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My girlfriend is a pescatarian (who doesn't even eat all seafood) and I am a picky eater with a distaste for a lot of greens. A recipe we both like without substitutions is a rare beast. That's why by far the best cookbook/cooking information for me has been the Culinary Institute of America textbook The Professional Chef. It's not built around recipes at all. The chapters are built around techniques and skills, and recipes are like the homework problems at the end of the chapter/book. Reading through it and learning about technique has allowed us to successfully improvise with the ingredients we do like much more so than trying to substitute liberally in others' precise recipes.
The Professional Chef. Tons of recipes, no fluff. Definitely more textbook than cookbook though.
Also, an Amazon reviewer of the book said this
>The biggest inconvenience is that the quantities are referenced by weight so it might say 2oz of sugar and I have no idea how much that is.
Which is just funny to me. The book has measurements in both imperial and metric for each recipe.
https://www.amazon.com/Professional-Chef-Culinary-Institute-America/dp/0470421355/
This is the primary instructional book for the Culinary Institute of America.
It's big and seems a bit daunting, but if you attempt it page by page, it will explain exactly (and in perfect detail) all of the basics.
Took me about 2 years to make my way through it, but now I actually have skills and can make things "on my own" without needing detailed recipes.
Edit:
> How to cook everything from the best culinary school in America. This is The Mothership for recipes and basic culinary techniques. Anyone and everyone serious about food and cooking should have one in their kitchen.
--Anthony Bourdain
If you like learning from books I would highly recommend buying a used copy of a Professional Cooking book that Culinary colleges use.
New ones cost about $50-75 but older editions with 98% of the same content can get found for $20 and can be used as a culinary bible.
The Culinary Institute of America has a series of very comprehensive, if expensive, books. I recommend The Professional Chef as a starting point.
Something I always see neglected here is COOKING SKILLS. There's a reason chuck wagons had a Cooky whose sole job was to fill everyone's bellies and make sure the coffee was hot. I'm not saying become a chef but everyone needs to purchase a cookbook that teaches practical skills. If you can find an original Fanny Farmer this book is the best for cottage cooking skills. From slaughter to roast beast the book will in great detail teach you. Otherwise just find something that teaches some basic kitchen skills not a recipe book. My recommendation is the Professional Chef it's a bit expensive but barring how to slaughter everything you need to know how to cook good is in there.
So, this might not be exactly what you are looking for but The Professional Chef from the Culinary Institute of America is what came to mind.
It's literally the textbook they use in their core cooking classes.
It's not quite broken down they way you requested though. The first 235 pages contain no recipes and just goes into great detail about how a professional kitchen works, the equipment you may use, and all the ingredients you may need to know about (they go over every cut of beef, talk about different spices/mixes, etc).
Once you get past that they start with stocks, they discuss the theory and types and give you the basic formula for how to make a stock. Then they provide several recipes for stock that use the techniques and theory they just went over.
Then they move on to soup, again going over types of soup, theory, etc and then recipes but if they ever use a stock in a soup (which they pretty much always do) they provide the page number for that recipe.
The problem with the book is it's not practical for a home cook to "follow" it. Most home cooks are looking for meals, not dishes. Since this book is sectioned by category you are not going to get a full meal when you follow it but you will learn all the theory.
Someone else mentioned the America's Test Kitchen Cooking School Cookbook which is very similar but aimed at a home cook. It has the same issue though, you are going to learn about eggs, not breakfast, you are going to learn about turkey, not thanksgiving dinner.
By the end you will know how to roast, braise, blanch, poach, bake, fry, etc and be able to compose a meal but you need to know how to jump around the books to learn those skills as you need them.
How does an accountant learn to account? They go to college.
You can do the same for cooking, without actually going to school.
Buy this: https://www.amazon.com/Professional-Chef-Culinary-Institute-America/dp/0470421355/
Then cook your way through it. It took me about 2 years +/-.
When you're done, you'll be very equipped to start branching out and really making your own dishes because you'll have a solid foundation.
Watching old episodes of good eats are also great. Lots of science explained.
