Houghton Mifflin How To Cook Everything The Basics: All You Need to Make Great Food--With 1,000 Photos

This is the book that helped end my fear of the kitchen. I started out with the chicken and broccoli stir-fry, it helped to get a grounding on the basics of flavour combinations and methods to add or reduce flavours you like or dislike.Everything is explained in a way that puts you in the driving seat with your teacher by your side. You can read and revise methods to understand the how and the why behind some techniques, this is helpful if you're someone who graves a lot of detail and explanation. There are handy alternatives which help you to see how versatile food can be! It's also great because it teaches you what you can substitute if you don't have or like some ingredients.There's a great chapter on baking which is great at the end. Really appreciated the conversions at the back of the book as well. 5 stars because they're due. I would shake the author's hand in gratitude if I could.

Good intro to the mechanics and chemistry of cooking.

I'd recommend this book for the extent and coverage of materials relating to cookery.

In really like this book. It's essentially idiot proof and it's great for a first time cook such as myself who can barely cook pasta.

I am not a good cook. I can make some mean toast and fry an egg if I'm feeling super fancy, but overall I just never really developed the skills to cook things as well as I should have.This book is a game changer for someone like me, as it walks you through every step of every basic task you would ever need to do while cooking. I've used this book to greatly improve my cooking skills, and so far nobody has been accidentally poisoned by me while eating the results.It may be too basic for some, but if you're like me and need a launching point to work towards being a better cook, this is definitely worthwhile.