The Nimble Cook: New Strategies for Great Meals That Make the Most of Your Ingredients

by Ronna Welsh

A paradigm-shifting book that helps cooks think on their feet, create brilliant dishes from ingredients on hand, and avoid wasting food. For more than two decades, Ronna Welsh has been empowering home cooks and chefs with radically simple strategies for cooking creatively and efficiently. In this sweeping masterwork with 400 recipes, she shows how to make varied, impromptu, economical, and delicious meals by coaxing the most flavor from common ingredients. The Nimble Cook teaches optimal prep methods, like the perfect way to dry and store greens—forget the salad spinner—for a salad made in seconds to pair with a vinaigrette composed of refrigerator door condiments. It provides hundreds of “starting point” recipes to transform basic dishes into luxurious ones, like an onion jam for burgers; a cheese stock for decadent risotto; or a mix of salt and whirred bay leaves that takes roasted shrimp or fish from ordinary to extraordinary. Welsh teaches nimble cooks irresistible uses for parts that otherwise go to waste, whether cucumber peels in kimchi or apple cores in a sweet-and-sour syrup for a bourbon cocktail. Graceful illustrations throughout provide further inspiration, making this book an essential addition to any creative cook's kitchen.

Genres: Cookbooks, Cooking, Food, Nonfiction

400 pages, Hardcover

Published April 2, 2019

Reviews

[Therese · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lovely watercolor illustrations. A nice cookbook for those into improvisatory cooking, as well as frugal cooking and reducing food waste. The author makes excellent points about how recipes and meal plans can lead to a lot of expense to get all the right ingredients and then you end up using only a little of an ingredient before the rest goes bad and you throw it away. (Story of my life with things like buttermilk bought for pancakes and fresh herbs.) She suggests a new approach of building up meals based on what you happen to have, what’s in season, what’s on sale, and becoming more well-versed in methods of preparation to be more freed from recipes. Some of the chapters do for fruits and veggies what the “nose-to-tail” movement has done for meat - giving ideas for how to make use of every part and letting nothing go to waste. Some of the ideas may be somewhat “chichi” for a home cook who is just trying to save money on food, but those who like to try creative approaches and don’t shy away from the chichi will likely enjoy the more sophisticated dishes.

Ideally I would love to see a cookbook that exhaustively goes through ingredients and gives really basic ideas for the simplest preparation methods and ways to make sure you can use up foods you’ve bought, and tips on tweaking recipes to substitute what you have, and general recipe formulas that can accommodate a lot of variations. This comes kind of close but is less exhaustive and less simple than my ideal cookbook would be ... still, a good cookbook for inspiration and ideas.

[Karen Potoski · Rating 3 out of 5]

My taste buds and mind are not mature enough for this book. I'll revisit this later, maybe I'll have matured enough to appreciate this book.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this used at an AAUW book sale.
It is a very unusual cook book but everything I’ve tried has been fantastic! I call your attention to page 366 Balsamic-Poached Figs. The very last sentence is “Store in a covered container at room temperature indefinitely .” Well for me that was 10 months ago and the last drop was just as tasty and satisfying as the first!
I’m still working on recipes (today it is pickled green tomatoes ) and I am sure to revisit this book for years to come

[Nichola · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitely a different approach to cooking, it's is a really well put together volume about things that make sense in real life- moving ingredients toward readiness for meal prep rather than starting with recipes and having to learn technique, waste reducing, time management and people pleasing all at once. At the simplest level its like buying celery, then wash and cutting it into sticks when you get home so that someone can just open the fridge and start snacking. But it is so much more that this- veg, meats, aromatics, herbs, fruits. basic preparations move to explorations, and a variety of complete meals.

[Courtney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Genius! I can do WHAT with garlic skin?!

[Benjamin Minor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Helped me build my philosophy on cooking - to cook by vibes rather than by rigid rules

[Cherie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Finally, a book that focuses on kale stems and what to do with leftover broccoli rabe and making the most of all the ingredients. I must admit - I would have preferred photos to drawings. Lots of veg recipes.

[Salliewt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Watercolor illustrations and ideas are great, but actual recipes were just ok.

[Jessie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this for the most part, though it isn't a great read-like-a-novel cookbook. Ronna Welsh clearly knows her stuff. The way she writes about food is easy and hunger-inducing; I made a couple of the recipes before even finishing the book, and her roasted broccoli has replaced my previous method.

My complaints:
-Too much reliance on freezing. I would need an entire second freezer to completely adopt her approach as a philosophy.
-Some recipes are fussy. Fussy cooking makes me anxious.