Here is the book I was talking about, it looks like maybe they changed the name for the newest editions, it was recommended to me by an old chef to fill in all the gaps I had from different on the job trainings; I have no culinary education myself besides what I grew up with or what I’ve picked up in restaurants over the last decade or so
The Culinary Institute of America's textbook is the best basic reference guide for french technique. It'll outline all the skills you need to cook anything you want.
Great news! I was you 20 years ago and I did exactly what you are thinking about.
Let me start with a question.... how do people that want to learn something in the best way possible usually do that?
They go to college.
But what do they do at college?
They read a textbook.
And what’s one of the best culinary programs out there?
The C. I. A.
So...... get yourself a copy of “the professional chef”. 1232 pages of everything you need to know! Then set a schedule each week to complete a few recipes / techniques. Don’t skip anything. Understand the food safety sections. Memorize and always practice your knife skills.
When you’re done, you will have a substantial amount of skill that you can then apply to truly making “your own food”.
For reference, I stayed steady on my study and it took about 2 years to make it through.
https://www.amazon.com/Professional-Chef-Culinary-Institute-America/dp/0470421355
And I’m always happy if you need to dm for questions as you go along the book. (As well as here as well, of course)
The professional chef is one of my favorite books in spite of not being a pro chef, it is the text book from the CIA
In terms of bang for your buck, this is the best one out there. Not only does it have every recipe you could want, it also covers the why and how of every basic step. Published by the Culinary Institute of America (the best culinary school in the world.) https://www.amazon.com/Professional-Chef-Culinary-Institute-America/dp/0470421355
So a few off the top of my head:
The Professional Chef. Geared towards professional chefs but a great resource.
On Food and Cooking. A classic. Not really a 'cookbook' per se but rather a book that discusses history and food science.
The now out-of-print Williams and Sonoma Mastering Series. Specifically, their book on sauces - the others are solid but not quite as good. Those books were how I personally learned to cook. (still can find used)
The Flavor Bible. Obligatory. Eventually you grow out of it a bit, but it's still a great resource to have around.
Flour Water Salt Yeast. I just got this book recently this last Christmas, and I've been enjoying it quite a bit.
There are very few progressive learning tools online for cooking. Most are one off units that go thru things like bread or pasta or worse 'week night meals!' etc. Better off with books and then seek out specifics when you have questions. The best videos tend to be Jacques Pépin's old PBS shows.
The Professional Chef by CIA.
New Complete Techniques by Jacques Pépin.
On Food & Cooking by Harold McGee for the underlying science.
Well, on the extreme side, "The Professional Chef" textbook I believe is the one used by the culinary institute of America. I picked one up off Amazon for $36 just for the hell of it. It's really interesting and reads more like an academic text than a cook book. It can be quite intense though.
A much more popular choice and a much easier read would be "The Food Lab" by Kenji Lopez-Alt who is a writer for serious eats. The book has plenty of recipes but does an unbelievably amazing job explaining the science and reasoning behind the choices that are made as well as various "experiments" that kanji does to answer cooking questions. It definitely teaches technique and really helps put you in the right "mindset" for cooking without a recipe.
Here are links to both.
https://www.amazon.com/Professional-Chef-Culinary-Institute-America/dp/0470421355
https://www.amazon.com/Food-Lab-Cooking-Through-Science/dp/0393081087
The Noma book is as much of a cook book as the CIA cook book which is to say that neither are "cook books" in the same sense as say the americas test kitchen or betty crocker cook books.
The Noma book is really about fermentation theory in that it teaches you about what fermentation is, the mechanisms behind the different types and the history of fermentation as a food preservation method.
If you are looking mostly for how to and recipes it is not the right book. If you want to do a deep dive into fermentation and gain a deep understanding of the processes and chemistry of fermentation so that you can develop your own recipes then its the right book.
If you want to cook like a pro why not study the books used in cooking schools.
The Professional Chef https://www.amazon.com/dp/0470421355/ref=cm_sw_r_api_i_VFG84261NPY41EKXS6P8_0
u/funkgerm is on it — learn techniques and practice them!
For instance, look up videos on how to cut onions a bunch of different ways, then use your onions to make French onion soup, caramelized onions, etc. Get yourself one of those Costco sized bags of onions and cut them all different ways.
