Knife Drop: Creative Recipes Anyone Can Cook

by Nick DiGiovanni, Gordon Ramsay (Foreword)

New York Times Bestseller

Forget the rules. Just cook!

Home-cooked food doesn’t have to be over-the-top, fussy, or time-intensive to be absolutely amazing. In his debut cookbook, Nick DiGiovanni gives you the tools to become fearless in the kitchen and to create delicious meals.

Building on a foundation of staple recipes such as basic pasta dough and homemade butter, Nick shares a mouthwatering selection of his favorite recipes. Feast on New England favorites like Browned Butter Lobster Rolls and Garlic Butter Steak Tips, enjoy decadent pasta dishes like Smoky Mezcal Rigatoni and Sungold Spaghetti, and recreate fan favorites like his Viral Pasta Chips and Dino Nuggets. And of course, Nick had to include some “collab” recipes from his famous friends like Andrew Zimmern, Robert Irvine, Joanne Chang, Lynja, and more.

Knife Drop also includes Nick’s expert advice on equipment, ingredients, and techniques, so home cooks of any ability level can pick up some new skills. Explore a library of QR codes linking to video tutorials showcasing key cooking techniques, from holding a chef’s knife and making a piping bag to pronouncing “gnocchi” the correct way.

Genres: Cookbooks, Cooking, Nonfiction, Food, Adult

256 pages, Hardcover

Published June 13, 2023

Reviews

[Scottsdale Public Library]

Anyone can cook, and Nick’s cookbook will help you become a home master chef! Well, the latter is on you, but Nick’s recipes are so very craveable.

The recipes are approachable for a home cook, and the directions are straightforward. Some recipes even include QR codes so you can watch Nick demonstrate the cooking techniques. What a great idea!

So far, the recipes I’ve tried and loved are the browned butter, pasta dough (which made some great egg-yolk ravioli), crunchy snacking chickpeas (the best make-ahead weekly snack), viral pasta chips (took a little time to get right but they are so addictive!), and Brazilian cheese balls (this recipe beats Guga’s recipe. Sorry, Guga!). I can't wait to try more.

The humor in the soup section is quite amusing, and Nick’s personal comments throughout are endearing.

We started following Nick on YouTube, which turned into watching MasterChef, and now Nick is co-hosting Food Network shows! This Harvard grad has proven he’s an excelled chef, and we can’t wait to see what he does next. A foreword from Gordon is a nice touch, too.

We didn’t need another reason to love Nick, but we received one anyway. -Sara W.

[Jessica Hicks]

My son loves this YouTuber and asked me to read his cookbook and review it, so of course I said yes! It was so fun to read it together and pick food to make. The pictures were exciting and so many things seemed like they’d be really tasty… and then I learned that for the first time in a long time, I’d found a cookbook I didn’t like. I found a dangerous recipe, one that didn’t match the photo because the ingredients were clearly different, and one that was straight up nasty. I don’t doubt that this guy is a great cook, but something went wrong with producing this cookbook in my opinion.
🐟
Here’s what I made:
🧀 Tuna Melt- The tuna was runny from too much mayo and pink from so much paprika. Also it called for sharp cheddar but the cheese in the picture was white. The finished product was super bland.
🐔 Chicken Scrambled Eggs- Ever take a whiff of a jar of bouillon powder and think “I want a meal that tastes like only this.” No? Then definitely don’t try chicken scrambled eggs.
🍜 Carbona(ra)men- Dude asks you to cook 8 pieces of bacon, remove the bacon and leave ALL the hot fat, and dump 2 cups of water into it. I explained the chemistry behind this to my son before doing it for the review and, as predicted, hot grease exploded all over my kitchen. This book is written for young inexperienced cooks. Will someone be burned? I think so. The food itself was a chore to eat. Way too much bacon. One note flavor.
🍚 Asparagus and Parmesan Risotto- this was the best dish we tried… and it was from a chapter of recipes written by other people. I was skeptical about using 2 entire bunches of asparagus but you purée half and it totally works.

[T]

Rather put out re: the soup hate.

[Molly W]

i think its great cookbook with amazing recipes

[Clwseattle]

What I liked about Knife Drop:
The recipes are presented on a single page.
There are mouthwatering pictures of every recipe.
The ingredients are listed in volume and weight.
There are recipes for common ingredients.
There are helpful tips and interesting descriptions.

What I found disappointing about Knife Drop:
The recipes are mostly pedestrian.
The Pasta Chips were . . . disappointing.
I'm gob smacked that a 2023 cookbook uses a 1950's ingredient, mayonnaise, so liberally when there are healthy oils available.
The author, Nick Giovanni, evidently has no use for soups.

