Reddit reviews CookWise: The Hows & Whys of Successful Cooking, The Secrets of Cooking Revealed

Shirley Corriher, who was the science expert on Alton Brown's Good Eats has a book that might be right

Another book that I would recommend is Cookwise by Shirley Corriher.

Yep. I had it backwards. I went to look it up in Cookwise ( an excellent book if you don't already have it ) and came back to orange envelope.

I am in the same position you are in. Love cooking, no formal training, but love the science, theory and art behind it all. I have a few books that I find to be indispensable.

• How to Cook Everything and How to Cook Everything: Vegetarian by Mark Bittman are two of my favorite recipe books. Loads of pretty simple recipes, lots of suggestions for modifications, and easy to modify yourself. Covers a bit of technique and flavor tips, but mostly recipes.
  
  
• CookWise by Shirley Corriher (the food science guru for Good Eats!) - great book that goes much more into the theory and science behind food and cooking. Lots of detailed info broken up nicely and then provides recipes to highlight the information discussed. Definitely a science book with experiments (recipes) added in to try yourself.
  
  
• Professional Baking and Professional Cooking by Wayne Gissen - Both of these books are written like textbooks for a cooking class. Filled with tons of conversion charts, techniques, processes, and detailed food science info. Has recipes, but definitely packed with tons of useful info.
  
  
• The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters - this is not much on theory and more recipes, but after using many of the recipes in this book and reading between the lines a great deal, this taught me a lot about how great food doesn't require tons of ingredients. Many foods and flavors highlight themselves when used and prepared very simply and this really shifted my perspective from overworking and overpreparing dishes to keeping things simple and letting the food speak for itself.
  
  And mentioned in other threads, Cooking for Geeks is a great book too, On Food and Cooking is WONDERFUL and What Einstein Told His Chef is a great read as well. Modernist Cuisine is REALLY cool but makes me cry when I see the price.

As an engineer "Cookwise" is pretty cool for the science of WHY you should do certain things while cooking. (Linky)

So a few ideas and I'll put them all in one so you guys can make your own top level comments with the ones you like?

This is the latest in a 30 book series I've been reading for years: http://amzn.com/B00BGCC28Y about Honor Harrington, it's space opera like Star Wars but with a kick ass woman lead :)


I've never read this series, but it's all three books in one: http://amzn.com/B007WE3AFO so not bad for $9.99

The author of this one is amazing, and there's a used "very good' copy for 2.68 + 3.99 shipping that would be great! http://amzn.com/0688102298

But please! WHAT DO YOU GUYS LIKE from my lists? The penguin? The SEAL book? MP3s and some .99c Kindle stuff? I'll be happy with ANYTHING...there's even doggy treats that'll work and Loki will love you forever!

THANK YOU!!!!!

Second the nomination of Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking, The Science and Lore of the Kitchen.

Good Eats fans with an interest in the science might like Shirley O. Corriher's Cookwise, The Secrets of Cooking Revealed. She was The Science Lady on the Good Eats show.

>Shirley O. Corriher is a biochemist and author of CookWise: The Hows and Whys of Successful Cooking, winner of a James Beard Foundation award, and BakeWise: The Hows and Whys of Successful Baking.

(From wikipedia.)

Here is the Amazon page for Cookwise:

https://www.amazon.com/CookWise-Successful-Cooking-Secrets-Revealed/dp/0688102298/

Forgot to mention CookWise earlier. Knowing the chemistry of WHY you do certain things helps you be more successful in kitchen experiments, I think.

Also try Cookwise - it explains much of the science behind why things work or don't, which gives you a lot of insight into where you can make changes and where you need to be precise.

I picked up a book from the Test Kitchen a few years back about how to make great vegetables, and it was another book that made me a better cook. In the book I had, they explained that there were, say, six popular ways of making this dish, and so we tried them all, and here are the results. I love the idea, and also that I don't need to make 50 batches of potatoes to figure this stuff out.

I haven't read Cooking for Geeks, but On Food and Cooking, which /u/Arkolix also mentioned, is a great reference book.

My own personal recommendation is Cookwise by Shirley Corriher, who used to appear occasionally on "Good Eats". I like this book because, in addition to explaining the hows and whys of things happening, there are also recipes that show, as one example in a baking chapter, what happens when you make chocolate chip cookies and use more white sugar or more brown sugar or shortening instead of butter.

