Milk Street Simple

by Christopher Kimball

The James Beard Award-winning team at Milk Street delivers 200 easy, clever recipes you can just the world’s greatest culinary ideas, distilled to their essence and simplified for weeknight meals. Milk Street has spent years learning from cooks all around the world and applying those lessons to weeknight cooking here at home. This book takes the best of those great culinary ideas and pares them back to their most basic, essential elements. The result is a set of recipes that are genius in their simplicity.
 
Each of these 200 recipes works with just a handful of ingredients and short active cooking time; these dishes are done when you need them, or hands-off so you can let them cook while you do something else. The keys are high-impact ingredients, transformative techniques, powerful flavor combinations, and layers of texture.  Milk Street Simple  recipes help turn a straightforward bowl of pasta or a head of roasted cauliflower into a delightful meal, with no fuss and recipes that are endlessly flexible.
 
If you loved Milk Street’s  Cookish , this collection of recipes is for you. Chapters

Genres: Cookbooks, Cooking, Food, Nonfiction, Reference, Food and Drink

368 pages, Hardcover

Published October 17, 2023

Reviews

[Joanne · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a book for my Cookbook Club tomorrow. Not much to my liking. I was hoping for more "I have that in my pantry," which, from my understanding now, is not something Kimball thinks about. A lot of the recipes I tried tasted bland, and I ended up doctoring them up. I am trying to figure out how this guy won the James Beard Award. Maybe it's just me.

I am making a potato soup for the meeting. I haven't tried it yet, but I expect to need to add flavor to it.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like the Milk Street cookbooks and this one also seems good. All of the recipes are geared toward being "simple" or easy to make. The recipes are organized by categories like sandwiches, vegetables, grains, one pan, etc. No desserts or appetizers, just basic meals organized by category. I like that there are often variations given - easy rice bowls has 3 different recipes with other optional flavor/ingredient combinations. There were several recipes I'd like to try. This would be a good cookbook for someone hoping to switch up their dinner options or a newer cook who wants/needs easier recipes.

[Arctic Llama · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book had plenty of recipes where, "I could make that," but almost none of, "I want to make that." Despite being titled Simple, this cookbook, like most Milk Street cookbooks, goes heavy on the kinds of peppers and spices that you probably don't really stock unless you do a lot of "exotic" cooking. Think harissa, gochang, kimchi, and the like. For parents, know that pretty much zero of the recipes in this cookbook will pass the picky eater test, with the possible exception of fettucini alfreado. I like other Milk Street cookbooks, so this one probably just isn't for me. I guess I was just expecting something different based on the title. If you too were looking for something that might actually be simple, might I suggest Milk Street's Tuesday Nights cookbook which would probably fit the bill.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a useful book for weeknight meals. The premise is not a lot of cook time, great flavors. These are cooking intensive - you are actively cooking most of the time - but the meals are solid. My favorite chapters were high heat and tray bakes. I found the book's organization to be a little challenging - by cooking, or enhancement method, rather than meat, pasta, etc.

I thought this was a good resource, but these aren't the kind of meals my family will eat night after night. If you're a more adventurous eater, or cooking for a smaller group, I recommend this. There is a lot of food information in here, so it's worth checking out.

[Emily]

No rating because I haven’t tried any recipes yet. This cookbook has photos for every or nearly every recipe. Most seem much more doable on a weeknight than Michael Symon’s Simply Symon Suppers I just looked through. Ingredient lists are reasonable and most are things I could get at the neighborhood grocery store or I’ve seen at the Asian grocery store. The recipe page layout isn’t my favorite; I find it a bit easier to read when the headnote is separate and then the ingredients and instructions start below. But that’s a minor personal preference.

[Debbie]

Not rating this one because we only made one recipe from it. At this point, I think I am oversaturated with Milk Street cookbooks. I found the three I love and I'm sticking with those. This one wasn't organized in a way that works as well for me. I would much rather have it organized by red meat, chicken, etc. as opposed to One Pan, Stir-Fries, Roasts, etc.

[Quirkybookwormkat · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoy watching Milk Street. Saw this cookbook on sale. Lots of recipes. However, a lot have ingredients which are not really typical basic staples we’d have in our pantries. As matter as fact these would be found in big cities with foreign grocery stores. Other than that, most of them looked fantastic! I’m trying Shortcut Paella tonight!

[Danielle Booey · Rating 3 out of 5]

My favorite part of the Mill Street cookbook line is the abundance of pictures. Almost every recipe has a full page picture to go along with it.

In this volume I took pictures of several soup recipes and a few aioli sauces, salmon and tofu recipes, and salad dressings.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was still pretty good, but I like several of the others better.

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Chock full of international recipes. There’s bound to be a few you’ll want to try. I’ll definitely try the Cuban spiced burgers and the seeet and sour cauliflower.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hard to go wrong with Milk Street!

[Jenifer Jacobs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some really yummy recipes!! Most are pretty easy also. Don’t trust the “start to finish” times. They are pretty off lol.

[Bayla Jacobson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as interesting as hoped?

[Aneesa]

I like the way this cookbook is organized, by technique.

[Kathy M · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not as physically unwieldy as some Milk Street titles and very good not too complicated recipes! A win for me.

[Yvonne O'Connor · Rating 3 out of 5]

I appreciate the recipes have options in terms of things you can substitute or interchange or mix, but if the whole book, I only found about 5 recipes that I wanted to try.

[Avery Purtee · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’ve owned this book for a couple years now and I’ve picked it up only a of couple times. Not much going on there.

[Karen Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

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