Best international cookbooks according to redditors
We found 1,883 Reddit comments discussing the best international cookbooks. We ranked the 750 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
We found 1,883 Reddit comments discussing the best international cookbooks. We ranked the 750 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
![Afro-Vegan: Farm-Fresh African, Caribbean, and Southern Flavors Remixed [A Cookbook]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51HlKYzMLKL.jpg)
I've come across a few great vegan cooking resources that you may be interested in:
please share others!
My basic sauce is Marcella Hazan's recipe:
Ingredients:
2 pounds fresh plum tomatoes, peeled, chopped (Ok I cheat and I just buy a 28oz can of whole peeled San Marzano tomatoes and throw them in a blender)
5 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 medium onion, peeled and cut in half
salt, to taste
(I also add black pepper and crushed red pepper to taste
Directions:
Dump all of it in your pot/saucepan, simmer over low-medium heat for about 45 minutes, stirring occasionally until the butter is completely melted and the fat floats to the surface, salt, pepper, red pepper to taste.
Discard the onion. (Or dice it and keep it in the sauce, personal preference)
Enjoy
Bourdain's Les Halles
Get the Cook's Illustrated Cookbook. Tons and tons of classics made with perfect technique. It'll be your new go-to.
My mom uses recipes from the Korean cooking blog Maangchi.com — looks like she has a cookbook too
I know this is isn’t exactly what you asked for, but since you enjoyed Night + Market’s cookbook and you’re from LA, I’d suggest you check out Roy Choi’s cookbook LA Son
It isn’t exactly authentic, but an LA specific take and his personal stories are also interesting
Of course! Mine is mostly from Momofuku
2 Large pieces of konbu (or other seaweed if you can't find konbu)
2 cups dried shiitake mushrooms, (you can use fresh if you want, but they're stupid-expensive where I am)
1 Large chicken, whole.
5 pounds marrow bones (I use pork neck bone)
1lb bacon (one package)
2 bunches of scallions (green onions)
Mirin or Sake, Tare or teriyaki sauce to taste.
Rinse all ingredients before putting them in the stock pot. All ingredients can be eaten in any number of ways after they've given their flavor to the broth.
Toppings:
Flavor eggs:
Boil some eggs, peel the eggs, then put them in a ziplock bag.
Add teriyaki, peanut sauce, and a little mirin and shake that sucker. Leave in the fridge overnight.
Spicy Pork:
I buy the shredded pork in the package for this.
Heat some oil in wok.
Add the pork, let the oil cook it.
Add whatever spicy sauce you want to it, I use a schezwan stir-fry sauce.
If you have the pork, an egg, some chicken, extra seaweed and a mushroom or 3 you've gotyourself some ramen, get the broth piping hot and let everything cook in the broth before eating. (I use fresh noodles because they cook faster)
I could keep going but I should stop. So many great ones out there.
http://www.amazon.com/Americas-Kitchen-Family-Cookbook-Edition/dp/1933615486/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1404596627&sr=8-2&keywords=cooks+illustrated+cookbook+family
Agree with /u/X28.
Andrea's book should be considered as a primary text for Vietnamese cooking (much like David Thompson's Thai Food for Thai, or Paul Bocuse: The Complete Recipes for French).
Luke's books are great (as well as his shows that sort of accompany the books, or the other way around).
Rice and beans. Beans and rice. Also, check out the More with Less, a cookbook put out by the Mennonites. It has lots of good, cheap recipes.
I'm trying to remember the name of it! Hold on... :)
edit: got it! More With Less (https://www.amazon.com/More-Less-Cookbook-World-Community/dp/083619263X)
Hooray! I love cookbooks!
I don't know if they're into making ice cream, but it's really easy and fun:
Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream, The Perfect Scoop, and Ample Hills are all great.
I recently donated away about 100 cookbooks I had collected over the years (I organize virtually everything digitally now) but I kept these 5:
Child et al, Mastering the Art of French Cooking (well-used, next to the stove)
Hazan, Essentials of Italian Cooking (carried to Italy and used there twice)
Lewis, The Taste of Country Cooking (such a good read)
Rombauer. An older than I am edition (with how-to-skin-a-squirrel recipes) of the Joy of Cooking (falling apart, kept for sentimental reasons)
Fox, On Vegetables: Modern Recipes for the Home Kitchen (for the porn)
Also not a chef but here are some good theory and technique books:
Larousse Gastranomique -
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Larousse-Gastronomique-Hamlyn/dp/0600620425
The focus is obv iously french cooking techniques and application etc.
Leith's cooking Bible -
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Leiths-Cookery-Bible-3rd-ed/dp/074756602X
Prue Leith is highly respected in the U.K for her culinary school...this book gets used a lot in my house
The flavour thesaurus -
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Flavour-Thesaurus-Niki-Segnit/dp/0747599777
Once you have techniques you can look to build on them creatively so theory of what flavours work together is pretty crucial.
Same reason all shop curries are a bit shit, they cheap out on the ingredients, a decent korma from a curry house will have a good amount of ground almonds in it, shop versions which are produced in massive quantities in factories for a very strict price margin will most likely have more cream in and possibly cheaper nuts, spices used in a curry house will also be freshly roasted and ground, where as factory versions are not roasted before hand and they will use the very bare minimum of the expensive spices to achieve something that is just about OK for the price demanded by the supermarket.
If they can save a couple of grams of spice in every portion accords hundreds of portions it’s hundreds of £s saved.
If you’re disappointed by supermarket versions, try making your own, I highly recommend;
The Curry Secret
This is an updated version of the original, I still refer to my copy which has so many spices impregnated into the pages I could probably eat the ratty old thing and it would taste goood!
Aah asafoetida - sometimes called Devil's Dung because of its aroma, especially when the powder is fresh! A pinch or two is all that is ever needed, and it adds a similar flavour to onions and garlic to a dish. It is commonly used with lentils and beans.
In South India it is used quite a bit. It is very common in Sambar and Rasam dishes. It is also very common in Ayurvedic cooking as that does not use onions or garlic.
The cookbook Lord Krishna's Kitchen uses it in almost every recipe, and the recipes are all great.
This is a great article on Asafoetida - and here is one of the few recipes you will find with it in the title - Salt Lassi with Asafoetida
Lord Krishna's Cuisine: The Art of Indian Vegetarian Cooking is on my shelf. Good recipes & very comprehensive.
Instead of a sub to Cook's Illustrated, OP could also just get their cookbook. It's pretty inexpensive, has pretty much every recipe I could ever want, and I've only gotten raves when I've made recipes out of it. I use it all the time. I literally have it open in front of me right now.
Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan.
I've enjoyed this book immensely, it has great reviews on Amazon, and Alton Brown considers this one of the 'best' cook books to own.
French food is more about a way of eating than about some dishes - it is about enjoying a meal vs. utilitarian feeding or instant fat and sweet gratification.
That being said, I get that the point of this thread is to know "obscure/insider dishes that will impress your friends" ... So there you go, here are some lesser known yet classic dishes (meaning any French chef would know):
- Quenelles sauce nantua
- Lievre a la royale
- Pommes souflees
- Pommes pont-neuf
- Pommes Maxim's
- Veau marengo
- Oeuf meyerbeer
- Tournedos rossini
- Tarte praline
- Profiteroles
​
Street food
- Jambon beurre
- Sandwich americain (way better than any hamburger)
- Pan bagnat
​
Some famous dishes that restaurants often get wrong:
- Boeuf bourguignon
- Quiche Lorraine (the real thing just onions and bacon)
- Oeuf coque avec mouillettes
- Croissants (assuming you live in America, it's near impossible to find decent ones)
​
To know more and if you have genuine interest in French food, I recommend to start by investing in this book: https://www.amazon.com/New-Larousse-Gastronomique-Hamlyn/dp/0600620425/ref=sr_1_2?crid=7DVIYNNXECNZ&keywords=larousse+gastronomic&qid=1562946190&s=gateway&sprefix=larousse+gast%2Caps%2C315&sr=8-2
The Silver Spoon is a massive Italian cookbook with pretty easy to read instructions and big fancy pictures. I got one as a gift its has some pretty good recipes in it that range from easier to harder recipes. Its about 30 bucks on amazon
http://www.amazon.com/Silver-Spoon-New-Kitchen/dp/0714862568/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1450126627&sr=8-1&keywords=the+silver+spoon+cookbook
Asia's a big, ancient place. Even within each nation there are unique styles of regional and ethnic fare.
With that in mind, I'd love to see some recommendations here for awesome Indian, Filipino, Hmong, Uzbek, etc. cookbooks.
Japanese
Lets get beyond sushi and hibatchi.
Shizuo Tsuji's Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art is a great starting point. If you want to get technical you should check out Ando's Washoku or Hachisu's Preserving the Japanese Way.
If you want to start simple, Hachisu also has a great book on Japanese Farm Food. Ono and Salat have written a great noodle slurping opus in Japanese Soul Cooking.
Chinese
What we've come to think of as Chinese food in the US is a natural part of human appropriation of food styles, but with all due respect to Trader Vic's, crab rangoon and other buffet staples really aren't the real deal. Food in China is extremely regional. You don't have to go very deep to see the vast differentiation in spicy Schezwan recipes and Cantonese Dim Sum culture.
For your reading pleasure:
Mastering the Art of Chinese Cooking Eileen Yin-Fei Lo.
Breath of the Wok by Grace Young and Alan Richardson.
Phoenix Claws and Jade Trees by Kian Lam Kho and Jody Horton.
All Under Heaven: Recipes from the 35 Cuisines of China by Carolyn Phillips.
Some people might freak out that I'm placing Erway's The Food of Taiwan under the Chinese category, but I'm not going to get into a political debate here. Taiwan has had a lot of different culinary influences due to migration / occupation and that is really the take away here.
Go forth, make bao.
Korean
Korea is having it's moment right now and if you want the classics, Hi Soo Shin Hepinstall's Growing up in a Korean Kitchen is a good baseline. It has all the greatest hits.
You also can't cook Korean food without kimchi. The only book I've read is Lauryn Chun's The Kimchi Cookbook which is kind of underwhelming considering the hundreds of styles of Kimchi that have been documented. The process of making kimchi (kimjang) even has a UNESCO world heritage designation. With that in mind, I think it's only a matter of time before we see a English book on the subject that has depth.
Given the cuisine's popularity, there are several other cookbooks on Korean food that have recently been published within the last year or so, I just haven't gotten around to reading them yet, so I won't recommend them here.
Thai
David Thompson's Thai Food and Thai Street Food are both excellent. /u/Empath1999 's recommendation of Andy Ricker's Pok Pok is excellent but it focuses on Northern Thai cuisine, so if you want to venture into central and southern Thai fare, Thompson's the other farang of note.
Vietnamese
Nguyen's Into the Vietnamese Kitchen provides a nice survey to Vietnamese cooking. Charles Phan also has a couple of cookbooks that are quite good but I'm sure that there are zealots out there who would bemoan authenticity in either Vietnamese Home Cooking or The Slanted Door, but seriously, who gives a shit, the dude has Beard Awards under his belt for fuck's sake.
TL;DR OP means well but its long past time to bury "Asian" as a catch-all for such a large and diverse part of a continent, no?
A lot of famous restaurants and chefs have cookbooks that feature recipes from their restaurants.
It can be pretty hard to replicate a restaurant dish at home. I cook for a living and you have a lot of advantages in a professional kitchen. Hotter ovens and burners and all kinds of other toys.
So the recipes in restaurant cookbooks aren't always the most reliable when you do them at home. And the cookbooks are pricey. But they have pretty pictures.
If you want to get really crazy try one of these,
Mugaritz: A Natural Science of Cooking
or
Alinea
or
Noma: Time and Place in Nordic Cuisine
So, when you heat food up- meat especially- it has a tendency to dry out. This is very true if you're cooking past medium temps.
A reduction is a sauce made by simmering or boiling down a liquid into a strong, thick concentration, yielding an intense taste. Because there are different components in liquids, when you apply heat they can evaporate or clump together.
Reductions (and other sauces) add another layer of flavor to the dish. If a meat or veggie is bland, not well seasoned enough, or too gamey, the sauce will tend to help liven it up.
I'm a huge fan of red wine and shallots, and bourbon-honey-butter reductions. Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook is a wonderful reference to have in the kitchen and living room.
Tons of cooking videos on yourtube! Here's one with sprouts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LhZpTqWCMc
You should also check out mother sauces. Your taste buds will thank you.
Real ramen is nothing like those instant ramen packets. Fresh meats and vegetables, insane broths, and fresh noodles make it a completely different dish.
