The best Regional & International Cooking & Wine books: Reddit reviews

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

Harold McGee's book "On Food and Cooking", has great explanations of the science behind foods and cooking techniques.

https://www.amazon.com/Food-Cooking-Science-Lore-Kitchen/dp/0684800012/ref=sr_1_2

Apologies to anyone genuinely bamboozled. And if you are not already aware of the fantastic <em>Salt Fat Acid Heat</em> (which preceded the Netflix series of the same name), you should really give it a look.

If you're looking for pairing suggestions/ideas, the flavor bible is a great resource for pairing flavors. It can provide great suggestions for flavors to pair with your protein and even great flavors to enhance your current sides.

On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee is highly regarded as a comprehensive background for history, and science of food. It does not have any recipes though.

How to Cook Anything replaced Joy of Cooking as my favorite general cooking reference.

Need to know how long to steam a artichoke, or the ratio of stock to rice in risotto, or what to do with that random ingredient you bought at the store. It's got all the basics covered.

Great book. There's a reason Salt is the first word of the books title. It is the most critical ingredient when it comes to flavor.

Edit: non-affiliate link for the book on amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Salt-Fat-Acid-Heat-Mastering/dp/1476753830

The Flavor Bible. Its my favorite cookbook that oddly has no recipes in it.

Its a giant cross reference chart of what ingredients pair with what according to 40 chefs. You can look up eggs for example, and they list everything that goes good with it... meats, veg, fruits, herbs and seasonings, etc. with the best ones highlighted.

On top of all that theres musings from the consulting chefs on how they like to use ingredients in sidebars near the entries. Famous dishes that made good use of the item in question (but no recipes). And other little tips like when certain ones are in season, if they have a strong or subtle flavor that might overpower, or be overpowered by, others. And more.

$90 is a hard sell when he's got so much free content on youtube and an authoritative $20 book.

I have both these books plus The Flavor Bible: The Essential Guide to Culinary Creativity, Based on the Wisdom of America's Most Imaginative Chefs https://www.amazon.com/dp/0316118400/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_atIyAbZ73DT45

I can say I open the food lab for just about every meal. Well worth the money!

Sorry for not making that a link. I'm on the app and can't figure out how to change the displayed text of the link.

The Flavor Bible gets thrown around a lot, but for good reason. It's a great resource when trying to formulate your own recipe. It focuses on things like which foods have affinities for other foods, seasonality, and sensations different foods have. It's a great thing to page through when you have whatever the equivalent of writer's block is for cooks.

here's where I break out my copy of The Flavor Bible:

SWEET POTATO Flavor Affinities

1) allspice + Cinnamon + Ginger

2) apples + sage

3) bacon + onions + rosemary

4) chile peppers + lemon zest

5) chorizo sausage + orange

6) cilantro + lime juice

7) kale + prosciutto

8) maple syrup + pecans

yes I know the first 2 don't really fit with what you may traditionally think of when you think of soup. But #3, #4 and #7 sound really good.

Go buy this book. Don't steal it, pay money for it. It's one of the few things you'll buy that's worth every damn penny. Read it cover to cover. Go practice. This is the BBQ bible.

https://www.amazon.com/Franklin-Barbecue-Meat-Smoking-Manifesto-Aaron/dp/1607747200

This is Texas and good BBQ has gotten me Money, Liquor, and Women. This is a religion.

The Flavor Bible isn't really what you're asking for, but it might be useful. https://www.amazon.com/Flavor-Bible-Essential-Creativity-Imaginative/dp/0316118400/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1520779413&amp;sr=8-2&amp;keywords=the+flavor+bible

The best thing I can recommend is to pick up a copy of the book &quot;The Joy Of Cooking&quot; This book has recipes for everything you could ever want.to cook, but more importantly it teaches you the why's of how cooking works. A lot pf recipes just tell you 'Knead the dough and let it rise', but Joy goes into detail. It is a foundational work and should be on ever6 cook's shelf at least as a reference.

Here are a couple of things that helped me:

Binging with Babish Cooking Equipment- This will give you an idea of the right tools that will help. If you can only afford one of these, get a knife. You can get like a $30 knife on Amazon here. I use this one and it's great. You don't have to spend $150. Some of these tools will be unnecessary for a beginner, but you'll start to get an idea of some of the most helpful tools.

How to Cook Everything: The Basics- I recently bought this book because I wanted to learn some of the easy things (how to cut a chicken, how to make the best eggs, etc). This book is GREAT - it assumes you know nothing. It has pictures of what the recipe should look like during prep, during cooking, and when finished and that is SO helpful. I've made probably 25% of the recipes in it (that's a lot in one book, for me). Read through the summary sections (he also includes a more thorough - and probably more realistic - equipment list) before you start to cook, and it'll give you a great ground level to start on.

