The best Asian Cooking, Food & Wine books: Reddit reviews

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

If you are looking for more Indian recipes in general, this is the instant pot cookbook we use the most.

It introduced my husband and me to dal, and they have become a staple at our house.

I had a lot of luck with this book. https://www.amazon.com/660-Curries-Raghavan-Iyer/dp/0761137874

Between that and hours of watching grannies on YouTube, I can now make indian food without recipes that tastes pretty legit.

Sorry, meant to post it as a top level comment. It's from the Momofuku cookbook by David Chang and Peter Meehan.

edit: The recipe is actually by Christina Tosi (who used to be Chang's Chef). Here it is, step by step. It's the exact same as in the cookbook, but with more pictures.

The only one I've bought so far is this one from the butter chicken lady. If you like Indian food it's a good buy and some, if not all, of the recipes are on her website if you want to check them out first. I hadn't even attempted Indian food up until the butter chicken. Great recipe even if you skip on the book. At under $10 though, it was a quick purchase for me. Everything we've tried has been good and straightforward to cook.

After trying her butter chicken, her cookbook was pretty much an instant buy on Amazon for around $8. Some other great recipes in there also. They may be all on the website, but I haven't verified.

Buy a copy of the Smuggler's Cove book and go from there.

The only physical cookbook I've picked up so far is the Indian Instant Pot Cookbook by Urvashi Pitre. I've only made a couple of the recipes so far, including this Butter Chicken, which I think is the same one from the book, but they were both great. The Butter Chicken was super easy also and even the kids loved it. Plus at like $8, it's not an expensive book.

If you really want to get into making tiki drinks, you should buy the Smuggler's Cove book to get a good grip on what you're doing. The book also has recipes for most of the common syrups in the back. It is under $20 on Amazon, so it costs about the same as a decent bottle of rum.

Before you go buying a bunch more rums, you need to get a copy of Martin Cate's Smuggler's Cove book. The chapter on the different types of rums alone is worth the price of the book.

https://www.amazon.com/Smugglers-Cove-Exotic-Cocktails-Cult/dp/1607747324

We do different dals almost every week in my house. I would recommend this cookbook if that interests you.

Rum wise, you need something Jamaican. I would recommend Appleton. Smith and Cross can also be fun. Overproof also gets used frequently; Plantation Old Fashioned Traditional Dark (OFTD) is popular.

Personally, I would also consider my copy of Smuggler's Cove: Exotic Cocktails, Rum, and the Cult of Tiki to be essential.

I worked in a very, very good Thai restaurant for a good deal of time, and a chef told me <em>Pok Pok</em> was the best Thai cookbook available in English. Never read it myself, but I had a chance to skim through his copy and it certainly seemed like high-quality, authentic stuff. That said, being authentic, it doesn't shy away from ingredients you'll have trouble finding 10,000 km from Thailand.

I came here to recommend Two Sleevers also! I agree that the butter chicken is one of my favorite instant pot recipes. I was reading about the founder of the site and she has a cookbook of traditional Indian dishes written for the instant pot!

Indian Instant Pot® Cookbook: Traditional Indian Dishes](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1939754542/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_imm_J01NPEK0WAWNT2C61RJE)

I got it from this cookbook! It's got tonnsss of good looking recipes 🤤

Japanese Soul Cooking: Ramen, Tonkatsu, Tempura, and More from the Streets and Kitchens of Tokyo and Beyond [A Cookbook] https://www.amazon.com/dp/1607743523/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_8whHFb39JN366

My wife bought me a copy of <em>Smuggler's Cove: Exotic Cocktails, Rum, and the Cult of Tiki</em> when coronavirus started. We’ve really enjoyed making tiki drinks. If you have visited r/tiki yet I recommend it!

A few ideas:

This is the best Indian Cookbook, I've literally never had anything fail: https://www.amazon.com/660-Curries-Raghavan-Iyer/dp/0761137874

- Try adding miso or stock to curries, even lentil based ones. It creates a lot of extra depth of flavour.

- For chicken, cook the chicken pieces bone in, then take them out of the sauce, cut the pieces off of the chicken while the sauce is reducing and then add them back.

- Spices have a shelf life, so if try to replace the old ones once they don't smell fantastic.

https://www.amazon.com/Indian-Instant-Pot%C2%AE-Cookbook-Traditional/dp/1939754542 and there's a good few recipe books that are specifically for the IP! Apparently their butter chicken is incredible.

Ivan Ramen is a good place to start. Japanese Soul Cooking has some good recipes as well.

