15 Best Books to Learn Cooking Techniques for Beginners
Today I will share with you the 15 Best Books to Learn Cooking Techniques for Beginners. Also, I’m just a budding new cook who scrambles all green leafy vegetables with minced garlic and only knocks eggs when cooking soup!
There is no “standard version”, even if the taste is quite satisfactory, is it simple and easy to use and not easy to make bad?
In the case that thousands of recipes can be found on the Internet and various food apps, I also buy recipe books one by one. In the final analysis, it is because of laziness. So in the end I fell into the arms of the original recipe book.
There are a lot of recipes that I have tried in the past two years, both borrowed and bought, but there are not many that stay with me in the end.
In addition to being really practical, each of the leftovers has irreplaceable characteristics for me.
I also made a solicitation with my friends in the editorial department and finally selected the following 15 books, which I highly recommend to everyone.
How can I teach myself to cook?
Cooking refers to the art of eating, the complex and regular process of transforming ingredients into food. It is the processing method and method of processing ingredients to make food more delicious, better looking, and better smelling.
Cooking mainly deals with food processing, such as cutting, slicing, chopping, etc. to make the food shredded and easy to eat, pickling or adding seasonings to make the food more palatable, or heating the food. Heating food usually softens, sterilizes, and makes the food’s nutrients more easily absorbed by the body.
5–60°C is the temperature at which many food bacteria thrive. Chicken, duck, fish, meat, and milk should all be avoided in this temperature range. Refrigeration and freezing don’t kill bacteria, they only slow their growth and allow food to last longer.
With the development of material production and the progress of social life, cooking has become more and more aesthetic in nature, until it has developed into a variety of decorative dishes and a sumptuous and gorgeous feast with both practicality and aesthetics.
Although culinary art is limited by factors such as cooking materials, cooking techniques, and practical functions of food, it has its own artistic characteristics compared with other art types, that is, it integrates painting, sculpture, decoration, gardening, etc., and other art forms.
What books should I read to learn how to cook?
If you want to be successful in learning to cook, it is not enough to have practical exercises in school. We also need to learn to understand more comprehensive knowledge by reading books.
Let’s talk about 15 books that beginners should read.
15 Best Books to Learn Cooking Techniques for Beginners
I have heard people say what a delicious dish is: when you first eat it, it should be a faint taste that makes people indistinguishable, and then feel it with your nose, tongue, and throat, and use your own strength to explore. ‘Delicious’.
I have heard of really delicious things, and even after eating, the wonderful aftertaste will always remain. Not only in cooking, but also in work, life, and relationships, the benefits of aftertaste are worthy of attention.
Don’t be greedy’ Just look at the moment, but keep ‘getting better in mind. I want to be someone who cherishes the aftertaste.
Today, I would like to recommend the 15 best cooking techniques books for beginners to make it easy for you to be a beginner. Food books are all home dishes, light and delicious, let’s eat healthy together.
1. Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat
On October 12, Netflix launched its first documentary about cooking, Salt Fat Acid Heat. Its content direction comes from the book of the same name and is hosted by Samin Nosrat, the author of the book.
Published in April 2017, “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat” was a New York Times bestseller that year and was rated as “a professional guide on how to use accurate techniques to cook good ingredients.”
“Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat” also won the James Beard Award for Best Cookbook, an important award in the culinary world, and one of the awards is often used as a reference for choosing cookbooks.
Author Samin Nosrat is a writer and chef. She lives in Berkeley, USA, and has been a professional chef since 2000.
In “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat”, she simplified her cooking experience over the years, and explained how to cook food in the four simple cooking elements of “salt, fat, acid, and heat”.
Her basic point is that these four basic culinary elements can make or break a dish. Learning to use them not only makes you a good cook, it actually makes you a super good cook.
The same goes for the documentary “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat”. It’s only four episodes in all, and it’s both a cooking documentary and a travel documentary.
Host Samin Nosrat travels to the common man’s kitchen in Italy, the islands of southern Japan, hot Mexico, and the Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, where she works.
Here she reveals her culinary principles, showing how to incorporate these elements into cooking.
Matching Samin Nosrat’s culinary principles, the hosting and shooting style of the documentary “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat” is relatively unpretentious.
Specifically, Samin Nosrat has a lot of real reactions when hosting. Chopping onions was so spicy that you wrinkled your face, eating spaghetti and making noises, and the rice balls that you squeezed may not be in the perfect shape that is usually seen in the camera…
“Washington Post” described that this documentary looks like Samin Nosrat’s life is moving because it’s imperfect.
However, this style is not loved by everyone. After the documentary “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat” was broadcast, some viewers also thought that the host’s style was not pleasing, and the presentation of the video might not be as good as that of the book. In the documentary, the producer’s discussion of various elements was a little bit to the point.
2. The Joy of Cooking by Irma S. Rombauer
The joy of Cooking: 2019 Edition Fully Revised and Updated by Irma S. Rombauer
The Joy of Cooking grows with the times-it has a full roster of American and foreign dishes such as strudel, zabaglione, rijsttafel, and couscous, among many others.
All the classic terms found on menus, such as Provençale, bonne femme, meuniére, and Florentine are not merely defined but fully explained so that readers can easily concoct the dish in their own homes.
In this classic edition readers learn:
- Exactly what simmering, blanching, roasting, and braising does
- In what amounts herbs, spices, and seasonings should be added to recipes
- How to present food correctly
- How to prepare ingredients with classic tools and techniques
- How to safely preserve the results of your canning and freezing
With more than 4,500 recipes and 1,000 easy-to-follow illustrations, The Joy of Cooking is a must for every American kitchen.
