Thuis koken: Of: hoe ik ben gestopt me druk te maken om recepten (en van mijn magnetron ben gaan houden)

by David Chang

Van de beste manier om diepvriesgroenten te gebruiken tot leren wanneer je een recept moet laten voor wat het is om er zelf iets veel beters van te maken. Thuis koken is een handboek vol tips voor het vervangen van ingrediënten, aanpassen van recepten en het staat vol next-level shortcuts - zoals het in de magnetron voorgaren van kip voordat je het op smaak brengt in de wok of er een stoofpotje van maakt dat binnen tien minuten op tafel staan. Waar het op neerkomt is dat je leert denken als een chef, die is gestopt met denken als een chef.

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

Kindle Edition

First published October 26, 2021

Reviews

[Annie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Originally posted on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

Cooking at Home is a well written guide by David Chang and Priya Krishna on making the most of readers' cooking skill in the home kitchen. Due out 26th Oct 2021 from Penguin Random House on their Clarkson Potter imprint, it's 304 pages and will be available in hardcover and ebook formats.

I can't even count the number of times I've stood in front of the refrigerator trying to find inspiration and figure out what to cook for dinner. This is a book by two food professionals which doesn't contain actual precisely measured recipes (really). Instead, they've taken the route of showing (and not telling) readers how to follow guidelines which they've provided and find their own dishes and seasoning profiles. This is much more theory than slavish recipe following. I found it intriguing.

Both Chang and Krishna have an active voice in the text and their interactions are labeled with their initials to keep them distinct. Honestly, their voices are so different from one another, it's not difficult to keep them straight when reading. The tone throughout is light and full of warmth and humor. I enjoyed listening to what they had to say and their different perspectives (Chang is quite brash sometimes, Krishna more thoughtful).

The book is graphically very bold and colorful. It's full of bright *popping* sidebars and simple illustrations. There are numerous photographs, of the authors cooking, process cooking photos, and some finished dishes. The book's emphasis is on ingredients and how to utilize them to make different dishes, as well as different appliances and cooking methods.

Famous chefs and professional foodies might be famous, but they still have to eat. This book helps the rest of us as well. I'm not sure how much I'll use this book, but it's an enlightening and engaging read.

Five stars. It would be a good selection for public library acquisition, and for cooks who enjoy deeper food theory and want to learn to develop their own techniques and recipes.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

[Jason Frasca · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall I did appreciate this book and its concept. I love the idea of presenting more of a 'roadmap' with concepts and themes, rather than specific directions and instructions. I learned a new appreciation for several methods I've never used, such as boiling meat, and refocusing on cuts of meat I often overlook, like chuck beef. I appreciate the tidbits from food scientists that that authors have added as well. I do recommend to most readers has it will add to your fundamental toolbox of cooking methods.

My main criticisms, though, are as follows:
-The organization confuses me. It seems to break into subsections based off protein, then cooking method, but still seems disorganized overall to me.
-There is a lot of cursing throughout. A bit here and there I can deal with, especially seeing as the whole goal of this book is to focus on ways to cook efficiently at home. However, from a professionalism stand point, I highly recommend re-wording multiple sections.
-The back and forth from the authors leaves me confused at times. Why don't the authors combine forces as just one unified narrative voice?
-Multiple pictures of cooked meals on display throughout are burnt, and the authors even comment as such. Now, from the cooking at home standpoint, I can see how having these throughout can show how home meals are often imperfect, yet still delicious. As a big reader and lover of cookbooks, I'm left wondering, why weren't these remade to look more attractive for print? I did read this on the NetGalley app, which seemed to have some issues with the exact words and layout - perhaps they will look better in print.

Because of the comments above, I have chosen 3 stars, as overall, I think the content is great.

Thank you NetGalley for my free copy. The comments above are mine without influence.

[emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

An easy 5. Greatest advocate(s) of improv cooking. I'm all for it. I cook everyday; and for anyone who does the same, well, you lot know that there's just no room/luxury for precise recipes/measurements. I adore this book. Chang's other book, Eat a Peach is one of my favourite memoirs .