Make the seven mother sauces, one at a time.
You can pick a one or two simple things like this, and then just do it a few times until you work out the kinks. When you pick something simple, it's usually versatile so it won't be hard to find a bunch of uses.
The other thing to do is get used to splitting up your recipes into stages where you do a bunch of steps, get to a stopping point, then clean up everything before going on to the next stage. This is a super useful skill to build when doing a few recipes in parallel because you'll find that many recipes follow the same general arc: prep and do mise en place, clean up, assemble some ingredients into thing1, clean up, assemble others into thing 2, clean up, put everything together to create the finished dish, and plate. When you look around after you finish the plated dish, you should find that you have a dirty pan and some really light work.
This is the essence of clean as you go and it's the only way to keep multiple balls in the air at once without getting snowed under a pile of dishes. But it also requires that you start way earlier than most recipes would have you believe, and you should really do as much prep well ahead as you can anyway so that by the time you're ready to "start cooking dinner" it's mostly just knocking down the dominoes you've already set up and you're coming in fresh.
The other thing is don't beat yourself up when you mess something up. In fact, expect to mess up the first few times you try something. Until you have a pretty good working knowledge of sauces, and sautes, and this, and that, you shouldn't expect to try something new you've never done before and have it work the first time. It's okay to throw away some failures, think of that as much, much cheaper than tuition.
I'd recommend getting a text that shows all the basic techniques, too, like <em>Pro Chef</em>. It's a textbook so it covers everything comprehensively, but all the basics so nothing too tough. (The one drawback of that book is the recipes are all scaled for a commercial kitchen, and it's not always possible to linearly scale, but for techniques it's really good.) There's tons of other technique books out there like <em>SFAH</em>, <em>Ratios</em>, <em>Food Lab</em>, etc. There's also science books like <em>On Food and Cooking</em> (classic by McGee)
The main thing is just to get started. Pick a thing like eggs. Get a flat at Costco and make a bunch of different kinds of eggs.
Rules you should follow:
- Just focus on one thing at a time at first. If you want to learn how to make great pies, just worry about making a good crust at first and put store bought pie filling or whatever in it. Do one thing well and methodically build your skills one at a time, don't try to big bang everything at once so nothing comes out well.
- Really, really focus on clean as you go. Rewrite recipes that breaks them up into stages, and don't pull the trigger on the final stage you plate until everything possible is washed, dried, put away, counters cleaned, etc. That last step should feel like you're on the set of a cooking show. Nothing feels worse than blowing up the kitchen to create a dish, and nothing feels better than finessing out a plate. Positive feedback loops only.
- Get a couple of decent, cheap 6" chef's knives. Don't get fancy or expensive. Get a sharpening stone, the kind you wet that has two different grits on each side. Learn how to sharpen your knife. You'll ruin one or both, but practice until you restore them. Once you can do it reliably, then go get your fancy chef's knife. Hone every time you use. Learn good knife technique, keep your thumb curled back, ride the blade along your knuckles. Get a half a dozen cutting boards, plastic and wood, in small, medium, and large.
- Eschew toys. Do everything by hand. Mince garlic with your knife. Don't use a food processor to chop things, do that yourself. Only invest in tools that actually work as well or better than you doing things by hand and will actually save you time. Everyone that is learning to cook runs out and buys a ton of kitchen stuff. Resist the urge. With a Lodge cast iron combo cooker, a couple of good stainless steel pans with riveted handles, 8" and 12", a stainless sauce pot, and a Dutch oven you can pretty much make anything.
- Ignore recipe times! They lie in the first place to make it seem like every recipe will be done in 30 minutes or less, but more to the point, recipes don't include prep time (b/c everyone has different prep skills) and clean-as-you-go time. Instead just figure out where the stopping points are and start way ahead of time, do each stage, and take your time to do it right first and smooth second and quick third.
- Taste as you go! Every time you make a recipe, taste it at the same points as you go so you learn what happens to ingredients as they work their way into the final dish. Then, you'll know after the first couple of goes how to change things up. Not enough garlic, you can add more. Flavors not intense enough? Season a bit more and reduce, reduce, reduce to concentrate flavors. Flavors are muddled? Add a bit more acid next time.
