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.
Who backs it
Sorted by strength of stance
- 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
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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.