Book

Get Cooking

📖 Overview

Get Cooking presents beginner-friendly recipes and kitchen fundamentals for novice home cooks. The book contains 150 straightforward recipes organized into categories like soups, salads, main dishes, and desserts. Author Mollie Katzen focuses on building cooking confidence through clear instructions and basic techniques. Each recipe includes step-by-step directions, ingredient notes, and suggestions for variations. The recipes emphasize fresh ingredients and simple preparation methods that require minimal specialized equipment. Photography and illustrations demonstrate key steps and techniques throughout the book. The book serves as both a practical cooking manual and an introduction to home cooking as a form of self-reliance and creativity. Its approach reinforces the connection between basic kitchen skills and the ability to prepare satisfying meals.

👀 Reviews

Readers found Get Cooking effective for beginners learning basic kitchen skills. The step-by-step photos and clear instructions helped novice cooks build confidence. Liked: - Simple, approachable recipes with common ingredients - Basic techniques explained thoroughly - Photos showing each cooking stage - Vegetarian options included - Recipe notes provide useful variations Disliked: - Some recipes too basic for experienced cooks - Limited number of recipes (100 total) - Several readers noted bland seasonings - Some felt ingredient lists were too long One reader said "Perfect for my college student - taught her how to cook real food." Another noted "Instructions are clear but recipes lack excitement." Ratings: Goodreads: 3.8/5 (89 ratings) Amazon: 4.3/5 (98 ratings) Barnes & Noble: 4.4/5 (12 ratings) The cookbook earned particular praise from parents teaching teens to cook and young adults living on their own for the first time.

📚 Similar books

How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman This cookbook presents fundamental cooking techniques and kitchen basics through straightforward recipes with variations for home cooks.

The Joy of Cooking by Irma S. Rombauer This comprehensive cooking guide contains recipes, techniques, and kitchen fundamentals for beginners through experienced home cooks.

The Moosewood Cookbook by Mollie Katzen This collection features vegetarian recipes with hand-lettered pages and illustrated cooking instructions for home cooks.

The Fannie Farmer Cookbook by Marion Cunningham This recipe collection includes classic American dishes with precise measurements and step-by-step instructions for home cooking.

The New Basics Cookbook by Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins This cookbook combines kitchen fundamentals with recipes that incorporate global ingredients and techniques.

🤔 Interesting facts

🥄 Mollie Katzen was inducted into the James Beard Foundation's Cookbook Hall of Fame for her influential vegetarian cookbooks, including the iconic "Moosewood Cookbook." 🍳 "Get Cooking" marked a departure from Katzen's vegetarian focus, including meat dishes to appeal to a broader audience of beginning cooks. 📚 The author's distinctive hand-lettered and illustrated cookbooks have sold more than 6 million copies worldwide. 🥗 Katzen helped revolutionize American cooking in the 1970s as part of the Moosewood Restaurant collective in Ithaca, NY, which was named one of the 13 most influential restaurants of the 20th century by Bon Appétit magazine. 👩‍🍳 Beyond cookbooks, Katzen has served as a culinary advisor to Harvard University's dining services and was named by Health magazine as one of the five "Women Who Changed the Way We Eat."