14 ms·
‘Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat’ Is a Love Letter to Amateur Cooks
- JauntTrooper 8y agoMy wife is loving this book. It's very different from other cookbooks. It's more narrative, and teaches you how to think about cooking rather than just providing recipes to follow.
- jb188 8y agoI just finished watching this and LOVED it. I haven't read the book yet, but it is now on my todo list. I love to cook and found so many tips in here to make rethink how to assemble a meal.
- war1025 8y agoI read the book last year and watched a couple of the episodes of the show last weekend. The book is super informative and useful for thinking about how to build dishes that will taste good. The show seems more like a food travel show that is semi based around on of the items. Both are good, but if you were impressed by the show, the book will blow you away.
- deyturkerjerbs 8y agoThis is the exact reason why I became a huge fan of Chef John since 2010. He has follow-along style videos of cooking different dishes. What I love about him is that he purposely keeps a fluid recipe to add in what you like, omit anything you don't, concious about possible alternative ingredients for personal taste, dietary restrictions, etc. Also has a great sense of humor. I highly recommend checking out some of his videos here https://www.youtube.com/foodwishes https://www.youtube.com/foodwishes
- moneil971 8y agoDef planning to watch the series and prob pick up the book as well
- sailfast 8y agoI haven't read the book, but based on your description it sounds like she might also like The Food Lab by Kenji Lopez-Alt. Food Lab gets much deeper into the chemistry and the why / how than the TV series. I was kinda hoping for some more direct cooking guidance rather than having my appetite whet by the show, but it was still fun to watch.
- NotANaN 8y agoShelby Stanger had a great interview with her on the most recent episode of the "Wild Ideas Worth Living" REI podcast. https://wildideasworthliving.com/samin-nosrat-the-adventure-of-good-cooking/ https://wildideasworthliving.com/samin-nosrat-the-adventure-...
- chrstphrhrt 8y agoShe's amazing. So humble and accessible.
- medius 8y agoMy wife said, after we finished watching her show, that Samin seems to be the kind of person she would love to be close friends with.
- nemo44x 8y agoGreat book - every home cook should read it. A truly effective philosophy for building dishes. You’ve maybe heard the expression “the acid cuts through the fat” before and this book explains why and is useful in finding ways to adapt this technique. Having 50 or so pages dedicated to salt is great. Knowing when to salt something and what effect it will have on the food is particularly useful. Effective brining and salting is critical to cooking. I didn’t care too much for the show. Just unremarkable imo. But the book is great.
- tincholio 8y agoI haven't read the book, but I share your feeling about the show. It was a bit disappointing.
- f2f 8y agolove the book. didn't think the show captured the essence of it that well, looked like a 4-episode set piece for a future cooking series. but the book is really good. sits on top of the educational pile for me, together with the "silver spoon" book.
- ilamont 8y agoI started to watch the video series set in Italy featuring the author. I agree with the premise, thought a few scenes were interesting (particularly the butcher and harvesting olives in the first episode), but just couldn't get into the cooking and dining scenes ... too heavy on the "food porn" and too light on the "whys" of what they are doing. They just do something, and people are mostly left to their imaginations of why this combination or process or amount leads to the terrific outcome shown on the screen. I will say one thing about the video series that was refreshing: She learned Italian, and for the most part talks with people who can't speak English. Many cooking travel shows are forced to rely on interpreters, expats, or locals who can speak English, which really limits the expertise and viewpoints that can be shared.
- parabx 8y agoI think that the series is more about what is to cook food, not how to cook it. It's a different lens over the same matter.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- acomjean 8y agoI watched the first episode. I really liked it and will watch the the rest shortly. Her enthusiasm about food was pretty contagious. And it was interesting. If there is a complaint, its a little light on the how-to (it isn't "america's test kitchen), and it needed a little more content for the length. I found it interesting to see the Italian attitude to food and also found the "olives" and butcher interesting (as well as the pesto segment..).