I was on a ramen kick awhile back and bought the Momofuku cookbook. AWESOME recipes. I spent hours making some of those broths in the book, went to several asian markets to find the right noodles, and spent a lot of time learning different techniques. It was a ton of fun, and now my kids are crazy about ramen. Even if you don't plan on making it yourself, the cookbook is a great read. It's basically more of a story about how the author got into ramen and opened his first restaurant, interlaced with recipes and other instructional stuff.
Edit: Here's the link for the book:
https://www.amazon.com/Momofuku-David-Chang/dp/030745195X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1474393414&sr=8-1&keywords=momofuku
Essential's of Italian Classic Cooking by Marcella Hazan--the late dean of Italian cooking in the US. She helped revolutionize Italian cuisine in the 1970's and 80's by prodding eaters to look beyond garlic & red marinara, which she felt were bastardizations of real cucina italiana.
One of the most interesting and classic Italian cookbooks is "Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well", written by Pellegrino Artusi in 1891. It's huge, a fascinating read, incredibly comprehensive, and literally laugh-out-loud funny. EDIT: another good one is "Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking" by Marcella Hazan.
White Trash Cooking
Any Bitch Can Cook
OP checks out!
I respect your progression up to Alton Brown, and I do enjoy Alton's cooking science, but I watched his show for years and never learned as much as I did since I started watching America's Test Kitchen on PBS. Sometimes they go into some complex recipes though, ignore those and pay attention to their basics, they explain what they tried and why it failed. They have an excellent beginners cookbook that covers all the essentials without going into the complex recipes they do on the show, it's found here The show has excellent product recommendations too. It's now the only show I watch, although I still occasionally look for specific episodes of Good Eats on youtube.
Upvote for ATK.
Though if you're new to ATK, I'd stick to their classic red book or green book for healthier options instead of whatever book they happen to have published this year.
There are a lot of varieties, and they can taste pretty different. The good news is that they are hard to screw up.
For Thai curries, I like these pastes, they just get mixed with coconut milk (ratio is on the can), heated, and then you simmer veggies in the sauce until they are cooked to your liking. The red and green are spicy, the panang is somewhere in the middle, and the yellow and masaman are mild.
This is a good and easy Japanese curry. Instructions are on the box. It involves some simple sauteing and simmering.
And for Indian curries, I have been making my own using these recipes. There are so many good recipes in this book, and they are pretty easy too. However, you might need to up the contents of your spice cabinet to make these.
Anyhow, curries are usually just a very flavorful sauce with veggies simmered in them. Pretty easy stuff, lots of variety, and very tasty.
If you are a big fan of Indian food, like me, I recommend Vegan Richas Indian Kitchen https://www.amazon.com/Vegan-Richas-Indian-Kitchen-Traditional/dp/1941252095/ref=nodl_
She also has a website https://www.veganricha.com/
Shoutout to Jen Fisch, author of The Easy 5-Ingredient Ketogenic Diet Cookbook (Amazon link). This is a modified version of her cream cheese muffin recipe. I would definitely classify these as a fat bomb, breakfast, or dessert!
Ingredients:
Macros per Muffin:
Cal - 290
Carbs - 5.3 g
Protein - 8 g
Fat - 27 g
Fiber - 2.8 g
Net Carbs - 2.5 g!
Her book, Vegan Richa's Indian Kitchen is really good, she has a vegan "paneer" recipe in there and pretty much everything you could want. Even sweets, there's a good gulab jamun in there too!
I like The Vegan Table for American food.
Quick Vegetarian Dishes has a variety of recipes from around the world. Not one uses tofu or fake meat. (One note: The recipes use Australian measurements, which are slightly different than American. It only really matters if you're baking, though, and even then, it is easy to adjust for.)
For Indian food, Lord Krishna's Cuisine: The Art of Indian Vegetarian Cooking seems to have hundreds of great recipes in it, but not a single one with fake meats or tofu.
I have all three of these, and have really enjoyed the recipes. Happy cooking!
Aight girl-
Foreign Cuisine-
How to Eataly - Oscar Farinetti - We made the most AMAZING brisket meatballs and a super simple yet completely delicious red sauce out of this book
Around My French Table - Dorie Greenspan - Where the Cornish hens and gougeres came from.
Real Korean Cooking - Maangchi - Korean Fried Chicken. We've made them twice now because they're so good and can't wait to do more.
Mexican Everyday - Rick Bayless - Learned how to make perfect guac from this book and so far we've made these v tasty chorizo/mushroom/potato tacos. The recipe is SO cheap and SO voluminous that we had it as a taco filling, a quesadilla filling, and we're making a hash with it for brunch this morning.
Every Grain of Rice - Fuchsia Dunlop - We haven't tried anything out of here yet but there are sooooo many good-looking recipes in here.
Entice with Spice - Shubhra Ramineni - Likewise, haven't made anything out of here yet but looking forward to trying it all out soon.
Jack's Wife Freda - Dean & Maya Jankelowitz - This is actually a book from a restaurant that my fiance and I LOVED when we last visited NYC. It's got a lot of fusion recipes. Mediterranean/Israeli/South African/etc. Really unique flavors and also v comfort-food based. We're making rosewater waffles out of this book tomorrow!
Baking-
Rose's Baking Basics - Rose Levy Barenbaum - This book is incredible. She has tons and tons of step-by-step photos which is SUPER helpful. We made the dark chocolate caramel tart out of this book, but pretty much everything in here looks amazing.
Modern Baking - Donna Hay - I mean... There is some INSANELY decadent looking stuff in here. We haven't tried any of these recipes yet but I can't wait to!
Misc-
Cook Like a Pro - Ina Garten - It was really hard to pick just one Ina book but I liked most of the recipes in this one. She has this ridic recipe for a dijon mustard chicken that is INCREDIBLE. Also, this bitch knows how to cook some veggies. Big fan of this one.
The Food Lab - /u/j_kenji_lopez-alt - I just love this guy, tbh. We've made a really fantastic beef tenderloin out of this book and an incredible red wine sauce to go with it and of course, his famous roasted potatoes which are now my holy grail recipe for roasted potatoes. This book is like a science textbook only instead of boring stuff it's FOOD science, which is my favorite kind.
Those were all the ones we purchased ourselves (though technically Eataly was a gift BUT we love it and plan to use it often.) We have other cookbooks in our stable that we've received as gifts, which is what resulted in my fiance and I deciding we wanted to embark on this journey. We kept being given cookbooks and never doing anything with them. But man, do people love it when you send them pics of stuff you cooked out of a book they gave you. If people give you cookbooks, use them!! It will make their day to see it's being used. Here's what else is on our cookbook shelf-
The Forest Feast Gatherings - Erin Gleeson - This is a vegetarian book my fiance's mom gave us a few years ago for Christmas. We have a bunch of veggie friends (and friends with a lot of different allergies) so we turn to this book to have a few things that are edible by all of them when we have them over, as we often do. This book has a really delicious salad that has pomegranate seeds, pear, and hazelnut that is out of this world good. I also got my HG salad dressing from this book.
The Salad Bowl - Nicola Graimes - Another gift from my fiance's mom. Is she trying to tell us something?? Honestly haven't looked much into this book yet but it sure is pretty.
The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook - Dinah Bucholz - This was a gift from the assistant in my office. Everyone in my office knows me as the Harry Potter girl because I have a lightning bolt tattoo, haha. We haven't made anything out of this yet, but we probably will have some sort of epic feast with recipes from this book when GoT starts back up later this year.
Talk About Good - Louisiana Lafayette Junior League - My boss gave this to my fiance and I as part of an engagement gift. My fiance went to school in New Orleans. It's primarily New Orleansian/Cajun food. Haven't made anything out of it yet, but we are looking forward to it.
And that's what's on our cookbook shelf for now.
edit also omg thanks for the gold!! <3
Probably this one.
The Silver Spoon is a mammoth of a book. around 2000 pages if I remember right. I had it recommended to me countless times but didn't realise just how amazing of a deal it was until it landed on my doorstep and I found out you could believably beat someone to death with it.
Huge book, categories for EVERYTHING. My only criticism is that sometimes it uses terminology that might not be the best for beginners and there's not many guide pictures. But that's nothing a bit of googling around can't sort out. I'd definitely recommend getting it for your collection.
Ahhhh, my condolences, how tragic!
I'm something of a cookbook minimalist, and keep my personal collection pretty concise; I'm quick to give away books if they've been on my shelf too long without much use. I used to be a cookbook hoarder, but I don't have the space for it anymore, lol.
The cookbooks I have on the shelf rn are Season, The Palestinian Table, Arabesque, Afro-Vegan, Donabe, and several Japanese-language cookbooks.
For dessert-related things, I have Baking and Pastry: Mastering the Art and Craft, Chocolates and Confections: Formula, Theory, and Technique, SUQAR, and the Flavor Thesaurus.
I like America's Test Kitchen Healthy Family Cookbook. It's huge! So many recipes :)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1933615567/ref=oh_details_o09_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&amp;psc=1
Marcella Hazan
Marcella Hazan
Marcella Hazan
Also, Marcella Hazan.
http://www.amazon.com/Essentials-Classic-Italian-Cooking-Marcella/dp/039458404X
I have this exact issue, and I find myself returning time and time again to this cookbook. It's Jain vegetarian cuisine (mentioned elsewhere in this thread), and it's just a terrific resource
If you're looking for a cookbook for this then Lord Krishna's Cuisine is one of the best cookbooks I've ever used.
https://www.amazon.com/Lord-Krishnas-Cuisine-Vegetarian-Cooking/dp/0525245642
Look up Jain and/or Buddhist recipes. Jain should exclude onions, potatoes & garlic. Buddhist should exclude onion & garlic, too but from what I've read, the onion is iffy, so it's good you have a substitute readily available.
Lord Krishna's Vegetarian Cooking cookbook follows the Vaishnava diet, which should also exclude onions & garlic.
Good luck!
I've used a lot of her recipes successfully. I also started using her once I returned back to the States to cook some good Korean food.
I have used the following recipes to great success from her:
Tteokbokki
Buldak
Kimchi Fried Rice
Soybean rice
Kimbap
Bulgogi
Maangchi also has a great cookbook. But her website has a lot more recipes than the cookbook does. But the cookbook does have about 95% of what you want, including the side dishes.
Afro Vegan
Vegan Soul Kitchen
Crossroads: Extraordinary Recipes from the Restaurant That Is Reinventing Vegan Cuisine
Dirt Candy: A Cookbook: Flavor-Forward Food from the Upstart New York City Vegetarian Restaurant
PLANTLAB
The Blossom Cookbook: Classic Favorites from the Restaurant That Pioneered a New Vegan Cuisine
Candle 79 Cookbook: Modern Vegan Classics from New York's Premier Sustainable Restaurant
The cookbook "More with Less" is a good one for different ways to use pantry staples like your rice and beans. Bonus is they have info on what combos of grains/beans/veggies make complete proteins to help keep nutrition up.
https://www.amazon.com/More-Less-Cookbook-World-Community/dp/083619263X
Five star rating on Amazon and no one has given it a 1 star. That might be the single best rating I have ever seen.
FYI I'd recommend this book if you're into Thai Food
I got my first copy many years ago and it's a bit of a Thai food Bible.
The Alinea cookbook has several dessert recipes and is beautiful
Alinea https://www.amazon.com/dp/1580089283/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_zIIBzbCXCSD9V
His cookbook is written in a similar manner as well.
I'd second Ottolenghi! I have Plenty and Plenty More and the recipes are honestly just so wonderful... particularly good for the summer when produce is at its best and you're craving fresh, flavourful, colourful food to match the weather.
In terms of really learning and having a totally new experience, however, I'd love to do this with a cookbook I've had for years but haven't explored much despite loving it: https://www.amazon.ca/Afro-Vegan-Farm-Fresh-African-Caribbean-Southern/dp/1607745313/ref=sr_1_fkmrnull_1?keywords=afro+caribbean+vegetarian&amp;qid=1551191162&amp;s=gateway&amp;sr=8-1-fkmrnull.
I know very little about Caribbean cuisine, let alone the cuisine of the wider black diaspora, and this book is a great overview. It has music to go with each recipe, discussion of ingredients, culture and context - it's a really holistic approach to learning about the cuisines included. It's fun, light and easy! Personally, if I were going to do a cookbook project I'd probably use one like this where I'd really be immersing myself in something new rather than just cooking good food. It's all about opening up new worlds and sharing in someone's worldview through food, after all.
I love the Test Kitchen. I have learned so many tips, techniques, and great recipes from them in the past 2 years. I think a useful pick up is The America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook. I use it at least once a week.
*edit for grammar
For the ATK fans in the house: http://www.amazon.com/Americas-Kitchen-Healthy-Family-Cookbook/dp/1933615567
This has been my go-to for quite some time now. Love everything in there!
