Joy of Cooking [2006]: 75th Anniversary Edition

This is easily the bible of cookbooks, even for vegans. The Joy of Cooking doesn't merely have recipes, it also tells you how to buy ripe fruit and vegetables, how to cut them, and how to prepare them in many ways. It has chapters on pretty much everything from soup to breads to appetizers to preserving food to meat stuff to fruits and veggies and everywhere in between. The last section is a wonderful reference guide to ingredients and, of course, includes food substitutions and conversion charts.

The JOC is my go-to guide for recipes for things like tortillas, pancakes, bread, soy milk, baked/mashed potatoes and baked french fries, risotto (which you can veganize by using nutritional yeast instead of parmesan), coconut rice, and many, show more many other things. I always check with the JOC first when I'm using a new grain or piece of produce, and it has never done me wrong. show less

Isn't this everyone's go-to cookbook? If you worked your way through this, you'd probably have an infinitely more thorough and broader grasp of cooking than you would working your way through Julia Child. I will keep this one around forever, if only for the extensive substitution chart. And the fact that there isn't a classic American recipe that's not contained within it. And on the off-chance you ever need to cook a squirrel or some other weird creature, what other mainstream cookbook can you think of that will instruct you in this endeavor? Not my favorite fun reading cookbook, but definitely my favorite useful one.

I -can't- cook. When I say that, I don't mean that I simply can't cook a 4-star gourmet dinner, I mean I can burn water. This book is a huge collection of recipes that even the worst in the kitchen (me) can actually follow. It has sections on how to boil eggs, roast turkeys, all those things most people learned while growing up, all while being in plain English.

If you look on GoodReads under "Popular Cookbooks Books" (sic) the Joy of Cooking is right at the top. It's reputably the go to cookbook, a "teaching" cookbook for those who don't just burn toast, they're capable of burning water. I'm not that bad, but neither am I a gourmet---I could use some teaching. I've long coveted this doorstopper book of 1,132 pages containing 4,500 recipes and finally broke down and ordered it when I had a Barnes and Noble coupon. It's like an encyclopedia of cooking.

It took some getting used to. The recipes aren't organized in the manner I've come to expect. Take, for instance, the beginning of the recipe for Chili Con Carne on page 513:

Pat dry:
3 pounds boneless beef chuck, trimmed and cut into 1/2-inch show more cubes

Season with:

1 to 2 teaspoons salt

Heat in a large skillet over medium-high heat:

2 tablespoons olive oil

And so on. Do you see what I mean? I'm used to recipes that list all the ingredients at the top, with instructions separate beneath. It was so different than how I'd done things for decades it was hard to adjust initially, although its ways have grown on me. Worth the price alone just for the sections after recipes such as "Keeping and Storing Food," "Know Your Ingredients" and "Cooking Methods and Techniques." show less

I find The Joy of Cooking to be an invaluable reference guide particularly with ingredients and techniques. Generally when I want to try a new recipe I refer to the Joy of Cooking first to see the basic ingredients and techniques needed even if I am using a recipe I found online.

The recipes are easy to follow once you get used to the ingredients being inline with the instructions instead of at the top. One thing you do have to watch out for is that you have to read the entire recipe because sometimes the last part of a recipe will call for another recipe found elsewhere in the book.

Still, this is an excellent reference and the information is very well written and easy to follow.

I got this cookbook primarily as a reference for looking up common recipes and techniques. It does that job very well. It probably has a version of almost every recipe you can think of, although they are often very scaled-down. Think of these recipes as a place to start creating in the kitchen or foundations to build on. While I consult this cookbook regularly, I don't cook out of it every day.

Standout recipes: Broiled stuffed mushrooms; Vegetarian chili; Marinated cucumbers; Sauteed greens with garlic

First cookbook I ever bought as a newlywed at the ArmyPX in Germany. It's a 1958 edition, now falling apart, before the internet, it was the best source for everything.
Newer editions eliminated the recipe for Chicken Baked in Batter which is essentially sauted chicken baked in a pan of yorkshire pudding batter...nothing better. Over the years, I've bought "back-up" copies of the same edition at library sales when I see them.