It sounds like you're on the right track regardless. Hope these recs help.

If you really want to learn the ins and outs of taking recipes to the next level, I strongly recommend the book Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking by Samin Nosrat. I've been a pretty serious home cook for about fifteen years, but this book has really opened my eyes to how easy it can be to get amazing, flavorful results with some fairly basic techniques.

Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. It kind of gets into the chemistry behind cooking. I got it for my wife and her cooking skills jumped up significantly after reading it.

The difference between what you typically find in the US and what you had here is the actual fermentation process. The original sauerkraut gets the taste from the fermentation process, as is written in the excellent recipe by u/FatBoy_87. I would advise you to follow this recipe and yes, it will take a week to develop true flavor.

Btw: loads of other veggies greatly ferment. Fermentation is kind of fashionable these days, Noma f.e. is very famous for its use of fermented product. If you are interested in this, this is an excellent book:

https://www.amazon.com/Noma-Guide-Fermentation-lacto-ferments-Foundations/dp/1579657184

Your best bet would be to learn about fermentation like what they do at Noma

The Noma Guide to Fermentation: Including koji, kombuchas, shoyus, misos, vinegars, garums, lacto-ferments, and black fruits and vegetables (Foundations of Flavor) https://www.amazon.com/dp/1579657184/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glc_fabc_ClwaGb87BRH4Z

The Flavor Bible: The Essential Guide to Culinary Creativity, Based on the Wisdom of America's Most Imaginative Chefs $23 hardcover on amazon brotha 👌

The Flavour Bible or The Flavour Thesaurus

pick one of your favorite dishes, and learn to recreate it.

or if you don’t want to go through that much trial and error, check out books like salt fat acid heat for basics.

classic cook book is "How to cook everything: the basics". I believe the first recipe is how to boil water (for later how to boil an egg). It grows in complexity to recipes such as pizza. It details what tools you need and how to wash vegetables

https://www.amazon.com/How-Cook-Everything-Basics-Food/dp/0470528060

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YouTube is your friend. Most cookbooks don't have enough pictures whereas, in the video, you can see all the in-between information (ie just how vigorously do you stir it) that the new cook will not know but is easily filled in by veteran cooks.

It's both. He's got some information on kitchen tools, technique, herbs, sauces, then recipes with tips sprinkled throughout. It doesn't have any pictures of finished food though, since he's shoved 2000 recipes into the book. There are illustrations on techniques though.

Amazon has a preview with a good sampling of what's in the book.

For centrist, more like this book

Get great grilling/smoking cook books, not necessarily kamado specific. You can figure that out with help from Reddit!

My favorites are:

"Meathead, the Science of Great Barbecue and Grilling" by Meathead Goldwyn. It explains the science behind grilling and will help you understand the best way to use the kamado.

"How to Grill Everything" by Mark Bittman. This is packed with recipes for all types of foods, including veggies. One of the best things about it is that it gives you lots of flavor variations so you can try different things with the same foods.

I started by going through the Bread Bakers Apprentice. I don't really use any of the recipes in there anymore but it gave me a good starting point and it's still a good reference for terminology and methods. Like, it got me really into ciabatta bread from that book. I'm still tweaking my recipe to perfect it.

Starter is a whole different beast. I've used the method found in this youtube series to make mine. He's got a series on sourdough bread, but that channel's non-bread content is pretty fantastic as well.

If you don't have one, I'd highly recommend a kitchen scale. Recipes using grams is so much easier/better than using volume. Also, don't buy those little packets of yeast at the grocery store if you're planning on making bread more than twice a year. You can find two pound bags of dry active yeast on amazon for ~$10.

In the meantime, check out "The Flavor Bible." It's a few bucks on Amazon but it's well worth the price. It shows you which spices/herbs work great with different types of food.

Aaron Franklin has a book with the recipe in it. It is a great book that talks about the science and methods of smoking. It’s also less than $20

Franklin Barbecue: A Meat-Smoking Manifesto [A Cookbook] https://www.amazon.com/dp/1607747200/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_fab_ffpBFb623K589

Alright, thanks for that.

I’ve been very happy with Meathead’s burger technique… maybe I can use a panade with meatballs…?

I’ve been frying my meatballs, which gives a pleasing crispy exterior and juicy interior but which is a lot of work. Easy to either make it greasy or burn them if you’re not paying attention, too.