- Keep it as simple as possible. Cooking is one of those things that does NOT recognize effort, only results. A lot of the time, the more you do, the more complicated you make it, the worse it comes out. Only add steps and make things more complicated if it makes a better result. Most of the time doing less to better ingredients is the way.
- When things go wrong, instead of getting frustrated, think about what went wrong and why, and what mindless process you can put in place to prevent that. Don't get mad that you forgot about the veggies in the oven and burned them, use it to build a habit that you will always perform. I have a magnetic timer that sticks to my oven door. If something goes in the oven, the timer is counting down, period. When it goes off, it's stuck to the oven so I know exactly what it's timing and I can't mess it up. And follow the habit! I never, never, never throw something back in the oven "for just another minute" without putting a minute on that timer. Mindless habits free up your brain for other things, and there's lots of other things in the kitchen to keep it occupied.
At my school, we used The Professional Chef in first year, and The French Laundry Cookbook for second year. I still use them both on a regular basis.
Your local library may have a copy. Or you can get it used other places for cheap.
Consider a comprehensive textbook like The Professional Chef - well worth the money.
Woohoo! Great to see LBB getting the love it so deserves since it was co-written by my former colleague and friend Michael Zebrowski!!!
There aren't a lot of 'for chefs by chefs' books out there. LBB assumes a lot of basic knowledge on the part of the cook [like you know how to make all the meringues,] the recipes are designed for industrial, standardised equipment like sheet trays and hotel pans and they are all pretty high yielding recipes for professional use.
Whereas books like The Professional Chef by CIA, Professional Cooking by Wayne Gisslen and Bocuse are heavier on teaching techniques but may include some of those types of higher end recipes with good plating [that aren't present in home cook focused books] that you're looking for.
Then there's the OG Larousse Gastronomique which is more of an encyclopaedia. It does include recipes but they are very light on actual details. Had a post here yesterday that was about a disaster trying to follow the crème brûlée one.
If you're into bread Tartine Bread by Chad Robertson is a pretty professionally focused opus on all things dough.
The Flavour Bible has no recipes at all. Its more of a thesaurus where you look up an ingredient and it will tell you what it pairs well with.
If you're into modernist cooking, Modernist Cuisine by Nathan Myhrvold is utter insanity. Crazy expensive but it really is a work of art. There's a less pricey version 'for home' which I have seen recommended.
Also recommend checking out r/chefit. Lots of pro chefs over there have been posting their book shelves the past few days so you can see what kind of books us chefs use for our own inspiration.
This is what you need:
The Professional Chef, by the Culinary Institute of America
​
This is the Culinary Institute of America's main textbook. It is all about technique. Everything from knife cuts, butchery, seafood cookery techniques, stocks, mother sauces, vegetables, garde manger, protein cooking techniques like searing, roasting, etc. This book is not really used in any of the classes there(each class has its own materials), it is more like a giant technique reference book. When you need to learn how to do something, it is in here. Simple with lots of pictures. You could even buy one of the earlier editions that are on Amazon and save a little.
You do not have to learn everything in this book. Just some will make things easier. And if you are ever reading a recipe and it says, "do this" and you do not know what this is, the book will tell you what it is and how to do it.
Learning to cook is about skills and techniques and fundamentally following recipes. Making your own new recipes (v. memorizing stuff) is what makes a chef. In my opinion you have to be a cook to become a chef.
Useful resources include:
Home Economics textbook, preferably from the 50s (see used book stores).
Joy of Cooking Fourth Edition (also the 50s, also used book stores).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMA2SqaDgG8
'On Food and Cooking' by Harold McGee.
The Professional Chef by Culinary Institute of America https://www.amazon.com/Professional-Chef-Culinary-Institute-America/dp/0470421355
Google is your friend ONCE YOU HAVE THE BASIC SKILLS. One of my greatest sources of inspiration are restaurant menus. Obviously no recipes, but the listings with descriptions get me thinking. Some research on the history of a dish (chicken marsala, dumplings, yogurt, pasta, ...) gets me thinking about what will be fit what I'm trying to accomplish within the constraints I'm working with.