I love most Cook's Illustrated cookbooks, but for a new cook it can seem rather daunting and some ingredients are not in a simple grocery store.
That being said, everything I have made from my Cook's Illustrated Cook Book has been delicious.
Go to you local library and try them out first. Cookbooks are expensive and this way you can get a really good feel for it without spending a bunch. Also try used book stores lots of people get rid of quality cookbooks and you can get them pretty cheap. Oh an my favorite basic book for anyone is Cooks Illustrated Cook's Illustrated https://www.amazon.com/dp/1933615893/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_7K0YBbEMF8DN3. Most cookbooks don't test all of their recipes and this one dose. It's not full of fancy pictures but quality basic and delicious recipes.
I get all my best recipes from good cook books. I highly recommend Cooks Illustrated ( https://www.amazon.com/dp/1933615893/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_KbjOAb6PBRC4Y ) and if you want to learn everything in and around food for any occasion then try Joy of Cooking ( https://www.amazon.com/dp/0743246268/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_TcjOAb55Z5TRH ).
Marcella Hazan is to Italian food as Julia Child is to French food. Start with Hazan's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking; you can't go wrong!
I'm guessing you haven't looked yet? Given that most Indian food (I think) is good, and a lot of it is vegetarian, you'd have a hard time finding something not fitting your needs ;)
You might want to take a look a Manjula's Kitchen, a free YouTube-based Indian cooking guide.
A good book I'd recommend (if you really like Indian food) is Lord Krishna's Cuisine: The Art of Indian Vegetarian Cooking, an 800 page tome with everything you could want. Here's a recipe I made recently which I enjoyed.
---
Cabbage Kofta (Bandhgobhi Kofta)
Preparation and cooking time (after assembling ingredients): about 30 minutes. Serves 4 to 6.
3 1/2 cups (930 ml) finely shredded trimmed cabbage (about 1 lb/455 g)
1-2 hot green chilies, seeded and minced
1/2-inch (1.5cm) piece of peeled fresh ginger root
1/4 cup (25g) grated fresh or dried coconut
1 tsp (5 ml) each turmeric and garam masala
3 Tbps (45ml) finely chopped fresh coriander, parsley or mixed herbs
1 tsp (5 ml) salt
1 tsp (5 ml) baking powder
ghee or vegetable oil for deep-frying
about 1 cup (100 g) sifted chickpea flour (sifted before measuring)
a few sprigs of coarsely chopped fresh coriander or minced parsley for garnishing
1 Tbps (15 ml) toasted chopped pumpkin seeds for garnishing
I'm a bit of a cookbook junkie, so I have a bunch to recommend. I'm interpreting this as "good cookbooks from cuisines in Asia" so there are some that are native and others that are from specific restaurants in the US, but I would consider these legit both in terms of the food and the recipes/techniques. Here are a few of my favorites:
Pan-Asian
Burmese
Cambodian
Chinese
Indian
Indonesia
Japanese
Korean
Malaysian
Middle Eastern
Philippine
Russian
Sri Lankan
Taiwanese
Thailand
Turkish
Vietnamese
(edit: screwed up a couple links)
https://smile.amazon.com/Maangchis-Real-Korean-Cooking-Authentic/dp/054412989X/ref=sr_1_2?crid=1AVS3BYUHZ74K&keywords=maangchi&qid=1572922278&s=books&sprefix=maang%2Caps%2C179&sr=1-2
And her new one, which I don't have yet:
https://smile.amazon.com/Maangchis-Big-Book-Korean-Cooking/dp/1328988120/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1AVS3BYUHZ74K&keywords=maangchi&qid=1572922333&s=books&sprefix=maang%2Caps%2C179&sr=1-1
There is a book called "The Curry Secret" which has recipes for British-Indian Restaurant food - not 'authentic' Indian food, but the stuff you get in a UK restaurant. Very different thing.
It has a kickass chicken tikka masala recipe in it, I can eat the tarka dahl with a spoon until I turn greeny yellow from the tumeric, and if you take the time you can make the prettiest, fluffiest pilau rice you can imagine.
I own only one recipe book (the internet suffices for everything else) but that book is (to me) worth it.
You'd love The Vegan Soul Kitchen
Mollie Katzen's The New Moosewood Cookbook. Great little pictures of ingredients/recipes.
The Joy of Cooking. It's got a great baseline of knowledge and can provide a good context when you start cooking.
The Mennonite cookbook More with Less. This one will broaden your horizons and you'll find yourself cooking outside of your typical cuisines.
I read “Nothing in this book is true but it’s exactly how things are” back in 1997. It explains how there are microscopic inter dimensional space ships inside a chamber in the Sphinx which can be activated using star tetrahedron technology which is some sort of interior mechanism anyone is capable of activating through meditation. I think I’m going to read the book again. It’s excellent in my opinion.
https://www.amazon.com/Nothing-This-Exactly-Things-Anniversary/dp/1556438311
Some cookbooks that I use or are on my wishlist:
Great British Chefs also has some recipes from Michelin starred restaurants.
I think she would enjoy the ramblings of Christopher Kimball.
https://www.amazon.com/Americas-Test-Kitchen-Family-Cookbook/dp/1933615486
One I got for a gift recently was the Easy 5 Ingrediate Ketogenic Cookbook. I do find some great recipes online but still come back to this cookbook because it is beyond simple and most everything I've had has tasted really good. The simple ingredients also mean no random grocery items.
https://www.amazon.com/Easy-5-Ingredient-Ketogenic-Diet-Cookbook/dp/1939754445
Here's a list of the ones I own and love:
Can't go wrong with any of these. I have come to view the world differently through food since going vegan. I would love to add a variety of other flavors like Caribbean, Asian - though some of these do include that, Vegan Richa is great for expanding beyond Indian food. I also highly recommend looking into Ethiopian foods, they are lentil heavy and flavorful.
Also to note, Hot for Food has a blog and youtube channel, and Vegan Richa has a blog and has been making videos as well so you can check them out and see if the recipes interest you.
The Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook by Joanne Stepaniak is a great book with tonnes of clever ideas and substitution advice, all of her books are pretty great. Vegan Richa's Indian Kitchen would be a great one as well, same with Bryant Terry's Afro Vegan. If you are looking for something easy and cutesy, the vegan stoner cookbook is a good bet too.
I’m making this recipe tonight that I found in this cookbook: The Easy 5-Ingredient Ketogenic Diet Cookbook: Low-Carb, High-Fat Recipes for Busy People on the Keto Diet https://www.amazon.com/dp/1939754445/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_PCfYCb7S5Y4Z1
Bacon Cheeseburger Casserole
Serves 4 Prep 10 mins Cook 50 mins
Ingredients
For the bacon and ground beef
1lb bacon (use your most feasible keto friendly brand)
1lb ground beef
1Tbsp ghee (could probably use grassfed butter too)
Pink salt and Freshly ground black pepper
For the casserole
1 Tbsp ghee
1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
4 large eggs, lightly beaten
3/4 cup shredded cheese of your choice
Pink salt and Freshly ground black pepper
Directions
Preheat the oven to 350F
To make the bacon and ground beef
•In large skillet over medium-high heat, cook the bacon on both sides until crispy, about 8 mins. Transfer the bacon to a paper towel lined plate to drain and cool for 5 minutes. Transfer to a cutting board and chop the bacon.
• use the same skillet with the bacon grease, add ghee and heat. Add the ground beef and season with salt/pepper. Stir occasionally, breaking the beef chunks apart. *don’t overcook the bacon and beef because you’ll be baking the casserole.
• once meat is browned, after about 8 mins, drain the fat and mix in the chopped bacon.
To make the casserole
• coat a 9x13 in baking dish with ghee
• spoon the meat and bacon mixture into the baking dish as a first layer
• in a medium bowl, mix together the cream, eggs, and half the cheese, and season with pink salt and pepper. Pour over the meat. Top with the remaining half of the cheese.
•bake for 30 mins, or until the cheese on top is melted and lightly browned.
•let the casserole sit for 5 mins on a cooling rack before setting and serving.
Ingredient substitutes
• if desired, substitute ground turkey for ground beef
• add a 1/2 cup of diced pickles into the beef mixture; it adds a nice acidity
• sliced pepperoncini works if you don’t like pickles
• adding a 1/4 cup of low-sugar tomato sauce to the cream and eggs mix provides flavor. Rao’s or Simply Ragu are low/no sugar brands. Skip pasta sauce if it doesn’t fit into your macros.
Can’t wait to see how this recipe works tonight!
Check out vegan richa's cookbook. If you like indian food, you'll love it. Most of the recipes are simple-medium complexity, and they make a lot of servings. Plus you don't feel bad for stuffing yourself with them since it's almost entirely really healthy food. Plus some of the desserts (especially the doughnuts) are unbelievable in how good they taste.
My breakfast is almost always a Slimfast Advanced Nutrition shake.
Lunch, I do a lot of Atkins frozen meals or Quest bars and cheese. Sometimes I'll do a precooked frozen chicken breast and steam in the bag frozen veggies (I teach, so my lunches need to be fast and microwavable at most)
Dinner is where things get more adventurous. My husband and I have a keto cookbook. We try to do one new thing a week. (Specifically, I use this one:The Easy 5-Ingredient Ketogenic Diet Cookbook: Low-Carb, High-Fat Recipes for Busy People on the Keto Diet https://www.amazon.com/dp/1939754445/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_.AOQCbHCF6T7K )
Personally, you cant go wrong with salad (romaine, black olives, mushrooms, cucumbers, maybe a little shaved carrot and feta cheese) with your protein of choice (grilled salmon is great. Fried tofu is good. Chicken is good.) Just make sure you measure all those veggies- they do have carbs and they can add up.
It's all about the broth, which means it's all about simmering a bunch of stuff in a giant pot for a very long time. Momofuku's ramen is not my favorite but the recipe in the Momofuku cookbook is very detailed. Good place to start.
Just a some that likes cooking alot here. Maybe pick one of these bad boys up and start playing.
http://www.amazon.com/Professional-Chef-Culinary-Institute-America/dp/0470421355
http://www.amazon.com/Ad-Hoc-Home-Thomas-Keller/dp/1579653774/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1373677797&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=thomas+keller+cookbooks
http://www.amazon.com/Bouchon-Bakery-Thomas-Keller/dp/1579654355/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1373677797&amp;sr=1-2&amp;keywords=thomas+keller+cookbooks
http://www.amazon.com/French-Laundry-Cookbook-Thomas-Keller/dp/1579651267/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1373677797&amp;sr=1-3&amp;keywords=thomas+keller+cookbooks
http://www.amazon.com/Bouchon-Thomas-Keller/dp/1579652395/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1373677797&amp;sr=1-4&amp;keywords=thomas+keller+cookbooks
http://www.amazon.com/Under-Pressure-Cooking-Sous-Vide/dp/1579653510/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1373677797&amp;sr=1-6&amp;keywords=thomas+keller+cookbooks
http://www.amazon.com/Momofuku-David-Chang/dp/030745195X/ref=sr_1_9?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1373677797&amp;sr=1-9&amp;keywords=thomas+keller+cookbooks
http://www.amazon.com/Ratio-Simple-Behind-Everyday-Cooking/dp/1416571728/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1373678139&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=ratio
Fuschia Dunlop is a good source for Chinese food. Her published recipe for Kung Pao Chicken is pretty killer. Eileen Yin-Fi Lo is also a well respected Chinese recipe author, check out My Grandmother's Chinese Kitchen.
For Thai Food, Andy Ricker's Pok Pok is pretty interesting (and the restaurants are pretty awesome). There's also a tome, simply called Thai Food from David Thompson, as an outsider, looks complete and exhaustive (it's also daunting to me, but nice to have).
Hot Sour Salty Sweet also features Thai (as well as other SE Asian flavors). And I really like Asian Flavors of Jean-Georges as a more upscale cookbook.
Also, I find this little, unsung book to be a great resource. It has fairly simple recipes that can yield some nice flavors, great for weeknight dishes.
And, Momofuku is a fun contemporary twist with some good basics, but it's not a beginner book by any stretch!
Finally, The Slanted Door is on my wishlist. Looks divine.
Investing in culinary texts rather than cookbooks really helped me. These books provide very basic recipes along with relevant techniques/information. Once you get these down, it's a heck of a lot easier to be creative with your dishes (e.g. knowing the 5 mother sauces of French cuisine leads to literally thousands of other recipes).
Suggested reading material:
Sauces: Classical and Contemporary Sauce Making
One of my absolute favorites, I refer to this book pretty much every time I'm in the mood for something new. The author does a great job at keeping things simple while providing great information on traditional applications (along with how to flavor things to your own tastes) for dishes ranging from Mornay sauce to Ganache.
