Reddit reviews Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book

Yay you! I'm a chef and I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE to hear when people start their journey into the Art Cullinaire - come to the Foodie Side, we ALWAYS have brownies!

So, let me give you a few quick tips to help you jumpstart your skillz:

FoodSafety.gov is a wonderful website. I say go over and browse the whole site, but the most, most, most important thing to ever know is Temperature Control. And they have a nice chart of Safe Cooking Temperatures, to make it easy! Print it out, and buy yourself a cheapo $5 thermometer, and from now on, you can most certainly enjoy a steak cooked to rare, medium, medium well, or whatever YOUR preferred temperature is. It will be perfectly safe to eat. These thermometers are super simple to use - you keep them in a drawer and when you want to check the temp, you just pop it in up to the little groove/notch and wait about 10 seconds for it to finish registering. Wipe it with bleach water to sanitize it and pop it back into it's plastic case and you're done.

Cookbooks like the Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook (get the ring-bound edition) are perfect for the beginning cook, but don't just use them 1 recipe at a time, or you'll miss out on the bulk of what they can offer you... real knowledge that can save you a ton of money and headache in setting up your kitchen and stocking it. Read it like a regular book, cover-to-cover at least once, and you will find advice on setting up your kitchen, charts on butcher's cuts, notes on technique and tools, and yes, my beloved Food Safety as well.

Know what the USDA and FDA do for you - they are fabulous resources to learn about food and nutrition. There is so much there that you can get lost in it all. But the easiest and most money-saving thing you can do is look for the USDA label. What that tells you is the food product is adhering to the standards of quality set by the US Dept. of Agriculture. What does that mean? Grade AA Butter is Grade AA butter, even if one of the brands is $2 more per pound, it's not better. Ditto on cooking oils, pastas, or anything else with that label on the packaging - it's monitored and has to meet certain quality standards. If you notice a difference in taste, it's usually due to freshness, quality of packaging in preserving the product's shelf life, on, like in the case of the biggest national brand of butter - proprietary patented wrapping to keep out other flavors in your fridge from infusing in (and a higher salt content).

Good luck on your future culinary adventures. You're learning to cook at the perfect time - YouTube has ALL the classic cooking techniques, there are a million TV shows that show you how to do them, and the availability of products has never been better. It's a set of skills that will make you healthier, happier, richer, and more connected with people. Welcome to the Foodie Club!

Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook

This is a classic of basics IMHO. There's a couple chapters in methods, stocking your kitchen, spices, etc. Then there's endless recipes of the basics/classics: lasagna, mashed potatoes, cookies, etc.

I use my copy more than any other cookbook.

Edit: Amazon.ca link

this is the current version of the one given to me as a new bride 18 yrs ago:

http://www.amazon.com/Better-Homes-Gardens-Cook-Plaid/dp/0470560770
(make sure you get the spiral bound!)

all the basics, a few nice date-night special recipes, and very straightforward instructions. I don't refer to it much anymore, but I still use the pizza crust recipe!

When I was a kid this was a staple in our home. While it may be quite simple and from the 70s-80s the sauces, techniques and basic recipes are a fantastic starting point.

Great, I’m excited to begin. Thank you for doing this!

DISCUSSION:

1. What do you like to cook? I enjoy baking particularly. Other than that, I enjoy trying new ethnic foods. I’m up for new experiences!
   
2. Who is your favorite chef? As cheesy as this may sound, it is my mother. She didn’t usually cook fancy or time-consuming dishes, especially being a busy mother of a large family. But, her meals are always the most tasty to me! No one can compare in my mind.
   
3. What is your favorite cookbook and why? My mother always used a Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book, and when I got married she gifted me one too. So, it is there for sentimental value as well as making dishes I’ve come to enjoy as a child.*
   
4. What are you looking to learn? I'm interested in learning more about different cuisines other than traditional American and Greek, since I'm more familiar with those (though I'm not opposed to learning more about those either). I’m excited to hone my kitchen skills. I’d like to learn more about using herbs and spices I don’t normally use. Also, I’d like to become adept at knife skills so that chopping vegetables won’t take as long.
   
5. Do you have any recipes that you would like to make but are afraid and why? Not really. I’m always a little nervous when trying something that includes a technique I haven’t done before, but I just research the process and forge ahead!
   
6. What ingredient do you just not like and could you be persuaded to try it if the right recipe came along? There are very few ingredients I have tried that I do not like, and I forced myself to learn to appreciate the ones I didn’t like in the past (mushrooms & coconut). I suppose I usually steer clear of anchovies and things like insect flour (I’ve never tried them b/c they don’t look appealing), but I’m always willing to try something once if given the opportunity. I'd say my main limitations are not an ingredient's taste, but tend to be cost and calorie count.
   
