How to Cook Everything: Simple Recipes for Great Food

this reference book has incredible info and recipes. from that perspective it is a master work. would i buy it again? probably Not. the book is about two inches thick, has nearly 1,000 pages and weighs about six pounds (paperback). the massive size limits its usefulness as it requires kitchen counter space to use since ive never seen a recipe stand that can efficiently handle the books size and weight. this edition just screams for at a minimum a trilogy publishing format, which even in trilogy format would represent 3 volumes of about 300 + pages each. i would even be interested in a five book series. i salute mr bittman though for what is otherwise a wonderfully useful reference work.

it is one of the best books I have. A++++++++++++

Hard not to find a recipe in this cookbook.

PROS: Hard to find (excellent) traditional AND very ethnic recipes are shared with wonderful cooking details. For an oh-too-limited example you can find recipes for making Succotash, white pizza, or basic fruit pies. There's also "Salted Cabbage with Szechwan Peppercorns" (if you're feeling adventurous) or you can make all sorts of party drinks: "REAL" egg nog (with vanilla extract and rum) or a Whiskey Sour or Mint Julep; to name a very few. The book's very organized with a wonderful index, various menu suggestions and picnic plans, measurement conversions, etc. CONS: My only reservations are that it's not a hard-back so it feels less sturdy when it's also so very thick and bulky (seems a burden to lug around a small kitchen). Honestly? I prefer my vintage, lighter, hard-back Betty Crocker book from the 1960s for those reasons. Meanwhile, this easy-to-follow cookbook has a lot of fascinating ideas for cooking in ways that Betty Crocker would never have explored.

This is a wonderful all-around cookbook, much easier to follow than the "Joy of Cooking". Cooking has always been my passion, but my creations were always fairly complex, adventurous dishes ... I never really learned how to make simple, every day meals. This book really helped me out with that! This would be a perfect gift for someone who has recently moved out on their own or for the single guy who needs a break from frozen pizzas! Even if most of the book were useless (which it is not), it would be a worthwhile purchase simply for the section entitled "28 Meals You Can Prepare in the Time it Takes to Boil Pasta" ... the recipes in this section are all simple, require usually less than 5 ingredients and can be prepared in just a few minutes. There are wonderfully detailed explanations in the books about simple, time-saving cooking techniques, as well as the reasons why certain things are prepared the way they are, so that the cook will have a better understanding of what they are doing. I would recommend this cookbook to everyone!

As someone who is learning to cook only late in her life, I was apprehensive and embarrassed about asking simple basic questions of friends and family. Perceiving this, my parents gave me this cookbook, and voila! -- I can cook! With step-by-step instructions on everything from cookware, ingredients, buying, preapring, cooking, and serving, there's nothing this book can't handle. It provides recipes to prepare foods in the simplest ways, all the way up to complex gourmet dishes. And it covers every imaginable food -- if it isn't in here, I can't imagine where you'd find it.The language is straightforward and encouraging, with appropriate editorializing on the author's preferences, and the layout is clean and easy to read. I can't say enough good things about this cookbook -- it never leaves my kitchen counter.(P.S. -- Try the spinach with tons of butter -- it's to die for!)

"How to Cook Everything" is one of the more useful cookbooks I've owned. Each type of food has a "Basics" section that includes lots of preparation tips. The recipes themselves are detailed enough for beginners, and not so esoteric that you have to make a trip to a specialty grocery store every time you want to cook something. Especially helpful are the suggestions for expanding on each dish. For example, after the basic Chicken Kebab recipe, there are four modifications, including Chicken Kebabs in Yogurt-Cumin Sauce. I'm relearning the way I prepare even the most basic things, like sandwiches and scrambled eggs. Who would have thought scrambled eggs could be so good? And the Pan-Grilled steak has weaned me from the backyard grill forever. No other cookbook would warn you that "clouds of smoke will instantly appear; do not turn down the heat." That bit of fear that your fire alarm will go off at any second just adds spice to the whole cooking experience. The breadth of this book is amazing. Besides having nearly every type of Western cooking you can imagine, it also has recipes from Japan, India, Thailand, and... you get the idea. There is one drawback -- this book has no photos, just a few hand-drawn illustrations. However, the book is so big that if it did have photos, it would cost much more.