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After reading a lot of recipes and watching pictures/videos from same authors I learned that the description of browning is very subjective to the author. Very

After reading a lot of recipes and watching pictures/videos from same authors I learned that the description of browning is very subjective to the author. Very few recipes actually required onions browned through (as in entire volume) and if they actually do, the author will for sure mention it. Onions that are completely browned have very overpowering sweet aroma that is undesirable in most recipes except the ones that are built around it (like, famously, french onion soup or various caramelized onion dips). Vast majority of recipes actually require the onion to just get little hints of being gold in places or some gold just on the surface of it. That is enough to add flavor that will distribute once you add some liquid to it. From my experience most cooking book authors seem to be testing their recipes. Many times I have been frustrated by being unable to get the desired effect only to find some missing technique that the author very likely did not think important enough to mention or maybe difference in ingredients or measuring methodology. I have learned to prefer books that describe the methodology used by the author (for example how they measure things, how they make broth if they use one in recipe, etc.) I have also learned to search the book for a recipe that I already know and figure out if it agrees with my experience and if I would be able to make the recipe from that description. Another important point is that usually you need to understand particular cuisine from which the recipe comes to be able to make it faithfully. Every cuisine is a little small system of thinking about how to choose, process and combine ingredients. Recipes tend to be silent on a lot of stuff that is completely trivial to natives of particular cuisine. For example, I have been practicing Italian, Indian and Thai cuisines for the past 20 years. I can make Italian, Indian or Thai dish on a pinch from whatever I can find in my fridge and pantry but I still can't make convincing Creole dish even if I tried. (edit) If you are asking for best books for beginners, I suggest to skip books and rather research the recipe on Youtube. Watch couple of people doing the same thing -- this is going to provide much more valuable information than you could ever read in a book. This mostly because having visual reference of how it actually looked when the person was cooking it will give you immediate feedback when you are getting something wrong. It is still my preferred way of learning new kinds of dishes.