(The three-star review that calls the cookbook a "bust" because it doesn't have nutrition information and photographs for each recipe has missed the point. This book is about methods and flexibility, not the set-in-stone, meal-planning type of cooking. [And I don't think a single cookbook in my 80+ collection has nutrition information. Though I am careful about the ingredients I buy, I'm not interested in the "nutrition information" approach to food appreciation, and neither, I feel confident saying, is Ronna Welsh.])

[Ardyth · Rating 2 out of 5]

I like the ideas behind this cookbook -- considering a stalk of celery as four distinct ingredients (white bottom, thick fibrous green, slender flexible green, leaves) is something I'd never once heard. What other normie-not-celebrity-cheffy stuff have I been missing?

But the book quickly shifts from that type of "how to understand an ingredient" content into more building-block type recipes. Those look all right, but I have a bunch of them already.

For a relative newbie or less confident home cook, this could be a great fit. It just isn't what I need at this point in my cookery journey.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is exactly the kind of cook book that I'm looking for these days. I want flexibility, simplicity, but interesting ideas that I haven't tried before. Essentially, I want to become a better cook that can look in the pantry and fridge and create something wonderful.

Lots of interesting ways to make the most of your produce (including peels, cores, and the parts that normally get tossed), and plenty of fantastically versatile condiments and sauces.

I may actually purchase this one instead of renewing 1000 times from the library...

[Lisa Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this cookbook. The illustrations alone are worth the purchase price. She has a lot of practical information on food prep and storage. As a soon to be empty nester, I was looking for more creative and healthy ways to cook for my husband and myself. I think this is a doable new approach for smaller and healthier portions and options for us.

[Debbie Gascoyne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Got this from the library, but I think I may have to buy it because it has SO MANY wonderful and creative ideas. I love that it encourages you to use every part of ingredients, so that you avoid waste. The recipes are sophisticated, but not terribly complicated, and she emphasizes the idea of preparing stuff in advance and having things in your freezer that you can use in new ways.

[Louise · Rating 5 out of 5]

LOVE this. I had followed her blog for years and this compendium of recipes and ideas is even more delightful. Easily organized by food starting point, with well linked index, this cookbook is my new favorite. So many ways to use ALL of a food item.

[Dray · Rating 4 out of 5]

great cookbook with an unusual slant. i have been slowly getting into fermented foods, and although this is not a fermented foods cookbook, it has a lot of delicious recipes that use vinegar and pickling.

[Cynde · Rating 4 out of 5]

interesting ideas for some ingredient combinations.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amazingly creative ideas for using up odds and ends in the kitchen! #Quarantinecooking

[Brianna · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the perfect book to be quarantined with! Onion broth from onion skins, who knows I might need that info! Great recipes for getting the most use and flavor out your food!

[Gretchen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wasn't for me. The philosophy makes sense, and the illustrations are beautiful, but the recipes are nearly all way more fancy and involved than I'm interested in spending the time to cook.

[Jo Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love the concept of the book (using master recipes as a springboard for exploration.) So many fun possibilities to play with!

[Nicole · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fine, but probably not worth the cost of the hardcover.

[Mskychick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interlibrary loan thru PC library

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

want to try:
butter bath carrots w/ balsamic poached figs and goat cheese

[Amie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not your typical cookbook - and that's why I like it! It reminds me a LOT of how older generations would prep for meals by saving the meat drippings, the potato water, the celery tops, etc. for future meals. How many cookbooks will tell you the best ways to use every part of that bunch of celery you bought? This one does. It's how many of us should think about meals: "what can we make with what we have on hand?" rather than "what do we need to make this one thing?"

It also has most recipes set to a single serving size - so easily scaled up for more than one person meals or for the person cooking for themselves.

Other reviewers have complained about the lack of food pictures or even photographs. Instead, there are lovely watercolor drawings of some things. I really like this for 2 reasons: #1 I know what most food looks like and #2 there's no preconceived notion of how my dish "should" be plated or appear.

I haven't followed a recipe yet - but they look credible and tasty.

[Ginny · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am very disappointed. But, it’s my own fault. I ignored all my basic rules for cookbook purchases:
1. Do all the recipes have photographs?
2. Do the ingredient measurements include metric?
3. Does each recipe have basic nutrition information per serving? (Calories, fats, carbohydrates.)

I’ve only cooked three dishes so far - so keep that in mind. I do not yet know if I just had bad luck with my selections, or if it a sign of a trend. (I’m going with the later.)

The author says at one point that most people under-season their food. Each recipe I did had limited seasoning, generally salt (just salt, not even salt and pepper). And, each recipe was terribly over-salted. Each dish was edible, but not worthy of a repeat.

The premise of the book is to cook with ingredients, not recipes. Good thing, because this book is very limited on recipes. For each vegetable, maybe two recipes, and little variation.

Bottom line, this cookbook is a bust.