What's the difference between braising and roasting (that old Home Ec text) and how does it impact the end result (On Food and Cooking, The Professional Chef)? What difference to you get cooking bacon in a pan, on a flat top, or in an oven? Why do you care for bacon at breakfast or for crumbles on a salad with feta and balsamic dressing?
What are your goals? Do you want to be able to open the refrigerator and make something good for one to four people from what is there without a late night run to a grocery? Or do you want to learn to cook four choices for 250 people in a banquet hall? Or 500 covers from a menu with twenty items that you developed over six hours? How much do you have to worry about allergies, religious proscriptions, and preferences? Do you need to care about the difference between kosher and halal? Or do you just want to make your take on the best darn Philly cheese steak ever?
There is no substitute for experience. You can pay for that in culinary schools. You might try being creative by volunteering to help in the kitchen at a firehouse. Definitely cook for family and friends. Eat your mistakes.
I support your enthusiasm. We can help you more and better if we know more.
In the meantime watch a movie. Perhaps 'Chef.' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF_rYNupPwg
Suosittelen alkuun joitain ihan kokkikoulun kirjoja, niissä kun selitetään perusteellisesti ja juurta jaksain. Itse olen erityisesti pitänyt näistä:
Jos taas haluaa syvempää kemiaa takana niin hyvä kotimainen popularisoitu kirja on Kaksi kokkia ja kemisti .
Tämän jälkeen kannattaa lähteä lukemaan itseä kiinnostavien ravintoloiden nimikkokirjoja. Niissä taas usein kokit kertoo ajatuksensa luovan prosessin takaa. Esim. French Laundrya on yleisesti kehuttu, mutta kotimaasta vaikkapa Sandro.
Here is one, it's a bible reslly:
https://www.amazon.ca/dp/0470421355/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_Tv7LFbQ9RGV6A?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1
It's to the Canadian amazon, it will undoubtedly be on yours.
The CIA textbook
The Professional Chef https://www.amazon.com/dp/0470421355/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_YBYqFbP2QDWMD
More important to learn HOW to cook, than what to cook. If I could chat with 15 year old me, I would give him this book! https://www.amazon.com/Professional-Chef-Culinary-Institute-America/dp/0470421355/
The Professional Chef (ProChef), you can also get this in ebook/ App form!
Buy this book, seriously.
https://www.amazon.com/Professional-Chef-Culinary-Institute-America/dp/0470421355
The Professional Chef is a textbook you would have read in some culinary schools. It does have a bunch of recipes. I think it could pair well with something someone else recommended, On Food and Cooking which heavier on the science of cooking and descriptions of ingredients.
There are books that are encyclopedia's like The Oxford Companion to Food. It is fun to flip through, but I think it is not nearly as necessary as a lot of the other cookbooks. It is interesting to learn the history of the artichoke, but not particularly helpful knowing that much about it.
Here's some advise, from someone who started my own a few years ago and have just now begun to "get out there" on a selling sense.
1) sign up and lurk / ask questions on http://thehotpepper.com they have tons of great free advise.
2) stop telling people you are selling your sauce unlicensed/from the house, etc. There are people out there simply looking to to take advantage of that. It's quite lucrative to contact someone and ask to buy their home sauce, then claim being sick from it and sue you. Not to mention it's illegal, even to friends/family. I'm not trying to sound harsh. simply telling you there are people LOOKING to find people doing it for their own gain.
3) go spend some money and buy some professional cullinary books like the professional chef and the flavor bible. start reading and educate yourself on why things work, how things work and the fundamentals of cooking.
4) develop your sauce. Log everything you do in grams (weight) and time (even liquid measurements) - don't do cups or tsp, etc. Do grams. This helps you scale later. Making 1 gallon is easy. Making 150 gallons means you have to scale, and 1 cup of onion won't be the same when you scale it. Do it by weight. Log your recipes, make each alteration a new one and keep the notes safe. Take pictures throughout each step of cooking. Keep the batches small, quart or 1/2 gallon to save money. Don't buy more than you need to or you waste money on ingredients.
