How to Cook Everything: 2,000 Simple Recipes for Great Food (Completely Revised 10th Anniversary Edition)

Overall a very complete collection!

With 2,000 recipes packed onto over 1,000 pages this is a very dense and serious cookbook. No color photographs or pictures of the author to catch your eye and the recipes are packed in one after the other. Initially I had a hard time reading this cookbook and processing so much information. Then I found the lists in the back: "My Top 100 Fast Recipes" was my favorite. These lists provide a nice way to take the book in bite-sized chunks. The recipies I've tried:
Real Popcorn - My mom used to make popcorn like this (on the stove) and I had forgotten it. It is a fast and easy way to make more flavorful popcorn.
Poached Pears in red wine - holy cow these were good! Very elegant, easy to do, and light and healthy for when you mght be maxed out on rich, heavy desserts. This is a recipe I will make over and over.
Cranberry Relish with Orange and Ginger - Fresher tasting then cooked cranberry sauce and I loved the addition of ginger. This was a big hit at Thanksgiving.
Braised Potatoes with Kielbasa, Cheddar, and Beer - very tasty, one pot meal. The beer gave the whole dish a nice flavor. This is perfect comfort food for a COlorado winter!
Peanut Brittle - my only loser so far from this collection. It was such a complete failure that I think being at high altitude was the problem.

Overall a very complete collection! There are still many recipes I would like to try and I know many of the illustrations will come in handy in the future (how to clean squid, roll sushi, bone a chicken...). This cookbook would be a great gift for an avid cook.

11 out of 11 people found this review helpful.

Good basic cookbook with tons of information

I got this cookbook as a gift and it has become my go to reference book. This cookbook gives information on everything related to cooking - from must have kitchen tools to cooking techniques. In addition to thousands of recipes, the cookbook provides detailed information in each chapter on choosing and preparing herbs, vegetables and meats. I particularly like the how there are basic recipes with alternate ingredient suggestions. It's always easy to find something to cook because the recipes use basic ingredients that are usually in your pantry.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman/Tenth Anniversary Edition

I enjoyed this book, but many of the good recipes from the original cookbook were missing. The "original" cookbook that they were now toting as the original was about 1/3 of this book. I no longer have the original cookbook so I was hoping this cookbook would have some of the recipes I no longer had, but it didn't -- like the bread. His cookbook, however, is very good and simple and the recipes are tasty. I would recommend it to anyone; I am 66 and my daughters are in their 30's and we all refer to the recipes in it and have for years.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

Really, how to cook Almost Everything!

Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything has been my "go to" book for some time now. It's especially good for inspiration for good weeknight dinners. He's the "Minimalist Cook", so his philosophy is to create the best taste with the least amount of fuss. I love to cook, but there are times when I don't want to make a big project of it. That's when I turn to this book. His recipes are so approachable; you read them and think, "I could do that!" And they are GOOD! My husband didn't think he liked hummus until I made Mark's flavorful version. It's so quick and easy with a food processor! Other recent favorites have been Arroz con Pollo (Chicken with Rice--good enough for company), Roast Chicken Parts, Lentil Soup, and Roasted Carrots with Cumin. (The carrots were actually amazing, and so simple to do!) This week I tried his Shrimp Scampi; it was the easiest, and the tastiest, version I have ever made. If you like to eat well, but don't want complicated recipes, I think you will enjoy this cookbook.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Perfect gift for friends learning NOT to follow recipes

I read this book cover to cover and loved that it introduces the variations to the recipes. If it can teach my old roommate to cook for a dinner party of ten, it can help anyone. Even without photos, it is very informative and goes through the basics that starter home chefs need to know and gives old dogs some new tricks.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Not quite everything, and not always well laid-out, but nonetheless useful

Many of these recipes have appeared in the New York Times food section, or on the author's "Bitten" blog on nytimes.com. There are a lot of decent recipes in here (cooking various grains, meats, vegetables, etc.), but the book overall suffers from the way the pages are laid out. Frequently, recipes will be partially printed on both sides of a page, which makes using the tome as a cook book interesting at times. Chapters are ordered in a strange manner, too (apple pie will be at the start of the chapter, but the pie crust at the end of the chapter). Be prepared to flip around a lot.

There are a few illustrations here and there in this massive (it's 1000+ pages all together), but no photos. Sometimes, more illustrations/photos would have been nice, especially with the less-familiar cooking methods/ingredients.

If you live outside of a very large city, some of the ingredients called for will be tricky to find unless you buy online. This is particularly true of most of the Asian cuisine and specialty vegetables.

