Can you recommend a good first cookbook?!
Answers: for a 21 year old, that really doesn't know much about cooking?
Better Homes and Gardens is great, and so is any Rachel Ray book, they are easy and fast recipe books, with lots of tips.
Better Homes and Gardens.
Lots of recipes in all categories plus info on basics like different cuts of meat & general cooking times & temps
Definitely better homes and gardens! that was my first cook book. or any of the Taste of Home cookbooks are good as well!
Depends where you live and what books are available - I would go for the Naked Chef by Jamie Oliver.
If a student then go for the River Cafe (mini) cookbooks.
Neither of these are at all pretentious and right for a newbie or student.
I agree, a Better Homes and Garden one not only has great classic recipes, but its full of tips and instructions and definitions for common cooking terms that a new cook might not know.
When I was a young newlywed I lived with my Betty Crocker Cookbook, which I still refer to all the time. Quite honestly, with computers at your finger tips today I would rely on foodnetwork.com. They have a variety of recipes which are all ranked and often have videos demonstrating techniques, etc. Check Rachel Ray recipes (30 minute Meals), Sandra Lee, (Semi Homemade), Robin Miller (Quick Meals) and Tyler Florence (How to Boil Water). They are the easiest and almost foolproof.
Have fun and remember - even if you make a mistake it will still probably be delicious!! Bon Appetite'!
How to cook Everything by Mark Bittman
homes and gardens
Rachel Ray
Look for magizens in the store (everyday living, food, family cirlcle)
WWW.foodnetwork.com (great help, and rates meals from easly to hard)
Better Homes and Gardens (and for that matter, Betty Crocker, and any other "traditional" cookbooks) are fine if you want to cook uninspired, bland food for the masses.
To find recipes that reflect today's trends in cooking, try The Gourmet Cookbook by Ruth Reichl, The Best of Gourmet: Sixty-five Years, Sixty-five Favorite Recipes (Best of Gourmet),The New York Times 60-Minute Gourmet by Pierre Franey, The Bon Appetit Cookbook by Barbara Fairchild, The Best of Gourmet (series-various authors), How to Eat: The Pleasures and Principles of Good Food by Nigella Lawson, The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook by Ina Garten, The Way to Cook by Julia Child, Julia's Kitchen Wisdom: Essential Techniques and Recipes from a Lifetime of Cooking by Julia Child, or The Way to Cook by Julia Child.
Why teach yet another person the same old tired cooking? Inspire someone to create food instead!
For healthy cooking: American Heart Association Heart Healthy Cookbook.
There's a book called "Cooking with 5 Ingredients" and one called "The New Cooking with 4 Ingredients" and they are really good. They are very simple, yet tasty recipes that don't require more than 4 or 5 ingredients and it's usually stuff you already have on hand. Once you get the hang of cooking and baking, then you can move onto "Better Homes & Gardens." Good luck! Oh, also, the "Fix It and Forget It Cookbook" is a good one for slow cookers. You can make a great meal that seems like you spent a lot of time and talent on, but you simply throw a bunch of stuff in and let it cook all day!
My, oh, my. Seems like lots of folks have their favorites.
From my MANY years of experience at home and in the restaurant biz ... these are what I recommend:
Betty Crocker's Cooking Basics : Learning to Cook with Confidence (Betty Crocker) (Spiral-bound)
Betty Crocker's Picture Cookbook: The Original 1950 Classic (Betty Crocker) (Ring-bound)
Better Homes & Gardens New Cook Book, 75th Anniversary Limited Edition (Ring-bound)
The Taste of Home
The Way to Cook (Hardcover), by Julia Child
(Have a wonderful, rewarding journey)
Go with Donna's suggestions... they are about the best cookbooks and the Taste of Home magazine is awesome! I have a cookbook collection that totals about 350 books and those that she mentioned are the best for beginners. I do alot of cooking and the recipes in those are the simplest and the explanations are the best on technical things and such. Good Luck and enjoy yourself!
Cuilinary Arts Institute Encyclopedic is my fave. Mom gave me one when I married in 1972. I found other editions to give my daughter and daughter in law when they married. It is the most informative of any I own. It has anything from how to set a formal table, where cuts of meat come from on the side of beef or pork, where different fruits come from, equivilants, definitions, what you need to equip a kitchen, basic food stuffs for your kitchen, how to fold napkins, how to can, and hundreds of menus, thousands of recipes. It is the best. You can get at Barnes and Nobles or other b.stores for big bucks, but you can get an older edition in an antique or second hand store or book store, garage sale for almost nothing.
how to boil water
The Ultimate Southern Living Cookbook by Oxmoor House is an all-in-one cookbook. It literally covers cooking from A to Z. The edition I have was published in 1999. It has pictures of correct techniques for measuring, cutting, cooking, and baking. There are pictures and definitions of knives, herbs, pastas, and cuts of meat. This book covers everything from how to make fresh lemonade to how to properly beat egg whites to building the best sandwich to roasting a chicken to making homemade ice cream. It has just about anything you could be looking for and the recipes are great. Near the end of the book is a section on how to cook many types of vegetables and which seasonings and sauces are compatible. The Appendices covers equivalent weights and yields (example: apples 1 lb. [3 med.] = 3 cups sliced) and ingredient, alcohol, and baking pan substitutions. I have collected cookbooks for quite a few years. I really love them. But, if I could only keep one, this would be my choice. There is a more recent version dated 2006. It probably is as good, but I'm not sure. I do know I wouldn't trade. Best wishes in your search. Tip: remember that cooking/baking can be a lot of fun and that there are often many different ways to accomplish the same task.