Best sauces & topping cooking books according to redditors

I tend to find roasting a good method. Barring that, a good sauce goes a long way towards helping with things you don’t love eating. Spending some time with a sauce-centric cookbook, like this one , could prove useful in a ton of cooking situations, including dressing up things you struggle with. Good luck!

Just got his cookbook for Christmas, it's legit

The first secret of great sauces is great stock. Without it, you are nothing. With a nice batch of stock to hand, almost anything you throw in with it to call it a sauce will be lovely.

Beyond that, basic understanding of flavours along with a passable knowledge of the various ways of thickening a sauce to the desired consistency (e.g. simple reduction, roux, beurre manie, cornstarch, etc.) and when you should consider any of them appropriate should see you through. I heartily recommend Michel Roux's book on the subject if you really want to get down and dirty. It is mainly a recipe book, but it does a great job of educating the reader along the way too.

https://www.amazon.com/My-Life-Plate-Recipes-Around/dp/1909487309

I totally hear you. Even though I work from a home office, I don't have time to cook as much as I'd like. I don't want to admit how often I buy ingredients for a great dinner, only to have them go bad because I haven't had time to cook.

Well, at least I can get a paleo-friendly fast food dinner at Chipotle.... Do make a list for yourselves for takeout and fast food that's on-diet. It may not be perfect, but it's better than a burger joint. For instance, order Asian food without rice, and go to a better burger joint where, when you order it without a bun, you don't see a sad little patty reminding you that 90% of what you were paying for was bread. There's a high-end burger restaurant near us that lets us order essentially burger salads.

Anyhow, when I'm better organized, here's some of the things I do:

• Make stew. Like the chili /u/sweatpantsromance suggests, you can cook it on the weekend, and it only gets better over time.
  
  Do freeze one dinner's worth, though, because you'll get tired of even the best stew during the week... and then when you go puttering in the freezer in a few weeks you'll have a great surprise.
  
  
• Roast a chicken and vegetables. I'm a grand fan of recipes that take no attention, like this one from Nigella Lawson. Throw some sweet potatoes in the oven and you're done.
  
  
• Meat loaf! We make a huge one, then freeze it. Our go-to recipe is for "hedgehog" from the original Two Fat Ladies cookbook, which uses no bread and also includes chicken livers; but if you must use a filler, almond meal is good.
  
  
• It isn't make-ahead, but fish really is your friend. Last night I made a shrimp dish that'd serve 6... and start-to-finish it was 25 minutes, which is less time than online delivery would take to get to your house. For example, if you eat cheese, this shrimp-and-feta recipe might be yummy. (Mine was a variation thereof... no tomato, but the juice of two lemons and a dash of chili.)
  
  
• Similarly, if you have a grill, it's fast to grill dinner... assuming that you marinade it ahead of time. I recently reviewed this marinade cookbook quite favorably.
  
  This week, I'm making a shepherd's pie with parsnip mash, which I found in the BBC Olive Magazine. That should feed us for a few days. As well as a quick-dinner stew of chicken, mango, and cashews.

I've picked up this book from Ebay for like $2 and I'd recommend it.

https://www.amazon.com/Paul-Kirks-Championship-Barbecue-Sauces/dp/155832125X

part 2/2

Second, there are ways to take a more cost-effective approach. I always bring up the physics example of the apple falling on Newton's head, which made him realize gravity existed, and then he dedicated his whole life to figuring out the formula for gravity; then you saunter up to science class one day, learn F=ma, and that's that! Likewise, a lot of smart & persistent people have worked hard to create formulas for food, called recipes, which you can try & learn & get good results at simply by following their step-by-step checklist.

Part of getting good at cooking is learning the underlying tools, technique, and knowledge required for flavor combinations, food pairings, spice mixes, cooking methods, etc., but part of it is also just burning through a bunch of recipes & getting exposure to good results & to various processes, without having to master every single one right off the bat & then think up new ways to use them. So in addition to learning how to cook in general, I'd also recommend simply following a bunch of recipes initially, rather than trying to re-invent the wheel, which can help you get better results initially, simply because you have proven instructions to follow! There are a million great resources for doing this; I'll share just a few here:

• Website: Serious Eats: Most recipes are split into a detailed explanation & then a separate page for the recipe itself. Excellent learning resource!
  
• Book: The Food Lab: By Kenji of the Serious Eats website. This is a really excellent book to learn cooking step-by-step, complete with full-color pictures & detailed explanations.
  
• Website: ChefSteps: An excellent resource for detailed recipes from the company that makes the Joule sous-vide machine (note that not all recipes are sous-vide!)
  
• Show: Good Eats with Alton Brown (on TV or available to purchase online); lots of detailed walkthroughs & tribal knowledge shared in each episode.
  
• Book: Modern Sauces: 150 sauces, plus great explanations to build up your knowledge about sauces. One thing I've realized over time is that most restaurants create amazing flavor through their sauces, whether it's something as basic as Big Mac sauce at McDonald's or a super fancy steak sauce at an elegant, high-end restaurant.
  
• Show: "Wok Star" by Eleanor Ho: She teaches a fantastic, recipe-free workflow for creating stir-fry dishes using a wok & a hi-heat portable burner. Note that you can buy the discs (which are just simple recordings of her classes) & printed materials separately from the wok & burner if you already have the tools. She's put together a really great system for teaching wok cooking, so if you're interested in learning the "flowchart" for quick & healthy meals using the stir-fry method, this is the best resource I've ever come across!
  