"While it has a time and place, soup lacks texture and excitement."

I'm not sure if I should be upset by his dislike of soup or pity him for never tasting a really great one. You would think his editor would counsel him to just not mention the missing category rather than glaringly point it out with such a snarky opinion.

3.5 Stars (bumped up). Knife Drop is not bad but could have been far better. I have to quibble with the word creative in the subtitle. I'm grateful I was able to find Knife Drop at the library.

[MKF]

My daughter loves watching his videos so was excited to get his book and share it with me. Being a picky eater I wouldn't eat a lot of this stuff especially the weirder things like blueberry grilled cheese. I do like the fact that he recommends making a lot of basics like salt and butter from scratch. The recipes are simple enough so could be a good introduction for beginners.

[Julia Katherine Byerly Witt]

I GOT THIS IN A GOODREADS GIVEAWAY!! it is a beautifully printed book and has awesome and inventive recipes. stunning.

[Jamil Allahham]

Amazing recipes

The recipes in this book are fantastic. It is like getting normal boring recipes and adding flavor into the recipes.

[Patrick]

Good pictures

[Hillary Pate]

3.5 stars. It must be genetic. I have a secret love of reading cookbooks. Start to finish. It’s a sacred experience. My son ordered this cookbook, we flipped through the cookbook taking turns reading the headers out loud, selecting the recipes.

He knew everything about the cookbook author, down to the best recipe on page 152, it was revealed to me with a drum roll, he had watched all his videos, we will be breaking Hershey bars for the chunks in the chocolate chip cookies. A younger version of me would make the recipes of vanilla, brown sugar, homemade ricotta, butter, and homemade pasta. I did it all but the wiser older version of me knows to buy it at the store now to keep my sanity. So I will stick to the recipes in the back of the book.

I taught him all the ways, reading all the headers what words give, away the best recipes, the ones to try first. Stay tuned of my review of the recipes. I loved that he sold “ blueberry coluis” lemonade to the neighbors pictures in the book at the age of 5. His love and passion for cooking is tangible. It has a masculine touch from pictures to recipe choices.

[Shannon]

I am extremely picky about the cookbooks that I buy. I'll borrow just about anything from the library, but it takes A LOT to get me to give up real estate on my kitchen shelf. That being said, I did not expect this one to make the cut. I have a love/hate relationship with Gordon Ramsay and everything about this cover had me thinking it was going to be full of pretentious, stupid recipes created by a stupid, pretentious kid (I judge books by their cover, that's what they are there for. Don't come at me).
But I was shocked when I started to dig into this book. DiGiovanni's recipes are clean and precise. His recipes are ones I have been looking for, ones that I do, and think about doing. He shows cooking from scratch in a positive light and just how easy it can be. That is a concept I have lived by for so long!
I took off a star based on his soup chapter because I 💯 do not agree. Nobody's perfect, but he's still young...🤷🏼‍♀️
In conclusion, I greatly misjudged this book and I'm making room on my kitchen shelf for it as we speak.

[Lucas]

This is a pretty decent cookbook. I really love the history and memoir at the start, it's really cool.

In terms of the cooking, it's pretty good. It gives some really great tips for cooking (eg. adding milk powder to brown butter to bring out more of its nutty richness.) I also like that it gives QR codes for some more complex cooking techniques, such as flambe or carving an entire chicken.

However, the recipes fall a bit short. Some are overly salty, and sweet. I find most of the desserts (chocolate chip cookies) to have wayy too much flour which hinders the taste. Nontheless, I'd say 95% of them are pretty good and its still a fantastic book worth buying. The one thing I would say thats missing to the book is plating techniques. Granted this is a cookbook for begginers, however it would be cool if we got some fancy plating techniques to show off :)

Overall this is a great book and I reccomend it to anyone who is interested in cooking!

[Milton Public Library]

This cookbook got me excited about cooking, which I think is the whole point of this one. Nick DiGiovanni makes me believe that I could actually make a lot of these delicious looking recipes. My palate isn't exotic so a lot of the recipes were right up my alley. I appreciated the layout, the pictures, and the confidence this cookbook gave me.

Find it in our SHARE Catalog today!

Ashley C. / Milton Public Library #CheckOutMPL

[Steven Loebig]

I was torn between 1 and 2 stars for this, but Goodreads described 1 star as "did not like it" and 2 stars as "it was okay". I used that definition to help me conclude that this cookbook deserves one star.

Recipes do not match pictures, every recipe has sooooo many ingredients that you can only comfortably cook them in a professional kitchen, recipes have no flavor when done.

I saw the pictures of the food when looking at this book in Target, and after making 12 recipes from this book (which cost me a pretty penny each time), I have yet to create something I am proud of.

