Rec | THE FOOD LAB

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Not really a recipe book (though certainly has recipes) and more of a reference bible about the chemical processes of cooking. Kenji answers questions like: - Why does the pH of my pancake batter matter? - Why should I add sodium citrate to mac n cheese? - Why is my turkey dry? - How to make can beans taste good? and will also teach you how to butterfly a chicken, faux-tourné your carrots, and emulsify your vinaigrettes. Kenji is extraordinarily online (linked his website for socials) and posts tons of stuff for free if you don’t wanna shell out for this very expensive and very heavy book. I have a ton of respect for him and genuinely think he is the most influential living person working in food right now + will be remembered among the greats. Can’t rec this book enough!

@cilantro

Feb 19, 2025

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The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science

I’m still on a big Kenji Lopez-Alt binge, but for the last few weeks I’ve spent every few minutes I’ve had reading The Food Lab. It has changed the way I think about cooking. It feels really good to understand the science behind cooking, but more importantly why I’ve f**ked up a so many dishes I’ve cooked in the past. This isn’t a traditional recipe book, it dives deep into the science behind temperature, heat, acid, and even the materials that make the best pots and pans and I am hooked.

@serey-morm

Feb 1, 2022

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Nico Kenji López-Alt

Anytime I meet someone who’s also a fan of Kenji we both start geeking out like kids. This man has taught me how to cook economically and his videos helped me develop a foundation of food science knowledge to help create a wide variety of dishes. He’s incredibly humble and encourages experimentation and creativity. I have his book “The Food Lab” and it’s probably the only cook book you would ever need.

@been

Jul 2, 2024

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best way to learn is by watching and doing

reddit will have differing opinions and pretentious people (there is however one thread about how to cook perfect sushi rice that i constantly revisit) and google’s algorithm for recipes especially has been riddled with AI slop. I have always loved cooking but youtube has really leveled up my cooking game, especially for recipes outside my own culture that my parents and grandparents never made. i get a lot of inspiration and recipes from youtube shorts, especially videos with very few views of people cooking in their home kitchen. Specific Creators For general technique and the WHY’s of cooking I also recommend ABTK like @BEE1000 has said. I also love all the J. Kenji Lopez Alt POV videos as they’re very approachable and by a great chef/huge kitchen nerd. I have watched his salsa verde recipe many times and made delicious salsa verde every time. His cookbook, The Food Lab, is absolutely worth buying. He is a big nerd/scientist and will explain why and how everything happens in the kitchen, from the maillard reaction to how to dice vegetables. He also uses grams in all his recipes. When in doubt, look on the Serious Eats website for recipes. Futurecanoe is funny relatable cooking content by someone who can actually wield a knife and gives you access to trendy recipes. He also is very down to earth and shows you fuck-ups are normal, part of the process, and hopefully how to learn by his mistakes. For Indian food I watch a lot of shorts but love videos by Hebbars Kitchen and written recipes by shwasti’s veg recipes of india online. When making something new for the first time, I will watch several videos and adjust to my taste/preferences. For Chinese food I love Chinese Cooking Demystified, they do a great job of explaining Chinese ingredients, substitutions, and techniques. For vegan and plant-based foods from around the world I like Baking Hermann on youtube. he recommends delicious recipes to try and he has recipes with grams on his website and his Mahjeb (pictured below) recipe changed my life. For Japanese food I watch shorts and like and trust the website and book from Just One Cookbook. For Korean, Maangchi is the GOAT and I also like the korean vegan cookbook. Cookbooks Cookbooks are underrated!! the other thing that’s underrated?? getting them from the library!!! it’s a great way to branch out and browse options before investing time and money in the kitchen and on ingredients. I mentioned a couple cookbooks I like above but I also like The Moosewood Cookbook, the new and best recipes (literally an encyclopedia), the joy of cooking, Six Seasons: A New Way with Vegetables. See if there’s a restaurant you like and if the chef has written a book! General Advice and Techniques Early on you rely should use exact measurements but once you’re comfortable in the kitchen/with a particular dish you can start to trust your gut when making most things, baking aside. It is absolutely worth investing in a kitchen scale, I use a coffee scale and it works well. This is also absolutely necessary imo for baking and doughs. Have a sharp knife! Get comfortable with a sharpening stone or ask your dad to do it like me lol, it makes all the difference. Stainless steel and high heat are scary but with confidence and patience they will become your friends. You need to practice and fuck up chopping to get things right. Make a shit ton caramelized onions (using Kenji’s recipe in The Food Lab cookbook or online) to get comfortable chopping an onion with the confidence that you’ll still have something tasty in the end even if your cuts are a bit wonky. Make a carrot ginger salad with match stick carrots to practice chopping a ton of carrots and not have the pressure of cooking them all evenly since it’s not cooked. Apologies for no advice for cooking meat, my husband is a vegetarian and does the dishes but (rightfully) refuses to wash raw meat contaminated dishes so I get Bojangle’s and arby’s when I crave the meats and thus can provide no advice. My brother does cook a lot of meat and adores his sous vide so you can always try that. Also ,I apologize for not providing links, if you need any specific ones I’m happy to provide them in the comments but am afraid of my phone crashing and deleting this mid-hyperlink. Above all, find out what you genuinely enjoy cooking and eating, go all in on that, and share in the joy and excitement of your creations in the kitchen by feeding your friends and loved ones. That’s the moment you’ll truly feel the magic of making food.