On Cooking: A Textbook of Culinary Fundamentals
This was my required text for intro culinary classes, which makes it expensive. I'm sure finding older/used versions will be much cheaper and just as useful. This is a great resource for techniques such as deboning poultry, ideal use for various potato species, the different cuts of beef and pork, the best cooking methods for said cuts, culinary terms, etc.
The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking
My god do I love Marcella Hazan. She's the Italian Julia Child, and does a fantastic job at making intimidating dishes much more approachable. While this is more of a classic cookbook than the previous two, Hazan provides info on produce selection, basic kitchen techniques, ideal tools to have, and, of course, hundreds of traditional Italian recipes with notes on altering flavor profiles.
YMMV, depending on how deep into the cooking world you'd like to get. Sometimes it's just easier for me to look through google results of a specific dish for inspiration. Good luck!
Yamuna Devi or Ragivan Iyer. The former is a true classic, and I've cooked nearly every recipe over the past 20 years. The later is a more recent book, but the recipes are every bit as classic (and delicious).
Here it is on Amazon. $60 is a bargain I reckon.
Julia Child is great, but that really isn't the best resource. Have a look at these three books. Together they will tell you more than almost any other resources about French cuisine, recipes, technique, history, everything.
Larousse Gastronomique
http://www.amazon.com/New-Larousse-Gastronomique-Hamlyn/dp/0600620425/ref=dp_ob_title_bk
The Escoffier Cookbook
http://www.amazon.com/Escoffier-Cookbook-Guide-Fine-Cookery/dp/0517506629/ref=pd_sim_b_4
On Food and Cooking
http://www.amazon.com/On-Food-Cooking-Science-Kitchen/dp/0684800012/ref=pd_sim_b_6
Find a good vegan cookbook. Heck, find three or four of them. I like the Veganomicon, which is a great general reference, but you can find one for everything, from pies to soul food to sandwiches.
Cookbooks will do two things for you. First, they'll provide a resource if you start to feel cravings for food you used to rely on: if you get desperate for burgers, or chicken parmesan, or mousakka, you'll find a great alternative that scratches that itch. Second, they'll provide an excellent resource to browse through and find recipes you'd never have thought of on your own. Expanding your palate is a surefire way to improve your diet.
Welcome!!
If soul food is what you know & want, look into Bryant Terry's cookbooks. Vegan Soul Kitchen has gotten some amazing reviews. I've actually been thinking of picking up his most recent one, Afro-Vegan which is African, Southern, & Caribbean inspired recipes. Plus it looks like some good food porn for my coffee table book collection!
This subreddit is what inspired me to go vegan myself so I can attest that there are a lot of great resources around here. The people are friendly and helpful so never hesitate to ask questions!
My one piece of advice is this: patience. I know you've experienced this revelation of sorts and it's exciting and you want to share it with the world! I know I did. But sometimes the world is a few paces behind. My friends and family are still slowly coming around to the idea about a year and a half after the fact. So don't be discouraged if they don't hop on the vegan train with you right away. Have no expectations, don't take it personally, and enjoy the small victories.
Good luck! You're doing a great thing :)
Vegan Soul Kitchen - soul food made vegan and healthy (and tasty!)
Maybe this book for some familiar flavors (that guy does have a couple other books out).
Vegan Soul Kitchen by Bryant Terry Amazon Link
I'll take this opportunity to plug my favourite frugal cookbook, which, although published by the Mennonite church, can be found in almost every Canadian prairie kitchen.
From Wikipedia:
>The More-with-Less Cookbook is a cookbook commissioned by the Mennonite Central Committee in 1976 with the goal of "helping Christians respond in a caring-sharing way in a world with limited food resources"[1] and "to challenge North Americans to consume less so others could eat enough".[2] The first edition of the book has received forty-seven printings, with over 847,000 copies sold worldwide, including Bantam Press, British English and German editions.[3]
>The book advocates the consumption of more whole grains, legumes, fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds, the moderation of meat and dairy products and the avoidance of processed and convenience foods. The recipes, collected from Mennonite and other Christian families around the world, are intended to be affordable, nutritious and socially and ecologically responsible.
This one is I believe. It's an interesting read, if a little bizarre.
Reminds me of that bonkers book by Bob Frissell. Frissell strings together every new age belief without the slightest bit of legitimate evidence or critical thought. I only picked it up because of a recommendation in a Tool newsletter from over two decades ago, and I somehow got through the whole thing. I feel like the claims in each - these videos and Bob's book - are very similar.
When he said “you wouldn’t believe me” reminded me of a great book that changed my outlook on life “Nothing in This Book Is True, But It's Exactly How Things Are” by Bob Frissell. Here is an amazon link: it will tell you all the secrets
https://www.amazon.com/Nothing-This-Exactly-Things-Anniversary/dp/1556438311/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2JHG0BDXT4WLO&amp;keywords=nothing+in+this+book+is+true+but+it%27s+exactly+how+things+are&amp;qid=1556244776&amp;s=gateway&amp;sprefix=Nothing+in+this%2Caps%2C220&amp;sr=8-1
If you are looking for a great book on Thai food, there is no better book than Thai Food by David Thompson. It is the most complete book you can find on Thai food, the people and how they eat. I also own Pok Pok and it's great. I love how everything is measured out by weight, but if I could only own one book on Thai cuisine, it's definitely Thompson's book.
I've eaten at Alinea, Moto, and quite a few other high end restaurants as a cooking enthusiast. Its hard to say one kind of food is better than another - however, one of the reasons you would eat at a place like Alinea because you could never reasonably make the dishes they make (unless you have some specialized and expensive lab equipment).
EDIT: I should mention that Achatz has an Alinea book where he outlines some of the recipes from the restaurant (http://www.amazon.com/Alinea-Grant-Achatz/dp/1580089283). I find this commentary quite appropriate: http://ruhlman.com/2008/09/alinea-the-cook/
>This is not a home-cook book. This is a document of the exact recipes the Alinea brigade uses. It's very complex stuff and some of the techniques are difficult to pull off, requiring a good deal of skill and delicacy.
I have mixed feelings about celebrity cookbooks, but nevertheless I'm a big fan of Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook. It's fairly unpretentious French bistro fare, but a lot of the recipes require a decent amount of prep, a lot of trial and error, and sometimes recipes stages that span multiple days. Not all of the recipes are tough, but as an intermediate cook myself I really think that some of these will be a pleasant challenge. Plus it's a very aesthetically pleasing book imo.
I am a professional chef and while watching people prepare food is entertaining and sometimes also educating I actually recommend you to buy books and learn the basics first.
You can then use youtube pretty well in order to watch how to do specific things, like i.e. deboning a whole chicken for a gallantine, or how to trim certain pieces of meat.
Start with french cuisine. Once you have understood how things are connected you'll actually understand everything else.
If you want something simple and entertaining for the start I'd choose Anthony Bourdaine's Les Halles Cookbook. It's amusingly written and the recipes are fairly easy and they are all legit.
Then there is Paul Bocus. Living legend with three long-term girlfriends.
And of course you want to have Escoffier at your home. Doesn't get much more classic than that.
If you want to get a sense of what drives a top notch chef, watch In Search of Perfection by Heston Blumethal. Very very good stuff.
And finally, if you want to learn something about culinary history I highly highly recommend Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany and to learn about our lifes as a chef you need to read the (admittedly exaggerated) autobiographicly Kitchen Confidential by Bourdain.
All this provided, you won't learn cooking without actually doing it.
Edit: Depending on your budget, I also heavily recommend Alain Ducasse's Grand Livre de Cuisine.
Afro-Vegan: Farm-Fresh African, Caribbean, and Southern Flavors Remixed by Bryant Terry
Lots of veggie-centric recipes from scratch without being too labor-intensive; hardly any "specialty" ingredients. There's a whole section on spice combinations and sauces, which you can adapt for so many other recipes (I will never run out of ways to make yams). He likes coconut oil and peanuts a lot (I hate coconut oil and my good friend is allergic to peanuts), but I think the substitutions are not insurmountable. Other frequent ingredients are millet, black eyed peas, and mustard greens.
I use ppk.com all the time as a reference and love Isa Chandra, and I'm sure people will recommend Veganomicon as a kind of vegan "tanakh" ;), but Bryant Terry is who I'd recommend if someone is overwhelmed by their CSA.
Veganomicon is less than $10 on Amazon if you get it used:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/156924264X/ref=sr_1_6_olp?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1486674904&amp;sr=8-6&amp;keywords=vegan+cookbook
Afro Vegan is solid, and is less than $20 new:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1607745313/sr=8-31/qid=1486674985/ref=olp_product_details?_encoding=UTF8&amp;me=&amp;qid=1486674985&amp;sr=8-31
Vegan Soups and Hearty Stews is like $4 used:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/076793072X/ref=sr_1_5_olp?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1486675176&amp;sr=8-5&amp;keywords=nava+atlas
Vegan Without Borders is $5 used:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/1449447082/ref=tmm_hrd_used_olp_sr?ie=UTF8&amp;condition=used&amp;qid=&amp;sr=
Bryant Terry's Afro-Vegan is great! Simple recipes with bits of history, humor, health and music (each recipe has a suggested soundtrack song) mixed it. And, it's a beautiful book with lots of pictures and a lovely printed cloth binding.
I would actually suggest the normal (not healthy) version, but either is great.
http://www.amazon.com/Americas-Test-Kitchen-Family-Cookbook/dp/1933615486
The Cook's Illustrated Cookbook. I'd also suggest subscribing to the magazine.
They're like the Popular Mechanics of cooking. No ads, no sponsors, just lots of great recipes that have been refined through many trials and variations. The Cookbook has thousands of recipes with detailed info on why a particular ingredient or process works or doesn't work. They've taken all of the guesswork out of it, just follow the instructions. Great if you just want a tested recipe to follow or if you want to understand more about why a recipe works. Highly recommended.
The Easy 5-Ingredient Ketogenic Diet Cookbook: Low-Carb, High-Fat Recipes for Busy People on the Keto Diet https://www.amazon.com/dp/1939754445/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_kYZuDbY3EGHRR
If you follow the link they have a few recipes listed there. The one we did tonight is cheesy bacon and broccoli chicken
2 tablespoons ghee
2 boneless skinless chicken breasts
Pink Himalayan salt
Fresh ground pepper
4 bacon slices
6 oz cream cheese room temp
2 cups frozen broccoli
1/2 cup shredded cheese.
This is a two person serving. Best part she provides calories, total fat, carbs, net carbs, fiber and protein per batch and per serving! It was delicious
I think there are a few books that would help. I don't know of any specific titles but I know there are some fairly famous books that basically talk about flavors and which flavors go with what. They are quite specific and thorough. It'd be worth learning more about that if you try things on your own a lot.
I think something else that really helps is understanding the science behind cooking. Places like The Food Lab are great for that. Check out Kenji's other posts on that site as well, mostly from the Burger lab. He covers a lot of the science and always writes about the full journey. What his goals were, what he tried, what did/didn't work and why. Very useful.
Finally, if you can grill, bake and fry, you might try and play around with the 'new' forms of cooking that are popular. Read up on Sous Vide (The Food Lab has a great article with a beer cooler hack) and Molecular Gastronomy. For MG, this is a great source as well as this and on that blog for a fun read check out this
If you want some good cookbooks with a challenge look for anything by Thomas Keller, Heston Blumenthal, David Chang and a few others. I'd say start with Keller's Ad Hoc. The recipes are things you are familiar with but often quite complex. Check out this for an example. I don't have it myself, but I've heard for lovers of asian food, this is the best book out there.
Last night I made farfalle Alfredo, which is Thing 2's absolute favorite. Thing 1 can take it or leave it. Thing 3 ate four bowlsful and immediately lapsed into a carb coma.
Marcella Hazan's pork loin in red wine vinegar tonight. You salt and pepper a pork loin roast, brown it on both sides in a snugly-fitting saucepan with a little butter and olive oil and then, while it's still hot, pour in red wine vinegar to come up about halfway. (Stand back, the steam will make your eyes sting.) Throw a bay leaf in, clamp the lid on, and turn the heat down to low. Simmer until the pork reaches an internal temperature of 150 or so. DO NOT OVERCOOK OR IT WILL BE DRY LIKE SAWDUST.
This was one of the first recipes I cooked out of this book, way back when I was first learning to cook, in the late 1990s. I had just started dating Mr. Arthur and didn't know a thing about cooking because my mother never cared much about food and my dad only wanted to eat the same five dinners in a rotation. Mr. Arthur's family cares about food A LOT and I knew I had to raise my game. This is the single best cookbook I own, and I own hundreds, and opened my eyes to so many concepts: technique, simplicity of ingredients, et al et al.
This recipe is only three ingredients, not counting the oil and butter and salt and pepper, but it's one of the best things I have ever eaten.
