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4 Must Have Cookbooks

Ranked #10,448 in Food & Cooking, #187,615 overall

What's In Your Kitchen?

Everybody has a favorite book, and every cook has a favorite cookbook. They are not always books of recipes, but encyclopedias, books of ingredients, and just about anything that will help give you more information about the food you are working with. Of course the occasional simple recipe book is included, but much more valuable is what you get from reading between the lines, and reaching into another chefs soul and extracting the inspiration. I was trained as a chef, and I love to cook. These are all books that have stood by me as I was learning in a professional kitchen, in school, and at home. I don't know what I would have done without these books in my kitchen, and I think that they should be a part of everybody's home.

Table of Contents

Larousse Gastronomique

by: Librairie Larousse

This encyclopedia of culinary knowledge is at the core of most great kitchens. Everybody uses it as a basic reference, and it has information about every aspect of the culinary world you can think of, from famous chefs to ingredients to classic recipes. I remember the year I got mine for Christmas, in my second year of culinary school, I spent the whole holiday just flipping through the pages. It has wonderful illustrations as well as well thought out text, and lots of valuable information. In my opinion, every kitchen should have one, professional or home.

Recipe adapted from the Larousse Gastronomique

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The Joy of Cooking

by: Irma S. Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker, Ethan Becker

This is one of those cookbooks that is impossible to keep clean for long. Its at the center of the kitchen for every meal, and it gets your notes all over it, as well as its fair share of butter stains. Every nostalgic breakfast I make my mom made from the Joy of Cooking. This is my first reference when I want to try a new recipe, and even though I may tweak it to fit me, its still the first place I look. Most of the recipes are really good, but in my opinion the breakfast and baking items are the reason to have this book around. I don't reference a book very often when I'm cooking dinner, but if I want biscuits and scrambled eggs, this is where my biscuit recipe comes from. The same is true for cake, icing, pie crust... you name it, if it has to be baked, chances are good that I get the recipe from this book.

“Bon Apetit!”

Mastering the Art of French Cooking

by: Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle, Simone Beck

I don't actually own this set of books, but I refer to it all the time in the library. Its a great every day cookbook, but its also wonderful for entertaining. I find that its a great complement to the Joy of Cooking as well, because it is a bit fancier. Even though its not modern or cutting edge, it has all the classics in it that everybody loves, and very few people know how to make. For example, you wouldn't believe how amazing and easy it is to make mayonnaise from scratch, and the Art of French Cooking has a wonderful recipe for it. Now I wouldn't necessarily make it every day, but definitely for a cocktail party if I was making deviled eggs for example, or to go with artichokes for a dinner party.

Ingredients

by: Loukie Werle, Jill Cox

Honestly, this is just a really beautiful book for its pictures. It is a list of ingredients form around the world in pictures, and divided into sections by type. For example, It has two pages devoted to eggs, and you can see how big they are in proportion to each other. I can spend hours looking at it. It is also really useful because there are many times when you come across an ingredient and you have no idea what it is or what it looks like. You can just look it up in this book and will know exactly what to look for at the grocery store or in the market. Not only fresh ingredients are shown, but also dried, preserved and processed, depending on what the most common way for an ingredient to appear is. They have a whole section on spices that show what they all look like. Truly a work of art.

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Tell Me What You Think!

Do you have an all time favorite cookbook? Did I include it here?

  • bossypants Apr 28, 2012 @ 12:09 pm | delete
    What a treat to have recommendations from a trained chef! I will be looking at these next time I'm in the bookstore.

    I don't even bother with a cookbook that doesn't have photographs. I have an old set of Time Life instructional cookbooks called the Good Cook, which I go to for technique, sometimes. But, it's all about the "next' book otherwise! :)
  • Lily Apr 24, 2012 @ 6:36 pm | delete
    All great choices
  • Tipi Mar 28, 2012 @ 3:12 pm | delete
    I see that I am missing some of your must have cookbooks....that would get me in the kitchen again!
  • Cumberland Mar 20, 2012 @ 5:40 pm | delete
    Very nice. I do some cooking. My wife isn't always comfortable with it though as I consider recipes as a starting point only. I have had wonderful results from some changes and titanic disasters with others. Fun though.
  • JoshK47 Feb 4, 2012 @ 11:49 pm | delete
    Sound great to me. :)
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Hello, world! I am an artist, a cook, and an avid gamer. I have spent most of my life traveling (I've never lived anywhere for more that 3 years in a row)... more »

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