protomyth 5y ago
What books have you liked that met your criteria?
- lmilcin 5y ago
  Half a dozen bookshelves filled with just cookbooks, so apparently I am not too strict. I think that cooking from recipes is kind of catch-22. Recipes seem to be most useful to people who already are adept at cooking (in particular cuisine and in general) but when you don't know how to cook recipes seem to be practically only source of information. I think if you are already adept at cooking, know techniques, cuisine etc. then you will be able to judge the book on your own. For example, if you are just starting up with Italian cuisine, you will be thoroughly disappointed by The Silver Spoon. It is huge compendium of recipes, but it is very light on any kind of explanation of technique -- assuming the reader is already steeped in the Italian culture. On the other hand it is very useful to me as one of the books to look for a little bit of inspiration when I just want to throw in something new. Just going through the list of ingredients is usually enough for me to imagine the process and reading the description is more of a confirmation that I actually understand what is going on.
- mattkrause 5y ago
  Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking is great. It can’t be your only cookbook—-the amount of butter will literally kill you—-and some of the recipes area bit dated (so many aspics!). However, the first part of the book focuses on techniques: chop an onion, roll an omelet, etc. The other part I like is how it demonstrates that you can “fork” a master recipe into many different dishes by swapping out sets of ingredients. A lot of other cookbooks disguise the fact that most recipes are variations on a theme, and understanding that makes it easier to improvise with whatever you have left in the fridge.
  - denton-scratch 5y ago
    "the amount of butter will literally kill you" Abuse of the term "literally". Many recipes, especially classic french recipes, benefit from butter. It may be bad for your health, but it sure makes for nice sauces. Julia Child is fun, because of all the background she gives for her recipes. She's an engaging writer. My mother had a copy of Le Guide Culinaire by Escoffier (in english translation). It's a recipe book for pro chefs; many of the recipes are just one paragraph - you're supposed to know what "make a roux" means. My mum was not a great cook - I have no idea what she was doing with a book on Cordon Bleu cooking on her kitchen shelf.
williamjackson 5y ago
You have eloquently elaborated on a truth I came to realize many years ago: Cooking well (from a recipe) is the art of having enough experience to know what unwritten assumptions the recipe author has made.
- lmilcin 5y ago
  You have put it very well. I am stealing this one:)
- manquer 5y ago
  That is true for any concise set of directions. I mean if I give a developer some instructions, or read some from stackoverflow , they only work the best if I already somewhat familiar or expert knowledge to understand it. Cooking shouldn't be any different. Writing small user apps doesn't translate to building apps for millions of users, the same way cooking for your family doesn't translate to cooking in a restaurant or wedding, or to how McDonald's ( google of the cooking world ?) should cook.
  - Zababa 5y ago
    > McDonald's ( google of the cooking world ?) should cook Having worked at a cook at McDonald's, I don't know if I would call it "google of the cooking world". From my experience, McDonald's cooking is highly streamlined and focused on reproducing the same experience at some level (for example French McDonald's is not the same as American McDonald's but the fries and Big mac are still relatively the same).
- ErrantX 5y ago
  I'd add. Its also the art of understanding how to cook a recipe to your own palate. Or in other words; those assumptions are often very personal and therefore you need to develop and refine them for you as well.
- lebuffon 5y ago
  Sounds like programming. :) ...having enough experience to know what unwritten assumptions the O/S author, language author, spec writer has made.
cogman10 5y ago
Yup. Shows like "good eats" are also super useful for cooking IMO. Treating cooking like the chemistry experiments it is gives you excellent results without a lot of the faff. Didn't mean there aren't legitimate techniques, but rather it helps to know what those techniques are accomplishing so you know if you've messed up. Onion browning is a good example. In most recipes I've dealt with, onions are browned as a near first step and then further cooked in later steps. That strongly suggested the author isn't going for "fully brown" onions and rather just browned onions. Why? Because those onions don't stop cooking just because they are added to additional ingredients.
- wil421 5y ago
  Good Eats is perfect for telling you how it’s supposed to be done and if possible a home cook friendly way to do it. Kenji Lopez’s POV cooking vids are fantastic as well. Perfect for the home cook and he’ll tell you how a restaurant does it and how a home cook should do it.
ghaff 5y ago
That's probably true of most things that require working in the physical world. While I generally hate videos that take 5 minutes to explain something that could be described in a paragraph, if you're a complete noob at something, a video that actually shows how to do something can be much more useful than descriptive text. (Sometimes if only to show some "tricky" step that you're likely going to have to practice a lot before you'll have a chance of getting it right.)
- bombcar 5y ago
  Jump cuts can make a video quicker to watch but for things like recipes you often want to see exactly what’s being done, so you can find out what went wrong if it didn’t work.
randywaterhouse 5y ago
Wholeheartedly agree about process vs. color-by-number recipes... For those who do like to read offline, I do recommend Ruhlman's "Twenty" [0]. It is well written and illustrated and provides a lens into process via carefully selected recipes. [0] Full title being ``Ruhlman's Twenty: 20 Techniques, 100 Recipes, A Cook's Manifesto (The Science of Cooking, Culinary Books, Chef Cookbooks, Cooking Techniques Book)``
ezoe 5y ago
> some missing technique that the author very likely did not think important enough to mention That reminds me a funny story I've read: A scientist failed to reproduce a paper which says "room temperature". They later successfully reproduced it in the freezer. The paper was from Russia.
- hallway_monitor 5y ago
  Have you heard of room temperature? Welcome to the room. The room temperature room.
  - bombcar 5y ago
    Now I’m imagining a “standard room” in France held at the reference temperature (and which the meter long rod and the kilogram weight would be stored, of course).
    - beckingz 5y ago
      Of course, they haven't measured it since the 1960s because the body heat of a scientist going in to measure it changes it a little bit.
      - M2Ys4U 5y ago
        However or whenever they measure the prototype kilogram, it weighs[0] exactly 1kg by definition. [0] Well, not any more as the kilogram was redefined in 2019
    - swiftcoder 5y ago
      Does the length of the metre long rod not vary with temperature?
      - abdullahkhalids 5y ago
        It does. If you are using that rod to measure something else, or calibrate another rod, you are supposed to keep it at a given fixed temperature. Also, the standard of length was changed quite a while ago to one based on the definition of the second, and the speed of light. Edit: here are the latest standards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_redefinition_of_the_SI_base_units https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_redefinition_of_the_SI_ba...
dheera 5y ago
Also I think it hugely depends on your equipment. I have an induction stove and pans heat up almost instantly. I can easily get onions browned to the effect of the picture within 10 minutes on high heat. Here's the thing -- onions won't brown until a certain amount of their water content is evaporated. And what matters to evaporate water content is the amount of actual heat energy going into the food. Induction stoves are particularly excellent at shoving watts straight into your pan. I imagine many of the pros writing these recipes are using either a professional gas stoves (which are inefficient, but also very powerful) OR induction. If you use a household gas or electric stove, it's going to be a LOT slower, these just can't get that many watts into your pan.
MegaDeKay 5y ago
It wouldn't hurt for all recipes to convert over to grams except perhaps for very small measures. "Four cups of flour" can have a substantial swing by weight, making a real difference in something like a loaf of bread. If you aren't an experienced baker or never made a particular loaf before, it is really hard to know by feel if the hydration is right or wrong. Every kitchen should have a scale so cookbook authors can count on this. And please please please don't use ounces instead: they are too coarse, and they are inexcusably used for both weight and volume. I'd also like the phrase "medium heat" outlawed but I know that is a bridge too far. My stove has four burners in a ridiculous range of heat output. Each has a "medium" setting. My pancakes are much better off now that I've got an IR thermometer and can keep the pan around 350 - 375F.
- bombcar 5y ago
  Medium heat is the worst - and having at least some references for what temperature you’re looking for would help tremendously. I’m surprised oven manufacturers don’t sell cookbooks designed and tested on their actual ovens.
  - cratermoon 5y ago
    Ovens used to come with pamphlets of recipes. Microwave ovens, too.
    - bombcar 5y ago
      The original ones are amazing - put the venison in the microwave on high for 40 minutes.
      - bartvk 5y ago
        What does that do to the venison?!
        adamauckland 5y ago
        I think it brings it back to life!