7. What liquids do you use regularly that didn’t make the list? None. Those are the ones I use the most.
   
8. What spices and seasonings do you use regularly that didn’t make the list? smoked paprika, onion powder, dill, cinnamon (does cinnamon count? I use it in cooking meats sometimes)
   
9. What recipes do you cook regularly (or want to make) that showcase a particular ingredient (listed or missing here)? Can’t think of any…
   
   
   RECIPE DISCUSSION
   
   
   I looked through the 1896 cookbook and decided to try to translate a soup recipe into modern format. It was tough because it doesn’t specify temperatures or ingredient quantities, so I took my best guess. However, I’ll probably measure more to taste when I cook it. I’ll update with a pic once it is made. Here’s the recipe I chose and translate:
   
   
   Herb Soup with Parmesan Cheese:
   
   
   TOTAL TIME: 55min.
   
   
   Serves: 4
   
   
   Ingredients:
   
   
   

• 1 head young celery
  
  
  
• 1 bunch sorrel
  
  
  
• 1 bunch chervil (curly parsley?)
  
  
  
• 1 bundle chives
  
  
  
• 1 bunch parsley
  
  
  
• 3 tarragon leaves
  
  
  
• 6 cups chicken broth
  
  
  
• 3 French rolls
  
  
  
• 3T hot butter
  
  
  
• ½ cup parmesan, finely grated
  
  
  Directions:
  
  
  

1. Wash the celery, chervil, chives, parsley, tarragon.
   
2. Drain thoroughly and chop into ½” pieces.
   
3. Gently boil the chopped vegetables/herbs in a saucepan with 6 cups of broth until tender.
   
4. Preheat oven to 375F. Cut slices of French rolls into 1” pieces.
   
5. Dip the bread pieces in hot butter and roll in finely grated parmesan, giving them a good coating.
   
6. On a baking pan layered with parchment paper, bake bread until lightly browned.
   
7. Serve soup topped with baked French bread.
   
   
   EDIT: Have you thought about posting this to /r/cooking, /r/Universityofreddit, /r/food, etc...? I'm sure there are people in other subs that can benefit from this series.
   
   
   QUESTION: Am I right in thinking that chervil is labeled as curly parsley in the store, or is that something different?

For learning basics you can't go wrong with the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook It's a staple in the kitchen of every person I know.
*Edit: a word

My grandmother, my mom, and I all have used (various editions) of this one: http://www.amazon.com/Better-Homes-Gardens-Cook-Book/dp/0470560770

It's pretty much every basic (and many not-so-basic) recipe you could possibly hope for.

I am up to about 20 cook books. At one point, my mom told me to stop buying cook books, and that once I cooked every single recipe in every single cook book THEN I can start buying new cookbooks. That is when I started getting cooking magazine subscriptions, and I have a few years of those magazines built up now. I have one or two on my Nook that were free or cheap, but I don't use them because I don't want my Nook anywhere near the kitchen when I start cooking. I make too many messes.

Anywho, my favorite ones are these two:
The red and white Better Homes and Gardens. My mom had one of these growing up, so part of the reason I like it is nostalgia, but it also has a ton of recipes. It's super well divided (beef, vegetables, pork, cookies, poultry, breads, etc) and organized. I forgot what edition my mom has, but I just found the 15th or 16th edition for $1.00 at a library sale. It was brand new. I was looking through my grandpa's edition from like 1950 something. It had recipes for like organ meats in there...it was an interesting little history lesson.

Also, my Tastes of Home cookbook for pretty similar reasons. It's massive, great organization, etc.

Those 2 are usually the first I'll look at in my collection, but I also have a few "Fix it and Forget It" cookbooks for my crock pot, "Budget Bytes" and "Good and Cheap", several themed cook books (pizza, chocolate, greek yogurt, pasta, etc) a vegetarian cookbook, a "5 ingredient or less" cookbook...and several others that I apparently don't look at often enough to remember.


Maybe Mom was right.

I highly recommend this book. It is simplistic and explains it without assuming you already know certain things. I cook quite frequently and this is one of my go to books for recipes and techniques

Lasagna was one of my first dishes, straight from the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook a fine basic recipe book for a supermarket-driven kitchen. (I found the Lasagna recipe itself online here.)

It doesn't take much more work than pasta and sauce, nothing hard here, just some steps that take time. I've never had this turn out watery. It's a bit on the bland side as is, but that's easy enough to fix. (Hint: "italian seasonings" leaves a lot of room for expansion/experimentation.)

If you wanna stick with baking, I highly recommend a Better Homes and Gardens cookbook! My family has one that's at least 30 years old and it has some great baking recipes in it. I've been making the banana cream pie recipe in it for years and it's one of my family's favorite desserts, and the white cake recipe comes out perfect every time!

It has a ton of other recipes too, but the dessert ones I know for sure are top notch.

Get the quintessential Better Homes cookbook. It has great tips/recipes and the cookies ARE perfect. Oh! They also tell you the accurate baking time so you don't have to pull you cookies out early for soft centers and crisp outside!

Link to the hard copy:
https://www.amazon.com/Better-Homes-Gardens-Cook-Book/dp/0470560770

P.S. they also have an app! I have yet to check out though I'm sure its pretty good.