i have a lot of cook books floating around here. i like to have a variety of recipes to choose from. who doesn’t?
one of my all time favorites is the fanny farmer cook book. there are so many helpful tips and information in addition to the recipes. it’s quite a hefty little cook book! the pages are covered with splatters from a sloppy cook. i like how each type of meat is broken down with diagrams of cuts and descriptions of the cuts, along with the best way to prepare them. the same is done for fruits and vegetables too. it’s a cook book i highly recommend to anyone wanting to cook from scratch!
the nourishing traditions cook book is another great book that talks about preparing foods in the ancient tradition, soaking foods and keeping them alive (as opposed to just baking them such as granola which is supposed to be a no-no…we love it here so i make it anyway!). in addition to recipes, the columns are filled with customs of tribes around the world on food preparation and statistics of their health.
the sunburst family cook book is a hippy style cook book that offers alternatives to cooking with sugar and refined flour. recipes usually use honey and whole grain flour as well as other types of flours and sweeteners. it is vegetarian based.
putting it by with honey is excellent for jelly and jam recipes using honey instead of sugar. they generally turn out a bit runny but around here, sweet is sweet.
those four preside within easy reach for reference. the rest of my varied stash hang out on a higher shelf, some being rotated during the season they are needed the most:
dry it, you’ll like it! is about dehydrating just about anything, including meat.
wild fermentation is useful during harvest season to make krauts, pickles and such.
solar cooking gives me ideas during the summer on how to use my solar oven.
in addition to those perennial favorites, i have another assortment that sits even higher:
the vegetarian epicure
the vegetarian epicure, book 2
fields of greens
vegetarian times
moosewood cook book
moosewood restaurant cooks at home
the barefoot contessa
the naked chef
the little house cook book
cooking by moonlight
that is the short list! there are plenty more hidden around the house as well. the problem with that is i use maybe 1-2 recipes out of the majority of the cook books and so they sit around collecting dust and getting in my way, thus the reason they are up high on shelves.
to solve that problem, i have compiled my own cook book of sorts for my household binder. i type the recipes on a page created in word, including the source book and page number for easy reference and then print the pages out and keep them in my binder. i have 4 sections: entrees, sweets, breads, misc (sourdough, kefir, kombucha, etc). when i try out a new recipe, i’ll add it to my word document and print the page once it’s full and add it to my binder. that way, i’ve always got my tried and true recipes within reach without trying to remember which cook book i found a particular recipe in and spend half the day trying to find it. and even though i love my fanny farmer cook book, having all the recipes i truly enjoy all in my binder saves me from trying to remember the name of the recipe. i still use my fanny farmer book weekly but if there’s a specific recipe i want, i go straight to my binder. the bonus is, when i travel, i generally take my binder along since it always has travel information in it as well. so, if i’m staying away from home, i still have an arsonal of recipes at my disposal any time i feel like whipping something up. and yes, even when camping, i use it!
now that i’m organized, who’s got some more cook book suggestions for me??? what is/are your favorite cook book(s)?
My best friend and I do something similar but more because we simply can’t leave a recipe alone than anything else. It keeps our latest version of all used recipes handy without marking up the books.
I’m right there with you! I have loads of cookbooks but for most I use only a few recipes or references.
I also have a binder full of recipes I’ve collected and typed up in plastic sleeves. That way I can pull the recipe out and if it gets splattered, the mess just wipes off. It’s about time to go through and update it though. After 20 years, some of them are so familiar I don’t need the recipe to cook. Others caught my eye but never got made for various reasons.
I like Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, and also Madhur Jaffrey’s World Vegetarian. Not that I’m vegetarian. I also like the America’s Test Kitchen’s New Best Recipe as well as their Family Cookbook (looks like the old Better Homes & Gardens Cookbook).
-Kate
I couldn’t live without my Fanny Farmer! I grew up learning to cook from this, and it was the first thing I asked for as a present when I got out on my own.
i like Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone ( also not a vegetarian- rather the opposite!) and Julia Child’s The Way To Cook. also, the Tassajara Bread Book. that one gets used a lot ’round here.
I love old church cook books, the ones that church’s sell for fundraisers. There are some incredible and odd recipes in those. But for ones that you can find easily, it would have to be Celtic Folklore Cooking by Asala
I use The Joy of Cooking (the edition from the 70s) for just about everything. I don’t know if the more recent reprints have all the cool stuff like how to dress game, make cheese, work with sourdough, preserve food, or the wonderful if fat-laden comfort food recipes.