- marrone12 8y agoI love that she spoke Italian in that episode. It's why I like the Mexico episode because she speaks a lot of spanish.
- NikolaeVarius 8y agoI'll probably check this out sooner or later, but how is this compared to the Modernist Cuisine. I really love that series.
- tptacek 8y agoI've read the book and watched the series. Both are fine. The series is in a weird place in between Mind of a Chef (which, in most of its seasons, is a significantly better show) and a more conventional FoodTV cooking show. I think they're trying to do too much in each episode, and also that the travel-show part of each episode works better than the cooking demos do. The book is better than the show. I have friends that swear by it. I like it fine! It sort of joins a pantheon of "if you're only going to own one cooking book make it this one" books, which would include Bittman's "How To Cook Anything", Ruhlman's "Twenty", the Cooks Illustrated Cookbook, and, I don't know, maybe "Joy of Cooking"? Of those books, I think Ruhlman's "Twenty" is by far the best. It's similar to "Salt, Fat" in the sense that it breaks cooking down by technique and concept, instead of courses or dishes. But I think it has a more coherent structure, covers more ground, and, while wasting less time on narrative, still manages to establish a conversational tone.
- Nition 8y agoIn New Zealand that "one cooking book" is the Edmonds Cookery Book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmonds_Cookery_Book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmonds_Cookery_Book Tells you all the essentials of how to cook meat and veges and make basic sauces and all that, plus has a whole lot of relatively simple recipes that use common ingredients.
- libdjml 8y agoWe recently had a 2nd hand copy shipped to NYC to bring a little bit of home back to the kitchen. It’s almost like the Michelin: intended to sell more of a product (tires/flour), but ended up iconic in its own right.
- seem_2211 8y agoWhat's scary is comparing the old versions of the Edmonds Cook Book with the more recent versions and seeing how much more sugar we're putting in a lot of the stuff we're making.
- Nition 8y ago
- Tomte 8y agoI'm not a fan of the book. I mean, it's all correct, the illustrations are beautiful, not much to bicker about. But it fell flat for me, maybe because I already have Twenty and a few other books. I did not find really new concepts, and none of the recipes really jumped out at me and made me want to cook them, I returned the book. It's fine, really, but I think there are better ones. Twenty for concepts, Ratio for "show me quickly how to do X" and, my special tip, How to Cook without a Book by Anderson. Just disregard her list of ingredients you should always have in stock, because you'd probably need to convert one of your larger rooms into a pantry. It goes on and on for pages. But the recipes and the whole presentration is top-notch. Including a short rhyme at the beginning of every chapter that tells you Ratio-like how to do a basic whatever the chapter is about. If you read German, get Nahrungszubereitung Schritt für Schritt by Schlieper. It's a very thin book, full of illustrations, because it is for school use (including special-needs schools). Very basic. What parts of the beef or pork are there. What kinds of rice are readily available in the supermarket. Basic recipes like pancakes, roux, Bologna sauce. They tell you how to cook pasta. It's conventional. None of the higher-level stuff like "let your steak rest after cooking" or "more salt into your pasta water". But it's great for all those little things like roux that "normal people" don't do often and forget the details. I just hope they added a real index in a later edition, because I don't find anything in their botched simulation of an index.
- alwaysreading 8y agoThe book is better than the show. Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat on Amazon for those interested - https://amzn.to/2OPW4PR https://amzn.to/2OPW4PR
- markdown 8y ago> I returned the book. Wait, what? You read the book, returned it, and feel no shame in admitting it?
- mlevental 8y agowut. if the book isn't good why would one feel ashamed of returning it? is there a moral obligation to keep a bad product?
- jonplackett 8y agoI like watching that series when I just want to chill and zone out a bit. I like seeing how food was originally made. The episode where she is making pesto properly (ie not with a blender that just chops instead of crushing and leaves you with crap oily rubbish - what I used to do) made me really want to visit Italy and just eat everything.
