Keys to good cooking

What Hacker News says

1. antogniniJul 2021
   McGee's On Food and Cooking is a wonderful book, but I'm not sure I'd call it accessible. :)

   For beginners I'd instead recommend his book Keys to Good Cooking. It takes all the information in On Food and Cooking and distills it down to the practical lessons a cook will need to improve their cooking.

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2. antogniniJun 2017
   It's not a website, but there's a great book about cooking called Keys to Good Cooking by Harold McGee. (It's not really a cookbook because there aren't any recipes in it.) Each chapter begins with a section on food safety for that particular category.
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3. antogniniAug 2016
   I have a couple of cookbooks that are now very well worn. I think the best of them is probably Appetite by Nigel Slater. It's a little unique in that he treats his recipes more as suggestions rather than rules. He encourages lots of experimentation --- after all, everyone's taste is different, so you should make something you like instead of something the author likes. Each recipe comes with a handful of variations so you can see how you can start to build new dishes out of ones you already know. There's a great section at the beginning that goes through lots of herbs and spices and suggests combinations of ingredients that generally work well together. But maybe the best thing about the book is just the writing. It's hard not to read it and not start to appreciate food.

   If you're strictly interested in techniques, I like Keys to Good Cooking by Harold McGee. If you're brave, you can read through his magnum opus, On Food and Cooking, which goes through all the science. Keys to Good Cooking is sort of the cliffs notes version and just tells you what you need to know. But there are no recipes in either.

   Then there's Joy of Cooking. It's an old standby and it's hard to go wrong with it. There's tons of information in there.

   Lastly, look into anything by America's Test Kitchen. It's sort of the polar opposite of Nigel Slater's approach. They test every recipe, sometimes ~100 variations, to try to find the precise recipe that they think works best. If you want a recipe that you know will just work, it's probably the best place to start.

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4. dagwNov 2015
   If you're just primarily interested in quick and helpful cooking tips and less interested in the background history, anthropology and science that On Food and Cooking covers, you really should take a look at McGee's other book Keys to Good Cooking. It is a collection of useful techniques and tips broken down by ingredient.

   Or to put it in HN terms. If On Food and Cooking as comprehensive guide to the fundamentals of computer science, then Keys to Good Cooking is Javascript: The Good Parts

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5. bambaxOct 2016
   The US seems obsessed with food safety in a manner that I'm not sure exist in other cultures. Do statistics exist of bacterial outbreaks per country, is it actually worse in the US than elsewhere?

   Last year I bought Harold Mcgee's "Keys to good cooking" but couldn't go through it as all he talks about isn't "cooking" but telling you all the manners in which food is going to kill you.

   (Ironically, in the parts I did read he explains that his own father spent his whole life eating raw meat and never suffered from it.)

   Maybe the problem with the US is the number of people who buy meals from restaurants, as opposed to cooking at home. If there's a problem in your own kitchen the only people who are going to get sick are members of your family; if there's a problem in a restaurant, or a restaurant chain, you have an outbreak.

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6. antogniniDec 2015
   I have seen a variety of opinions on whether to use water just off the boil, or slightly cooler water to brew tea. The Royal Society of Chemistry released a guide to make the perfect cup of tea:

   http://www.academiaobscura.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/RS...

   They recommend using boiling water as well. Harold McGee's Keys to Good Cooking recommends water just off the boil for black tea, but cooler water for oolong and green teas.

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