Reddit reviews Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking
We found 31 Reddit comments about Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
SIMON SCHUSTER
Here's my list of gift ideas! Mostly stuff I own and love:
EDIT: I guess I'm overflowing with gift ideas today, here are some more:
Samin Nosrat’s Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat is terrific. Highly recommended.
This is not a rule of SWPL cuisine, it's a rule of cuisine. Fat, acid and salt are the three things that make everything taste better. Acid and salt in particular are good at making other flavors more apparent.
This book is infuriatingly twee but discusses the subject well:
https://smile.amazon.com/Salt-Fat-Acid-Heat-Mastering/dp/1476753830?sa-no-redirect=1
Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat is so great at teaching you about the whys and hows of cooking instead of just giving you a recipe. It's my favorite one.
How to Cook Without a Book by Pam Anderson is another great one.
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As an avid cook and collector of cookbooks, I have three recommendations -
The first two will teach you the essentials of cooking. How salt, fat, acid, and heat work together to make delicious food. J Kenji Lopez Alt has a popular serious eats blog and his book will teach you everything you need to know about cooking perfect meat, eggs, burgers, etc.
Once you learn all of the basics from those books, use the Flavor Bible to be creative.
Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat is not exactly this concept. But would definitely be a great tool for building skills, concepts, and what kit you actually need.
You're not letting salt do its work, AKA osmosis. Salt your chicken a day in advance. You're seasoning way too close to when you cook, which is drawing out the moisture while it's in the oven making it even drier. If you give salt enough time, it draws out the moisture but then restructures the proteins in the meat so they reabsorb the salty water and retain the moisture. For more check out Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat.
Which, for the record, is hella cheap today.
https://www.epicurious.com/ has some great recipes for novices. Also the book SaltFatAcidHeat gives you a really direct and wonderfully written foundation on what to think about while cooking.
Food doesn't have to be expensive, especially while cooking for one, but a lot of grad students (and college students in general) should consider a "meal day" where you pre make large portions and divide them up and store them in the freezer/fridge for the rest of the week to eat at your convenience.
Lots of Burrito/Bean dishes etc are really popular. quick, easy, can eat cold or be microwaved. Cheap to make in bulk and there are a thousand recipes on this subreddit
Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking
And Ad Hoc by Thomas Keller.
If she really wants that master chef vibe I recommend Buchon and The French Laundry.
I'd definitely recommend Samin's book Salt Fat Acid Heat! Rather than just recipes, it teaches you the fundamentals of recipe creation and cooking. Kenji's The Food Lab is also an awesome contribution.
Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat
Well explained the why's of using each element. Very well organized and good recipes to try. Uses basic ingredients too, so won't break your budget.
amzn link
Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat is a great cookbook as well- like Brown's stuff, it teaches you the why's of cooking, and how to improvise with whatever you have on hand:
https://www.amazon.com/Salt-Fat-Acid-Heat-Mastering/dp/1476753830/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
Salt Fat Acid Heat by Samin Nosrat has a handy flavor wheel chart that explains flavors by nationality. It's pretty handy, I actually photocopied mine and hung it on my kitchen wall. The rest of the book is super interesting too, definitely worth purchasing.
My grandma recently gave me an old Chef Paul Prudhomme cookbook from the 80's that is great. I'm a huge gumbo fan and I think there's like 5 separate recipes in there just for that, with different variations for chicken/sausage, seafood, duck, etc.
But, what I really came here to say is there's a newish book called Salt Fat Acid Heat that isn't directly tied to cajun food, but is excellent at explaining the science of food and why things are delicious. I like this instead of a cookbook that just gives you a list of ingredients and specific steps to follow, with no reasoning for why you're doing each of the steps. Here's a link: https://www.amazon.com/Salt-Fat-Acid-Heat-Mastering/dp/1476753830... there's also a Netflix special that has the same title that's good as an appetizer to the book if you're interested.
It's $13 right now on Amazon, that's a pretty bangin price. Might have to get myself a christmas present early!
