{"id":1509,"date":"2009-10-20T16:22:24","date_gmt":"2009-10-20T21:22:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/webcookingclasses.com\/?p=1509"},"modified":"2016-03-10T08:12:27","modified_gmt":"2016-03-10T13:12:27","slug":"whats-a-great-cookbook-if-you-dont-use-recipes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webcookingclasses.com\/whats-a-great-cookbook-if-you-dont-use-recipes\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s a Great Cookbook If You Don’t Use Recipes?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cBurn Your Recipes\u201d, \u201ccook by method over recipes\u201d, \u201ca recipe is one person\u2019s opinion\u201d, \u201cfollowing recipes is not fun\u201d, are all things you might have heard me say over the past two years.\u00a0 You won\u2019t find any of those phrases in a great cookbook.\u00a0 You know my position on recipes, those strict set of instructions you must follow or face failure, they often don\u2019t work.<\/p>\n

Recipes are inherently flawed because of the many variables that go into cookbook cooking.\u00a0\u00a0 Everyone\u2019s stoves are slightly different.\u00a0 Gas stoves will heat differently than electric stoves, aluminum pans will heat differently than stainless steel, chicken breasts are varied thicknesses and so on.\u00a0 Recipes should not be the crutch that the home cook uses to place blame on their own cooking.\u00a0 \u201cIt didn\u2019t come out right, but I followed the recipe exactly,\u201d they say.<\/p>\n

After teaching thousands of people to cook without written instructions, I\u2019ve found that cooking isn\u2019t the problem for home cooks. \u00a0Following recipes is the problem with cookbook cooking.\u00a0 An amazing transformation occurs when people are given \u201cpermission\u201d to cook from their own desires and interpretations rather than following a cookbook.\u00a0 They suddenly discover that they can<\/span> cook.\u00a0 It\u2019s the recipes that make it confusing.<\/p>\n

Is this to say that I don\u2019t own a single cookbook?\u00a0 Certainly not, I own many.\u00a0 Recipes are excellent for getting ideas on seasoning, ingredient combinations, reviewing methods, and recording this for someone else to try to follow.\u00a0 I just wouldn\u2019t call the books in my kitchen \u201crecipe books\u201d.\u00a0 I call them \u201ccookbooks\u201d because quite often, they don\u2019t contain recipes.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s a great cookbook to me?\u00a0 A great cookbook is one that imparts more knowledge than instructions.\u00a0 A cookbook should be a book that teaches you how to cook, or adds basic information to your cooking skills.\u00a0 From there, you can write your own recipes.<\/p>\n

The best cookbooks to me are narrowly targeted.\u00a0 They concentrate on regional cooking styles, are exclusively about a specific topic like sauces, or are simply reference manuals for the vocabulary of cooking.<\/p>\n

Even after holding top level Executive Chef positions at very large institutions, cooking for thousands daily, there\u2019s still rarely a day I don\u2019t learn something new about cooking.\u00a0\u00a0 This new knowledge mostly comes from the types of reference books I mention above, but also by the exciting process of trying something new on my own, without having to refer to a book.\u00a0 You learn by doing, correcting, and doing again.\u00a0 Cooking is an art form that is difficult to learn just by following someone else\u2019s recipe creation.<\/p>\n

Tomorrow, we\u2019ll peak into the cabinet that holds the few great cookbooks that I own, and why they deserve to be there.<\/p>\n

Cook like a chef at home in 16 weeks, guaranteed with my online cooking classes<\/a>.
\n\"Web<\/a><\/p>\n


\nGet a FREE 14 day trial in WebCookingClasses.com<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If Chef Todd Mohr is so against cooking by recipe, what are some of the great cookbooks he owns?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":24019,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webcookingclasses.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1509"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webcookingclasses.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webcookingclasses.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webcookingclasses.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webcookingclasses.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/webcookingclasses.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1509\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webcookingclasses.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webcookingclasses.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webcookingclasses.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webcookingclasses.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1509"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webcookingclasses.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=1509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}