Essential Recipes follow. These are his master techniques and include many sidebar boxes listing the variations that were a big draw for me. Then he moves on to other recipes, getting more specific. For example, in Poultry, the Essential recipes include roasting chicken parts, grilling or broiling boneless chicken, a very simple stir fry, whole roast chicken, roast turkey and so on, with many, many options. Then he spends another 55 pages going into more depth with techniques, illustrations, recipes and variations for chicken, turkey and duck, but also pheasant, squab and quail.
Cheese Fondue - 14 variations
Stuffed vegetables - there are 7 veggies and 7 stuffings, mix and match (Veg/Fruit chapter is almost 200 pages!)
Simply cooked fish (roasted, grilled, pan-cooked or broiled) - 13 seasonings and 21 sauces
The 3 examples listed above are representative of what you'll find in the book. What makes this design so nice is that when I know I want to cook some boneless chicken breasts, but want something different, it's easy to gain inspiration by going to that section of the Poultry chapter and checking out the many ways to season, marinate, sauce and cook them. When I know exactly what I want to cook, the index is very good. Nothing is more frustrating than indexes that only include recipes by title (I'm looking at you, Beth Hensperger!) or only list each recipe one time. HTCE's 60-page index is complete, with most recipes listed in several places.
I'm a fan of his serving sizes, too. Where most recipes still yield 2-3 servings per pound of meat, Bittman gives us 3-4 servings. A seasoned cook can look at the ingredients and know how many it will feed and can easily scale it, but for new cooks, not so much. The smaller portion sizes fit the way more of us eat today. He also includes an index of menus, and charts of the 102 Essential Recipes, his top 100 fast recipes (out of 453 that are 30 min or less), top 100 make-ahead and top 100 vegetarian recipes. He's got sources for equipment and foods. The Kitchen Basics chapter will enable anyone to equip their kitchen using his must-have, want to have and nice to have lists. Last are the doneness charts for proteins. He gives the temperatures that most experienced cooks prefer and also the USDA chart with it's higher temperatures. We get to choose.
Whether you're just learning to cook or are have been cooking for many years and want to expand your repertoire, this is an excellent cookbook, a welcome addition to the pantheon of well-regarded reference cookbooks. This is the book I'll be giving to all new cooks from now on. No question.
Top reviews from other countries
I have a few cookbooks; not an impressive collection by any stretch of the imagination, but it includes Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking and Larrouse's Gastronomique, plus a few cooking "bibles", yet...
Something was missing..
I needed ideas for everyday dinners, and after browsing this book, I can tell it will deliver...
Why do I say this, having tried only one recipe, so far?
Because it explains the BASICS of many dishes, with any number of variations..!
I looked up old recipes in the index that I have tried before and I can see the possibilities!
The explanations and diagrams are so straightforward!
To the people that have taken off stars from their reviews for measurements not being metric: conversion tables?, anyone?? Hello?!
It is really no biggie to convert as you go and, voilà!
Tonight I cooked and aced something that had always eluded me (I am no expert cook): a stir-fry! And it was yummmmy...! :-D
























