# Books for home cook



## shovi

Hi all,
I'm sorry if this subject has been talked about before, I looked at up and didn't find an answer.
I want to buy a book or two about cooking, not necessary recipes but something which will teach me and will be fun to read. Since I love science I was recommended to buy The Food Lab, but I also heard about The Flavor Bible and The Professional Chef.
Is there suggestion from the above, or other book, for what book to buy?
Thank You


----------



## phatch

The professional chef is not what would recommend. For science, try On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee. This is more about ingredients and techniques and the science behind what happens with those things. No recipes to speak of. 

Shirley Coriher wrote Cookwise and Bakewise. These two books are more specific to recipes and the science that makes them work.


----------



## scott livesey

I would recommend an early edition of "Joy of Cooking" where they go into the why's as well as the how's. the earlier editions also include such essentials as how to prepare a squirrel or possum for supper.


----------



## brulo

Can I hijack this post for a moment to ask for advice? 

I want a couple of books similar to what the OP requested but that also also easy to carry around. 

I have the McGee and the Food Lab, both are really cool but are massive in size, those are books to read at home.

I would like some books to carry around and read here and there, maybe some with stories from kitchens, advice from professionals, history and whatnot. 

What do you think?


----------



## chrislehrer

brulo said:


> Can I hijack this post for a moment to ask for advice?
> 
> I want a couple of books similar to what the OP requested but that also also easy to carry around.
> 
> I have the McGee and the Food Lab, both are really cool but are massive in size, those are books to read at home.
> 
> I would like some books to carry around and read here and there, maybe some with stories from kitchens, advice from professionals, history and whatnot.
> 
> What do you think?


Are you looking for recipes? Concepts? New ideas? History? Pro terminology?

In a portable book (not counting Kindle and such) you'll get two of these at best.


----------



## brulo

chrislehrer said:


> Are you looking for recipes? Concepts? New ideas? History? Pro terminology?
> 
> In a portable book (not counting Kindle and such) you'll get two of these at best.


I'm an amateur cook about to start cooking school, love to try techniques, recipes, learn random facts.

Maybe I could use some reading about the industry, stories from the kitchen, I'm pretty sure some renown chefs would had written some cool books on that matter.

Or maybe something about techniques and good explanations...

Basically, if you read a cool book related to gastronomy and can be carried around in a backpack, feel free to recommend it!


----------



## The Nosey Chef

This is an endlessly open question, and much depends on where you are in your cooking journey, and what styles of food you like to cook. I can only describe the way I went about it.

I got a love of cooking about 20 years ago when my wife and I moved into the first house we had with a usable kitchen. I wanted to preserve my own family's tradition of Sunday dinner (which in England is a roast), and the only way that this was going to happen was if I cooked it.

So, given that Sunday dinner was the primary target, I got a copy of a book that focused on British classics. It happened to be Gary Rhodes' _New British Classics_. Fast forward, and I decided to try vegetarian Italian stuff (my wife was a vegetarian at the time), and got Ursula Ferrigno's _Truly Italian_. In both these cases, I was not buying a book with a hodgepodge of all sorts in it, I was focusing on one cuisine, and learning a few recipes from it. Ferrigno's book was the first one I cooked from front to back, and I learned a lot of basic skills like risotto, building soups, getting pasta right etc. For French, I looked to Raymond Blanc as a Frenchman cooking in England with access to British ingredients.

Fast forward again, and I wanted to really learn stuff and develop my own dishes. For that, I use a core library of _Larousse Gastronomique_ for general recipes, French food and authenticity, I use Escoffier's _Le Guide Culinaire_ for ideas (cooking from that takes some effort), _Institut Paul Bocuse Gastronomique_ for techniques and basics, Anna del Conte's _Gastronomy of Italy_ for Italian, and finally I cook a bit of stuff from the _Roast Chicken and Other Stories_ series by the well-regarded British chef Simon Hopkinson (those books are written according to ingredient and season).

Of those books, the Simon Hopkinson ones were actually a good bedtime read because that and his _Week In Week Out_ are actually columns from the UK's _Independent_ newspaper. The _Roast Chicken_ books are the books I would 'carry around' as they are small paperbacks and a great read.

Finally, there is the Internet. I uses this to work out how to do specific things. The most reliable sites for me are _BBC Good Food_ (for ease) and _Serious Eats_ (for furiously researched amazing stuff). _Chef Steps_ is good for working out Sous Vide timings. Ian Haste's _Haste's Kitchen_ and Simon Quilter's _Food Busker_ YouTube channels are also inspiring places to get ideas. But the Internet changes all the time, so these things come and go.


----------



## Niftynorm

Maybe you should look to some chef biographies or 'The Making of a Chef' by Michael Ruhlman is an interesting read.


----------



## Niftynorm

brulo said:


> Can I hijack this post for a moment to ask for advice?
> 
> I want a couple of books similar to what the OP requested but that also also easy to carry around.
> 
> I have the McGee and the Food Lab, both are really cool but are massive in size, those are books to read at home.
> 
> I would like some books to carry around and read here and there, maybe some with stories from kitchens, advice from professionals, history and whatnot.
> 
> What do you think?


Look up "The Saucier's Apprentice" by Raymond Sokolov It is a small book with a lot of information on sauces.


----------