[Frances · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ok not only did I a) read this entire book start to finish and b) actually cook out of it, it officially made the transition from a library book to an owned book!
Looking forward to cooking more stuff in my microwave. Also MORE HOME RECIPE DEVELOPERS should be like - ok you COULD do it this way orrrrrrr you could do it THAT way and save 3 hours and $40. Your call.

[Toni · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most fun and exciting cookbooks in a long time. It's so inconsistent. E.g. David Chang professes he wants the vegetables chapter to become the lenghtiest in the book, but then proceeds to spend the first almost 300 pages just on meat and fish. Chang and Krishna also say the book has no recipes, or at least no measurements, but then can't help sneaking some precise measurements in here and there anyway. But it doesn't matter. You get the point. And the point is: Cooking at home should be effortless, improvisational, delicious and with lots of "sandbaggery" as David Chang calls it, when you just wing it, use whatever you have and care less about the "right way" to make an emulsion, cook a potato or even prepare seemingly traditional dishes. It's all mixed together and the cultural influences are so many! I've learned a lot about South-East Asian cuisine, or at least gotten a ton of inspiration to learn more, from reading this book. As a 95% vegetarian, eating only meat occasionally for special occasions, I wish the vegetables, mushrooms, grains, legumes and so on took up the better half of the book, but it's fine. At the end of the day, this book has a few very simple, but actually quite ingenious principles, it hammers in again and again. For one, you can actually use a microwave to cook almost anything you would normally use the stove or oven for. Second principle, many if not most of the culinary rules you've picked up on over the years originated in a highly specific cultural context which is the French regimented haut cuisine restaurant (they don't say this in the book, but almost, and David Chang definitely is tired of French cooking). But what that means is home cooks have gotten this weird idea that they need to somehow do a half-assed version of Michelin-quality dishes on a daily basis. That's insane. No, there actually is no point in peeling all that produce. Except if you want a silky-smooth pommes puré. Which you want occasionally (like once a year when you also dress up and everything is a bit more extraordinary?). But not on a daily basis. So yes, "stop the peeling madness". HAHA. It's so wonderful how all these ideas I've had are just shattered by reading this fun book that almost reads like it was transcribed small-talk between Krishna and Chang (Priya Krishna is a gifted writer by the way and her own book Indian-ish has the same down-to-earth fun but also concise tone). For gods sake, the images throughout the book are like low-quality mobile phone photos. HAHA! Not even kitsch or instagram-like "lo-fi", just bad quality and out of focus. But it's fitting and underscores their cooking ethic very well. There are details I didn't like or would have seen done differently (if I awkwardly imagine myself being the editor, which is the nature of a review I guess?), but it would defeat the point. There's a lot of great parts and bits in the book, really great, but they all serve to drive home a STYLE or an approach you can bring with you to the kitchen. For me it worked, so I can't say much negative about this book. Great shit!

[Ivonne Rovira · Rating 1 out of 5]

David Chang, the founder of Momofuku, is the co-author of this James Beard Award-nominated cookbook. It should be fabulous, right? But I just couldn’t finish it. In fact, I couldn’t even get a fourth of the way through it.

Chang’s co-author Priya Krishna writes on p. 25, “[M]aybe by the time you’ve gotten to this point you’ve realized you just purchased a cookbook by a famous chef with no recipes and you’re confused. Or disappointed. Or panicked.” But this really isn’t a cookbook without recipes; it’s much worse. It’s a cookbook with very, very vague recipes of unfamiliar dishes without enough guidance to avoid a disaster. If you’re a Brooklyn-level foodie with a sky-high sense of adventure, this cookbook probably will be your cup of tea. As for me, I just had to abandon this bitter brew. I bought this book in the Kindle edition on sale for just a few dollars, and I still feel ripped off. Cocus emptor.

[Amy Naidoo · Rating 5 out of 5]

This may be the best cookbook I've read in a long time, and I own a lot of cookbooks. One fun thing about getting into this book is that both authors have a great online video presence, so when you're reading you can pretty much hear it in their voices. I love that they share how different their perspectives on taste and cooking are, it makes cooking so much more personal and low pressure.

Personally their method of instinctual cooking is how my mom cooks and how I now cook, so this made a lot of sense to me and made other types of cuisine seem much easier to cook too. I love all the information they provide about ingredients and why they like those particular ones, it really helps understanding different flavour profiles and if it is something you would like investing in and adding to your pantries.