Anything by Deborah Madison is brilliant, though unless one’s garden is going gangbusters or there’s a farmstand next door, some of her recipes can be hard to approximate.
We have three shelves of cookbooks and counting but that’s nothing: one couple we know has 3 floor-to-ceiling bookcases. What can I say? Book clutter is the one kind of clutter we’re friendly to around her.
I grew up with Betty Crocker’s 1951 “New Picture Cookbook” in my mom’s house. I became Fanny Farmer as a youth, but my 70′s edition was stolen by a crazy neighbor in the 90′s. My youth was also sprinkled with Julia Child and Jeff Smith. One of my first “gourmet” meals was Julia’s “Chicken Melon,” where I removed a chicken from its intact skin, and made pistachio-studded pate to restuff it for baking.
Now, I am a mix of Mark Bittman and eclectic Internet. Influences from Alton Brown and several favorite blogs. I worked in restaurants and in catering from age 14 to 34, so I am also influenced by a lifetime of working chefs and cooking friends, some vegetarian. I was imprinted by grandmothers; one was a practical PA Dutch cook with 7 kids, the other a snooty Adelle Davis/Joy of Cooking show-off. My mother was a mediocre cook, but a better baker.
Among my favorite commercial cookbooks:
How to Cook Everything – Mark Bittman (1998)
Good Food Book – Jane Brody (1985)
The Vegetarian Epicure – Anna Thomas (1972)
I would like to get Bittman’s “How to Cook Everything Vegetarian.” I like his “minimalist” attitude. I’ll always be a meat-eater, but I have learned a lot from vegetarian cooks.
I organize all my recipes on WeGottaEat.com, and print the ones I use regularly. Right now, the most frequent ones are just taped inside my cupboard doors, but I am intending to put them in a binder in sheet protectors. Really, I am.
My 70′s James Beard edition Fannie Farmer is the one I use the most, along with all my Grange Cookbooks. I just keep my favorites on recipe cards in a small file and the rest are in my head – eater beware!
I use my Joy of Cooking quite a bit because I don’t have the Fanny Farmer one (altho, I’ve been tempted by it at the bookstore many times!) I can find almost any recipe in that book (especially the basics like pie crust, dumplings, quiche or shepherd’s pie).
Too bad we don’t live closer to each other: I have almost all of those same cookbooks on the “not as routine” list! We could consolidate cookbooks and borrow when needed!
I also use the Tassajara Bread Book (love it) and I recently found another Tassajara cookbook (name escaping me at moment) at a thrift store that looks interesting
I started using WeGottaEat site at Matriarchy’s suggestion (I hope to purge some of my lesser used cookbooks soon).
Great topic!
My old Joy of Cooking is my favorite but I also like Dining with William Shakespear. I tend towards colonial cookbooks.
My favorite online source is King Arthur Flour recipes. So far each and every one has turned out perfect! Perfectly sinful! Perfectly suited to going straight to my hips!!!
I run to my old Joy of Cooking (also a 70′s edition) often. I also love my More with Less cookbook from the Mennonite Central Committee. I also just got their Simply in Season- it has seasonal recipes for garden veggies.
I have over 40 cookbooks, everything from dutch oven to Mid Eastern vegetarian.
i also have a binder with page protectors. I use our copier to add to my book. I also have a section for my canning recipes. Since these are something I may only use during the hectic summer season I won’t have to wonder, “which pizza sauce recipe or bread & butter pickle recipe I used”
I also write on there any changes I make. Usually it’s adding a bit of red pepper flakes or less salt.
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Some of yours are also mine. My latest cookbook gold is Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. It has made my life so much simpler…and the bread is as good as any I’ve ever baked traditionally.
I’d like to second the Jane Brody cookbook (great stuff!) AND the More with Less Cookbook. Although I have a plethora of wonderful books, I turn to these two and my 1000 Vegetarian Recipes book more often than not!
Thank you for all the great recommendations! I am a relative newbie to cookbooks even though I cook/bake all the time – its just usually by “ear”. Sort of like Matriarchy, I guess its a mix of all different influences, ideas, and just little tidbits I’ve heard and seen. But I definitely agree with AnnaMarie – King Arthur recipes seem nearly foolproof!
Madhur Jaffrey’s World of the East Vegetarian Cooking. I’ve had to buy three copies over the years, from it getting so dog-eared.