How to Break an Egg: 1,453 Kitchen Tips, Food Fixes, Emergency Substit

I am at best an amateur cook. I have more cookbooks then I will ever be able to use. This book has so many useful hints and techniques. I actually set down and read it thru. I have already used several with complete success. One of the most useful books I have used.

For an all-in-one guide to kitchen troubles, whether it be rescuing a failed recipe, making emergency substitutions, or brushing up on techniques, How To Break An Egg: 1,453 Kitchen Tips, Food Fixes, Emergency Substitutions And Handy Techniques packs in tips by the editors, contributors and readers of Fine Cooking Magazine. Each chapter on 'tips' or 'techniques' is subdivided in the table of contents by method or tip: this makes it quick and easy to locate tips on say pitting fruit, or cooking potatoes properly. New cooks will find this a much more extensive reference than your usual substitution guide - and provides much more overall culinary detail on method than most, while retaining the at-a-glance referencing system so important to a cook facing problems and needing immediate solutions.

Library Journal Utilizing information from qualified food writers, chefs, and experienced readers, the editors of Fine Cooking magazine have compiled a troubleshooting guide for home cooks. The recipients of the 2005 International Association of Culinary Professionals Compilation Award for their previous book (Cooking New American), these editors have delivered another classic. Included are troubleshooting charts, step-by-step preparation techniques (with photographs), ingredient information, a substitution guide, equivalent measures, tips on kitchen safety, and much more. The most useful section helps cooks understand what went wrong with the recipe and recommendations of what to try next time. An extremely valuable guide assisting the home cook in learning how to cook as opposed to just cooking; recommended for all public libraries.-Jennifer A. Wickes, Suite101.com, Pine Beach, NJ Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

`How To Break An Egg' is a collection of `1,453 Kitchen Tips, Food Fixes, Emergency Substitutions, and Handy Techniques' by the Editors, Contributors, and Readers of `Fine Cooking' magazine. One of the first things this means is that if you are a dedicated subscriber to `Fine Cooking' magazine and have every issue going back about ten (10) years, you already have most of what is in this book. This volume belongs to one of the three general classes of books which focus much more on why and how to do things in general rather than on specific recipes. The first of these classes is represented by Shirley Corriher's `Cookwise' which has many recipes, but whose real purpose is to demonstrate why things work the way they do. The second of these three groups is represented by the Williams-Sonoma `Kitchen Companion' and Christopher Kimball's `The Cook's Bible'. These two books deal less with science and more with technique, and are typically organized like an encyclopedia. The third class, to which this book belongs, is a collection of individual tips and suggestions from many different sources. The other most recent entry into this category was `Chef's Secrets' collected by Francine Maroukian'. This `Chef's Secrets' was not entirely up to the standard represented by the reputations of the contributors (see my review of this book). `How To Break An Egg' has some of the weaknesses of `Chef's Secrets' in that a few may simply be wrong or at least unnecessary, but the very large number of suggestions and the diligence of the `Fine Cooking' editors has kept the chaff to a minimum. It is also important to note that many of these suggestions come from several culinary heavyweights such as Bruce Aidells, John Ash, Rose Levy Beranbaum, and Shirley Corriher. And, I can see that the suggestions from these authorities are uniformly better than those submitted by `Fine Cooking' readers. Many of the suggestions are probably common knowledge to most amatuer cooks who spend a lot of time reading these authors, `Fine Cooking', `Saveur', and `Cooks Illustrated Magazines', and spend time watching the Food Network, especially Alton Brown's `Good Eats' show. Thus, the book's value drops off if you are an experienced foodie own a sizeable culinary library. On the other hand, the average level of the suggestions is really pretty good. I suspect there may be a fair amount of friendly copying, as I recognize many suggestions from other sources, especially, Alton Brown and the baking Gurus such as Beranbaum and Flo Brakker. The suggestions fall into several different categories. First, there are the amateur techniques to make up for the lack of technique typically gained through practice. Many of the baking tips fall into this category such as the technique for draping a pizza dough over an overturned bowl to spread it out in place of the usual method of stretching it on your knuckles. These are often revealed by caveats saying that `the usual method of doing this only works