Dave provides an excellent guide as to how to layer flavours and I'm excited to really try this method when I'm cooking now. When I am cooking my own cuisine I instinctually know how to layer the flavours to achieve balance, but this guide makes me more confident to experiment with layering flavours for different cuisines like Thai or Korean without following a strict recipe.

The recipes in this book do not have and measurements, and I'm so keen to jump in a start cooking and building my confidence with flavours and instincts.

*This review was from an Advanced Reader Copy I received, however, the review is entirely my own.

[Tracy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Four Stars.
There's a quote from Rachel Khong at the end of Cooking At Home that sums up the book so well. "You can cook with whatever you have on hand, and food can be imperfect and still a miracle... know and feel confident that you can put food on the table - delicious and nourishing food..."

I love love love the concept of this book - flexibility, experimentation, going your own way. If you want to learn to cook, this might not be the best cookbook to start with, but if you're feeling ready to branch out on your own, ditch those stuffy recipes, trust yourself and try new things, you should definitely try Cooking at Home. I think that most intermediate home cooks will be able to use this book to hone their skills, and most (if not all) of the recommended ingredients should be easy enough to source and use.

That said, I wish there were some more plant-based recipes, and the pictures and layout probably don't do the food or the book itself justice - but even so, I would definitely recommend this book to pretty much anyone who cooks.

Thanks to NetGalley and Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed Press for the opportunity to read and review Cooking at Home.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved the visuals of this book just as much as I loved the content. It's the kind of book that we should all have on our shelves as a reference book, but it is just as much fun to simply leaf through it for ideas and commentary. There's no doubt that the authors know their stuff and readers benefit from what they've learned through their own hours in the kitchen. I ended up feeling actual gratitude towards them for this wonderful attempt to have us all eating well without too much fuss.

This is a book both for the experienced cook and the novice. Highly recommended!

Thank you to NetGalley for a chance to view and read this book pre-publication.

[Alicia Bayer · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very informative book on cooking, rather than a cookbook. It's written by two authors who go back and forth with the instructions and stories, the most famous of whom is David Chang. It's a great source of knowledge about cooking techniques, especially for Asian dishes. If you don't know how to cook intuitively, this is a great guide to teach you. The illustrations are a sort of pop art scheme, and I didn't love them. There aren't traditional recipes here, but there are instructions on how to cook lots of foods well.

I read a temporary digital ARC of this book via Net Galley.

[Alissa Avilov · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is honestly fantastic - it pairs the hot takes and no nonsense attitude you expect from David Chang with Priya’s thoughtful interpretations and, at times, conflicting perspective. This book is incredibly real, starting with the photos and ending with the essays.

This book is more of an education and a guide rather than a book with recipes. I did still find it really useful, and I learned a lot! I especially enjoyed the essays from scientists who shared the intersection of science and food around topics like frozen food.

The general sections included in this book are as follows:
- cooking meat
-cooking in the microwave (this section really inspired me)
-fish (titled Who actually has a local fishmonger? Not me! A realistic approach to cooking fish)
-cooking vegetables (especially less than ideal produce)
-if I’m not eating rice I’m probably eating noodles
-a flatbread recipe
-condiments
-a few other recipes they love

After reading through I am excited to play around with tuna pasta salad, choose your own adventure beans, cooking iceberg lettuce (?!), and cooking corn in corn.

I think this is a must for anybody who loves to cook or wants to learn more. The guidance offered in this book is valuable to anyone with a kitchen.

[Margaux · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is truly more of a "how-to-cook" book than a "cookbook." It gives insight into the idea behind preparing something, how you might approach a meat or type of dish, and different places you can go from there. I definitely tried the roasted chicken (loved) and then used those leftovers to make a chicken pot pie (also loved).

I've always admired the way David Chang approached cooking in a casual way, and this was just that. He's not up on his soapbox yelling to all of us peons about how we should be braising our meat. He says to us, "this is what I do, this is what my friends do, this is why we do it this way, this is how you could mix it up." Really a different kind of cookbook.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

This cookbook is one that has more of a philosophy at the heart of it as opposed to a collection of recipes, and reading it was helpful for the stage of cooking I'm at! I've always been a big recipe follower, and this has been a helpful way to reconceptualize how to enjoy cooking at home. I enjoyed it.