Check out Cookwise. The author is a biochemist and explains from a scientific perspective what's happening as your ingredients are cooking. To highlight one example she compares a cookie recipe made with varying amounts of the same ingredients, and the result. Can't recommend this book highly enough.

Books are everything here, friend.

Basic Food Science and Cooking Technique (Understanding how ingredients work, individually and in combination):

• Shirley O. Corriher - CookWise (I prefer this book, because it includes recipes as examples to demonstrate food science)
  
• Harold McGee - On Food and Cooking : The Science and Lore of the Kitchen (The more comprehensive of the two, zero recipes though.)
  
  References and Recepies:
  
  
• Wayne Gisslen - Professional Cooking (Pretty much the only recipe book you ever need. Very in depth.)
  
• Joy of Cooking (Including this because it used to be known as the bible of American cooking. Might be a little dated now.)
  
  Edit: Updated a book to its latest edition.

One of my favorite cookbooks: Cookwise

It's written by a biochemist who also ran the kitchen in a boys' school for awhile. It explains why things work the way they do when you're cooking, and the recipes are well explained and really hard to eff up.

One of the best things you can do is to train your palate. This way, when you taste something, you can figure out what's in it, and make it yourself if you want. It will also help you to learn what goes with what. For example, dill goes with salmon, lemon with raspberries, tomato with onion and cilantro or basil, etc. That kind of knowledge will help you to invent your own recipes which are catered directly to your tastes.

If you really want to know what makes food do what it does, I would recommend the following books:

• For general culinary science, On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen by Harold McGee. It is one of the best books ever written which actually explains why things happen in the kitchen.
  
• I usually buy a copy of Shirley O. Corriher's CookWise for anyone who says they want to learn to cook. It is perfect for beginners and has lots of very useful recipes. If you watch Alton Brown's "Good Eats", you will see Ms. (or is is Dr.?) Corriher explaining some of the science.
  
• If you want to learn how to bake incredible cake, Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Cake Bible is indispensable, same for her Bread Bible and Pie and Pastry Bible. I rarely fuck up a cake now, and if I do, I know why. And her cake recipes are brilliant. From learning to make her chocolate butter cake, I also discovered the secret to making the BEST cup of chocolate ever. The aforementioned Ms. Corriher's BakeWise is also excellent for beginners.
  
• The Larousse Gastronomique is probably the most famous book on cuisine. It's an encyclopedia which contains pretty much every cooking term. It's a pretty high-level book, but it is the authority.
  
  Have fun with it! =)

I think you'd like Alton Brown's book I'm Just Here for the Food. It does contain recipes, but its focus is teaching you to understand how cooking techniques work so that you can apply that knowledge as you will. Relatedly, I've heard CookWise is something like what you're looking for.

CookWise by Shirley Corriher
Culinary Artistry by Andrew Dornenburg

My mother bought me this cookbook a few years ago and it teaches the actual science of cooking. She also talk some about baking bread in there and about the different flours, how they interact with their ingredients and so forth.

While I don't have this book, the same woman wrote Bakewise. It will also get into the sciences of it and all the "whys". I would bet that once you have some experience with this book that you would be able to start making up your own recipes as well. Once you know the ratio's, you should be golden. (I didn't even know she had done written this book till I searched for Cookwise. I might have to get this one for myself!)

EDIT: Someone else mentioned The Joy of Cooking. My husband is one heck of a baker and he gets a lot of his recipes from The Joy of Baking. They have all been excellent so far.

EDIT II: (Sorry, I love this kind of thing and keep thinking of more stuff). I have gotten a lot of excellent dessert recipes from Southern Living. Before they changed the layout of their magazine a few years back, I would get their magazine. I poured over it for hours. While the magazine isn't as good, their recipes are still excellent. Type in what you are looking for and it will give you several recipes to choose from (the search engine in the middle of the page, not the one in the upper right corner).

My favorite apple pie comes from there. I get wonderful compliments whenever I make it. Don't leave out the brandy-caramel sauce linked in the ingredients!

A really good pizza needs to form a lot of gluten. This means you need a very strong flour to make a good pizza. Normal 00 is not strong enough. I personally add a 5% in weight of gluten to the dough maiden with 00. Professional pizza makers use their own mix of flours. A very good book that explain many details of dough making process is
https://www.amazon.com/CookWise-Successful-Cooking-Secrets-Revealed/dp/0688102298