This book is a good general cookbook, but for specific things (like say, breads and baking), you might be better off with specialty books. I'm not sure the audience for this book--many of the recipes are written to imply advanced cooking techniques and equipment, but Bittman seems to be aiming for a populist audience. It's a good reference and source of information.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Best OVERALL COOKBOOK ever !!!

Grew up with a mother who NEVER cooked. Needless to say, I never learned family recipes or how to cook from my mother; I learned in my adulthood. This cookbook -- HOW TO COOK EVERYTHING -- has been a godsend with the overall description of anything and everything you would need to know in order to cook anything in your kitchen. My suggestion; BUY IT!! Easy to understand recipes and basics throughout. EVERYTHING I have EVER attempted to cook or bake from this cookbook has turned out exact.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Good book to have

This is a good starting point if you don't know much about cooking or need to relearn the basics. I find that after all these years I have started to the same dishes all the time. This is helping learn new techniques and ideas for menus.

Best cookbook ever. Period.

If I had to limit myself to one cookbook, this would be it. Bittman really does have excellent recipes for almost everything one will actually cook, including variations of dishes that change flavor but not technique. His Best Food in the World is my second favorite.

Excellent for Beginning Cooks

After several failed attempts at learning to cook, this was the cookbook that finally helped me through the process. It doesn't assume you know the basics, or that you have a kitchen full of standard ingredients, or that you're interested in going grocery shopping every time you want to try a new recipe. Instead, it goes through techniques, tells you what seasonings and staples you should have on hand, and offers multiple variations on recipes to allow for flexibility.

Unlike a lot of other beginning cookbooks, it also offers some inspiration for a beginning cook. Although the size of the book is intimidating, paging through reveals how the simple, basic recipe cooked for dinner one night can later become a complex, modern, stylish dish that could be served to friends. Throughout, the book focuses on fresh ingredients and healthy eating, without being too strident about things overly snobby about reasonable shortcuts like frozen vegetables. I found it to be a refreshing take on the genre, and it's still the cookbook I use most frequently.

Go back to Joy of Cooking!

Bittman does update the classic in that he enjoys and includes world cuisines and ingredients in his recipes. However there is a big problem: many of his recipes are either wrong or not very good. The best examples are is basic lobster boiling instructions. As a long-time New Englander I know how to cook a lobster. We boil small ones 7-8 minutes and large ones maybe 10-12. He suggests boiling a large lobster for 15-20 minutes. Trust me: if you do you will have just ruined a $30-40 dinner. Totally rubbery. I just can't understand what he's thinking.
Another example is his banana bread - a staple. He adds a good deal of coconut to his recipe. Not really appropriate, and really a cheap trick, since the coconut is a borrowed interest best left out.

0 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

Tons of great information

How to Cook Everything is incredibly thorough. There is a chapter for each kind of cooking, from sauces to poultry. Every chapter starts with what he calls basic recipes, with lots of ideas for how to use them and what to put with them. After those recipes, he gives information on the various ways to cook those items, meal ideas, and then additional recipes. There are also specific sidebars throughout. The amount of information he provides can at times be overwhelming. However, I plan to take it just one recipe at a time, and eventually I just may be able to cook!

Great gift idea for a new household

I first bought Bittman's 'Fish: The Complete Guide to Buying and Cooking' book after borrowing a copy from a friend because I liked it so much. In addition to great recipes, I learned a lot about fish and seafood.
So after following his column in the NY Times for a while, I realized that I liked his approach to cooking and his philosophy about food. The new edition of 'How to Cook Everything' had recently been published so I bought it and find that I use it regularly. I am now eating foods I never ate before. I am not an intuitive cook so Bittman's explanation of variations and herb pairings are valuable to me. The recipes are simple and easy to follow and I have expanded my repertoire of healthy dinners. I especially appreciate the alternatives recommended with many recipes. That way if there is an ingredient I don't eat or don't have, or I just want a change, I can still use the basic recipe.

Not EVERYTHING, But Who Cares???!!!

How To Cook Everything isn't the encyclopedic guide for which you've been waiting, but it IS the armchair reader you need this winter! It will keep you entertained for hours, and give you plenty of ideas for both entertaining and week-night dinners.

He's not kidding!

It may be big, but it is everything. A great reference with ideas and explanations for things you've seen and those you haven't. I find his focus on flexibility makes it easy to riff on the basic recipes. Well worth having in the kitchen.

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