- atomical 8y agoThis reads like every cookbook. Something about culture and connecting food to some other thing like nature, family, or the garden. There aren't many things you can do with food that haven't been done before.
- shaklee3 8y agoHas anyone seen the documentary with the same name? It comes up on Netflix for me every time I load it. I'm pretty overwhelmed by the number of food documentaries out there, so this one didn't stand out for any reason.
- kemiller2002 8y agoIt's a great documentary. She doesn't give specific recipes etc., but the way she explores the culture around the food is amazing. (Not as good as Bordain was, but I'm still very glad I watched it.) I loved the documentary, admittedly, I can't say I learned anything new, but I'm not a typical case.
- jboynyc 8y agoI've been wanting to watch it since seeing it described as "a Marxist fantasy" in this essay: https://www.eater.com/2018/10/19/17995884/salt-fat-acid-heat-marxist-samin-nosrat-netflix https://www.eater.com/2018/10/19/17995884/salt-fat-acid-heat...
- mmanfrin 8y agoI thought it was great. Very food-porny, but in a well done way. Only 4 episodes, so a very small investment if you get hooked.
- methodover 8y agoDoes anyone know of a cookbook that provides complete meals? The ones I’ve had recommended all assume you kinda know what you want to make. But I want someone else to tell me what to make, and I’ll just put it all together.
- papa_bear 8y agoIt's not really a cookbook, but check out my website https://www.EatThisMuch.com/ https://www.EatThisMuch.com/ You can set it to just one meal if you want (and something like 600 calories) and keep regenerating it until it looks like something you'll like. I started it because I'm terrible at thinking about what I want to eat :)
- riteshpatel 8y agoThis site is really well made! Nice job!
- papa_bear 8y agoThanks! We've been working on it for quite a few years, and steadily improving things bit by bit.
- pkd 8y agoThis is very well done. I just wish there was a Google login instead of Facebook.
- papa_bear 8y agoThanks! We've been meaning to add Google login at some point, but I usually forget which one I used when other websites offer multiple options, so I've been a bit hesitant. It's probably a non-issue if we can just link multiple logins to the same account.
- dmos62 8y agoI love this! I'm having trouble balancing my diet, largely because I don't put in the time in research, and this does all these things. Great idea. However, I follow a vegetarian diet (as in 95% of my intake is vegetables, legumes and grains), and the generator is having trouble composing meal plans. It says so if you click on Details next to the calorie target. The picked meal plans differ from the carb/fat/protein targets significantly, and the meals are all uncooked: salads, smoothies and deserts. So the vegetarian "menu" doesn't really work, unfortunately. I thought that the database is severely skewed towards animal-based diets, but if I pick "anything" in the diet menu, I still get mostly salads, sandwitches, scrambled eggs, and stuff like yogurt, nuts, cheese slices, with some meat and eggs here and there of course. What stands out is that most things seem to require very little preparation. Is this tool oriented towards people unexperienced in the kitchen? Or maybe people who don't want to spend time preparing food? That's a nice option to have, but to only have recipes like that is a bit strange. Also, since I was told by a physician I should avoid raw vegetables and eat them well cooked (I used to eat raw or minimally cooked in the past), at least 3/4 of the suggested meals are no-go for me.
- amb23 8y agoIf we're on the topic of how to cook rather than just what to cook: I just got A New Way to Dinner (a cookbook from Food52) earlier this summer and have been using it religiously pretty much every week since. It's a strategy guide on how to prep all your food on the weekend and have diverse meals throughout the week. You basically do 1-3 hours of cooking on the weekend to make the components for your dishes, and then a bit of assembly work during the week to combine different components and build your meals (i.e. A roast chicken on Monday can turn into a chicken salad with fennel on Wednesday and a chicken salad sandwich for lunch anytime during the week) If I don't plan and cook my meals like this, then I end up either spending an hour plus to make a new dinner every weeknight, or getting lazy and frying up some eggs, or making a huge batch of whatever and reheating the same thing again and again. It's been such a timesaver during the week, I really wish more recipes & cookbooks were formatted like this.