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is interestingly one of the most divisive ones around lately in cooking

Handpicked the very best of the bad and the good

and i think my 41 out of 100 rating
actually does seem to match up with the consensus out there, interestingly enough

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Amazon Reviews

Give it a chance

When I first opened up this cookbook I was instantly disappointed. The layout was awful: giant multicolored font on top of brightly colored pages with tons of empty space. The content didn't seem much better. Vague advice throughout such as "cook meat until done", "maybe use this many eggs?", and "season to your liking with whatever you want" seemed incredibly unhelpful. The mostly unfamiliar Korean names also put me off, since I didn't exactly have a Korean cookbook in mind when ordering.

Before sending it back, I figured I'd give it a chance though. Glad I did, because it just might be one of the most practical cookbooks I own. And because of its simplicity, maybe one of the most beginner-friendly ones as well.

Turns out, once you start reading it cover to cover, most of the "vague" statements actually make sense. Either being specific truly doesn't matter or the topic was already talked about in detail (with a page number provided). - 8/10

Aaron Martin

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no recipes, just chatter

this is an expensive disappointment
very few ideas, lots of chatter
huge disappointment and terribly expensive - 2/10

Jacque Sharma

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Reinvigorating

I never really leave reviews for things but had to for this. I've been cooking since my early teens and have always enjoyed it, but recently had fallen into a bit of a rut of cooking the same things week in week out.

Maybe this book is more suited to people who've cooked a bit already as it's quite conceptual, but for me it's totally reignited the spark for cooking.

I've made the boiled chicken (the most uninspiring description of a total gamechanger) so many times now - I always thought you had to save all your chicken carcasses and boil em for 8 hours or whatever. Now I have a huge pot of chicken broth and a seasoned but not too far in any one direction chicken in 45 minutes, and a bunch of new ideas to take it in loads of different directions.

Great for principles and inspiration if you're in a rut - I would agree that it's not a book for vegetarians, but it definitely helps make the meat you buy go a hell of a lot further. - 10/10

Adam Byrd

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Did not like

Nope. I did not like this book - at all. None of the recipes inspired me and left a sour taste about the author's attitude. He came off very negative about they way other people cook while being very elitist about his own way. - 2/10

G Thomas

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Great content, difficult to read

This book is an interesting 'anti-cookbook'. The first thing you should know about this book is that it is very disorganized. There is a mix of lots of home cooking tips (which are pretty good, though again, disorganized), some personal stories, and a bunch of 'almost recipes' scattered throughout that offer pretty loose ingredient and portion guidance with the idea that you find out how you like it and that it's fine to be a bit flexible about your inputs and cooking time - this is NOT a baking book that demands precision, it's very loose and informal.

Frankly, I again find the layout hard to read - it's overly 'graphic designed', with some text being quite difficult to parse and a lot of the content is really hard to find. Despite claiming that the book doesn't contain recipes, it does (just not rigid ones), and they're available in the index at the back but aren't well-marked going through the book. They do roughly categorize sections by main ingredient, but it isn't clear where to find the actual meal ideas. It's very high concept.

This is probably better suited as a book to more traditionally read through cover to cover, picking up all kinds of useful tips along the way, then marking the recipes you like yourself.

The loose recipes themselves are heavily influenced by the cultures of the authors, with David Chang's recipes heavily weighted to Korean food (without much explanation as to what the dishes are for audiences not familiar with them), and the coauthor's recipes influenced by light Indian fare. It feels like they're experiencing their childhoods in a sense with this book, bringing the cooking back to home, keeping the ideas and concepts casual and approachable.

There are recipes from other backgrounds (like say chicken pot pie), but I'd say it's tilted more culturally than I expected.

Overall I'm both pleased and disappointed by this book. I'm disappointed at the overly chaotic layout and content organization - I know why they did it, it's supposed to be loose and informal, but it's hard to read and hard to find content. If you want to DO anything specific with the book, you're going to find it tough to use. It is however a great book to read through, pick up ideas, mark up yourself and learn a lot of useful stuff about cooking delivered in a casual 'layman' way.

