The Food Lab

“The Food Lab” by J. Kenji Lopez Alt

Parent context: The Food Lab by Kenji Lopez-Alt taught me a ton of transferrable skills and amazing recipes. Reply: 100% this. This book won't (just) give you recipes, but goes into the principles of cooking so even if you're working without a recipe you'll know how to pair flavors and seasonings.

The Food Lab is great

The Food Lab is amazing as a simple "textbook" for cooking as well as having many recipes.

I've heard The Food Lab and Better Homes and Gardens are both good

The Food Lab, by Kenji Lopez-Alt. Lots of recipes in there, but the focus is on why those recipes work and the science behind them so that you can take that knowledge and apply it elsewhere. It's a massively thick book with a lot to learn. Nothing advanced my cooking skills more.

Salt fat acid heat and the food lab cookbooks

The beauty here exists in the detailed and engaging way kenji articulates concepts and after you've learned even just 3 or 4 recipes you'll start to notice that existing recipes could be improved by the application of these ideas. That's a very empowering moment for a new cook

The Food Lab by Kenji Lopez-Alt taught me a ton of transferrable skills and amazing recipes. It turned me from someone who hated cooking my entire life into someone deeply interested in the process. Rather than relying on received wisdom, he actually conducts experiments testing the validity of received wisdom and explains the results.