On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen
Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking is a kitchen classic. Hailed by Time magazine as “a minor masterpiece” when it first appeared in 1984, On Food and Cooking is the bible to which food lovers and professional chefs worldwide turn for an understanding of where our foods come from, what exactly they’re made of, and how cooking transforms them into something new and delicious.
Now, for its twentieth anniversary, Harold McGee has prepared a new, fully revised and updated edition of On Food and Cooking. He has rewritten the text almost completely, expanded it by two-thirds, and commissioned more than 100 new illustrations. As compulsively readable and engaging as ever, the new On Food and Cooking provides countless eye-opening insights into food, its preparation, and its enjoyment.
On Food and Cooking pioneered the translation of technical food science into cook-friendly kitchen science and helped give birth to the inventive culinary movement known as “molecular gastronomy.” Though other books have now been written about kitchen science, On Food and Cooking remains unmatched in the accuracy, clarity, and thoroughness of its explanations, and the intriguing way in which it blends science with the historical evolution of foods and cooking techniques.
Among the major themes addressed throughout this new edition are:
- Traditional and modern methods of food production and their influences on food quality
- The great diversity of methods by which people in different places and times have prepared the same ingredients
- Tips for selecting the best ingredients and preparing them successfully
- The particular substances that give foods their flavors and that give us pleasure
- Our evolving knowledge of the health benefits and risks of foods
On Food and Cooking is an invaluable and monumental compendium of basic information about ingredients, cooking methods, and the pleasures of eating. It will delight and fascinate anyone who has ever cooked, savored, or wondered about food.
List Price: $ 40.00
Price: $ 19.97
Question by melon_rose: For a beginning cook, why does cooking and meal / menu planning seem like such a daunting task?
it’s like… not only do i not really know how to cook… i feel like the planning and shopping is hard to figure out / balance out too. and finding time for it all.
how did you guys start out cooking/menu planning?
Best answer:
Answer by dragonrider707
KIS…Keep it simple. It depends on how many you are cooking for but start out by going to a cooking site and finding some easy recipes. Find 7 of them…one for each day and write the ingredients on a piece of paper and use it as a shopping list for your weeks groceries. Make sure you dont double up on things…if one recipe uses 2 eggs and another uses 1 and another uses 4 dont go buying 3 dozen eggs. Just buy 1 dozen and use what you need. Once you learn how to make a few meals this way you can start to modify the recipes by adding or taking away things you like or dislike. For example if you are making a stew you might like to add mushrooms but you might not like carrots very much so you can leave them out. After a while you build up a repertoire of things you can cook and it’s not so hard to figure out what to buy at the supermarket because it is all in your head.
What do you think? Answer below!
Video Vixen Jessenia Vice (twitter.com steams up her kitchen while slicing bananas, plantains, and yucca. Does she realize her young neighbors are getting a peep show they will never forget? (music by Baby Bash – “Fantasy Girl”)
Video Rating: 4 / 5
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
“Great cookbooks are not just collections of interesting recipes. They are, first and foremost, books that tell a story, the story of how people lived and cooked at a particular point in time. They reveal, to borrow an expression from James Beard, their delights and prejudices, their view of the social order, their appetite for serving others food that meets the expectations of their social class. Food can be anything and everything from fuel to an object of intellectual curiosity to full-bore hedonism that transports the mind and body far from the dinner table with just one overwhelming bite.
“I’m often asked to pick my favorite cookbook. Considering that there are over 3,000 cookbooks published each year, it’s a daunting task to try to narrow them down. Speaking as a chef who never went to cooking school, I’ve been enthralled by certain cookbooks, immersing myself from cover to cover and learning about exotic cuisines from all over the world. But for just plain basic information, both the original and revised Joy of Cooking are still my bibles. I can’t tell you how many times my wife Jackie and I have thumbed through the stained and broken-backed copy of Joy in our home kitchen, looking for our favorite angel food cake recipe, our favorite skillet corn bread, our favorite fluffy biscuits, and crisp waffles, and on and on. It’s tough to picture my family table–or, in fact, the American table–without a well-worn copy of Joy of Cooking in the background.” ” –Tom Douglas, author of I Love Crab Cakes! 
“I highly recommend this book as a must-have in your kitchen. Chock full of great information, this book takes all of the guess work out and leaves no stone unturned.” –Paula Deen, author of Paula Deen Celebrates! 
“In our kitchen, Joy of Cooking is a tool as indispensable as the chef’s knife, the scale, the whisk. We actually own two copies–a shelf-copy for reading, and one whose sauce-splattered, dog-eared pages bear witness to just how much joy we get from Joy.” ” –Matt Lee and Ted Lee, authors of The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook 
“Joy of Cooking is the ultimate reference guide that I have been using for years. It’s timeless and packed with perfect recipes for the home cook that stands up to the test of time.” –Tyler Florence, author of Tyler’s Ultimate 
“Joy of Cooking is a book I turn to whenever I have a question about food or cooking. The new edition is the combined effort of some of the best cooks writing today; I know I can trust its information. And trust is, to my mind, the essential quality of all great cookbooks.” –Sally Schneider, author of The Improvisational Cook 
“When Andrew first contemplated becoming a chef in the 1980s, he asked two Boston chefs of his acquaintance what books he should read. Each independently recommended Joy of Cooking as THE classic with reliable recipes for just about everything. (The second chef urged him to look for an early copy for the sheer entertainment value of reading how to cook a possum.) A decade later, when we interviewed 60 of America’s leading chefs for our first book Becoming a Chef, we asked them the same question–and again Joy was one of their five most recommended books. In fact, we recommend buying two copies, like we did: we keep our chocolate-smudged copy of Joy in our kitchen, and a reading copy on our bookshelves.” –Andrew Dorenburg and Karen Page, authors of What to Drink with What You Eat 
“Our Joy of Cooking is dog-eared, flour dusted, chocolate smudged, oil spattered, and easily the most used cookbook on the shelf. The staggering amount of information in the book taught us the basics when we were in our teens and has informed our cooking for the decades since. We wish we had written it!” –Johanne Killeen and George Germon, authors of On Top of Spaghetti 
“I received a copy of Joy of Cooking in my late teens. I have treasured the cookbook ever since and still use it frequently as a reference. In the late 80′s I was asked to represent American Cooking in Italy. I cooked all over the country for 2 months. The only book I took was Joy of Cooking. When ingredients that I had ordered did not show up and I had to totally wing it, I used this book to get me out of a few jams–like what the proportions are to make your own baking powder! If I could have only one cookbook–other than my own of course!–it would be Joy of Cooking–-as it is the bible of American cooking” –Kathy Casey, author of Kathy Casey’s Northwest Table 
“I have purchased Joy of Cooking for all my restaurant libraries as well as my own. The recipes always work–always–and the informational chapters are accurate, to the point, and incredibly helpful–couldn’t live with out it!!” –Cindy Pawlcyn, author of Big Small Plates 
