How to Cook without a Book helped me think about cooking differently. I use a lot of ingredients from our garden and from the woods. So I can’t alway predict what I’m going to have on hand. This book helped me think about how to utilize those ingredients to create my own recipes on the fly without a lot of technical “chef-know-how”. (PS-as an Amazon affiliate, I earn from qualifying purchases like this book. But I’m not in any way connected to the author or publisher).
It’s hard to find recipes featuring wild game or seasonal vegetables that can be made in 30 minutes. But that’s how we eat. When you cook seasonally or with wild ingredients, you need techniques and creativity to make the most of them. There are some amazing books out there that have given me confidence and techniques for cooking wild game. I highly recommend Jessie Griffiths Afield to any new wild game cook. Steve Rinella and the crew at MeatEater have revolutionized the wild game cooking ecosystem and they have some great cookbooks.
How to Cook without a Book provided some basic formulas that helped structure the creativity needed to make quick, delicious recipes with the ingredients I had. I heard that Ree Drummond from the Pioneer Woman used the first version of this cookbook as a baseline for her recipes. So I got the updated version and bought a copy for the young people in my life building their homes.
If you’re new to cooking, this is a great book. For those comfortable in their skills but want to be a little more creative, the formulas in this book provided a good starting point for me. Do you have any cookbooks you recommend or give as gifts?