Depending on your mood and personality you could find it to be one star or five stars. - 6/10

Gordon R.

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Not for me

I bought the book on its premise - Chef / TV personality David Chang turns to cook for his family for an extended period of time after being forced to stay home due to the pandemic.

But I wouldn't boil a 10-pound brisket to feed my family during the week... It's just not the type of food I would prepare for them. I'm looking for ways to cut down on meat, not tips on creative ways to add pork butt to a meal. - 4/10

Jason Bradbury

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For me, it was worthless

As someone who has been cooking for many years and the owner of many excellent cookbooks, this one was a dud. Pretty, but that's about all.

Perhaps this is for people who don't know how to cook. Not a single recipe or idea that inspired me, and I love to cook, try new recipes, spices, ingredients, and combinations. What a disappointment. - 2/10

Judith Anderson

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Disappointed

Another cookbook I was absolutely nothing forward to. I think there’s only one recipe that’s written normally. It will give you a headache trying to look for this cookbook and decipher everything. I sent mine back. I wouldn’t give you $.50 at a garage sale for it. And I absolutely was looking forward to getting this cookbook.

So if you wanna Lotta good recipes this book doesn’t have them. And I’m a big fan of the author. I don’t think he knows how to make a cookbook. Maybe you should just stick to cooking. And the publishing company should Learn how to put a cookbook together. Because if you’re a cool foodie and like cookbooks. This isn’t one for you. So very disappointed - 2/10

Sandra Gilbert

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Unreadable and unusable

Horrible layout that makes this book unreadable. Skimming around is even hard.

It feels like an unorganized blog, not a cool book.

The colors hurt the eyes and make certain text illegible (yellow print on a white page, really?) they were obviously trying to be clever but failed to be artistic in my opinion and made the book useless. Besides that, recipes I saw didn’t even have measurements… what? - 2/10

Jeffrey

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Waste of Time & Money!

Before buying this book, ask yourself how much time you want to dedicate to poring through the seriously overwrought layout searching for information and, most of all, inspiration. I found neither here - only useless "content" which seemed to serve as more of a vanity piece for the authors. Please be warned that there are very few microwave recipes despite the subtitle! - 2/10

Topper

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Horrendous
Absolutely terrible. Completely useless. Offers less than nothing. - 2/10

Paul TT

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Too big. Too little
They took a page to say very little. If they just printed the content, it would be a very little book - 4/10
Elaine T. Gelinas

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Good dish ideas, shockingly bad design. Ok for intermediate cooks.

In short

a. Good dishes that are fun to experiment with and practical for home cooking
b. Disappointingly small section on microwave recipes (despite the title)
c. Inconvenient book organization
d. Very ugly
[would not recommend as a gift, good if you want some more ideas and light guidance for cooking at home]
e. Very meat-heavy
[especially beef]

I am a longtime listener of Dave Chang's podcast and was super excited for this cookbook after hearing about his experiences cooking for his family at home (make it acceptable to eat, easy to clean up, and less prep work). In particular, I was really excited to learn how to better use my microwave because Dave Chang talked about how much faster and easier it is to cook with a microwave if you really know how to take advantage of it.

Overall, I agree with the philosophy of the book. The recipes encourage flexible cooking, experimentation, and it's easy to make the recipes your own. Because the recipes are relatively simple and don't have measurements, they're easy to remember and bring into the regular meal rotation. I have enjoyed the ones I've made - they've all been pretty tasty!

The focus is on making food that tastes good at home, rather than worrying about making sure the food is authentic, so it feels low-pressure. It fits with the style of inexact, spontaneous cooking of never being able to get the same results twice, but it all tastes good.

Learning how to make chawanmushi in the microwave was amazing and something that will definitely be a go-to for me.

[Note that if you make this, you need to use about 2.5x the amount of liquid Priya recommends or the egg will be very dry, illustrated by their chosen photo of the dish in the book]

That said, I would NOT recommend this book to a beginner cook.

Since most of the recipes don't really give measurements or even tell you what heat setting to cook things on, it is very easy to overcook meats or overseason if you're not already pretty confident in the kitchen. This is really meant for someone who is comfortable experimenting with and changing up recipes.

