How to Cook Everything: Simple Recipes for Great Food (How to Cook Everything Series, 1)

For those just getting started in learning how to cook with basicfoods instead of processed foods, I highly recommend "How To CookEverything" by Mark Bittman. Many recipes and cookbooks out there call for such "convenience" items as canned soups or pre-processed foods. Bittman's recipes, on the other hand, draw on the idea of a basic "pantry" of plain, pure foods, supplemented by fresh vegetables and fruits in season. Many of his recipes combine vegetables that come in season at the same time, and so are appropriate for those living off a garden. In addition, he gives step-by-step instructions, aimed at the inexperienced cook, on how to cook, well, everything-- soup, bread, beans, grains, vegetables, meats, seafood, fruits, cakes, etc... (Except armadillos, as my father keenly pointed out. There are no recipes for armadillos.) Detailed illustrations finally made it clear to me exactly how to chop up a whole chicken. There is even a frank discussion about beans and gas.Bittman draws on the home cooking traditions of almost every world ethnicity. Tangy Middle Eastern recipes sit right next to spicy Thai ones and savory French ones. There is a whole chapter on pasta. You will never serve it with canned spaghetti sauce again, once you have tried his quick and easy recipes. Every dish has fresh bright flavor, with very little work. He has definitely earned his nickname, "The Minimalist."Cooking with this book has opened up a whole new world for me. It is helping my family transition from processed foods to pure foods. I now make a lot of foods I would have bought processed, such as chicken broth. My chicken broth in particular has proved extremely useful. I freeze it into broth cubes which I put in my kids' soup to cool it. I also give it to a friend of mine who is often sick and who is allergic to soybeans. (You'd be surprised how many processed foods have soybeans in them, even bread crumbs! Read the labels.)

I am not a cookbook connoisseur, I own about three of them and checked-out a number from the library, so I am not giving the perspective of an expert but a weekend cook (I cook for my family on weekends and a few times during the week to give my wife a break). Speaking from this limited viewpoint I will say this the best cookbook I've ever seen and the only one I've read completely through. I've used probably 50-60 recipes and, according to my wife and kids, 90% of them were "do-agains"One of the best marks of a cook book in my mind is it gives you the desire to try not only new recipes but also new types of food. This is something Mr. Bittman has encouraged me to do. I do not know how many times my children have come in while I was cooking a meal from this book and asked what I was making. Upon telling them what it was they curled their lips and asked if there was going to be anything else. Their culinary tentativeness ended with their first bite, and the began to ask if I would make it again.My children also love this book. My son (9 years old) will read and a number of times I've come home and found it on my desk open to a specific recipe that my son wanted me to make.I also like the procedures shown with simply pencil drawn diagrams - everything from dividing a chicken to preparing an artichoke.Mr. Bittman is great and I love his book.That's my 2 cents.

I haven't done a lot of cooking in my life, and only recently I started cooking regularly for family. How to Cook Everything has been the only cookbook I've used in eons. Therefore, I don't have a good basis for comparison to other cookbooks. I can, however, compare the food I cook to what I eat and enjoy in restaurants. I've made about 40-50 recipes from this book.Some advantages of the book:- It assumes you know virtually nothing about cooking. There are sections on how to mince garlic, dice an onion, core a bell pepper... For me, and for many others, it's great. Experienced chefs can easily skip these parts.- It's huge. It has an example of just about every (Western) food you might want to cook. Certainly, one could go much further in each area by buying specialty cookbooks.- The philosophy of the book is ideal for home cooking. Pick good ingredients, add minimal flavorings, cook, and serve. Most of the recipes are fairly quick.Disadvantages:- The prep time of many recipes seems significantly underestimated, and often needs to be doubled. Maybe the time printed in the book is amount of time Bittman takes, but as more of a beginning chef, I can't fathom it.- Ingredients can be a pain to find, and what Bittman says is easily available in supermarkets often doesn't seem to be available anywhere around Harrisburg, PA (not exactly an out-of-the-way place), without checking dozens of specialty markets. What this and the previous statement mean is that cooking these recipes becomes significantly less easy to do after work.- My biggest problem is that the results, while generally good for home cooking, have been a bit hit-or-miss. I enjoy good restaurant food, and I'd like to think that I could cook the same quality food at home. Bittman's best recipes are excellent, food that I would praise in a restaurant, and it's a treat to find one of them. His worst recipes are purely average, or even a bit below.What I've surmised so far, although I've only cooked a small percentage of the book's recipes, is that Bittman is at his worst with foods that need a lot of added flavor or spice. I've noticed this in his Italian, Chinese, and Thai recipes - all of them seem to be clearly missing some crucial element of flavor. If I were more experienced as a cook, I'm sure I could identify what it was, but I'm not.Generally I think this is more a problem with quality control and scope than anything else - with 700 recipes, it's hard for Bittman to wholeheartedly recommend and repeatedly test all of them. I still have no problem recommending this book to everyone as a base cookbook, with the caveats above.

Have been using this cook book for about 18 years. Of course we have other great cook books, but this is the used the most and you can tell by the well worn pages and sauce splashes all over it.

Excellent book. It has proven to be a great reference for all things cooking. The recipes I have tried have all been great but it is also an excellent reference. It has replaced many of previous internet searches for suggestions and tips.

I love it, a brilliant book that EVERYONE should have, gives brilliant insight into different cooking techniques and allows you to learn as well as cook some delicious recipes

The one cookbook no one should go without. Simply written, Bittman compels you to cook and cook well. Just when you thought you knew how to roast a chicken... Brace yourself for some enjoyable cooking and eating.

Love this book the only downer is it has no pictures, but recipes are simple and easy to follow. Highly recommend!

Fantastic book for my son who will be off to college soon. He will be using this for years to come.