[Francisco Ramirez]

This book is pretty good, nothing more and nothing less, it consists of easy to make recipes for beginners, or people that don’t want to look through the complexity of many other cookbooks. This book offers good food whilst also making it not only simple to make but also simple to look at. (Disclaimer I have not made all the recipes but the recipes I have made I’ve enjoyed. I’ll probably be making the pancakes sometime this week.) I will update you all on my endeavors.

[Jo]

I've never heard of this guy before because I don't use TikTok, but the cookbook has a decent number of recipes I'd like to try. Features a bold voice (his chapter on soups lol), a well organized layout (each recipe is one page of text and one photo), and creative photos (my favorite is the dino nugget one).

[Luqman Hubbard]

One of the best cook books out there

[Cris]

Knife Drop

This is one of the few cookbooks I have picked up that has recipes I would actually cook from!! Nick has done a great job making them realistic for real people.

[Joud Chahine]

Amazing book. It has amazing recipes for everything pretty easy

[Evan Brown]

helped me with some of my recipes. as well as brought me back into cooking.

[Cruz Skaggs]

This is in my opinion the best cook book ever.Nick looks and acts like he’s such a fun and nice guy.And mine was also signed

[Luke Ryan]

Awesome cookbook

[Michelle]

I laughed out loud at the soup chapter.

[Josephine]

it was very good made smash burgers

[Marj Osborne]

Knife Drop has landed on our shores.
The first cookbook of celebrity chef and Masterchef US finalist Nick DiGiovanni, Knife Drop is a beautifully produced glossy paged edition. Hard covered and well indexed, the cookbook sets out to prove that anyone can cook, and it inspires us to do so.
Firstly the title: Knife drop. Obviously, by the number of Nick DiGiovanni’s social media fans (more than 25 million), there are lots of girls out there whose attention has been snagged on the end of Nick’s knife blade. Yes, he’s drop dead gorgeous, and the first one or two times the knife hits the chopping board in one of his reels we take a short gasp, but after that, we feel more blasé than entertained.
But, of course, there’s more to the cookbook than that, just as there is more to Nick himself...
Nick, a Harvard graduate, is one of Tik Tok’s highest ranking food creators. He auditioned for Gordon Ramsay's MasterChef TV competition in 2018 during his senior year at Harvard. His final thesis in his BA Food & Climate analysed data on carbon emissions in 36 global restaurants from Singapore to San Francisco, advised by none other than author Michael Pollan. During his final year at Harvard in 2018 he auditioned for Gordon Ramsay's MasterChef, becoming the youngest finalist in the competition.
The edition is bold, one recipe per double page, paired with effective Instagrammable, eye-catchingly clever photographs. Steak glistens, honey drips off the buttermilk fried chicken and a ranch wedge salad is photographed on a broken plate (explained in the photo’s caption). This is an adventure, the photographs tell us, and the goal is not perfection but taste.
From typical frat pack fare such as toasted sandwiches, shepherd’s pie or pimped packet ramen to a lobster roll (containing almost half a kg of fresh lobster) and chicken confit, this recipe collection is eclectic, drawing from a wide enough range of affordability and cultures to be of interest to a cross-section of cooks.
The Table of Contents points us to lots of basics and building blocks as well as techniques, hints and a ‘sauce library’. But no soups. We may not agree, but thankfully there’s no meal prep instructions either!
I’m particularly intrigued by a couple of shortcuts and clever ideas. Who would have thought to make hash browns in a waffle iron! Or making your own pretzel bread or crunchy chickpeas to snack on. And we applaud the ideas on how to use a ‘tradie’s handbag’ (AKA BBQ chook), including how to make stock from the carcass.
‘Compost’ takes on a new meaning in Nick’s cookie recipe, the accompanying photo showing a single cookie bearing hand emerging from a bed of pretzels, chips and smarties AKA pantry ‘compost’. How could we not be intrigued with the yin yang cookie concept!
Containing over 100 recipes, Nick urges young cooks to have a go, be fearless and build their tool kit of recipes and techniques from homemade staples up. Regardless of what I think of his knife throwing, his intentions are great.
Thanks to Penguin Random House Australia for the review copy.

[Robert Lewis]

The author is apparently some kind of social media star, delivering cooking videos to legions of fans. I admit, I didn’t know his work prior to reading this book. But when I stumbled across the book itself, I found it rather intriguing. The theme here seems to be interesting, creative, restaurant-quality types of dishes, but which can be (relatively) easily prepared by home cooks in a home kitchen.

Admittedly, some of the recipes live up to that promise a bit better than others. To be sure, there are several recipes in here that look just as impressive as anything you might find in a Michelin-starred restaurant, but with relatively simple ingredients and techniques accessible to home chefs. But there are also a couple that don’t quite hit that “impressive” mark or which might be a bit more intimidating to the home cook.