A couple other notes on the recipes themselves - I was really bummed that the microwave section was so small! There are only ~10 microwave recipes which just seemed really misleading given the book title calls out the microwave. Also, would just note that this book is very very meat heavy (especially beef), so if you're vegetarian (I'm not), there won't be much to cook from here.

Negatives - Usability Aesthetics

The book organization is pretty bizarre where the expectation seems to be that you will read it like a textbook, in full. You cannot just open to a single recipe and get all the information you need. Techniques are often consolidated in their own section rather than being in the recipe itself, and many times, there is no mention of where to find the relevant information in the recipe.

The design is very unpleasant from a readability standpoint.

I like the recipes but am a little bit pained everytime I open up the pages. There are a lot of really odd design choices like blocks of white text on a yellow background (or vice versa), or black text on a dark green background. I was in my living room and had to turn up the brightness on my lamp because I was straining my eyes to read the text. No good.

The photos are also kind of mind-boggling for me... they are very consistently pixelated, low-resolution, and out of focus. I understand that Dave and Priya wanted the food to look authentic to what someone would make at home, so they opted not to use a food stylist. But my issue isn't with the layout of the food - it's with the image quality. It's a bummer because the dishes taste great when making the recipes but they look so unappealing. I attached some examples here, but the low resolution issues may not be as noticeable on the small images. Trust me - full size on the page, it's very apparent.

I will definitely continue using this book and the recipes, but would NOT recommend getting this book as a gift for anyone (especially for someone who appreciates aesthetics or design).

The Lucky Peach cookbook is a good alternative for a nicer looking but still pretty easy and useful recipe book if you're looking for something similar to give as a gift. - 6/10

Jonathan Huang

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Misprints and migraines

I love the content, but the formatting is bizarre. They made so many odd choices that it took me a while to realize that some of them were accidental, I hope. I have tons of pages in my copy that have blurry shadow print, which is hard to read. - 8/10

Robyn Lopez

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Not a typical cookbook, but in a good way

First, if you're looking for a traditional cookbook with pages of recipes and perfect measurements you can look elsewhere.

However, if you are looking to truly up-level your cooking skill at home give this book a chance.

This book is an attempt to collect your mother/grandmother's random cooking skills/knowledge/recipes as organized as possible in a book format.

David goes through the basics of kitchen staples (thank you for saying knife block sets are a scam), how to tackle all the different types of meat from what types to get, how to get them, how to cook them. This is the book to get if you're ready to step outside of getting chicken breast and ny steak in the meat section.

I also love that he keeps the ingredients realistic. Most of the recipes here do not require a trip to a high-end specialty store for some imported spices.

And I agree with a previous reviewer's comment regarding lack of vegetarian dishes, it's true. I would say over 50% of this book is more for non-vegetarians/vegans. But considering his restaurants are most famous for meat dishes I'm also not surprised by this. - 10/10

MShopper

[Flora · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't think I have ever read a cookbook this closely before. There is a lot, A LOT of good info here. I suspect I am going to be pretty influenced by David Chang and his style of cooking. For instance, he has convinced me to give MSG a try again! And not long after finishing the book, I actually went and gave my microwave a good clean! Cook veggies in the microwave? He has convinced me to try it.

I made a lot of notes, and even texted my daughter back and forth about some of the kitchen equipment he recommended, I appreciated that the book has more meat dishes than anything else. If I remember correctly, there's only one dessert recipe! I'm not sure I like the way the "recipes" are written. I like them easy to refer to. Even though he says he doesn't think people should use recipes, he does have recipes except that they are not formatted the conventional way and some of the ingredients (mostly seasonings) are not given exact measurements. Perhaps not for absolute beginners but for someone who has had a little bit of experience in the kitchen (if disasters are to be avoided.)

Some of the 90 odd recipes are interesting and I hope to try them out soon. I like that he goes for the fast and easy and simple but still aiming for delicious.

If this book had been a hard copy one, it would be dog-earred and covered with highlights and notes.