5) take your recipes you think are good to a chef. A restaurant or actual chef. Have them try it, and listen to their advise. Ask what they will pair it with. What they might do to change it or make it better. What sucks? What's good? Listen. Learn. Be prepared to scrap the entire recipe if it needs revision.
6) Don't look at friends or other businesses and think you need to catch up. Take your time. Expect the business to take years to develop. Make a business plan.
7) roll out your business in phases. Phase 1 is planning. Phase 2 is development. Phase 3 is brand/becoming a LLC and handling things like taxes and books. Phase 4 is brand awareness and rolling it out. Phase 5 is retail. (I've been developing recipes for years, and finally late last year started rolling my 1st of 3 recipes. Now I have 3 and I'm in phase 4, booking as many shows as I can to get the sauce out there) - network and start being prepared for many late nights of hand shakes and calling people. Get your foot in the door legitimately everywhere you can. Don't expect a handout.
Oh, and just because someone says "Dude, make this, you'll sell it" or "I know a guy who wants to buy a pallet of sauce for his restaurant, you'll be rich!" - these people disappear the moment you go legit and sink YOUR money into it. do not count on sales until you close the deal.
Do it legit, don't cut corners. Stop announcing sales publicly until you have a LLC with insurance and FDA approved products or you can land in hot water. Log your batches, keep tons of notes and start reading up on how food works.
I hope it helps. thehotpepper.com is a massive suggestion to go learn about stuff. it's not easy, and it's not an easy field to break into. get legit and have a legit product and stand by it. You'll see the effort pay off in time if you work at it.
what you really want are recipe inspirations with common ingredients, not necessarily techniques. There are tomes out there like the CIA's Professional Chef or Pepin's New Complete Techniques which go into minute details on very classical preparations expected at high-end restaurant kitchens, but for the avg home cook that's overkill.
I think your ultimate goal is to develop a set of protocols to guide you in creating dishes on the fly, which actually is a really difficult thing to do even for skilled cooks. The only advice i can give is to cook broadly, learning preparations for various cuisines, from Italian dishes, to Lebanese/Israeli, to Indian, Chinese and Japanese. Many ethnic/cultural cuisines have a certain flavor profiles, with specific spices and ways of combining proteins & starches. But you need to read & practice so these protocols come instinctively.
My copy is at least 10 years old, but the information is still solid today. The Professional Chef.
I would also contend Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking is an excellent source for understanding basic flavors, mother sauces, etc.
I could have swore I replied to this, but I guess my comment got lost because I keep like, fifty fucking tabs open at a time. My bad.
ahem Anyway, it's hard for me to say if my taste differs much from an NT's sense of taste. I do feel like I taste things with more complexity(?), but I don't have much to compare it to. I can say that I started learning to cook and bake after reading and memorizing large portions of <em>The Professional Chef</em> and people love my food. And I taste-test it throughout the cooking process to make sure it's good, so apparently there's nothing wrong with my sense of taste. Maillard is one of my favorite words.
I hate the taste of liquor in things. I like alcoholic drinks where the taste of alcohol is completely disguised.
My favorite food is ice cream. My least favorite food is caviar.
I'm picky about the textures of foods, and I can't eat anything that smells bad (like kimchi). My sister-in-law makes this Filipino soup with tamarind and cellophane noodles that absolutely disgusts me. The smell of it drives me from the house. (Don't tell her I said that.)
I have a very strong sense of smell, which I think makes my sense of taste stronger than the average bear, but I'm not sure. I do know that certain smells which bother other people (skunk, gasoline, burning rubber, a catalytic converter) do not bother me at all. I actually think they smell pretty good. Meanwhile, some things which people think smell good (like certain flowers and perfumes) smell awful to me. I CANNOT go near a Bath and Body Works store.
I love to try cooking new and exotic things, but I personally have very simple tastes. I could happily live the rest of my life taking in nothing but coffee with milk and sugar, iced sweet tea, iced water with lemon, plain turkey sandwiches on white, and Campbell's chicken noodle or tomato soup.
Cilantro tastes like cilantro to me. Not soap. :D
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