Edit: A lot of recipes tell you to cook your pork to 160 or 170 degrees, lest you poison yourself with trichinosis, which is rubbish. At least in the US, there hasn't been a trich outbreak in decades, and you can actually see trich with the naked eye. If your pork is covered in swarming creepy-crawlies, throw it out and don't cook it at all. Trich is also killed at 137F. So if you're cooking pork loin or tenderloin, which does not benefit from long cooking the way that shoulder or belly does, cook it to 150 degrees and call it a day.
These are all great starts -
http://www.amazon.com/Essentials-Classic-Italian-Cooking-Marcella/dp/039458404X
http://www.amazon.com/Lidias-Italy-Simple-Delicious-Recipes/dp/1400040361/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1413903918&amp;sr=1-6&amp;keywords=lidia+bastianich+cookbooks
http://www.amazon.com/Mario-Batali-Simple-Italian-Food/dp/0609603000/ref=sr_1_9?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1413903950&amp;sr=1-9&amp;keywords=mario+batali
Essentials of Classic Italian... https://www.amazon.com/dp/039458404X?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share
My most used and well loved cookbook is Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. My Italian grandmother recommended it to me when I first started cooking as a teenager and it seems to be a staple for a lot of home cooks I know.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/039458404X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_ESCPAbCSJBRWR
I am not sure of what you already have or what you would need, I am listing a few things on top of my head:
Wow! I actually own this one already. Good to know that's the real deal.
Here's a link for those interested:
Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking https://www.amazon.com/dp/039458404X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_5puYzb43Z2KMK
Marcella Hazan has a parallel story to Julia Child, only for Italian cooking.
Use this one. It is the classic in italian cooking, written for Americans.
Wait, whaaat?! I'll Google and buy that shizz now, but I don't think she does... If I find one, I'll come right back.
Edit: her Patreon membership includes an ebook when it's done, and a hardcover one with the $5 tier, after 7 months. Here's her Patreon page. I just joined it.
Edit2: I got my threads mixed up in the inbox, and I was accidentally talking about and posted the Patreon for Souped Up Recipes, not Maangchi! Maangchi does have a cookbook - [maangchi's real korean cooking: Authentic Dishes for the Home Cook] (https://www.amazon.com/dp/054412989X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_CeZ6CbZZG0WNR) - more than one, in fact. [Here's one for pre-order - [maangchi's big book of korean cooking: From Everyday Meals to Celebration Cuisine] (https://www.amazon.com/dp/1328988120/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_ZfZ6Cb1MQ7PSG).
I don't know if it's necessarily for a "beginner", but I really love Maangchi.
Here's a link to her cookbook that I have:
Maangchi Cookbook
The thing that I love about her is that she also has a youtube channel where she uploads videos on how to make different things.
Here's her youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Maangchi
lol my parents get tired of it too but they cant deny my request because they love it just as much as i do. my mom cant find her really old one from when we were kids BUT she bought this one a year ago and has been getting recipes from it since then. I personally recommend making the 참치전 (tuna pancake) with some kimchi fried rice. i make that when i'm in between classes because it's fast and it tastes sooooo good. it reminds me of my childhood.
Larousse Gastronomique honestly I think the ones aimed at vegetarians are usually a bit shit.
Once you have some basics down, you might look around for a copy of this cookbook. It's sort of the bible of Italian cooking in Italy, and while it has some complicated recipes, there are also plenty of simple but classic dishes, especially in the appetizers. soups and salad sections.
These were cookbooks I found continually helpful while working at a fine-dining Italian place:
La Cucina: The Regional Cooking of Italy - 900 pages with a background on each recipe. Very helpful for research and creating dishes.
Encyclopedia of Pasta - Invaluable if you're doing fresh pasta. Provides a thorough explanation of each shape.
The Silver Spoon - a monster with 2000 recipes, but a great reference book. I think it claims to be Italy's oldest cookbook(?)...
I think these are a great starting point if you're in a serious kitchen - best of luck!
The Silver Spoon is like the Italian version of Joy of Cooking. It might be a good one for you to consider for your next project. There are a lot of editions so you can find copies that are pretty cheap.
"The quintessential cookbook." – USA Today
The Silver Spoon, the most influential and bestselling Italian cookbook of the last 50 years, is now available in a new updated and revised edition. This bible of authentic Italian home cooking features over 2,000 revised recipes and is illustrated with 400 brand new, full‐color photographs. A comprehensive and lively book, its uniquely stylish and user‐friendly format makes it accessible and a pleasure to read. The new updated edition features new introductory material covering such topics as how to compose a traditional Italian meal, typical food traditions of the different regions, and how to set an Italian table. It also contains a new section of menus by celebrity chefs cooking traditional Italian food including Mario Batali, Lidia Bastianich, Tony Mantuano, and Rich Torrisi and Mario Carbone.
Il Cucchiaio d’Argento was originally published in Italy in 1950 by the famous Italian design and architectural magazine Domus, and became an instant classic. A select group of cooking experts were commissioned to collect hundreds of traditional Italian home cooking recipes and make them available for the first time to a wider modern audience. In the process, they updated ingredients, quantities and methods to suit contemporary tastes and customs, at the same time preserving the memory of ancient recipes for future generations.
Divided into eleven color‐coded chapters by course, The Silver Spoon is a feat of design as well as content. Chapters include: Sauces, Marinades and Flavored Butters, Antipasti, Appetizers and Pizzas, First Courses, Eggs, Vegetles, Fish and Shellfish, Meat, Poultry, Game, Cheese, and Desserts. It covers everything from coveted authentic sauces and marinades to irresistible dishes such as Penne Rigate with Artichokes, Ricotta and Spinach Gnocchi, Tuscan Minestrone, Meatballs in Brandy, Bresaola with Corn Salad, Pizza Napoletana, Fried Mozzarella Sandwiches and Carpaccio Cipriani.
Buy The Curry Secret and make them yourself. They will taste just like a restaurant and so much better than a ready meal.
As a vegetarian, not a vegan, my current favorite cookbook is actually a vegan cookbook. Vegan soul food by Bryant Terry is a fantastic read with phenomenal recipes. I've worked my through a significant number of the recipes and I have been amazed by the complexity of the flavors and the deep unami taste of many of the recipes. Worth every cent - http://www.amazon.com/Vegan-Soul-Kitchen-Creative-African-American/dp/0738212288/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_y
More With Less
More for Less cookbook. I have saved so much money and learned to cook simpler and healthier meals http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/083619263X
When drunk, yes. I'm thinking of doing guides with pictures based on http://www.amazon.com/White-Cooking-Jargon-Ernest-Mickler/dp/0898151899.
I recommend you read "Nothing in this Book is True...But it's Exactly How Things Are" by Bob Frissell. It talks about all kinds of things from Grey Aliens to Sacred Geometry. Just finished it and it's a great book.
http://www.amazon.com/Nothing-Exactly-Things-Anniversary-Edition/dp/1556438311/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1331748774&amp;sr=8-1
My favourites for a few of the countries you list:
> Thailand
https://www.amazon.com/Thai-Food-David-Thompson/dp/1580084621/
> India
https://www.amazon.com/India-Cookbook-Pushpesh-Pant/dp/0714859028/
> Korea
https://www.amazon.com/Growing-up-Korean-Kitchen-Cookbook/dp/1580082815
Thai
http://www.amazon.com/Thai-Food-David-Thompson/dp/1580084621
http://www.amazon.com/Simple-Thai-Food-Classic-Recipes/dp/1607745232
http://www.amazon.com/Pok-Stories-Roadside-Restaurants-Thailand/dp/1607742888
Pick a classic in a cuisine with which you're generally unfamiliar but for which you feel confidant you can get good ingredients. A few ideas:
You'll be forced to learn new techniques and deal with new ingredients, and get a sense of an entire cooking tradition. Any of those books will give you at least a small sense of the culture that inspired the cuisine, the human context, in addition to culinary knowledge.
$35 https://www.amazon.com/dp/1580089283/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_haHUDbFXKFCT7
Have you read that AfroVegan cook book? It's meant to be good
https://www.amazon.com/Afro-Vegan-Farm-Fresh-African-Caribbean-Southern/dp/1607745313
np \^.^ how's being vegan so far? (i started jan. 1, and it's been great, i just learned how to make mapo tofu)
Edit: also, maybe check out bryant terry's cookbooks, eg:
https://www.amazon.com/Afro-Vegan-Farm-Fresh-African-Caribbean-Southern/dp/1607745313
Definitely agree there. Most of the time I've tried making my own "substitues" for things at home they don't exactly work out. Most of the time at restaurants it's done to quickly describe a flavor/dish out of ease. Honestly at home I mostly don't even bother with that type of food anymore and try to keep it simple. If I buy anything that's a frozen/prepared dish that's mimicking something that is overtly not vegan (cheeses, meat substitutes) it's on sale/i'm just feeling lazy/it's convenient.
While we're on the topic of cookbooks... :)
http://veganblackmetalchef.com/the-seitanic-spellbook-in-english/ (does a lot of good videos demoing some of the recipes as well, all with original music)
https://smile.amazon.com/Afro-Vegan-Farm-Fresh-African-Caribbean-Southern/dp/1607745313?sa-no-redirect=1 (incredible recipes. Haven't made one that hasn't been really good/fairly easy to make).
Depending on where you live, your library might have a bunch. You can check them out, try some recipes, and see if it's one you might want to buy.
I like a lot of international and multi-cultural flavors so I like a wide variety of cookbooks including:
Afro Vegan
Vegan Richa's Indian Kitchen
Chloe's Vegan Italian Kitchen
and a general cookbook that helps you make your own dishes using vegan staples:
The Homemade Vegan Pantry
This is great advice and a welcome article. Some really nice links leading to other links like this one for what looks like a terrific cookbook from a vegan activist.
The America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook is pretty awesome. There's a shit ton of recipes and lots of good cooking techniques in there, along with equipment tests and other good stuff. It's also ring bound so it's easy to keep it open to a certain page. This is THE #1 cookbook I always tell beginners to get. They also have a TV show on PBS that's quite good. I'd recommend avoiding signing up for the website as you'll get a lot of spam mail. But their book series are pretty great for the beginner.
Cooking for Geeks is also quite good if you're interested in the physics / chemistry aspect of cooking, although some of the stuff in there is a little too science-y for general beginners.
America's Test Kitchen Family cookbook. They explain technique very well and the recipes are solid. Plus it comes in a ring binder which is nice since it lays open better.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1933615486/ref=pd_aw_sims_3?pi=SY115&amp;simLd=1
I'd like to recommend a couple things:
America's Test Kitchen Healthy Family Cookbook has a lot of great family friendly recipes that are lower in calories.
100 Days of Real Food blog has great resources and recipes on how to incorporate more real and wholesome foods - those are the types of foods that will keep your older son fuller for longer.
Once a Month Meals has some great menu plans. It is originally set up for you to do the bulk of your cooking once a month and freeze the rest, but you don't have to do it that way. They do a good job of having seasonal appropriate menus.
http://www.amazon.com/Americas-Kitchen-Healthy-Family-Cookbook/dp/1933615567
Maybe start with America's Test Kitchen Healthy Family Cookbook
The people at America's Test Kitchen test every recipe many, many times and determine what works best. You can't go wrong with them.
It's this one.
Yeah, I was thinking maybe chicken teriyaki. This Cooks Illustrated Cookbook is my favorite cookbook I own, and it never lets us down. It has the best chicken teriyaki recipe I've ever made.
The Cook's Illustrated Cookbook
That'll keep me occupied for about 6 years or so.
The Bacon Cookbook, Ratio, and because I'm obsessed with New Orleans food, The Court of Two Sisters Cookbook.
Also someone else mentioned the Cook's Illustrated cookbook which is absolutely amazing.
Do my best. CI is really good about keeping their recipes off the net and this is from memory. I highly recommend the Cooks Illustrated Cookbook, I've never made a bad meal cooking from one of their recipes. (Except that lentil soup, but that was my fault for buying old lentils.)
Take your 4-5lb roast and pull it apart by the natural seams and remove most of the fat. Tie it up into two smaller roasts with kitchen twine. Season with salt and pepper and let sit at room temperature for a couple hours.
Take a bottle of Pinot Noir and start reducing it (and I don't mean by drinking it). Continue until your 750ml is approx 2c.
In your dutch oven, cook 3-4 strips of bacon, cut into 1/4" pieces, until crispy. Remove and reserve. Pour out most of the grease. Brown your roasts on all sides and set aside.
In your dutch oven, add one onion, chopped fine, and cook until starting to go translucent, about 5-10 minutes. Add a three cloves of garlic, chopped, and a tbsp of all purpose flour. Cook until fragrant, maybe 3-4 minutes.
