My spouse and I disagree about whether or not we should own more cookbooks. Clearly, we should. One can really never have enough. Naturally, you will never cook everything in a cookbook (my cousin did, once, you can read about it at My Year with Jamie Oliver). That said, you shouldn’t wait until you cook every single thing in a cookbook until you try a new one! If you didn’t, you’d end up eating all of the gross lamb dishes (personal opinion). Anyway, let’s talk cookbooks!
PS: I’ve linked these to Amazon.com with affiliate links, which means that should you click through and choose to purchase, I will get a tiny portion of the price, at no cost to you. Some of these are Canadian books and are therefore mostly unavailable, or obscenely priced, at Amazon.com!
Cookbooks I Think Everyone Should Own
This is the bible of cooking. It tells you how to clean a turtle, it tells you how to make broth, it tells you how to scramble eggs and it tells you how to set a table. There are literally thousands of recipes in this book. If the power goes out or you don’t have internet, you can turn to this handy tome!
Cook with Jamie: My Guide to Making You a Better Cook
Disclaimer: I don’t actually own this one. It’s sitting in my Amazon wishlist. However, everyone I know who owns this really loves it.
How to Break an Egg: 1,453 Kitchen Tips, Food Fixes, Emergency Substitutions
Similar to the Joy of Cooking, this lays down the laws of the kitchen for you, covering all sorts of things-you-ought-to-know.
Some of My Favourite Cookbooks
I had no idea these cookbooks existed until my Mom gave me some for Christmas. Now I have all three and they are absolutely delightful. If you need dinner party foods, these books will do you no wrong! From simple to complex, they are all delicious, and cover the gambit from vegan to gluten free to seafood to roasted lamb.
This cookbook is the product of a restaurant of the same name in Victoria, BC. It’s all vegetarian food, but you would never notice. There are all sorts of delicious recipes for fresh salsas, healthy waffles and more. I’m drooling a bit thinking about the recipes in there.
Cookbooks I Want to Own
If you want to know how to carve lamb and such, this is the book for you. (That someone is not me, we’ve discussed my dislike of lamb already!) This book doesn’t have all of the fancy pictures of new books, but it is my friend Adrienne’s absolute favourite cookbook, for good reason. It teaches you many, many things and it is chock a block full of recipes. It’s basically the Joy of Cooking, for Indian cuisine.
The Oh She Glows Cookbook: Over 100 Vegan Recipes to Glow from the Inside Out
I’ve made a few recipes from the Oh She Glows blog… and I want this one. A friend has it already and tells me it is delightful.
Martha Stewart’s Cookies: The Very Best Treats to Bake and to Share
My sister in law says this book really impressed her, which surprised her. The front of the book has pictures of every recipe, grouped by what type of cookie they are, for example crunchy, soft, jam filled and whatnot. My SIL gave her sister a copy of this, with commentary written in on the front pages, noting which were her favourites, which were easy to make, etc. I could go with the same as a gift, hint hint!
R has a ton of cookbooks, and I haven’t seen him look in them once 😉
Amanda @ My Life, I Guess recently posted…My Health is More Important Than $40
My wife owns the Joy of Cooking book. I have to say its actually pretty useful especially for an amateur like myself
Dan @ Our Big Fat Wallet recently posted…Do You Need to Use a Realtor?
I must admit… I used to be a big fan of cookbooks but now I often find my favourites online instead. I even have a cookbook with my favourites which I’ve assembled for easy reference. This way, I can switch in and out my recipes.
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I’m not a fan of cook books like you – mostly because my fiance has a lot of food quirks (aka, he can be a picky eater), and I feel like it would be more misses than hits. That said, I LOVE Jamie Oliver – have you watched his “Saving with Jamie” show all about stretching meals, etc? I love it, because it all stays hearty, and homey, but it doesn’t break the bank (well, I don’t think so at least, but the pound might be throwing off my math).
As an aside – I dated a guy in my early 20’s who loved Jamie Oliver cooking as well. We dated from November until about March, and we cooked our way through the majority of one of Jamie’s books, because it was freaking cold out. There were some good gems in there 🙂
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I used to be a huge cookbook fan, but now most of mine just collect dust. A few years back, I converted to food network.com to find recipes and then now I mostly use Pinterest. I like Pinterest for recipes because they are mostly pinned by everyday people and not professional chefs so I know it will probably taste good, have ingredients I can find and won’t be too difficult to make.
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I actually haven’t got any cook book yet. I feel I need to get one. I probably get that book entitled “How to break an egg”. Thanks for the recommendations.
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Ooh. I love your recommendations! Though the frugal me prefer the internet over cookbooks 🙂
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