  Third, it helps to have some good introductions to the different aspects of food. Here's a few links to read to help kick-start your education process:
  
  
• Basic cooking advice & approach
  
• How to cook a chicken breast so it's good every time
  
• A quick discussion about "master" recipes
  
• Introduction to spices
  
• How our bodies works in relation to food & a bit more on food & exercise
  
• A quick introduction to complete foods
  
• My approach to meal prep & a bit more information on the Look Book
  
• Some tips for getting organized in your kitchen (kitchen part specifically is a few posts down)
  
  Anyway, learning how to cook can definitely be discouraging & can absolutely be a money-drain, because you're going to have to make a lot of mistakes, due to the learning process, and make also a lot of just plain mediocre food before you start hitting some home-runs. I'd recommend making sure that you have a recipe storage system for capturing the recipes & workflows you really like.
  
  I'd also recommend adopting the "growth" mindset when it comes to cooking, because it's easy to quit in the face of setbacks & label yourself as a terrible cook or view cooking at home as hard or dumb or whatever. If you look at cooking from a big-picture perspective, you're going to be alive until you die, and you've gotta eat every day, so imo at least, it's totally worth learning how to cook so that you can save money & enhance the enjoyability of each meal that you cook while you can!
  
  I think part of that is just accepting that it's going to take some time & practice (and money) as you grow & develop your skills, your personal recipe database, and the various workflows available for things like making breads or grilling or stir-frying or whatever you want to dive into. Probably the best way to save money, at this point in your cooking education, is to find & follow top-rated recipes. Pinterest has a pretty good algorithm for bubbling up really good recipes, so if you type in "chocolate-chip cookie" into the Pinterest search & try a recipe (exactly as printed, step-by-step) on the first page of results, then you're likely to get much better results than just winging it...while also building up your cooking skills in the process & getting that background knowledge & hands-on time required to get better at cooking!

Happy 11th to you! Here is a Salad Dressings Book that would be good for making some salad dressings this weekend. Getting together with friends this weekend to hit up the local winery and hang out.

The Saucy Vegetarian is my favorite easy-peasy sauce book with

• explanation of sauce basics, literally a little from column A, column B, C and maybe D.
  
  
• lists of basic ingredients which fit A, B, C and D.
  
  
• specific recipes that match the explanation in section 1
  
  Yes ok they are vegetarian sauce recipes but who cares when you learn so much for so little effort. If you want them meaty, substitute right (veggie broth is suddenly chicken broth).

I recommend Paul Kirk's Championship BBQ Sauces. Worth every last penny, and has way more than just sauces. It's got seasonings, marinades, infused oils, curry powders, rubs, I mean, you name it, it's got it.

This is a shameless unaffiliated promotion, and I approve this message.

The mustard acts like a glue for your rub. You can't taste it. Check out Paul Kirks book. It shows you how to make rubs.

I make two of my own plus a garlic pepper blend I use as a base rub for most of my BBQ meats, but purchase 3 or 4 others that have a following on the competition trail, like Dizzy Pig or Smokin' Guns.

The best advice for making your own is to buy good spices online (storebought ones can be years old), and also check out Paul Kirk's book, it is very helpful in teaching you how to combine seasonings for your own rubs, and has good recipes too.

Paul kirks book. Start there. here

I have this book, and I've yet to make something out of it that isn't great.
Paul Kirk's Championship Barbecue Sauces (amazon)

I like all the books by Paul Kirk. His Championship Barbecue Sauces gives instructions on how to develop your own sauce and rubs. I think that is the second book I ever bought and it is sitting next to me as I type this.

http://www.amazon.com/Paul-Kirks-Championship-Barbecue-Sauces/dp/155832125X/ref=pd_sim_b_6

Same book on Amazon UK

Welcome, welcome! It's nice to have you on board!

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Say, one can never have too many cookbooks. Do you agree? So, I propose that, should this post win, I and other posters (determined each by the raffle) recieve a copy! Should you buy them used, that should be enough for a few copies.

How easy was that?

My mum got a copy of BBQ Sauces, Rubs and Marinades For Dummies recently and every single recipe we've tried has been PACKED full of flavour. A word of caution though, some recipes use A LOT of chili powder. On any of them that seem like a lot of chili I'd say use maybe 1/4 of what it says the first time? Also, here are a couple of websites i've found useful while cooking

• http://startcooking.com/ - Excellent for beginners
  
• http://www.joyofbaking.com/ - yummy baking!
  
• http://www.tastespotting.com/ - all sorts of stuff!
  

The book Physics for Entertainment by Yakov Perelman

To go with a Moleskine you really should have a good EDC pen, like the Fisher Space Pen, though Lamy Safari fountain pens are fun and affordable if that's more your style.

You should also look into Field Notes notebooks.

And the thing I have to include just because I have to... ninjabread men cookie cutters because I really really want it! (well them)

edit: I forgot two 'spirituality' books i've enjoyed, Saltwater Buddha and Kook

edit2: TIL I can't follow directions :D $5 & $10

I like this one: Modern Sauces