Add your wine reduction and 4c beef broth. Add a few sprigs of fresh parsley, three sprigs of fresh thyme and a couple bay leaves tied together with twine to the pot. Add in reserved bacon. Place your roasts on top of this concoction and place in a 300°f oven. One of the tricks here is to cover your dutch oven with tin foil before putting the cover on. This gives you a much better seal and keeps more liquid in the roast. This is apparently a pretty important step.
This will cook for 2-3 hours, until a fork slips in and out easily. Turn your roasts once an hour. When cooking has approximately 1 hour left, add four carrots, peeled and cut lengthwise into quarters by about an inch and a half long.
While waiting for it to cook, take 10ish oz of frozen pearl onions (thawed) and cook them in a saute pan in a cup of water and three tablespoons unsalted butter, covered, 12-15 minutes until soft. Uncover and cook until all water has boiled off. Add 8oz button mushrooms, quartered, and cook until everything is evenly browned.
When your roast is cooked, remove it from the oven, remove the roast from the dutch oven and tent with foil to keep warm. Add your pearl onion and mushroom mix to your braising liquid. Place the dutch oven back on the stove and reduce liquid by about a quarter. Skim as much fat off the top as possible. This will be your gravy for the pot roast. When nearly finished, add a tsp unflavored gelatin to the sauce to add richness.
And there you have it. By far the most prep I've ever done for a pot roast, but, bar none, it's the best I've ever had.
Cooks Illustrated is my absolute go to. We refer to it as The Bible in my house. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1933615893/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_lJNTDbTA8M9FF
Any America's Test Kitchen books are great.
I also love Mark Bitman's how to cook everything, Ottolenghi's Plenty & Plenty more.
It really depends on the person and the cook book and they can be great tools to learn from, especially for novices. I only have one cookbook, Cook's Illustrated, and I've learned a ton from it. It's made by the folks at America's Test Kitchen, which if you are unaware of who they are, are exactly what it sounds like. They test all sorts of recipes trying different techniques, temperatures, methods, etc, until they find the "best" way to cook a dish. The cookbook gives easy instructions, explanations as to why what they say to do is the best, and provide multiple variations for each recipe so you learn how to cook with a basic technique and then change it up however your imagination desires. My cooking has improved immensely from this one book.
Nice! If you're into cooking, I recommend this cookbook. Super delicious Indian food that tastes really rich but is 100% vegan. Lots of coconut cream and coconut yogurt and tons and tons of vegetables.
I seriously feel like I'm indulging whenever I make some of these recipes, and then I remember it's VEGETABLES. IT'S ALL VEGETABLES.
not that coconut cream is the least caloric thing,but still. it's delicious, so worth it.
It's in Vegan Richa's Indian Kitchen: Traditional and Creative Recipes for the Home Cook. The book came out earlier this year, and it's great.
I know, it's easy to get tired of chili since it's easy to make a TON of it and eat it regularly.
So it's the instant pot worth it? I've seen all over the place in reddit. It's not so popular here in Europe and I haven't seen it in appliance stores.
Also never heard of the Thug Kitchen cookbook. "Eat like you give a fuck" lol. Thanks for the references :)
By the way, if you like indian food I highly recommend this book I've been getting lots of good curry recipes from it.
If you like Indian food, this cookbook is pure gold.
You can make keto bread too, using almond flour and MCT powder and baking powder and eggs. It's not bad. I get most of my stuff from a cook book.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1939754445/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
And these keto snacks are good, just expensive and not a lot in the bag...
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07DDQ3GJT/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&th=1
I definitely recommend using an app like Carb Manager at first, it really helped me at first to understand what a typical keto day looks like with my allotted macros (and what foods to avoid - it even has a barcode scanner for easy adding foods you eat).
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There's also a lot of really budget-friendly foods you can buy that are keto, I eat a lot of eggs, brick cheese, bulk ground beef/ pork, pork tenderloin (pretty much whatever meat is on sale each week), bulk avocados. If you're not much into cooking I got this book through my local library to help me through the first couple weeks with easy meal ideas: https://www.amazon.com/Easy-5-Ingredient-Ketogenic-Diet-Cookbook/dp/1939754445
I got this book: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1941252095?keywords=vegan%20richa&amp;qid=1452442977&amp;ref_=sr_1_1&amp;sr=8-1
Has a ton of recipes in it, all are pretty damn good.
Not sure how you feel about Indian food but I've been working my way through this cookbook and the author does a really good job of telling you how to modify the recipes to make things gluten free or nut free or other dietary/allergen needs. Recipes are some of the tastiest things I've made too, probably from using fresh spices. The variety of spices can feel a little over whelming but it's been fun learning about it. Also if you go to an Indian grocery store they are suprisingly cheap.
I recommend you check out Vegan Richa, who has tons of traditional Indian recipes without all the butter and cream, and far fewer calories. I've been a fan of Indian food for decades and can tell you her recipes are very hard to distinguish from their higher-fat inspirations and in many cases, possess more complexity and nuance than what I'm used to. One of my favorites is her Mango Tofu Curry, which is the sort of recipe you'll never find in the typical Westernized Indian restaurant, and cleverly subs tofu for paneer. She also has a book I definitely recommend.
Richa's Indian Kitchen is my curry-from-scratch bible.
Check out this book, we use it all the time, meals are easy and delicious.
The Easy 5-Ingredient Ketogenic Diet Cookbook: Low-Carb, High-Fat Recipes for Busy People on the Keto Diet
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1939754445/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_FaoCCbDH4N4D6
then for days that you don’t want to plan, Grill up a steak or chicken, bake a fish. Breakfast for dinner is always good.
I saw a recipe in David Chang's book (Momofuku) that I'm going to try:
Ginger scallion noodles.
There's a free preview with the recipe on the book's Amazon page:
http://www.amazon.com/Momofuku-David-Chang/dp/030745195X
Great British Chefs, Challenging Recipes
Momofuku Milkbar
Thomas Keller recipes
Wow. Dude, that is not a deep argument. Spare your keyboard, you don't have to repeat yourself over and over.
Look, the fact is, when we die, we all go to the great pasta bowl in the sky. I don't know how to prove that to you, you'll have to take my word for it. There is a god, and he's made of spaghetti.
There's no way I can prove it to you in such a shallow forum. But perhaps this book will enlighten you. I could take you to a restaurant and introduce you to some of the best chefs in the world... but that's a lot of work.
I'm not being irreverent for the hell of it, I'm trying to make a point. You are incredibly tone deaf. Who do you think you're talking to? You just came to a debate forum, and told someone who has never seen any evidence of your god, "Don't worry, it's all true. Trust me. Some old people in a monastery are really nice. You'll die one day and then you'll realize that the dude you chatted with on reddit once was right all along."
The stuff you're saying is so vapid. If you learn nothing else on here, please learn this: If you want to convince a skeptical person who values evidence, a hollow and wordy emotional argument is actually counterproductive. When I decided I no longer believed, I was desperate for any counter evidence. I really wanted to keep my faith, but it just didn't make any sense. And arguments like yours (many of them, from several people) are what sealed my decision.
If you are looking for basic cooking information the Joy of Cooking is obligatory.
A couple things I've learned along the way is first to start slow and work through cookbooks. It's easy to keep buying book after book but they are just decoration if you don't know them well. Secondly, be wary of books with lots of pretty pictures! In my experience they are full of single-purpose recipes that don't teach you the true nature or source as you spoke of above.
As far as source recipes I'd second everything mentioned so far but if you are looking to blow people away with Italian and Mexican dishes (my particular favorite styles)... look no further than:
The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking - Marcella Hazan - Possibly my favorite author of cookbooks of all time. This is definitely the one to start with in my opinion.
The Art of Mexican Cooking - Diana Kennedy - If you are looking for real mexican food this book is a great place to start.
Bonus Book... not a cookbook but a great way to learn about cooking
Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking is a great Italian cookbook, although maybe more recipe-centric than what you are looking for.
There are more than enough resources out there to teach you how to cook. The better question might be - what do you want to learn how to cook?
If you're a big Italian food fan like I am, I did the following:
Step 1. Purchase copy of Marcella Hazan's ["Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking"] (http://www.amazon.ca/Essentials-Classic-Italian-Cooking-Marcella/dp/039458404X)
Step 2. Figure out the fundamental recipes - for me it was plain tomato sauce, bolognese sauce, minestrone soup, hand made pasta, roast chicken, ossobuco, and a few others
Step 3. Practice practice practice - I have probably made my own pasta 20 times in the past year and I am still not close to mastery (but I'm getting there!)
I'd also suggest that you work on basic knife skills, including sharpening your own knife. These are essential no matter what route you decide to take.
Basically gonna echo most of the answers already posted, but just to pile on:
Cookbooks
Nothing inspires cooking like a good cookbook collection. The great news about cookbooks is that they're often bought as gifts or souvenirs and they make their way onto the used market cheap and in great condition. Here are my suggestions for a great starter shelf:
The Essentials of Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan is an excellent book on Italian cooking.
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What's Eating Dan has some great videos on food science and why if you cook in certain ways the food is more delicious
For Italian, start here: https://www.amazon.com/Essentials-Classic-Italian-Cooking-Marcella/dp/039458404X
That's the basic definition of how you 'finish' a dish, in standard Italian cooking. https://www.amazon.ca/Essentials-Classic-Italian-Cooking-Marcella/dp/039458404X , like Italy-italian, not "North America's bizarro world version as promulgated by Olive Garden"
Surprisingly, authentic italian cooking can be very keto without sacrificing any flavour, and enhancing the satiation, and one of the big methods to do so is basically extra parmesan as a finishing touch.
Look for Marcella's recipe for minestrone. Leave out the pasta and potatoes, and it's full on keto. My version of the recipe is 12 g net carbs per serving, and only 8 if I leave out the cannellini beans. You lose zero flavour to having it be low carb. In the recipe you use parmesan heels (the part leftover when you grate all the cheese you can from a round) to start the broth thickening.
The classic italian meal treats pasta as an occasional, middle of the meal thing, and the portions are tiny by american standards- usually 30g or less carbs in the portion sizes I encountered. On my infrequent days off from keto, one of our go-to meals is Lasagne, northern italy style, and it's 40g carbs per serving.
Marcella Hazan, "Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking"
http://www.amazon.com/Essentials-Classic-Italian-Cooking-Marcella/dp/039458404X
Get Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Italian Cooking. Start with the basic pastas and sauces and move on from there.
http://www.amazon.com/Essentials-Classic-Italian-Cooking-Marcella/dp/039458404X
Marcella Hazan has a great recipe. It's probably my favorite thing to eat ever. Her recipes can be a bit fussy, but the instructions are thorough and straightforward. I'd recommend cooking anything in her book the prescribed way first, and then making any changes the next time around (though I usually find I don't want to change a thing). I usually do her bolognese on the stove through all the reduction steps, then put it in my crock pot on "low" or "warm" for the rest of the day.
Added bonus: that book contains my other favorite pasta sauce; it's called something like "tomato sauce with butter and onion." It's a quicker sauce to make and it's quite addictive. (Edit: and it doesn't taste super oniony. You cook it with the onions and then take them out before serving.)
This is vegetarian and does the no-onion and no-garlic thing, but it's quite big and covers a lot of material - a good starting point. It really teaches a lot about the what and the whys of Indian food. It was written by the (American) personal cook of the Hare Krishna founder, she followed him around all over India when he travelled there, learning recipes from his hosts.
Some easy to get into books
This is a classic Indian cookery books that grannies used to have
Tarla Daral was a popular food writer in India
Something from Punjab
This is not a beginners book, but very interesting
These Kerala restaurants do lovely modern cookbooks
More from South India
SOURCE: have been collecting books and shared cooking tips with Indian friends for a while
Get yourself Julia Sahni's Classic Indian Cooking book. It's a great place to start. If you're primarily into veg, another place to go would be Devi's Lord Krishna's Cuisine which is a positively massive cookbook that is great and vedic (no onions, etc. only hing).
Also, Manjula's Kitchen has some good videos.
Zero recipes, only plating.
It is a fantastic resource for that because it is open to interpretation.
The Escoffier Cookbook and Guide to the Fine Art of Cookery is a good companion.
New Larousse Gastronomique has many recipes and is an essential reference book
Institut Paul Bocuse Gastronomique: The definitive step-by-step guide to culinary excellence also a fantastic resource.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/New-Larousse-Gastronomique-Hamlyn/dp/0600620425/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1301886442&amp;sr=8-1
Good luck with training!
I would love to have this book, if it's still on sale. If not, this one also looks amazing. I would love to learn more about the science of cooking.
First recommendation is don't work as a chef if you value a social/family life.