- knight17 8y agoThank you for mentioning it. It is a useful way to organise a book for busy people who wants to cook. I found this aspect of the book interesting and searched for some reviews and found this critique of its ingredient list; that it is expensive: >>> ... seem unaware of their privilege ... ask you to buy near industrial quantities of certain expensive ingredients. Worse, there’s often no suggestion as to alternatives if the budget cannot quite stretch to a kilo of black raspberries ... painfully unconscious of this element to their book ... an expressly upper middle class lifestyle cookbook. [] <<< I usually discount criticisms of privilige but in this case of a cookbook it seems to be synonymous with expensive. [] http://cookthesebooks.com/a-new-way-to-dinner-amanda-hesser-and-merrill-stubbs/ http://cookthesebooks.com/a-new-way-to-dinner-amanda-hesser-... Anyone know of other books or resources along similar lines?
- amb23 8y agoI haven’t found the ingredients to be too expensive for most of the menus honestly, but I also live by a really cheap fruit and veggie store. (A kilo of blackberries isn’t gonna break the budget when it’s $1.00 a carton.) The book’s recipes are sized for a family of four hence the huge portions; I’m single so I usually cut the recipes in half and save a lot for leftovers. I’d say there’s a lot of substitutes you can make in the book for rare/pricier items and it’s realistic for most middle class budgets. They also group menus by season, so you buy the ingredients for the week when the produce is at its cheapest. But yeah, they do have the occasional ingredient like ground lamb or garlic scapes that can make the menus annoying/expensive to put together exactly.
- z3t4 8y agoWhen it comes to cooking, we are still in the stone age. When will we see a startup that stir up the food market !? It's a really huge market, and something that would truly make the world a better place. Just an crazy idea: Teleporting dishes. You scan in the food, then send it over the Internet to a molecular printer that re-creates it. Or if you are a pirate you download recipes from the web.
- trynewideas 8y agoIf you get nothing else from watching this show, try making your own focaccia. It's a relatively simple bread to make, doesn't require special ingredients or techniques, and bakes in a sheet pan. If you can make brownies, you can make focaccia.
- girvo 8y agoSo one of my favourite entrees (in the Australian sense of the word, not the American) is toasted focaccia with olive oil and balsamic vinegar to dip in it; I never made it often because focaccia is quite expensive here. You've just changed my world (and likely made me fat! I kid :P)
- cthalupa 8y ago>entrees (in the Australian sense of the word, not the American) Despite traveling pretty extensively, I somehow never noticed this. For those that are as lost on this as I am, it looks like this is a result from the compression of meals from 5-15 courses down to the more standard 1-3. At the time, entree would not match its current use anywhere in the world - your meal would have both fish and a roast, and the entree would be the course in between the two. Something like chicken, lobster, ragu, etc. When meals became less elaborate affairs, a lot of food items that would historically be the entree became acceptable to be the main course. In France and much of the English speaking world, to keep what was called the entree more in line with the French meaning of the root word (Apparently, specifically the entrance to a theater or musical performance), it became what Americans would call a starter or appetizer. America and most of Canada instead kept the word in line with the type of food item being consumed, which had shifted the previous pre-roast courses to being the primary course. And no one uses it how it was originally used in France, to refer to a stage and related set of courses for the dinner, rather than for any one course. (Sorry for the tangent, but hopefully this clears up the confusion for anyone else reading this)
- cantrevealname 8y agoHas anyone else noticed that there has been a massive surge in cooking books, videos, and shows in the last 10-15 years? Especially on TV, it's wall to wall cooking shows. I remember that cooking was a big interest 20-25 years ago, but it seems so much bigger now. Anyone have any theories about why this may be, or if my impression is wrong? My own theory is that many more men are into cooking nowadays, so the market for cooking-related things may have expanded up to 100%. Also, car ownership is becoming a burden rather than fun, and new home ownership is becoming unaffordable, therefore conversation about something everyone has in common has shifted from cars and homes over to cooking.