protomyth 5y ago

What books have you liked that met your criteria?

lmilcin 5y ago
Half a dozen bookshelves filled with just cookbooks, so apparently I am not too strict. I think that cooking from recipes is kind of catch-22. Recipes seem to be most useful to people who already are adept at cooking (in particular cuisine and in general) but when you don't know how to cook recipes seem to be practically only source of information. I think if you are already adept at cooking, know techniques, cuisine etc. then you will be able to judge the book on your own. For example, if you are just starting up with Italian cuisine, you will be thoroughly disappointed by The Silver Spoon. It is huge compendium of recipes, but it is very light on any kind of explanation of technique -- assuming the reader is already steeped in the Italian culture. On the other hand it is very useful to me as one of the books to look for a little bit of inspiration when I just want to throw in something new. Just going through the list of ingredients is usually enough for me to imagine the process and reading the description is more of a confirmation that I actually understand what is going on.
mattkrause 5y ago
Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking is great. It can’t be your only cookbook—-the amount of butter will literally kill you—-and some of the recipes area bit dated (so many aspics!). However, the first part of the book focuses on techniques: chop an onion, roll an omelet, etc. The other part I like is how it demonstrates that you can “fork” a master recipe into many different dishes by swapping out sets of ingredients. A lot of other cookbooks disguise the fact that most recipes are variations on a theme, and understanding that makes it easier to improvise with whatever you have left in the fridge.
- denton-scratch 5y ago
  "the amount of butter will literally kill you" Abuse of the term "literally". Many recipes, especially classic french recipes, benefit from butter. It may be bad for your health, but it sure makes for nice sauces. Julia Child is fun, because of all the background she gives for her recipes. She's an engaging writer. My mother had a copy of Le Guide Culinaire by Escoffier (in english translation). It's a recipe book for pro chefs; many of the recipes are just one paragraph - you're supposed to know what "make a roux" means. My mum was not a great cook - I have no idea what she was doing with a book on Cordon Bleu cooking on her kitchen shelf.

williamjackson 5y ago

You have eloquently elaborated on a truth I came to realize many years ago: Cooking well (from a recipe) is the art of having enough experience to know what unwritten assumptions the recipe author has made.

lmilcin 5y ago
You have put it very well. I am stealing this one:)
manquer 5y ago
That is true for any concise set of directions. I mean if I give a developer some instructions, or read some from stackoverflow , they only work the best if I already somewhat familiar or expert knowledge to understand it. Cooking shouldn't be any different. Writing small user apps doesn't translate to building apps for millions of users, the same way cooking for your family doesn't translate to cooking in a restaurant or wedding, or to how McDonald's ( google of the cooking world ?) should cook.
- Zababa 5y ago
  > McDonald's ( google of the cooking world ?) should cook Having worked at a cook at McDonald's, I don't know if I would call it "google of the cooking world". From my experience, McDonald's cooking is highly streamlined and focused on reproducing the same experience at some level (for example French McDonald's is not the same as American McDonald's but the fries and Big mac are still relatively the same).
ErrantX 5y ago
I'd add. Its also the art of understanding how to cook a recipe to your own palate. Or in other words; those assumptions are often very personal and therefore you need to develop and refine them for you as well.
lebuffon 5y ago
Sounds like programming. :) ...having enough experience to know what unwritten assumptions the O/S author, language author, spec writer has made.

cogman10 5y ago

Yup. Shows like "good eats" are also super useful for cooking IMO. Treating cooking like the chemistry experiments it is gives you excellent results without a lot of the faff. Didn't mean there aren't legitimate techniques, but rather it helps to know what those techniques are accomplishing so you know if you've messed up. Onion browning is a good example. In most recipes I've dealt with, onions are browned as a near first step and then further cooked in later steps. That strongly suggested the author isn't going for "fully brown" onions and rather just browned onions. Why? Because those onions don't stop cooking just because they are added to additional ingredients.

