Mark Bittman - How to Cook Everything The Basics: All You Need to Make Great Food -- With 1,000 Photos

Its too easy to eat without cooking in modern-day America, thanks to drive-through windows, take-out counters, vending machines, microwave meals, and other so-called conveniences. The problem is that no convenience food can compare to honest food, real ingredients prepared at home, no matter how simply or quickly you do it. My goal here is to make the case for the numerous and wonderful benefits of cooking: to make you a cook.

Cooking, at its heart, is simple and straightforward. Like most goal-oriented processes, you work through a few basic tasks to get from point A to point B; in cooking, the tasks include things like chopping, measuring, heating, and stirring. You use recipes instead of maps or instruction manuals. As with drivingor almost anything elseyour basic skills provide the foundation. As you improve and gain confidence, youll become more creative. In the meantime, even if youve never picked up a pot or pan in your life, you canand should!enjoy some time in the kitchen every day. Im here to help both novices and experienced cooks do just that.

Why is home cooking so important?

• Cooking is satisfying. When you combine good ingredients with simple techniques, you create something more delicious than fast food and usually as good as real restaurant food. Not only that, you can customize the flavors and textures so that you eat exactly what you like, when you like.
• Cooking saves money. Once you make a few initial, generally inexpensive investments in basic cooking equipment and pantry ingredients, you can easily make all sorts of meals incredibly inexpensively.
• Cooking produces truly nutritious food. If youve ever read the small print on the packages of processed foods, you know theyre almost always high in unhealthy fats, sugar, sodium, and strange ingredients. The first thing you learn from cooking is that fresh ingredients dont need much help to taste good. And when you take more control of what you eat and minimize the fake stuff, youll improve your diet and your health.
• Cooking is time well spent. Here are some examples of what you can make in less than 30 minutes: a big vegetable salad, pasta with homemade tomato sauce and grated cheese, chili with rice, or chicken stir-fry. Thats about as long as it takes to order a pizza or Chinese food and wait for it to be delivered, or to go to the nearest drive-through for a burger and fries, or to drive to the grocery store to pick up a frozen meal and then come home and pop it in the microwave. Think about it.
• Cooking is rewarding. Eating your own foodand sharing it with people you care aboutis a crucial human activity. On a practical level, youre providing nourishment and sustenance. And on an emotional level, cooking can become relaxing, comforting, and downright pleasurable, as you pause from an otherwise hectic day and give yourself a chance to focus on something basic and essential and meaningful.
• Cooking leads to family meals. Family meals stimulate conversation, communication, and love. Its a fact.

Even if youre setting up your first kitchen, Im guessing that your cupboards arent entirely bare. Youve probably got a few pots, pans, and gadgets, food in your fridge and pantry, maybe even a small appliance or two. Or maybe you already cook regularly and are fully stocked. Whatever your situation, Ill help you take inventory and evaluate what you need to make everyday meal preparation comfortable and enjoyable.

After that comes a visual guide to basic preparation, like rinsing and chopping, and cooking techniquesfrom boiling water (really) to roasting, braising, and grilling. These will become your go-to sections for quick reference as you start cooking.

There are a couple of different ways to use this book:

You can work straight through it. Ive organized it so that both the chapters and the recipes and Basics information within them progress from easiest to most challenging. Since each element focuses on a lesson or set of lessons, youll build knowledge and skills with each dish.

Or you can cherry-pick your way through the book and catch up on lessons by relying on the Learn More feature in the bottom right corner of each recipe. There youll find cross-references to information taught elsewhere thats relevant to what youre cooking. And whenever you want instructions for a specific technique, just flip to the , where all the skills appear at a glance.

Setting up Your Pantry

Cooking is especially convenient if you dont have to run to the store every day. Stocking a few key foods in the cupboard and fridge will make it far easier for you to cook when you need to (and therefore more likely that you actually will!). Then when you pick up fresh produce, meat, poultry, or fish, youll instantly have many options for what to do with it.