- idunno246 8y agoMy grandparents made a cookbook for all their children, and it was full of microwaved recipes and dumping jars of processed foods together. I looked into remaking it with better bindings as it was falling apart, but the recipes are all so gross. So I feel like part of it is generational, that we can get good ingredients, and value high quality food more than before. As much as people hate on blue apron, they kinda proved there's a demand for it, even if its not a viable price point. The other thing wrt television... old cooking shows were boring. Throw in a dose of reality tv, make it exciting, and people will watch. It's also one of the few tv shows where a person could pretty reasonably recreate it, probably simplified, within their own home.
- joelhooks 8y agoCream of mushroom soup and Cheese Whiz!
- nemo44x 8y agoIt’s interesting - I assume you’re American as am I. The approach to food was completely changed after WW2 in the USA. There was so much new food tech that looking back isn’t so nice but that people of that time embraced (and many still do). And for good reason it would seem looking back through their lens. Food and cooking lost a lot of value in our culture for many years. We started optimizing around the wrong things (fast and easy - cooking is a struggle!) and then again after more wrong things (lets replace fat with extra salt and processed foods!). And only lately has the idea of “fresh and seasonal” started to become more mainstream - again. Where as before the War it was what people did because it was how it was. There’s a lot of good cooking in the USA that just vanished from before the War. Very localized dishes, lots of stews. Some old cookbooks reveal how much we’ve changed and have also reclaimed old values.
- rjain15 8y agoI haven't read the book, but watched the series. I agree with some of the comments -- it's all about the love for food, watching the series makes you love the process of sourcing the ingredients, finding the right balance, and authentic insights from people who have been doing this without the recipe books. If you want the recipe, there are a million other resources in a quick google search.
- easymovet 8y agoLuscious 4K HDR too
- here2day 8y agoIt's so hard to read articles for the lowest common denominator. This guy begins by saying he doesnt know what a bay leaf is. He continues that he's inspired by the message of SFAH that 'anyone can cook anything and make it yummms', which is a complete rubbish of a premise. In the bin this article goes like most of the atlantics writing.
- wangyjx 8y agoTalking about cooking, western people really know what it is?
- nf05papsjfVbc 8y agoI take it you haven't spent considerable time in Italy?
- rataata_jr 8y agoOr France.
- resters 8y agoI loved the book and have (so far) watched only the first episode of the show. I look at the book as being full of low hanging fruit. The salt chapter alone has improved my cooking tremendously, and I thought I was already fairly aware of salt before I read it. It made me more bold with something I thought I already knew. The acid chapter took away any shame I had about loving sour cream and ketchup, which was worth the read in and of itself. I liked the travel show style of the show, and really liked how she built up the concepts in the focaccia recipe. As educational programming, it was superb. By the time she actually makes the focaccia the viewer has a love/appreciation for every single ingredient. I don't think I've had such a visceral jealousy of someone eating on tv as I did when they bit into that focaccia. The point she's trying to make, I think, is that the recipe anchors the region, the cuisine style, the way of life, and the meal it is enjoyed with. This was done beautifully. I will always appreciate focaccia more in the future for it.
- fredley 8y agoThe best cook books out there right now as far as I'm concerned are Meera Sodha's. Veg-centric (one book is entirely vegetarian) Indian cooking that's well-explained and mostly very easy to do at home (and totally delicious).
- funkythings 8y ago> Nosrat’s work to diversify the kinds of faces quite literally seen as culinary experts is directly connected to her view of food Can there be anything on the internet WITHOUT injecting social justice talking points into it? What the fuck does the quality of food have to do with my skin color?