The Food Lab
Winner of the James Beard Award for General Cooking Winner of the IACP Cookbook of the Year Award "The one book you must have, no matter what you’re planning to cook or where your skill level falls."—New York Times Book Review Ever wondered how to pan-fry a steak with a charred crust and an interior that's perfectly medium-rare from edge to edge when you cut into it? How to make homemade mac 'n' cheese that is as satisfyingly gooey and velvety-smooth as the blue box stuff, but far tastier? How to roast a succulent, moist turkey (forget about brining!)—and use a foolproof method that works every time? As Serious Eats's culinary nerd-in-residence, J. Kenji López-Alt has pondered all these questions and more. In The Food Lab, Kenji focuses on the science behind beloved American dishes, delving into the interactions between heat, energy, and molecules that create great food. Kenji shows that often, conventional methods don’t work that well, and home cooks can achieve far better results using new—but simple—techniques. In hundreds of easy-to-make recipes with over 1,000 full-color images, you will find out how to make foolproof Hollandaise sauce in just two minutes, how to transform one simple tomato sauce into a half dozen dishes, how to make the crispiest, creamiest potato casserole ever conceived, and much more.
Stats for nerds
46recommend
67mentions
59people
2013–2026years
79% recommend21% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Check out Kenji’s book, The Food Lab. (Also the name of his blog before it merged with Serious Eats.) You’ll get a sense of what makes him popular among nerds who like to cook.
He used to own a restaurant in downtown San Mateo called Wursthall. It has since closed. He lives up in Seattle now but I am not aware of him being involved in any new restaurants.
- I haven't seen this written yet but I highly recommend Kenji's book: The Food Lab. It's the perfect book for HN Nerds that love to cook
- The Food Lab is a great introduction to cooking. Could use some updates but it's still a staple for me.
I didn't like The Wok (his most recent real coobook) as much as the Food Lab. Although the garlic noodles with regular Italian pasta, oyster sauce, and Parmeggiano Reggiano are absolutely incredible and easy to whip up because it's all pantry ingredients.
Another cookbook I recommend is Meathead: The Science of Great Barbecue and Grilling. Also teaches the science and the guy who wrote it is one of the main people who debunked the resting meat.
- For people who enjoyed this post, I highly recommend J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s “The Food Lab”, which is a kind of science approach to home cooking. He also has a very good YouTube channel.
- OK, how about sharing some cooking resources worth looking into (this is more for future searches)? Here's mine:
1. On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen by Harold McGee. Not strictly a cooking book in the sense of recipes, but the most exhaustive encyclopedia / intro into the science and mechanics of cooking
2. Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking. The previous, but written with a "more is more" approach and an extra focus on modern techniques. More details, more pictures, (much) more volume and much pricier.
3. Serious eats Food Lab - Probably the best resource on "why/how" a given recipe / technique works that's accessible for free on the internet. I think the main author of this (J. Kenji Lopez-Alt) is also co-author of one part of the Modernist Cuisine.
4. Good Eats by Alton Brown. This used to be a TV show running for well over a decade. Alton Brown usually tries to do one recipe / technique / ingredient per episode and explain as much as he can in 30min or so. The first episodes / seasons are a bit dated (I think he goes over some of the older stuff in his later seasons), but overall probably the best TV show on cooking I ever saw.
5. America's Test Kitchen - a youtube channel. This is a bit of a mixed bag, but when it comes to a channel that I'd recomend to a beginner, I'd probably start with this. Second would probably be someone like some of the Adam Ragusea older episodes (I think he lately went into body buliding a bit too much), or some of the older stuff from "@FrenchGuyCooking" (I got to him through a video done by @ThisOldTony).
6. For recipes : personally I go for David Lebovitz. Old SF cook who moved to Paris some decades ago and at some point used to publish a lot of recipes on his website (though I have the impression he lately pivoted into more of restaurants reviews / social media, the archive is still good).