Good books to read are;
Larousse Gastronomique which is the absolute Bible/Koran/Bhagavad Gita
The Silver Spoon which is a great Italian cook book.
And another tip is old, outdated looking cook books are sometimes the best. I've got one I got from an ex girlfriend's mum which looks terrible but if you're into Cypriot/Greek/Turkish food is incredible, it's here
Silver spoon. I've been taking a lot of recipes from it lately. It's considered "Italian" but it's the furthest thing from Olive Garden you'll ever see in respects to Italian. A lot of things are simply prepared but have immense flavor. I made the green risotto for our seven fishes night and it was great! I made the bucatini with red pepper sauce and that was amazing. I've made a few fish and beef recipes too, their lasagna is amazing. It has a lot of things most people haven't heard of but the book makes them extremely approachable if you collect all the ingredients. I used to be not very big on using cookbooks but I've had this book for a year and recently it's become a favorite of mine.
The one thing I do have to say is that you need to treat the recipes in a true Italian manner where spaghetti isn't the only dish but a filler before your protein. Almost none of the pasta dishes have protein (except one of my favorites anchovy and breadcrumbs) so you serve almost all of them as a small side dish. My edition has a section in the back where about a dozen chefs designed a menu with recipes not in the book but that you can only find in there. I've really wanted to pick a menu and do it one night for some friends.
https://www.amazon.com/Silver-Spoon-New-Kitchen/dp/0714862568
I recommend this cookbook: The Silver Spoon New Edition https://www.amazon.com/dp/0714862568/ref=cm_sw_r_api_Uoo4yb5HMXSBF
Translated from Italian, 1000's of recipes. Get a reference copy for you kitchen, spend some time getting to know Italian seasonal non-tomato based cuisine in depth so you don't have to think on your feet when in order comes in.
The silver spoon is largely considered the go-to italian homestyle cookbook.
http://www.amazon.com/Silver-Spoon-New-Phaidon-Press/dp/0714862568/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1419952727&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=silver+spoon
Yes yes yes yes. This bad boy has all kinds of great bechamel - and other sauce - recipes.
Get a nice bottle of Barolo and do a gift basket for her. If she liked Rome include all the ingredients to make a Spaghetti alla Carbonara. Since she liked Sicily get her some aged pecorino to grate on top. Also, toss in a copy of the Silver Spoon so she can whip up her favorite dishes whenever she likes.
The Silver Spoon
https://www.amazon.com/Silver-Spoon-New-Kitchen/dp/0714862568
love reading good cook books too!
It's a little older, but when I moved of my parents house I took the Anna Thomas cook books.
The other one I like to page thru is the Silver Spoon
do you have a favorite?
3 spørgsmål:
For mig, der er den vigtigste bog at have, når vi snakker kogebøger, det er Kokkebogen. Det er en bog med alle de gode gamle klassiske retter i dansk køkken samt klassisker fra rundt omkring i Europa. Dertil får du alt den viden, som du har brug for, omkring alle dyr, udskæringer, køkkengrej og værktøj osv osv. Min gamle kokkelære på hotel og restaurations skolen sagde, at man med denne ene bog, kunne åbne en restaurant.
God mad, let at lave er også en rigtig god bog. Den er fyldt med masser af fantastiske opskrifter, som er skide god, hvis man ikke gider lange og besværlige processer.
Sølv Skeen Er den italienske udgave af vores kokkebog, bare uden alle de tekniske begreber. Jeg tror der er også 1000 opskrifter i denne bog (den er kæmpe. Min udgave har ødelagt et tørrestativ.)
Frøken Jensens kogebog er en gammel klassisker, og en hver kok med respekt for sig selv, har sådan en i sit køkken.
Jorden rundt på 80 retter er en lidt ukendt en til samlingen. Jeg synes personligt at den er skide god, fordi der er retter og inspiration at hente, som man normalt ikke ville falde over.
Men igen, så handler det jo meget om, hvad du gerne vil have. Du kan også hente inspiration på youtube, hvor Gordon Ramsay har sine Ultimate cooking course, som er en rigtig god madserie ( men det er fyldt med foodporn dog).
I have three books that I carry with from job to job.
http://www.amazon.com/Silver-Spoon-New-Phaidon-Press/dp/0714862568
The most amazing Italian cook book, the author went to little villages and talked to real Italian cooks and got the truest traditional methods and recipes
I would argue "The curry secret" shows British cooking, including such classics as Tikka Masala, and Rogan Josh.
Now I get that these might not fit into the "traditional British" category for some people, but not everyone wants a Sunday roast or toad in the hole.
Alright then
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Curry-Secret-Indian-Restaurant/dp/0716021919
The Curry Secret for Indian dishes. Actually making the base curry sauce right now.
IMO Ready meal curries are generally similar to typical indian restaurant takeaway curries. I learnt to cook them this way thanks to https://www.amazon.co.uk/Curry-Secret-Indian-Restaurant-Meals/dp/0716021919 . However it's actually easier and as cheap to buy the supermarket ones.
Buy this book:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Curry-Secret-Indian-Restaurant/dp/0716021919
I always like a good curry in cold weather. Have various recipes but recently was recommend this book, The Curry Secret, so hoping you try it soon.
Something else that I came across last summer, is a dessert. Super simple, unhealthy but seriously delicious.
Apparently, it’s called a Malaysian pudding - not sure why though.
1lt of good quality double cream yoghurt mixed with half a can (~200g) of condensed milk. Somehow this combination just makes a difference. Then add all your cut fruits, so...paw-paw, sweet melon, apple, peaches, banana, maybe pineapple. Let it refrigerate a bit to release the fruit juices. Simple goodness.
If they are in season, I like to make a berry version with blackberries, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and a banana to balance the flavors. It’s also for the lazy, because only the bananas and strawberries require cutting up. When dishing into bowls, garnish with a cherry.
I have no problem with swearing in general. It is not to my taste, but it is not something I am against. This particular book is not just full of swears, it is specifically imitating the cadence and language that it supposes urban black people use. And that is the sole "joke" of it, the juxtaposition of fancy vegan food and "hood" language. The authors concealed their identities for a long time allowing readers to think they were something other than who they are.
I never said that white people should not be allowed to cook whatever they want to or that it wouldn't be good food. In fact, I recommended Thug Kitchen as a book that I have heard good things about and that my friends really enjoy, with the caveat that I have never personally tried it for those reasons.
Yes, I do know that many restaurants hire chefs and cooks that are of varying ethnicities and I did say appropriation is not about any individual person cooking food, but is about profiting and power dynamics. I would rather support a vegan cookbook by an actual black person like Bryant Terry or Makini Howell than Thug Kitchen. Similarly I would rather financially support PoC owned restaurants rather than white owned restaurants that get more recognition and praise and are able to charge higher prices. I say white because white people are the majority where I live and are in a position of power over people of color. That doesn't mean that the white restaurants don't serve good food, it means I recognize that they aren't operating on an even playing field.
You can call me a SJW, it doesn't bother me. My passion for social justice lead me to veganism because I believe all living beings deserve respect, consideration, opportunities and just treatment. Veganism should be intersectional.
> Do you guys have any sources of really high quality vegan meals by like high level chefs and shit.
Take your pick! What cuisines does she like to make? What do you like to eat? Choose something that fits both.
Gourmet Stuff (youtube channels, blogs, and/or cookbooks. Some are all three):
For direct recreations of dairy, meat, and condiments/sauces.
For recreations of eggs:
For a general cookbook: Veganomicon
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My list of substitutions, taken from another comment:
"
Another thing you can do is learn or find vegan substitutes to things, then you can look up recipes that are as complex or authentic as you want, and simply use the substitutions. For gourmet vegan cooking, some are:
"
I am not sure if 'vegan' qualifies automatically as 'diabetic' but this cookbook is rockstar....and healthy.
"Vegan Soul Kitchen"
http://www.amazon.com/Vegan-Soul-Kitchen-Creative-African-American/dp/0738212288/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1450929368&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=vegan+soul+kitchen
i recently got hooked on Roasted Rosemary Tofu (recipe) (picture) from the Vegan Soul Kitchen cookbook. it's really easy to make, has wonderful flavor & a perfect texture. the only note that the posted recipe & the photos miss is that the rosemary should be very finely chopped, not left whole.
Check out the "More With Less Cookbook"
It was produced by the "Mennonite Central Committee"
https://www.amazon.ca/More-Less-World-Community-Cookbook/dp/083619263X
As an addition to the other great answers: I know of two cookbooks that are aimed at making food that is cheap and good (as in healthful and tasty). One is Good and Cheap by Leanne Brown, available for free from her website. The other is More-With-Less, which is published by a Mennonite group. I have never used Good and Cheap (it was in the news after it was published), and I've only used a few things from More-with-Less, so I can't really speak to their overall quality.
My personal favorite simple, cheap, tasty, and versatile dish is beans and rice. I typically combine equal amounts black beans and brown rice (I'm glossing over cooking them), season with cumin, garlic, and salt, add some diced tomatoes and lime juice, and top with fresh cilantro, cheese, and avocado (and hot sauce).
Using brown rice instead of white rice adds minerals and fiber, but isn't necessary. Avocados and cilantro are delicious, but aren't necessary (and can be expensive). Note that dried black beans require several hours of soaking before they can be cooked (and about an hour of cooking time). You can use things like canned beans, minute rice, canned tomatoes or salsa, and guacamole to make this basically effortless (though probably a little more expensive). There are lots of ways to combine beans and rice (there's even an academic book about it).
An even easier version, which I've only ever served as a side dish but is nutritionally acceptable as a main dish is: combine a can of beans with a can of corn (both drained), spice to taste (I use salt, cumin, garlic, etc), and add some fresh cilantro. Optionally add a drained can of diced tomatoes.
Good and Cheap: (Note: This is also available for free download in PDF format on the author's website. I know many folks who have downloaded it and printed it out for offline use.)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0761184996/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_EVLLDbRBSQMBH
Depression Era Recipes:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0934860556/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_9OLLDbTKCP8B4
Clara's Kitchen:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0312608276/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_MPLLDbWM71RM9
More-with-Less World Community Cookbook:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/083619263X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_nQLLDbF12CDHM
Finally, a word on creating your own cookbook binder: Bookmark the recipes you've tried and loved (using Pinterest is okay for this, too), print them out, and either laminate the pages, or use clear sheet protector sleeves to keep them fom getting cruddy with repeated use. Pick out a binder you like or have handy, create labeled categories using tab dividers, then sort your recipes into said categories as you put them into the binder. Voila! Your own collection of recipes you know and trust. 😁
More-With-Less
Oh! White Trash Cooking! Preserves the language, but actually has some really good recipes inside! I like it with the bacon fat and cracklings, and I add more buttermilk than called for. Let me know when you try it!
http://www.amazon.com/White-Trash-Cooking-Ernest-Mickler/dp/0898151899/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1465063063&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=white+trash+cookbook
yes they would, they even wrote a book about it and it's a must have.
turtle.....i have a cookbook called the white trash cookbook....funniest damn thing you have ever read.
http://www.amazon.com/White-Cooking-Jargon-Ernest-Mickler/dp/0898151899
Because White Trash Cooking rocks.
[http://i.imgur.com/VEGsJ.jpg]
[http://www.amazon.com/White-Cooking-Jargon-Ernest-Mickler/dp/0898151899]
I think you'd enjoy this book: https://www.amazon.com/Nothing-This-Exactly-Things-Anniversary/dp/1556438311
He figures prominently in this doosie of a read. Pretty entertaining stuff: Link
Okay I'll bite "Awful Truth" loaded to kindle.
I really hope its as bastshit as this one
I'll just leave this here Nothing in This Book Is True, But It's Exactly How Things Are
a giant granite mortar and pestle is a good tool to have. This is a good book, as long as you can track down the ingredients. Andy Ricker's is probably also good, as I'm sure David Thompson's other book is too.
I would recommend a dozen or so books to get started. However, if I had to recommend one thing it would be this blog, as it dissects the first book from Alinea from the view point of a novice. It should make you think about cooking and food in a completely different way, and give you a head start into think about advanced concepts.
Pastry cooks are hardly rare. Good ones are, though.
Get the Alinea cookbook and work your way through it, if you have the patience and the pocketbook. Very neat stuff, but really anal from a guy with zero taste buds. I respect him, but really... His most critical restaurant reviews are of his presentation and flavor combinations, so use your own judgement and taste buds while using this book. I recommend it as reading material, but follow your own head and area.
