The Food Lab
Home cooking worked out by experiment, grown from the Serious Eats column
Nine hundred and fifty pages, published in 2015, grown out of a Serious Eats column of the same name. Each section takes a familiar dish, changes one variable at a time and reports what happened. Why a dry surface sears better, what resting a steak does, how egg proteins set and then seize. Findings lead, recipes follow. It won the 2016 James Beard award for general cooking and has sold well past half a million copies.
People on record
Sorted by strength of stance
Does it: documented as part of their own routine. Recommends: explicitly advises other people to do it. Discusses: covered it substantively without clear personal adoption; this can include criticism or disagreement.
- J. Kenji López-AltRecommends
Chef and food writer · The Food Lab
His own 2015 book, which he describes as the one he would have wanted when he was learning to cook. The stated aim is not the recipes: he says he is teaching fundamentals so that a reader stops needing recipes. He left it off his own gift guide at first and put it back to avoid a conversation with his publisher.
Source: kenjilopezalt.com: 68 Gifts for Cookbook and Food Writing Lovers
Aimed at the same thing
Other entries filed under energy or productivity.
- Book$$$Cheap: Roughly under $50, or under $15/month.
Feel-Good Productivity
Energy and enjoyment as the engine of getting things done
On record from 1 of 62 tracked people: 1 recommends it - Book$$$Mid: Roughly $50 to $500, or up to $50/month.
On Food and Cooking
Harold McGee's reference on what ingredients are and what heat does to them
On record from 1 of 62 tracked people: 1 recommends it - Book$$$Cheap: Roughly under $50, or under $15/month.
The Wok
Nearly 700 pages on one pan, its physics and the cooking it makes possible
On record from 1 of 62 tracked people: 1 recommends it - ProtocolFREE, no cost
Hard thinking before lunch
Book the mentally demanding work for the morning and stop making big calls late in the day
On record from 2 of 62 tracked people: 2 do it - Gear$$$Cheap: Roughly under $50, or under $15/month.
Carbon steel wok
A thin steel pan with sloped sides, sold flat-bottomed for Western stoves
On record from 1 of 62 tracked people: 1 does it - Gear$$$Cheap: Roughly under $50, or under $15/month.
Cast iron skillet
A heavy iron pan that holds its heat when cold food hits it
On record from 1 of 62 tracked people: 1 does it
Book entry · notes paraphrased from cited sources, quoted excerpts copied from the transcript they link to. Not medical advice. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or reviewed by anyone listed. How this works.