Any cookbook recommendations?

[Medusa]

Just like clamps, you can never have enough cookbooks. I have the full on-line subscription to Cooks Illustrated, ATK, blah,blah for about $79. Also mag subscription to Food Network (mainly for #1). Have the Cooks Meat Book and The Science of Good Cooking. We actually have an entire book case for cookbooks accumulated over 25 years. Red Hat Society is also pretty good.

I like the Cooks Meat Book as it explains the different meat cuts and provides various recipes for each. Sometimes CI can add extra work, but most of the time it's well worth it.

I also get bombarded with email from Epicurious and Bon Appetite. Learned how to make the best hash browns from BA.

AR changed the way I cook, and 2 years ago I was clueless as to what to do with Charcoal. For those who have Weber's Big Book or Real Grilling, see if you can find the story of "Innocent Ed" under the chicken section.

Personally, I like to balance between indoor and outdoor cooking, so many recipes that I use outside of AR are for indoor. Search this site for Mahogany Chicken as this is a CI indoor recipe. Sauce is good enough to drink straight-up!

Just to be fair, sometimes CI is a little too much BS'y and into themselves.

Check out the burg section at SeriousEats.com. Made the best Pattie Melts.

-- Ed

[Willy]

"Just like clamps". Amen to that!

[Obi-Dan]

In general I tend to gravitate to books that teach more technique than just recipes. The Way to Cook by Julia Child was the first cookbook that I fell in love with. I also like Tom Colicchio's Think Like a Chef as well as Weber's Way to Grill for these reasons.

[Matt L]

I read entirely too many cookbooks. I had a job in the library during culinary school, so I spent much of it doing as much research as humanly possible. Now I just spend too much on them.

A lot of great information on basic technique to be had in Jacques Pepin books, those are pretty informative and give you lots of great basics. James Peterson books are similarly good at this kind of thing--Sauces is not to be missed and belongs in everyone's kitchen.

For good ways to evolve technique, I like Gramercy Tavern, Heirloom by Sean Brock, The French Laundry, and Eleven Madison Park.

For some cool theory and use of ancient cooking/fermentation methods, I sat down and read Faviken in like a day. Its amazingly informative.

If you have any interest in Southern, Edna Lewis's The Taste of Country Cooking is a really awesome cookbook/autobio on old school southern culture and cooking. One of my favorite reads, cookbook or otherwise.

The Mallman books mentioned previously are sick. If you like modernist cooking techniques, I've enjoyed reading Under Pressure (Thomas Keller), Volt Inc, and a few others. For ridiculously, over the top pretty stuff Pierre Gagniare is amazing.

Do you have any particular interests that you would like some cookbooks to learn more about?

[JCBBQ]

Matt! Thanks for that response. I'll definitely get Sauces. Never heard of it and I need it! And Mallman too. Right now I'm focused on learning how to use my Primo grill that I got in January. I guess I'm on a bit of an Asian kick ATM, so if you've got any Asian specific recommendations, I'm all ears. Did you ever cook from Sean Brock's Heirloom? I'm also interested in southern cooking but the recipes seemed a little fussy when I was leafing through it at the store. I'll check out Edna Lewis. Again, thanks for your post.

[Matt L]

Brock gives a lot of great info and most of the recipes are not too fussy, though they may challenge you to a technique you've never tried before. Ultimately its a great tool for learning to improve techniques. Some of it uses sous vide, a lot of it deals with more basic stuff but its a really good one. If you haven't already, check out Anson Mills for all your grain purchases from the cookbook because it makes a HUGE difference to have the right heirloom ingredients.

For Asian, some classic tomes include Shizou Tsuji's Japanese Cooking (its my fav 101 japanese and has great essays) and Breath of a Wok by Grace Young for Chinese. Chang is good for his simple stuff and straightforward/familiar approach.

My ultimate recommendation for asian (especially SE Asian because its the easiest to learn and will also teach you a lot about how chinese/japanese approaches can function) is to learn to use a few specific ingredients well. Fish Sauce (buy Red Boat if possible) is indispensable to me, and once you learn to use it, you will open up a whole new world of seasoning. For most southeast asian, its all about learning to use fish sauce in place of some/most/all of your salt, adding acid through limes, and sweetening with Palm Sugar. Then its just a matter of developing your cooking to have richness (coconut milk or stock), herbaceous notes (cilantro, culantro, kafir lime, etc), soy sauce (alongside fish sauce if even needed), and acidity (lime juice, rice vinegars). Once you get the hang of it, its super easy. Just experiment to get a feel and you'll have it in no time.

Side note: fish sauce works in EVERYTHING, especially French and Italian approaches. I put it in pretty much every soup/sauce I make for myself because its such an awesome way to drop some umami bombs into the equation. Learning to season with a little fish sauce and a touch of vinegar or lemon juice at the end will take anyone's cooking to the next level.

[Spinaker]

Amazingribs.com>Recipes all you'll ever need.

[Meathead]

Some of my favorite recipes http://amazingribs.com/BBQ_buyers_gu...ooks_mags.html

[JCBBQ]

Wow! This site is incredible. I keep getting shown more and more information. Thanks for all the responses. I ordered 3 cookbooks today! I would've ordered 6 but I didn't think that was going to fly with the boss. I'll wait a few months before hitting up her amazon prime again.

[Breadhead]

Hmmm... Books, hard copies. I have the best of the best! The Modernist Cuisine set.

However... I really think I gain more knowledge in the Pit, at Stella Culinary.com, at ChefSteps.com and at AllRecipes.com than anywhere else.

I'm going to buy Meathead's book but I'm not a big fan of cookbooks because those authors, like Meathead, and every famous bread baker I know of have the vast majority of the content in their books, online.😉

I'm just sayin...👍

[Medusa]

Yeah, I tend to agree about on-line info. I know there are books in our bookcase that I haven't cracked open in years, many of which I've forgotten that we own. Most of my computer data is recipes that I've downloaded and linked into a massive spreadsheet.

AR and a few other sites are plenty!

-- Ed

[Matt L]

Keep the SOs happy, order from abebooks.com Its a second hand online book sales site, I have gotten some amazing deals through there.