I collect cookbooks the way some people collect stamps or coins. At last count, I had over 300. The truth is that I love cookbooks of any kind; new editions, antiques, hardback, paperback, illustrated or not, I have never met a cookbook I didn’t like (or buy!). When the subject of my cookbook collection comes up, people often ask me, “Do you actually use them all?†The answer is that while I may not actively use them all, I do read them all…the same way you read a novel or a magazine. I love reading recipes and the little tidbits of facts and information hiding within the pages. Some of my favorite cookbooks have stories or a theme that supports the recipe, or an introduction about how the recipe developed.
Even though I love to read my cookbooks, I do also use them on a regular basis as references when I am developing a recipe or trying a new technique or ingredient. I often use ideas from several different books to develop a recipe idea, taking the bits and pieces I like best and combining them into something new. Here is a list of my top ten favorite “reference†cookbooks, the ones that have the most solid and fundamental information for any cook, regardless of skill level. These are the cookbooks I come back to again and again and they have never let me down:
Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book
Joy of Cooking: 75th Anniversary Edition – 2006
The Gourmet Cookbook: More than 1000 recipes
Farm Journal’s Freezing and Canning Cookbook: Prized Recipes from the Farms of America
Rick Bayless’s Mexican Kitchen: Capturing the Vibrant flavors of a World-Class Cuisine
Mastering The Art of French Cooking, Volume One (1)
Betty Crocker’s Best Bread Machine Cookbook: The Goodness of Homemade Bread the Easy Way
All of these books are still in print and readily available at major bookstores and online. If you don’t already have them, I suggest the first four as essential “must-havesâ€. The last six are more specialized, but they are what I consider to be the top authorities on their subjects.
Tags: cookbooks