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https://www.amazon.com/Salt-Fat-Acid-Heat-Mastering/dp/1476753830/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=salt+fat+acid+heat&qid=1574274029&sr=8-1
I found it for $13.73. Here's the link
There's a new book called "Salt Fat Acid Heat" which looks amazing. I checked it out from the library but haven't started it yet.
https://www.amazon.com/Salt-Fat-Acid-Heat-Mastering/dp/1476753830
https://www.amazon.com/Salt-Fat-Acid-Heat-Mastering/dp/1476753830
Zwei Bücher die dir von Grund auf an alle Prinzipien des Kochens erklären sind:
https://www.amazon.com/Salt-Fat-Acid-Heat-Mastering/dp/1476753830
Gibt's auch ne Serie auf Netflix.
https://www.amazon.com/4-Hour-Chef-Cooking-Learning-Anything/dp/1328519163/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?keywords=Four+hour+chef&qid=1557678541&s=gateway&sr=8-1
Kannst die ersten 50-100 Seiten überspringen, wenn dich Lernprinzipien nicht interessieren. Danach kommen aber einfache Rezepte die dir spezielle Kochtechniken beibringen.
/#1 Best Seller in Cooking Encyclopedia's
Salt. Fat. Acid. Heat.
Does he have a nice insulated mug/water bottle for when he is doing the outdoor stuff? A personal colored or engraved Hydroflask would be a nice gift to keep water cold or coffee/tea hot!
You could also get him a recipe book. These two are on my Christmas list, the first one has SO MANY recipes for everything you can think of and more, fun to get new meal inspiration. The bottom has a Netflix show, but is the basics of cooking and how to boost flavor with amazing illustrations.
You and your FH can write personal messages in the front cover to thank him.
America’s Test Kitchen Complete Cookbook
Salt Fat Acid Heat
This is a really good read - these are the opening lines of the book’s introduction:
> Anyone can cook anything and make it delicious.
> Whether you’ve never picked up a knife or you’re an accomplished chef, there are only four basic factors that determine how good your food will taste: salt, which enhances flavor; fat, which amplifies flavor and makes appealing textures possible; acid, which brightens and balances; and heat, which ultimately determines the texture of food. Salt, Fat, Acid, and Heat are the four cardinal directions of cooking, and this book shows how to use them to find your way in any kitchen.
Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking by Samin Nosrat
Oh. I poked around. Is it Salt Fat Acid Heat?
If so, here’s the link: Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking https://www.amazon.com/dp/1476753830/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_l0G0DbT4XX0MZ
This one is very popular and it's still on sale. Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1476753830/?coliid=I33BRJN8OJCTRL&colid=2LU4E1DJMSPDA&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it
Get the book Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. It teaches you how to think about your dish from first principles, rather than being bound to a recipe. It's really good!
Just some bits and pieces that might help:
You need to learn the quirks of your stove/oven. They aren't all the same. Gas vs electric is a huge difference, but even two gas or two electric setups can be different from each other. Just because a recipe says you put something in on X temperature for X time doesn't actually mean that's how it's going to work for you. At my last apartment, my oven ran hot and things went from done to overcooked extremely fast. At my new apartment, it's the exact opposite. Get a meat thermometer and accept that it'll take some time to figure out your setup.
For dishes you make on the stove, or one sheet pan meals in the oven, the #1 rule is do not crowd the pan. If you add too many things at once, your food is going to steam in the water that its neighbors are releasing, not sear. You want them seared for that Maillard reaction. This is related to the Chinese phrase wok hei.
Better seasonings helps a lot. Subscribe to Penzeys emails, the owner hates Trump and has been doing crazy giveaways every time he gets mad at Trump (I'm not trolling or shilling, he really does do these giveaways.) The spices/herbs/seasoning mixes are high quality and they make a huge difference.
Hands down the best book for learning the WHY of cooking, not just the how, is Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. I will fight anyone who says otherwise.
As others have said, practice.
With that said, books like Ratio and Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat have also been a huge help to me.
They both teach you more about what things work well together rather than how to follow particular recipes. Ratio is about what flavors compliment each other and Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat demonstrates how the combination of those four elemental units in cooking can up your game across the board.
I have never used a real cookbook, but I watched this mini series on Netflix called Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat and it was fantastic. Highly recommend it. I just looked up some cookbooks on amazon for you and saw the book there with stellar reviews. It has 100 recipes and also teaches you some fundamentals of cooking and how the ingredients work together. Sorry I don’t know any other books to recommend, I grew up on the internet!
Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking https://www.amazon.com/dp/1476753830/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_65lyCbDD3YSJB
I'm a little late to this and have only leafed through it myself but Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking might be of interest to you. It breaks down those four ingredients (and others) and how to use them/why they're important. Helpful for baking of course. Additionally, the illustrations are so cute. They remind me of Quentin Blake's illustration for Roald Dahl books.
Acid is a fundamental building block of cooking and flavor. Some would argue the four elements you must always keep in mind to create a dish are Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat