Bruce Weinstein (1) (1960–)

I am a long-time pressure cooker aficionado. Like Miss Vickie, I was using pressure cookers on the stovetop decades before the Instant Pot® came into vogue. Has the Instant Pot® made cooking much easier, however? Of course!

Authors Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough have a new cookbook with the subtitle of “How to Cook NO-PREP Meals in Your Instant Pot® Straight from Your Freezer.” What busy mom wouldn’t be intrigued by that? Or even more so by the first few sentences of the show more cookbook’s introduction:

This cookbook is the Holy Grail for busy people, for those of us who rush in the door at the end of the day, pull a package of ice-encrusted whatever out of the freezer and think, “Can I eat this?”

Good news: If you’ve got an Instant Pot and this book, the answer is “Yes!”

Please, please, please, sign me up!

From Freezer to Instant Pot® is the cookbook I’ve always longed for. I knew — I just knew — that there had to be a way to cook from frozen. Who hasn’t forgotten to thaw out meat or other frozen products for tonight’s dinner? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you had one less thing to remember? Thanks to Weinstein and Scarbrough, now you do. I only wish I could give this cookbook six stars instead of five!

Here’s one tip that Weinstein and Scarbrough could not include, as dried beans do not do well in recipes with frozen ingredients: A pressure cooker allows you to cook dried beans in a trice. You never, ever have to presoak beans. Ever. Simply rinse and pick them over to find the stray pebble or deformed bean, then increase the time under high pressure to 45 minutes. No having to soak overnight or any other such nonsense! A one-pound bag of beans is equivalent to four cans; you can do the math on your savings.

In the interest of full disclosure, I received this book from Little, Brown & Co. in return for an honest review — and I’m so glad they contacted me! show less

One of the best cookbooks I have, it explains the steps of a recipe and then gives a chart showing several different adaptations for that recipe. There are great photographs and clear definitions. Everything is defined and techniques are clearly explained. I love that if it calls for a spice mix, there is a recipe for that spice mix. I make everything from scratch and despise recipes that list as ingredients things like "box of cake mix" or "jar of sauce". Nothing of that sort here. Thisisa show more boom that teaches people how to cook without a cookbook using what they have available and according to their particular tastes. One great thing is how I can quickly look at a chart and see if I can adapt a recipe to make it safe for my son who has serious allergies to dairy and nuts. There are also plenty of vegetarian and vegan recipes and ones that can be adapted to be vegan or vegetarian. There is a quite a lot of direction on how to cook different types of meat dishes, so I don't think I would purchase it for someone who never eats meat. But my family eats meat only once or twice a week and there are plenty of recipes of all kinds. I could probably plan our menu for a year and never repeat the same thing twice using this cookbook. show less

From years of instructing knitters and watching women knit under-appreciated gifts for the men they love, Bruce Weinstein offers 10 rules to guide women in choosing knitting patterns, fibers and colors for their men, along with a perfect pattern to illustrate each rule. After going clothes shopping with my dad, brothers, son, and former husband, who all like clothes, I found myself nodding with recognition and sometimes laughing out loud as I read each of Weinstein's "rules." Here are some show more great examples:

For Rule No. 9, "Men are oblivious," Weinstein offers a reversible-cable scarf, so your lovingly fashioned neckwear will always look good, even if he throws it on backwards. Weinstein also helpfully explains the length and width of scarf most men are willing to accept. (Hint: It's a different length and width than you might want in a scarf, and Weinstein explains why.)

Rule No. 1, "Men can't fake it," turns out to mean that men won't pretend to like something they don't, and they won't wear it, either. (Translation for the Y-chromosome-challenged: If he doesn't like cables or wool, DON'T knit him an Alice Starmore Aran sweater, no matter how good it would look on him.)

I have a nineteen-year-old son who has kindly accompanied me to a yarn store several times, showed interest in what I was doing and once asked me to knit a scarf for him with yarn he loved in a pattern he picked out; sadly, the scarf has never been worn. This is thoughtfully explained by Rule No. 2: "Men resist change." Weinstein says that most men have their style pretty much set by age 15, and prefer to wear the same things over and over. (If he likes one sweater you knit for him, he may want the second one to be the same pattern, or even the same color.)

Of course, Weinstein has his own great stories to illustrate each of these sad, but too-true rules. You'll want the book for his wry humor, the rest of the rules, and the 10 solid, I-can-see-him-actually-wearing-that patterns in the book, which are written in multiple gauges and sizes. Weinstein's rules will even help you pick patterns on your own your man may want to wear. But, with patterns this good, you may never need to pick another one. show less

I have loved two previous cookbooks by Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough, two five-star wonders for the Instant Pot. With this cookbook, the team take on the air fryer. I don’t like this one as much, but I think it’s me, not them. I adore my Instant Pot so much more than the air fryer; in fact, I use the former two or three times a week. The only time I use my air fryer is for bacon.

But Weinstein and Scarbrough come up with ingenious ways to get crispy and quickly cooked meals in the show more air fryer, so I’m thinking that I’m going to be using my air fryer a lot more. So it’s five stars for this cookbook.

In the interest of full disclosure, I received this book from NetGalley, Voracious, and Little, Brown and Company in exchange for an honest review. show less