[Jessica · Rating 1 out of 5]

This makes me feel so old to say this, but I hated this cookbook. First of all a cookbook with no recipes? WTH. Second there was so much weirdness going on with crazy text/fonts/text size/color/etc. that I found that extremely distracting. Literally every page was text in different sizes and colors, I felt like a Kindergartener put it together. I know David Chang and Priya Krishna are both very well-known chefs and cookbook authors, but I did not like this one at all. Looking at other reviews so far, I'm obviously in the minority as well, but I still didn't like it.

[Tegan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The recipes were a little too different for our tastes, but loved the long intro! Great cooking science info and fun layout and pictures got me thinking about how I cook!

[Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

i rated it kinda poorly at first but then the advice actually keeps coming back to me when i cook

[Alpha · Rating 4 out of 5]

I borrowed this from the library, but I'm seriously considering buying it for my cookbook shelf, which is a pretty high bar. (I buy about one physical book a year nowadays.) It is practical to the extreme, and the recipes are designed as such, handwaving away precise ingredients, measurements, and steps. The book emphasizes speed and value over the absolute quality of a dish, which is something I can improve at, with my usual recipes coming from Kenji and ChefSteps, etc. I appreciate how he has recipes inspired by cuisines and dishes, but acknowledges that they are in no way authentic and also provides pointers towards sources that do offer that authenticity.

[RH Walters · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed the conversational, autobiographical tone of this book, and have already made the easy lunch of brown rice, sesame oil & furikake seasoning several times to great acclaim. The only problem is that I, already infused with a misguided sense of optimism and disregard for directions, need firmer instruction rather than more encouragement to go off-road. Both authors discuss the way food was cooked in their families, and how they reach for comfort and sustenance in these endless hungry days.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed the premise of this book, despite being a bit of a cookbook addict (probably own almost 100 in all). Equal parts science & sorcery, Cooking at Home validates our natural inclination to throw things in a pot to see what happens, while providing instruction on why it works OR goes horribly wrong. While the food photography could have been A LOT "sexier", Chang and Krishna let us in on their respective food journeys and encourage us to embark upon our own, equipping us with just enough information to be dangerous - and I love them for it!

[Anneli Xie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Looooved this. A revolutionary cookbook that I resonate with so much. Not so much recipes but more a philosophy and way of thinking which I very much appreciate. I share so much of Dave’s cooking philosophy; of improv, experimentation, and not taking yourself too seriously. Plus the graphics and layouting were A+. I want everyone to read this now!!!!!

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars. Lots of great information in this "cookbook" but it was definitely more education on food staples, cooking methods, and cooking equipment than actual recipes. I guess I thought it would be a little bit more on using a basic recipe with the stuff you have at home - mix and match, add different spices and herbs, etc. The organization was a bit half-hazard in my opinion and I ended up skimming through most of the meat recipes in the last half.

[Karrie Wagner · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you're looking to have your cooking confidence boosted, this book is for you. If you want to understand some of the science behind cooking , this book is for you. If you want to have fun, this book is for you.

Very informative and helpful, written well , and pleasing to the eye.

Dynamic duo.

This book really enabled me to keep chaos cooking.

[Allie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Much like Samin Nosrat’s Salt Fat Acid Heat, this is actually a book you need to sit down and read. I came from a family whose idea of cooking was Manwhich and have basically taught myself to cook. This book gave me back some of the convenient cooking methods my parents did use (frozen veggies! The microwave!) but explained the science and how to make awesome dishes with them instead of the flavorless mush I had growing up.

[Bilal Aslam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some interesting things in here that actually make a lot of sense for home cooking. Picked up some new tips and tricks. Authors come off a bit too self-important, but that's just David Chang.

[Ben Donovan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best cook book I have ever read.

[Bryan Dunk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wanted to like it more, but found it being a little too loose on concepts for me. Seems like a book that would be worth coming back to for specific meats/techniques when needed to get back in that headspace.

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this straight through, instead of flipping through like I would typically do with a cookbook. Made me think of Salt Fat Acid Heat — tasting for balance, finding where different cuisines and techniques connect. Love how Priya’s voice comes through for a different perspective or a laugh. It feels like a continuation of the conversations from Recipe Club.

[Mike Kolls · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not a single recipe given and yet I learned so much.