Reddit reviews Sauces: Classical and Contemporary Sauce Making, 3rd Edition

Sauces by James Peterson
I own it and it's a highly valuable resource.

I've found the most useful resource on sauces to be James Peterson's Sauces. It covers classical and contemporary sauces, and for classical sauces, contemporary methods of production. It's very useful.

Forgot another resource: If you're going to be in the industrial or modernist world, then Martin Lersch's Textures is a pretty great (and free) resource for working with hydrocolloids. Lersch's blog is also a good resource by itself.

Good luck!

James Peterson: Sauces is the best book I have found. It is more a text book though so it is extensive. French foundation but covers other things. My pan sauces are the beesknees because of it.

Investing in culinary texts rather than cookbooks really helped me. These books provide very basic recipes along with relevant techniques/information. Once you get these down, it's a heck of a lot easier to be creative with your dishes (e.g. knowing the 5 mother sauces of French cuisine leads to literally thousands of other recipes).


Suggested reading material:

Sauces: Classical and Contemporary Sauce Making
One of my absolute favorites, I refer to this book pretty much every time I'm in the mood for something new. The author does a great job at keeping things simple while providing great information on traditional applications (along with how to flavor things to your own tastes) for dishes ranging from Mornay sauce to Ganache.


On Cooking: A Textbook of Culinary Fundamentals
This was my required text for intro culinary classes, which makes it expensive. I'm sure finding older/used versions will be much cheaper and just as useful. This is a great resource for techniques such as deboning poultry, ideal use for various potato species, the different cuts of beef and pork, the best cooking methods for said cuts, culinary terms, etc.


The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking
My god do I love Marcella Hazan. She's the Italian Julia Child, and does a fantastic job at making intimidating dishes much more approachable. While this is more of a classic cookbook than the previous two, Hazan provides info on produce selection, basic kitchen techniques, ideal tools to have, and, of course, hundreds of traditional Italian recipes with notes on altering flavor profiles.


YMMV, depending on how deep into the cooking world you'd like to get. Sometimes it's just easier for me to look through google results of a specific dish for inspiration. Good luck!

• Rack of lamb: fat scored in a checker, seared in oil, then roasted
  
  
• Bearnaise: homemade from this book which I highly recommend... I can post the recipe if needed
  
  
• Pasta: linguine cooked to al dente- then finished in a pan with julienned summer (I think?) squash and a bunch of chardonnay and topped with some basil chiffonade and diced heirloom tomatoes
  
  

James Patterson Peterson literally wrote the book on this topic. go buy it, it's a completely fascinating read in it's own right with the side benefit that you get to understand the different aspects of how sauces work and their history.

James Peterson; Sauces: Classical and Contemporary Sauce Making is in my library.

this is a great book...


https://www.amazon.com/Sauces-Classical-Contemporary-Sauce-Making/dp/0470194960

http://www.amazon.com/Sauces-Classical-Contemporary-Sauce-Making/dp/0470194960

Accessible and comprehensive

Video series or anything? I really learned a ton reading The Professional Chef, which is a textbook in a lot of culinary schools I hear. I have the eTextbook version that has a lot of video links and interactivity.

If you're into the science behind cooking I'd also really recommend The Food Lab, I have the hard back version and it's also just a beautiful book.

I also have Cooking and Sauces by Peterson, also textbook quality books.

And of course, the ever popular Better Homes & Gardens Ring-Bound Cookbook, How to Cook Everything, and The Joy of Cooking are staples on my bookshelf as well. Great for reference or a quick look to find a particular recipe just to see how others do it.

I also browse a lot of websites and watch a lot on YouTube. I'll save recipes I find online using the Evernote Web Clipper and tag them so I can find them easily in the future. This works great because I can pull them up on my iPad while I'm cooking.

When a recipe calls for a method, tool, or ingredient I'm not very familiar with I'll usually just search it on YouTube and get some ideas about how to use it. That's worked really well for me so far.

Sauces: Classical and Contemporary Sauce Making

James Peterson - Sauces?

As /u/DroogyParade said, get a copy of On Cooking. Hell, I have one one and I'm just an enthusiastic home cook. Also, if you want a good book on sauces, and guy named Peterson wrote what is considered to be the current tome on sauces. It is very well done and very organized for having to cover such a vast subject.

This is the Bible for making Sauces.