But that’s not to say those recipes are necessarily bad or failures by any means. And despite a couple maybe not quite hitting the same theme as the rest of the book, I consider the book on the whole quite a success.

One thing I particularly like, and I don’t know whether to credit the author or the publisher for this, is that every single recipe in the book is accompanied by an attractive full-page illustration so you can see exactly what each dish is supposed to look like. Admittedly, that means there’s not room for quite as many recipes in here, but I find it makes for a more attractive, and indeed more useful, cookbook.

As for the recipes themselves, I’m quite pleased to report that the vast majority of them look like something I’d actually like to cook and/or eat. Obviously everyone’s tastes are different so no cookbook ever manages to be 100% for anyone (except perhaps its own author), but this one is closer aligned to my tastes than most. And I particularly like a book that combines some sophisticated classy recipes with some that are more comfort food. And I have to admit, what really caught my eye is that this book even includes a recipe to make your own home-made dino nuggies. I’m pretty sure that means this is an author who knows what his audience wants.

On that note of speaking to his audience, this might also be the perfect cookbook for the social media age because not only is the author apparently a social media cooking star of some sort, but he’s also included QR codes throughout the book leading the reader to videos demonstrating how to prepare some (not all) of the recipes.

Honestly, I didn’t know what to expect from this book, but now that I’ve read it, I can see why Gordon Ramsay was willing to put his name on it and supply a foreword. This is really an excellent cookbook.

[William Schram]

I don't watch television, and other than Goodreads, I don't follow social media. I never heard of Chef Nick DiGiovanni, but I have heard of Chef Gordon Ramsay. He's the guy from Hell's Kitchen and other cooking shows that play off his temper. From my limited information, I thought DiGiovanni might have been Ramsay's protege. DiGiovanni merely appeared on one of Ramsay's shows. The book's title is Knife Drop. The back of the book depicts DiGiovanni playfully battling a lobster with tongs and a potlid. I imagine he's a fun person.

DiGiovanni opens with the basics: must-have equipment and must-have ingredients. He advises the reader to be fearless in the face of cooking. I learned a lot from a single page. For example, I didn't know you should seal butter in an airtight container. The butter takes on the flavors and odors of the fridge otherwise. If you're making a dish with higher heat, like pancakes, use clarified butter. DiGiovanni emphasizes learning the technique rather than a mindless adherence to a recipe.

DiGiovanni moves on to recipes, and this is the most substantial portion of the book. He organizes the book by the type of meal. Breakfast opens with pancakes. He tells you how to make the most of your ingredients. DiGiovanni even has a technique for making a different type of salt. The book has QR codes you can scan to see videos related to the recipe.

I enjoyed the book. Thanks for reading my review, and see you next time.

[Julie H. Ernstein]

I am always on the lookout for exciting new cookbooks--either to gift to others at the holidays or to endanger our increasingly groaning shelves of cookbooks. Internet sensation and celebrity check Nick DiGiovanni's second book (the first dating to his childhood), Knife Drop: Creative Recipes Anyone Can Cook will be heading to my sister's house this holiday season. Before it leaves our house, however, I'm field-testing a couple of items, including: shepherd's pie (always in search of the perfect recipe), cast-iron naan, Persian street corn (you had me at cotija!), and gingerbread dog treats (a welcome addition to the peanut butter classic dog treats firmly ensconced in my doggo gift-giving arsenal).

The instructions are clear, well-illustrated, and with the possible exception of his total diss of soup (TTH, Dude?!), this book is unpretentious, easy to use, and demonstrable proof of his philosophy that "Anyone can cook!" I trust my sister is going to enjoy this quite a lot.

[Kandle]

This cookbook is stunning!

I love how he breaks down simple beginner ideas, such as how to hold a knife or how to make butter. He progresses with intermediate and advanced recipes that look and sound delicious. I have decided that I need to make my own Vanilla extract as soon as possible!

I appreciate the scope of this cookbook, and I look forward to sharing this book with my soon-to-graduate children to have references for successful cooking later in life.

Finally, I think the soup section is by far my favorite part. :)

[Benjamin Graham]

Some of these recipes are annoyingly nice (e.g the Buttermilk Fried Chicken and the Barbecue Sauce) but the good taste of some of the recipes doesn't compensate for the silly amounts of ingredients used in these recipes. It feels like they're doing too much too often.
I think this is also widely mentioned but his apparent hatred of soups and claiming they lack flavour just irritates me.
Basically, a handful of the recipes are good, but a lot of them are doing way too much or are just plain underwhelming.