This book is known as one of the oldest popular classic cookbooks in modern America. It has a history of nearly eighty years since the first edition in the 1930s and incorporates the cooking wisdom of many famous American chefs from World War II to the present.
A good cookbook not only has a very interesting recipe for the menu, but the most important thing is to tell a story. Stories, whether in the fields of news, novels, design, or drama, are the most fascinating elements. A good recipe book also tells stories. It should tell us about people’s lives and tell us the diet of certain people in a certain period of history.
It is necessary to reveal the opinions of different social classes and tell us that different social classes have different tastes in food, and it is best to show people’s wisdom and prejudice. Interesting eating is a whole process, from the quirks of intellectuals to hedonism for pleasure, from culture to science, and finally good writing.
3. The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science by J. Kenji López-Alt
Probably the best recipe book I’ve ever read. Even if you don’t read a large paragraph of chemical, physical, and thermodynamic principles, you can make delicious food by following the recipe.
But after taking the time to study, you can hopefully get rid of the shackles of recipes and develop your own. There is a big chapter dedicated to fast-cooking food (the first time I saw it in such a high-end book), most of which are done in 10–30 minutes, so there is no reason not to cook by yourself!
There are two regrets about this book for me. One is that the whole book focuses on American Food, but Kenji says on his website ( J. Kenji López-Alt ) that the second book will “incorporate techniques and ingredients from around the world”, so I’m looking forward to it!
The second is that there is nothing related to baking. Kenji said in the foreword that he prefers savory food and is not a baker.
The book teaches how incorporating simple techniques and ingredients from around the world can make your home cooking both more delicious and more efficient. These days in the kitchen we have access to this vast toolset of techniques and tools, so why don’t we use them?
This book aims to answer that question in the most delicious way possible. If the first book was about American food and how to cook these big project dishes, the second book is more about how I cook at home EVERY DAY. Not just when I’m entertaining.”
4. Small Victories by Julia Turshen
This cookbook of more than 400 simple cooking recipes and variations from Julia Turshen, writer, go-to recipe developer, and co-author for best-selling cookbooks such as Gwyneth Paltrow’s It’s All Good, and Dana Cowin’s Mastering My Mistakes in the Kitchen, and author of her cookbooks Now & Again and Feed the Resistance.
The process of truly great home cooking ideas is demystified via more than a hundred lessons called out as “small victories” in the funny, encouraging headnotes; these are lessons learned by Julia through a lifetime of cooking thousands of meals.
This beautifully curated, deeply personal collection emphasizes bold-flavored, honest food for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert. More than 160 mouth-watering photographs from acclaimed photographers Gentl + Hyers provide beautiful instruction and inspiration, and a gingham spine elevates this entertaining and essential kitchen resource into a covetable gift cookbook for both beginners and accomplished home cooks.
- Features high-quality photos of recipes to follow while cooking
- Recipes crafted by the author to be both easy to make and follow
Readers of Feed The Resistance, Damn Delicious, and Sneaky Chef will enjoy the simplicity and deliciousness of all recipes featured in this book.
This collection of recipes makes for an ideal:
- Home Cooking Book
- Healthy Recipes Cookbook
- Technique Cookbook
- Cookbook for Family Recipes
5. The New Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison
The tenth-anniversary edition of this landmark cookbook, with more than 325,000 copies in print, includes a new introduction from Deborah Madison, America’s leading authority on vegetarian cooking.
What Julia Child is to French cooking, Deborah Madison is to vegetarian cooking — a demystifier and definitive guide to the subject. After her many years as a teacher and writer, she realized that there was no comprehensive primer for vegetarian cooking, no single book that taught vegetarians basic cooking techniques, how to combine ingredients, and how to present vegetarian dishes with style.
Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone teaches readers how to build flavor into vegetable dishes, how to develop vegetable stocks, and how to choose, care for, and cook the many vegetables available to cooks today.
Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone is in every way Deborah Madison’s magnum opus, featuring 1,400 recipes suitable for committed vegetarians, vegans (in most cases), and everyone else who loves good food.
For nonvegetarians, the recipes can be served alongside meat, fish, or fowl and incorporated into a truly contemporary style of eating that emphasizes vegetables and fruits for health and well-being.
Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone is the most comprehensive vegetarian cookbook ever published. The recipes, which range from appetizers to desserts, are colorful and imaginative as well as familiar and comforting.
Madison introduces readers to innovative main course salads; warm and cold soups; vegetable braises and cobblers; golden-crusted gratins; Italian favorites like pasta, polenta, pizza, and risotto; savory tarts and galettes; grilled sandwiches and quesadillas; and creative dishes using grains and heirloom beans.
At the heart of the book is the A-to-Z vegetable chapter, which describes the unique personalities of readily available vegetables, the sauces and seasonings that best complement them, and the simplest ways to prepare them.
“Becoming a Cook” teaches cooking basics, from holding a knife to planning a menu, and “Foundations of Flavor” discusses how to use sauces, herbs, spices, oils, and vinegar to add flavor and character to meatless dishes.
In each chapter, the recipes range from those suitable for everyday dining to dishes for special occasions. And through it all, Madison presents a philosophy of cooking that is both practical and inspiring.
Despite its focus on meatless cooking, Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone is not just for vegetarians — it’s for everyone interested in learning how to cook vegetables creatively, healthfully, and passionately.
The recipes are remarkably straightforward, using easy-to-find ingredients in inspiring combinations. Some are simple, others more complex, but all are written with an eye toward the seasonality of produce.
Madison’s joyful and free-spirited approach to cooking will send you into the kitchen with confidence and enthusiasm. Whether you are a kitchen novice or an experienced cook, this wonderful cookbook has something for everyone.
