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Review
"Cooking Basics for Dummies sets out to prove that cooking doesn′t have to be hard." (StudentTimes.org, February 27th 2009)
"Like Jamie Oliver′s Ministry of Food...Good to get you started if you′re a cooking virgin...simple guide to a good feed." (Zoo Weekly, March 20th 2009)
"...one foolproof way to turn out dish after dish of fantastic fare, is Cooking Basics For Dummies." (Scotland Week News, June 13th 2009)
Product Description
The majority of people don’t know where to start when it comes to cooking a successful meal. Packed with easy–to–follow guidelines and recipes, this full–colour, hardback, spiral–bound edition of Cooking Basics For Dummies helps novice chefs navigate the kitchen and learn staple cooking techniques.
The lay–flat binding is the ideal format for the kitchen environment and the full–colour photos throughout show readers what they can expect to achieve from their efforts.
Cooking Basics For Dummies includes:
- Choosing the right tools and stocking your pantry
- The essential cooking techniques – boiling, poaching, steaming, sautéing, braising, stewing, roasting and grilling
- Expanding your repertoire with delicious recipes
- A glossary of over 100 common cooking terms
About the Authors
Bryan Millar is a former New York Times restaurant critic. Marie Ramer is a food writer.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
27 of 27 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I had this book for Christmas. It's entertaining, simple and funny and keeps away from exotic ingredients you'd need to travel abroad to find. I'd hoped it would be the perfect beginners book and for US cooks it might be. For inspiring UK cooks it is not great as all the measurements are in US imperial and many of the ingredients, cuts of meat etc have different names to that in the UK which is a pain in the you know what!!
37 of 39 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
My idea of the "For Dummies" books is that they are supposedto be for the beginner and not intimidate anyone. As an above average cook who is regularly asked for a recommendation on where a newcomer to the kitchen should start, I had hoped that this could be my answer. Unfortunately, there is a fatal flaw that make me hesitate and certainly give a disclaimer with any recommendation I might provide.
My biggest reservation has to do with the chapter on equipment. While I will certainly not disagree that I can cook slightly better with better equipment, I also know that you can be a perfectly good cook with 50 cent knives and $5 saucepans. This chapter should have been an appendix - "When you're ready to buy the best tools" instead of such an early chapter. At most the chapter should have contained a discussion about what each item is used for, and stopped there. As it stands, it succeeded mainly in putting off the less experienced cooks I showed it to.
This is a shame, since much of the rest of the book is useful, funny and informative. I have since recommended it to one person with the caveat that they should ignore that chapter until they could afford not to. But most people just starting out can't afford what's in there. (Heck, I'm well beyond starting out and can't afford much of it. Then again, I regularly produce gourmet meals on a $20 set of knives and a $50 set of pans. So can anyone.)
In the end, the author broke what I consider to be the cardinal rule of the "For Dummies" books - MAKE IT ACCESSIBLE. In the end, a $50 knive and a $100 pan are just not accessible and also, not NECESSARY to be a good cook. Learning the skills of cooking can be done on almost ANY equipment (the tops have to seal and the knives have to cut - that's about it). This book made it seem necessary to drop a $1000 or so before you could start boiling water and that's not just inaccessible but intimidating, too.
21 of 22 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Cooking for Dummies is funny, informative, and like all it's "For Dummies" cousins, immediately hands on.
I'll take away one star, only because the opening can be intimidating to a rank beginner who doesn't know the difference between a soufle or a sauce pan. Moreover, as has been pointed out earlier, "Cooking for Dummies" seems to say that one must have or obtain a kitchen far beyond the reach of most new cooks. If that's overly intimidating, it's made up for later, as the book gives simple steps that are all but foolproof. If the beginner cannot afford the costly equipment recommended, the beginner should make do with what can be obtained. However, cooking is like any other craft--the better the equipment, the better the results.
But the recipes and techniques are the highlight and soul of the book. Written with humor, insight, and a firm remembering of the intended audience (e.g. "dummies in the kitchen"), "Cooking for Dummies" is sure to please. The recipes are complete and easy to follow; the techniques are explained so that even a klutz like myself won't lose his fingers while chopping herbs or hard vegetables; and the results are uniformly satisfying.
"Cooking for Dummies" is great reading, easy to use, and will be a favorite for many new cooks learning to use the kitchen for more than storage of beer and chips.
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