Smuggler's Cove: Exotic Cocktails, Rum, and the Cult of Tiki is pretty much our bible. https://www.amazon.com/Smugglers-Cove-Exotic-Cocktails-Cult/dp/1607747324

Also get the Total Tiki app, which will give you tons of recipes and show you what you can make with what you have on hand. https://beachbumberry.com/publications.html

With those two you'll pretty much have everything you need.

Japanese Cooking 101 has lots of easy to follow videos if you're looking for recipes.

The all time classic cookbook/introduction to Japanese cuisine is Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art. It's well worth a read.

“Wok” by Kenji Lopez Alt is very good and has lots of info and recipes Amazon Book Link

I'll actually say that you might want to spend a little on picking up a good book about tiki, like Smuggler's Cove: Exotic Cocktails, Rum, and the Cult of Tiki. It's worth it for the recipes alone, but the chapter on rums is pure gold. You'll learn that "light" and "dark" don't really mean anything.

Other's here have recommended Cocktail Wonk's blog, and that's a good place to learn, as well.

Honestly I don't make a ton of "foreign" stuff, but I bought a premade bulgogi sauce I use fairly often. I did pick up a book called Japanese Soul Cooking.

Can you tell the difference between the taste of Rice Bran and Vegetable (Rapeseed) Oil?

I've been following a fantastic Wok cookbook a couple of times a week and I've learnt so much from it, one of the major things I haven't tried yet is he says to cook stir fries with Rice Bran or Peanut oil but they're really expensive, like 5x the price of bog standard veg oil at my local supermarket.

You're actually on the right track. Too many people jump into tiki and buy hundreds of dollars worth of ingredients that end up gathering dust. Go slow, and add as you need, and as you find a new drink you want to try making.

I'll echo that a good book like "Smuggler's Cove: Exotic Cocktails, Rum, and the Cult of Tiki", $16 on Amazon, will give you recipes, rum tips, and some cool fun history. But if you can get to a tiki bar to taste a few basic drinks (I agree with Mai Tai, Painkiller, Daiquiri), that will help you know what it's supposed to taste like. Let us know where you are and we can recommend the best nearby tiki bar.

When syrups go bad, they usually grow mold. It won't make you sick, but it'll taste yucky. You'll be able to tell because the syrup will get cloudy or have things floating in it or smell like vinegar. If you keep your syrups in the fridge, you can definitely keep them more than 2-3 months. I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I have a bottle of Liber & Co. orgeat that I opened Sept. 26th. Still good because I take it out, use it, and immediately put it back in. (Pro tip: write the date you open it on the bottle.) If you're making your own, sanitizing the container will make the biggest difference. (Boil for 5 minutes.) Your Monin syrup is likely still good, but it may be getting "tired" and losing flavor. I too recommend Liber & Co. for syrups. (https://www.liberandcompany.com/) Join their "Cocktail Club" and sign up for their newsletter and you'll get coupons and discounts. You can also find a lot of syrups on Amazon, but I find they tend to be cheaper direct from the companies.

Welcome to the fun! Enjoy!

The book "The Wok" by Kenji Lopez-Alt is great for learning some recipes, ingredients to keep on hand, and some wok/frying pan technique. It's a big book, and it's an incredible resource. I checked it out from the library and loved it so much that I bought a copy.

The Kung Pao Chicken recipe at the beginning of the book was a game changer for me.

https://www.amazon.com/Wok-Techniques-J-Kenji-L%C3%B3pez-Alt/dp/0393541215

www.thewoksoflife.com

Chinese Cooking Demystified (YouTube)

The Wok: Recipes and Techniques by J. Kenji López-Alt (Amazon)

Well if you do like Indian food, I have her Indian food Instant Pot cookbook and it's great.

https://smile.amazon.com/Indian-Instant-Pot%C2%AE-Cookbook-Traditional/dp/1939754542

As for a Keto one, I have this one:

https://smile.amazon.com/Keto-Instant-Pot-Cookbook-Ketogenic/dp/1641520434

All the recipes I've tried have been quite good. You really can't go wrong with any of them by her I would assume.

This may seem like out left field, but everyone I see Smuggler's Cove I think of this book. Check it out if you wanna learn how to make good tiki cocktails.

If you haven't done tomato & eggs yet, I'd heartily recommend giving that one a try. Stupidly easy to make, but very tasty.
In general, this book is a good resource for both technique and recipes, well worth picking up:
https://www.amazon.com/Wok-Techniques-J-Kenji-López-Alt/dp/0393541215