wil421 5y ago
Good Eats is perfect for telling you how it’s supposed to be done and if possible a home cook friendly way to do it. Kenji Lopez’s POV cooking vids are fantastic as well. Perfect for the home cook and he’ll tell you how a restaurant does it and how a home cook should do it.

ghaff 5y ago

That's probably true of most things that require working in the physical world. While I generally hate videos that take 5 minutes to explain something that could be described in a paragraph, if you're a complete noob at something, a video that actually shows how to do something can be much more useful than descriptive text. (Sometimes if only to show some "tricky" step that you're likely going to have to practice a lot before you'll have a chance of getting it right.)

bombcar 5y ago
Jump cuts can make a video quicker to watch but for things like recipes you often want to see exactly what’s being done, so you can find out what went wrong if it didn’t work.

randywaterhouse 5y ago

Wholeheartedly agree about process vs. color-by-number recipes... For those who do like to read offline, I do recommend Ruhlman's "Twenty" [0]. It is well written and illustrated and provides a lens into process via carefully selected recipes. [0] Full title being ``Ruhlman's Twenty: 20 Techniques, 100 Recipes, A Cook's Manifesto (The Science of Cooking, Culinary Books, Chef Cookbooks, Cooking Techniques Book)``

ezoe 5y ago

> some missing technique that the author very likely did not think important enough to mention That reminds me a funny story I've read: A scientist failed to reproduce a paper which says "room temperature". They later successfully reproduced it in the freezer. The paper was from Russia.

hallway_monitor 5y ago
Have you heard of room temperature? Welcome to the room. The room temperature room.
- bombcar 5y ago
  Now I’m imagining a “standard room” in France held at the reference temperature (and which the meter long rod and the kilogram weight would be stored, of course).
  - beckingz 5y ago
    Of course, they haven't measured it since the 1960s because the body heat of a scientist going in to measure it changes it a little bit.
    - M2Ys4U 5y ago
      However or whenever they measure the prototype kilogram, it weighs[0] exactly 1kg by definition. [0] Well, not any more as the kilogram was redefined in 2019
  - swiftcoder 5y ago
    Does the length of the metre long rod not vary with temperature?
    - abdullahkhalids 5y ago
      It does. If you are using that rod to measure something else, or calibrate another rod, you are supposed to keep it at a given fixed temperature. Also, the standard of length was changed quite a while ago to one based on the definition of the second, and the speed of light. Edit: here are the latest standards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_redefinition_of_the_SI_base_units https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_redefinition_of_the_SI_ba...

dheera 5y ago

Also I think it hugely depends on your equipment. I have an induction stove and pans heat up almost instantly. I can easily get onions browned to the effect of the picture within 10 minutes on high heat. Here's the thing -- onions won't brown until a certain amount of their water content is evaporated. And what matters to evaporate water content is the amount of actual heat energy going into the food. Induction stoves are particularly excellent at shoving watts straight into your pan. I imagine many of the pros writing these recipes are using either a professional gas stoves (which are inefficient, but also very powerful) OR induction. If you use a household gas or electric stove, it's going to be a LOT slower, these just can't get that many watts into your pan.

MegaDeKay 5y ago

It wouldn't hurt for all recipes to convert over to grams except perhaps for very small measures. "Four cups of flour" can have a substantial swing by weight, making a real difference in something like a loaf of bread. If you aren't an experienced baker or never made a particular loaf before, it is really hard to know by feel if the hydration is right or wrong. Every kitchen should have a scale so cookbook authors can count on this. And please please please don't use ounces instead: they are too coarse, and they are inexcusably used for both weight and volume. I'd also like the phrase "medium heat" outlawed but I know that is a bridge too far. My stove has four burners in a ridiculous range of heat output. Each has a "medium" setting. My pancakes are much better off now that I've got an IR thermometer and can keep the pan around 350 - 375F.

bombcar 5y ago
Medium heat is the worst - and having at least some references for what temperature you’re looking for would help tremendously. I’m surprised oven manufacturers don’t sell cookbooks designed and tested on their actual ovens.
- cratermoon 5y ago
  Ovens used to come with pamphlets of recipes. Microwave ovens, too.
  - bombcar 5y ago
    The original ones are amazing - put the venison in the microwave on high for 40 minutes.
    - bartvk 5y ago
      What does that do to the venison?!
      - adamauckland 5y ago
        I think it brings it back to life!