How To Cook Everything: Simple Recipes for Great Food

Great book - have it myself and gave it away as a present several times. Good book to consult. I like to 'experiment' so the recipes are a jumping off point, so to speak. Great in and of themselves. Between this and the internet, I have enough reference material to 'wing it' on any dish.

I just started to cook, and am often daunted by the enormity of the task. I love to master that meals I make, crushing out a mean grilled cheese, but sauteeing flounder, or making artichoke seemed out of my league. I found that this book provides a good base of knowledge written in a simple and straightforward manner, allowing me to meander down new avenues of culinary delight. Terms and sub-ingredients are succinctly explained for answering all those questions that invariably arise, and most recipes come with delicious alternatives to help add variety to the palette as a new notch is carved into my culinary board of knowledge. I think it probably holds it own as a cookbook, since everything I have made is pretty delicious, but its strength really lies in the wider tutelage on cooking lying within.

This is my "go-to cookbook" for EVERYTHING! I actually purchased this copy for a friend for her bridal shower...we were supposed to submit our 2 favorite recipes but instead I gave her my favorite cookbook! You are not going to find anything overly fancy here...this just has your basic recipes for as the title says cooking everything! I highly reccommend this book!

Think of a food you want to make, but don't know where to start, like say, hummus. Look in the appendix -- there it is! Then try the recipe. Yay! Don't know what to do with those parsnip things? Look up parsnips in the appendix -- there it is! You get the idea. The sections in the appendix that list meal suggestions broken down by type and time are really useful. Throw those awful "30 minute nightmare" books away.

Other reviewers have correctly pointed out that the recipes are not always mind-blowing, in fact, they are not necessarily even "best-of-breed".

But Bittman delivers what his title promises: "Simple Recipes for Great Food"

The instructions are easy to follow, the ingredients are easy to get and the food tastes like, well, what it's supposed to. If you didn't like parsnips before you tried his recipe, you probably still won't like them. But if you like Yorkshire Pudding, you will enjoy his simple recipe.

If you are already a pretty good cook, you will adapt his recipes to your tastes -- and most are easily adapted. In fact, with several recipes, he gives simple variations on the recipe to give your creativity a jumpstart. My personal copy looks horrible. The binding has split in a few places, there are notes of changes I've made scribbled in the margins and there are splatter stains on several pages.

Please note that this book is NOT for everyone. There isn't much going on in the visual aid department here, though I've read that the CD-ROM has some helpful stuff on it. (I bought mine before there was a CD-ROM version.) And if you actually like those "30 minute nightmare" recipes, you might not like these. Finally, if you are heavy seasoning inclined (like me, having grown up in Cajun Country), you will probably want to taste and then add "mo' love" to some of the dishes.

I really wanted to like this book, and I guess I do find it useful from an idea standpoint, but the truth is the food doesn't taste good. We've prepared between 10 to 15 recipes from this book and all of them disappointed. Contrast this with the less exciting but always tasty Joy of Cooking, and Joy wins every time. I wanted a sort of workhorse cookbook for everyday and I quickly realized this was not it. It went from lying open on the kitchen counter, to the bottom book on the kitchen cookbook stack (when I would thumb through it to get an idea for a dish) to being returned to the bookshelf and I'm afraid that's where it's going to stay. We had such high hopes, but thankfully, there's always our Joy of Cooking...