Image via Complex Original
There will come a time in your life when the number of memorized recipes at your disposal comes up short. Maybe you're cooking for a vegetarian and don't want to just dump a can of tomato soup over rice. Or maybe you're trying to impress someone, and you realize the burgers you always make, ground meat and pepper, are boring as hell. For those occasions, you need a gang of cookbooks to make the magic happen.
A good cookbook should provide delicious recipes and teach the reader. All of these essentials do just that.
Here are the 10 cookbooks every guy should own.
Authentic Mexican
Author: Rick Bayless
Buy It: $18.96
Why You Should Own It: Bayless studied Mexican cuisine for years with both a chef and an anthropologist's eye. This was the result, a book so comprehensive and invaluable that Craig Claiborne, the famous restaurant critic, called the book "the greatest contribution to the Mexican table imaginable." What more would you like to know?
Ruhlman's Twenty
Author: Michael Ruhlman
Buy It: $21.78
Why You Should Own It: Michael Ruhlman is important because he's a writer first, a cook second, thus his cookbooks are more instructive than most. He has access to the turns of phrase and tips that teach rather. His books are more than mere step-by-step accounts to be memorized.
His recent work, Ruhlman's Twenty, is described as a manifesto, and it's one that makes much sense. This book is fixed around twenty different techniques and ingredients rather than a specific cuisine or meal. Working out of this book, you master poaching or butter before moving on to something else. The result is the reader becomes comfortable diving into other cookbooks because they feel secure in their abilities. The student of Ruhlman's Twenty also feels more comfortable improvising, because they understand how, for instance, a higher temperature affects the different parts of the egg white. This is a text of biblical importance for the cook who is just starting to get serious.
Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone
Author: Deborah Madison
Buy It: $21.24
Why You Should Own It: Especially if you don't have much experience eating vegetarian, you need to cook from this book. Madison, a James Beard award-winner, has spent much of her life in New Mexico, ensuring that all of the dishes in this indispensable tome are full of flavor and oftentimes real heat. This isn't overcooked parsnips with a dash of salt. This is all sorts of vegetarian fare that'll have you wondering why meat became the ingredient that makes something a meal (in America, at least). (And let's be real: probably you'll date a vegetarian at some point in your life, or at least be friends with one—you should be able to cook for that person.)
Mastering the Art of French Cooking
Author: Julia Child
Buy It: $50.76
Why You Should Own It: Don't let the horrible Julie & Julia tarnish your opinion of Julia Child. That's a film about a shallow, self-centered blogger without ethics. Child remains the G who introduced French cooking in all its glory to American kitchens. That desire to add more and more butter to the rich concoctions you throw together on the stove top? Child knows that feeling, and embraces it. Her two-volume cookbook, written with Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle, is an obvious pick for your bookshelf and for obvious reasons: it will develop your skill set and produce delicious food.
Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking
Author: Marcella Hazan
Buy It: $20.98
Why You Should Own It: What Julia Child is to French cuisine, Mareclla Hazan is to Italian. Born in Italy, Hazan moved to NYC shortly after getting married. Before tying the knot, the foremost authority on cooking Italian had never prepared a meal. Not a one. But apparently she learned fast. Get with this classic text and you will too.
The Taste of Country Cooking
Author: Edna Lewis
Buy It: $16.41
Why You Should Own It: Edna Lewis is that rare chef whose writing is both informative and entertaining, surely a product of her wild life and Southern charm. Lewis didn't start making food professionally until she was in her 30s, when she became the cook at Café Nicholson, the famous NYC eatery frequented by a who's who of the cultural elite. Still, Lewis's approach remained fixed in the easy rhythms of Freetown, Virginia, her hometown. No kitchen is complete without her definitive Southern cookbook.
Meat
Author: James Peterson
Buy It: $22.60
Why You Should Own It: The problem with cookbooks like The Joy of Cooking is they present seemingly the entire world of food in such a way that the reader thinks they can jump in anywhere and start cooking. It's far better to devote time to a specific technique or ingredient until you've become comfortable before you start tackling everything. Enter Meat, James Peterson's encyclopedia. Pouring over this book is a class in the fundamentals of one extremely complicated and varied ingredient. But with an understanding of this ingredient, you step up your game enormously, allowing you to step into a far-reaching text with greater confidence.
Classic Home Desserts
Author: Richard Sax
Buy It: $22.86
Why You Should Own It: Simply a masterpiece. If you want to make dessert, you'll find no cookbook more comprehensive than Sax's definitive account of meal-finishing sweets. Too often your average guy writes off baking and desserts as something left to the women in his life. That's a bullshit cop-out. Baking is tricky; it requires greater attention to detail than something like basic grilling, meaning you're a coward for not knowing the precise temperature of your oven's interior when it's set to 375 degrees (probably it's not 375, and you should know this). Learn this.
Flatbreads and Flavors
Author: Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid
Buy It: $14.46
Why You Should Own It: Bread. Such a crucial part of the Western diet, but in a rigid form: the loaf. From the shittiest, gummiest piece of Wonder Bread to a crusty chunk of Italian, we tend to encounter bread in a way that many other parts of the world aren't concerned with. Throughout Asia, Europe, the Mediterranean, North Africa, and some parts of North America, flatbreads are the standard, the staple. Realizing this, the American-Canadian duo of Alford and Duguid wrote this essential book. Whether you want to prepare pita, naan, chapatti, or some other kind, the recipe can be found within these pages.
Thai Food
Author: David Thompson
Buy It: $29.40
Why You Should Own It: Before diving into a work like Thompson's, you need to get your head right. For a cookbook about a cuisine vastly different than the Euro-centric fare you grew up making, you need to put your student's cap on. This isn't the sort of cookbook you can peruse into while standing in the kitchen, one hand absentmindedly opening and closing the refrigerator door while you try and decide what to make. No, you need to sit down in a chair and read this. Study it. Then, once you've thought about these recipes, make sure you can secure the correct ingredients. If this sounds like a pain in the ass, get over it. Making something great takes time and effort. Food is often a slow process. So much of the bullshit we eat and encounter argues against that, but that's why so many people are unhealthy. Rethink your ideas about what you put in your body. A good cookbook will help you do that.