Start with this cookbook
Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook: Strategies, Recipes, and Techniques of Classic Bistro Cooking https://www.amazon.com/dp/158234180X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_pyWeAbK4J2TDM
I like to cook French and Asian/Indian foods the most. Here's my base list for any type of cooking: kosher salt, fresh cracked pepper, olive oil, canola oil, eggs, flour, potatoes, onions and shallots, cream, butter, bacon, cheese, rice, canned diced tomatoes, garlic bulbs, red and white wine, vinegar (rice wine or balsamic). Root vegetables can be added too, but I prefer to get them specific to the meal.
A few extras I tend to use a lot are ginger root, oyster sauce, and red cabbage. Not exactly stock-worthy to some people though.
But actually, I think this is the wrong approach. I suggest finding a good cook book, perhaps Ad Hoc at Home, and just start reading it. I did this with Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles book and it revolutionized how I think about cooking. I wish I had done it from the start to develop the thought process first, which then leads to better food preparation. When you cook a specific meal you can go to the store and look at each food separately for the meal you're preparing. When I'm at the market looking for specific ingredients and not "grocery shopping" I'm able to think about the food in a different way. Gradually, you can build up foods and spices over time, but in doing so you'll build good habits, good recipes, and a more mature approach to food in general. My approach before was very much like a shotgun blast of spices, whereas now I'm able to more precisely pinpoint the flavor profile I'm going for.
A word on spices: Buying in bulk will save you lots of money. People suggest dating them, so as to know when they're going bad, but this might be out of your scope right now. I know Central Market here in Texas has a pretty nice bulk spice section, and I imagine other whole foods places do as well.
Herbs: Fresh herbs are key. You want something to have at the ready? Fresh herbs you can get from the store. But really you should invest in a $.25 pack of basil seeds, rosemary seeds, and thyme seeds. These plants are hardy and tough to kill (maybe not so much with basil) and will make everything taste more expensive.
It was a game changer for me to realize that some recipes are just not good--a lot of cookbooks and recipes online have just been churned out and not really tested, so it's not even your fault if the food doesn't work out.
Finding cookbooks and blogs that you trust every time take the stress of failure out. America's Test Kitchen is fantastic, and this cookbook has the best recipes of all of the basics: http://www.amazon.com/Americas-Test-Kitchen-Family-Cookbook/dp/1933615486
I also love Heidi Swanson of 101cookbooks.com, and trust that all of her recipes will be delicious.
Just keep trying, and you'll get better.
I enjoy cookbooks that explain the process of why to do this and not that especially with ingredients and processes. This favorite has been go go to book for years..
These are two fantastic books for beginning cooks, so much so that I've been buying them as wedding/hosewarming presents as part of my gifts to newlyweds/new homeowners just starting out.
How to Cook Without a Book: Recipes and Techniques Every Cook Should Know by Heart by Pam Anderson
The America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook by America's Test Kitchen
The ATK book apparently has a new edition coming out in October. They also have a similar version if you are less interested in perhaps the best tasting versus the more healthful options.
There are a few comments suggesting that you get your kids involved in cooking, and to that end, I highly recommend the Good Eats (Alton Brown's show) episode called "Soups On", as it's about teaching a kid how to cook. They use soups in that episode, since they're so forgiving, but have tips for teaching kids (and adults) basic knife skills as well.
Good Eats is generally a great show for learning how to cook. Unlike most of the food-porn shows on tv, he actually teaches you how to cook and gives you a lot of answers to the "why" questions around cooking. Similarly, Americas Test Kitchen - still runs on PBS - is another good show. They test out recipes to give you the best versions - for taste, cost, and simplicity - and it's pretty family-friendly American foods. I highly recommend their Family Cookbook as a great collection.
My favorite cookbooks so far are
If you are brand new and want only the basices, you should get I'm Just Here for the Food: Food + Heat = Cooking by Alton Brown which is the most basic cooking-for-dummies book!
The America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook also comes in a binder. I used to use the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook, but I've been using the one I linked more often in the last few years.
This cookbook: http://amzn.com/1933615486 from America's Test Kitchen.
Includes a huge variety of recipes and also includes techniques on successful completion. Tips for how to identify and choose cuts of meat, easily dice an onion, choose knives, light a grill, preheat an oven...everything a beginning cook could use.
Each recipe gives exact cooking times and are rated "easy" "quick" so you know what you're getting into before you start.
I'd suggest this:
http://www.amazon.com/Americas-Kitchen-Healthy-Family-Cookbook/dp/1933615567/
Yep, I agree. I was actually wondering how he's take my question on the iPad app. Whatever - I bought two of his $40 book, and he knew it. :P
(You can get them waaaay cheaper online, but I wanted to support the store, etc.)
Cooks Illustrated. Ex bought this for me and it's pretty much been my bible. Good luck!
your method is a little different but the end result looks very similar to my own favorite carnitas recipe.
my recipe comes from the Cook's Illustrated Cookbook (page 420!), and since i started making it a few years ago it has become a favorite in my house. even my picky 3-year-old loves it!
i've never used ancho chiles or the peppers in adobo sauce, and i add some citrus flavor by juicing an orange and cooking the pork with the orange rinds mixed in, and a little different spices (i use onion powder, garlic powder, and like 5x more cumin lol), but otherwise this looks very very similar to the recipe i use.
i cook mine in a dutch oven for 2 hours then crisp it under the broiler for ~10 minutes. i also reduce my cooking liquid in a skillet before putting it on the pork under the broiler.
some fresh garnishes (onion, cilantro, lime juice) and sour cream complete the ensemble. its seriously amazing.
great post. made me hungry. 10/10 would upvote again.
No one has mentioned it yet, but I learned a lot from cook books.
These are not just lists or recipes, but instruction about techniques and methods and processes.
Some good ones are:
Having an actual dead tree book can be more convenient in the kitchen than a laptop or mobile device with an ebook.
If you can find episodes of Good Eats by Alton Brown he is really good at explaining things. Videos can be good, but a lot of times but really only when you know what it is you're looking for. With a book it is going to give you topics that you might never have thought of.
But for reals now, you are going to get the best value learning how to cook the basics. Your Instant pot is AWESOME for cooking dry beans. Get pound of dry black beans and 3 pounds of water (obviously you need a good kitchen scale). I just put the inner pot of my Instantpot on the scale, dump in the beans, tare it, then pour water in with a big cup till I have 3 lbs. Put in 1/2-1 teaspoon of salt. I also add granulated garlic and powdered onion and some cumin but you don't have to. Set your instanpot to manual for 45 mins and wait. Let it naturally release, if you manually release the pressure the skin on the beans will break, to me it still tastes the same but you have far fewer whole beans. Now you have a weeks worth of delicious, healthy black beans. No need for overnight soak or anything.
Small white beans (a.k.a navy beans) can be cooked the same and they taste different but just as good. Or you can add the extra ingredients and make pork and beans.
You can cook pinto beans with the same basic recipe, and they taste great too. When you want to take the extra time, then with a slotted spoon dish the cooked beans into a large frying pan with some lard or shortening and make your own refried beans. You smash the beans with the back of the spoon or a spatula, and use the bean broth to add liquid till you like the texture.
If you can't tell I like cooking beans in my Instantpot. I have a rice cooker but you can cook rice in the Instantpot too. Beans and rice is healthy and cheap!!! (cook them separately and mix them after cooking).
See if they have this book at your local library.
https://www.amazon.com/Cooks-Illustrated-Cookbook-Americas-Magazine/dp/1933615893
Has a great section explaining all of the ingredients and how to cook each. Start easy and get more complex. Canned beans have a ton of salt in them. Carne burritos are easier to cook than chicken because you can eat it rare. To get the taste of take out spot just look up mexican recipes online. It's all in the seasoning.
When I make burgers, if I'm grilling I just sprinkle on some Montreal steak seasoning (specifically this from McCormick) but if I'm cooking it on the stove I don't add anything, just cook it in a little butter or vegetable oil. The burgers themselves are always pure beef; usually good, fresh ground beef (frozen is acceptable if you have it, but fresh is the best) and never preformed unless you need to make dozens for a cookout or something. When forming the burgers, I generally go for 1/3 to 1/2 pound patties, as loosely packed as possible (just enough to hold together on the grill); when grilling, you'll want to add a dimple on top (just poke down the center to compress it a bit more), since burgers tend to poof a bit on the grill (though they don't seem to on the stove for some reason). I also make "premium" burgers on occasion by starting with steak and chopping it myself, although that's a much more involved process (I got the recipe for that from this Cook's Illustrated cookbook). No seasoning or other additives or sauces go into my burgers, just on top of them.
Unfortunately, I'm not the best at grilling, that's my dad's territory - however, it's pretty straightforward, you should only flip the burger once. I'd suggest listening to other's advice on when to flip the burger. You add the cheese when the burger is very close to being done, and make sure you toast the buns on the grill as well (timing isn't too important, you mostly want to crisp up the inside - still being warm is ideal, but it's okay if the buns cool off by the time you're eating). Stovetop cooking is also a viable option, one which I'm more experienced with, but I couldn't really tell you how to tell when the burgers are done. The cookbook I linked to above is where I'm starting from, I'm just experimenting from the basics I learned from that book (it's well worth getting even if you never make the burgers, just about everything in there is really good). The really basic version is what I said above, cook them in a pan with a bit of oil or butter and flip them only once.
For the cheese, I generally use either cheddar or jack. If all we have is the shitty processed cheese product (Kraft Singles or some generic version of them), I won't have any on my burger (it adds a lot, but isn't really necessary).
The bun is really important, but that is the hardest to tell you what to get - what's available in UK stores may be wildly different from what's available in the US, even finding the same brands in different parts of the US can be hard. To start, just look for a bun from a company that makes good bread (the best regular loafs of bread around here (Connecticut in the US) are from Martin's and Freihofer's, and the best burger buns come out of the same bakeries).
As for the toppings, you can do whatever you like. My preferences are either ketchup (Heinz) and mayo or barbecue sauce (something ketchup-based, not vinegar-based). Bacon is great anytime I can get it, but it's not necessary. The closest thing to a vegetable that I'll put on (aside from the ketchup) is this stuff (not necessarily that brand, I use something from a local spice store, but it's the same thing). Experiment to find what works, but to start with I'd go for just cheese and ketchup and mayo.
edit: Oh, and drink some good root beer or sarsaparilla with the burger. A&W is my preference among the big companies, although Barq's is a close second. Locally-brewed stuff can be really good, though, I generally drink sarsaparilla from Hosmer Mountain with mine.
Lots of people will say to look at the Instant Pot which is a combination electric pressure cooker/slow cooker/rice cooker ("multi cooker"). I had a bluetooth enabled "IP-SMART" 6qt model of theirs (actually three: first had a safety recall, second was dented on arrival, third still exhibited regulation issues). Lots of people are happy with Instant Pots, but I had a lot of issues with the pressure control being flaky for certain recipes. Additionally, much of what makes slow cookers safe when you are out of the house is their low wattage heaters... typically 250-400W... and low complexity (basically it's a small electric blanket that is wrapped around a very heavy ceramic pot). The Instant Pot has a 1000W heater, and is more complex (microcontroller + a thermocouple), so this negates some of the safety aspects of unattended slow cooking... though it is UL listed and has a thermal fuse in case anything goes wrong.
My recommendation if you are interested in pressure cookers and slow cookers:
$120 for both.. around the ballpark of the cheaper Instant Pots, you gain an additional pot for stove use, pressure cooker is of bigger size, slow cooker is safe unattended and a more conventional shape, and IMO will last longer. You lose automatic rice cooking capabilities but... by a $20-$30 rice cooker and probably get better rice, or just do it on the stovetop.
By the way, no idea what food you like to eat, but these are two of my favorite cookbooks if you are getting started and wanted to build up some experience:
And major shout out to Kenji's (from Seriouseats.com) new book if you want more detailed science information:
This post ended up being much longer than I expected, but those are my recommendations if you are just starting out. ;) The main thing I've learned since beginning to cook is that 90%+ of the recipes online (and even in print) are untested crap, and to look for recipe sources you can trust. The second thing is that a finished recipe is much more dependant on the technique (the steps you use to modify ingredients at specific times, temperatures, and textures) and way less dependent on the ingredients themselves (you can easily sub ingredients for many recipes once the core techniques are understood).
What's the difference between that cookbook by Cook's Illustrated and the one that came out later with even more recipes, The Cook's Illustrated Cookbook? Wouldn't it be better to get the one with more recipes?
I'll also suggest "The Joy of Cooking"
A couple of other books that are filled with perfect and realistic versions of food everyone will recognize and want to eat are:
The Cook's Illustrated Cookbook
The Complete America's Test Kitchen TV Show Cookbook 2001-2014
These two books are very similar so you don't need both of them, but I think having at least one of them is essential.
Buy this and start learning to cook some real Italian stuff:
http://www.amazon.com/Essentials-Classic-Italian-Cooking-Marcella/dp/039458404X/