Maria Guarnaschelli (1941–2021)

This would be valuable even if it had no recipes at all. Need a conversion? It's here. Need to learn how to do a basic white sauce? It's here. Wanna get fancy? It's here, too. At a certain point you begin to get the "feel" for cooking from this book. It's one thing to follow a recipe, but it's quite another to understand what's going to happen if you use corn starch here or baking powder there. This book helps you get beyond the strict following of recipes so you can do your own innovations. show more My Mom gave me Betty Crocker when I left home. I gave my kids Joy of Cooking. show less

Even though I'm vegetarian (and this book is really heavy on the meat) I still find there are a few jems throughout this book. With more than 1000 pages, I keep thinking I'll find more, but the meat emphasis is pretty strong.

All that being said, the unsweetened dried fruit and nut granola is my all time favorite cereal. I've yet to find anything in a store or in any other cookbook that comes close to this granola. Other areas I've got bookmarked include the muffins, quiche and eggs.

There's show more some very nice technique discussions in each section and a lot of variations. After I've read the technique information and the variations, I can usually make an educated guess on whether one of my own variations needs any special changes to the recipe.

Several years ago I got so fed up with seeing meat stuck everywhere in most omnivore cookbooks, I stopped buying anything that wasn't intended to be vegetarian (a little chicken stock here, a little bacon there). This is one of the rare cookbooks I've bought knowing that meat is a large focus and I don't regret it. show less

This cookbook is considered “authoritative” for good reason. It is a comprehensive compendium not only of recipes, but of all sorts of basic kitchen skills. For example, in the chapter “Shellfish,” you learn about shellfish safety, different varieties of shellfish, how to prepare it - from how to peel shrimp to how to kill a lobster to how to clean crabs, and so on. The chapter “Meat” goes through all the basic cuts, and all the various methods for cooking and storing it before show more getting into the recipes themselves. “Candy” teaches you about melting, tempering, and molding chocolate, all about fondant, and the difference between praline, almond paste, and marzipan. All of this background and instructions are accompanied by drawn illustrations. A large appendix provides a thorough selection of charts on measurements, conversions, substitutions, and nutritional data.

The recipes are good, but "standard fare." There is certainly value in having access to them. But the real value of the book is in the extensive supplemental matter. show less

Aptly described by other reviewers as an American classic, The Joy of Cooking has been in "my" kitchen for as long as I can remember. My own personal copy, which I still own, came to me as part of a prize that I won in a book raffle during college. I somehow managed to misplace the other four cookbooks that were also part of the prize (lost in a move, I believe), but this volume is still around.

More than just an extensive and thorough cookbook, this is a culinary reference work, containing show more all sorts of basic information about food preparation. Wondering how long you should soak those dried beans or legumes before cooking? Hoping to discover how to blanche nuts? Look no further... I find that this is a helpful book to have around, even if I don't use the recipes that often. show less