Like Techniques of Healthy Cooking, Cooking at Home is from the folks at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA).  Unlike that book, this one is not specifically focused on “healthy” food, but it’s also written for home cooks rather than professional chefs.  Although I wouldn’t say either book is better (not even for a home cook, necessarily), they are very different.  If you’re looking for a start-to-finish, teach-you-how-to-cook book, this one is probably a better choice.

Cooking at Home is divided into eight sections:

1. Stocks, Soups, and Sauces
2. Steaming, Poaching, Simmering, Boiling, and Braising  (moist heat methods)
3. Grilling, Broiling, and Roasting (dry heat methods)
4. Sauteing, Pan Frying, and Deep Frying (more dry heat methods, ‘though all fat-based)
5. Cooking Pasta, Grains, and Legumes
6. Salads and Sandwiches
7. Cooking Eggs
8. Breads and Desserts

There are a couple of obvious advantages to this book.  One is the general presentation.  While Techniques of Healthy Cooking was packed full of relatively small print, with a lot of technical sidebars, etc., Cooking at Home has a lot of white space and a clear, simple layout that looks more approachable and less overwhelming.  Information is presented in a clearly linear, progressive fashion, so you can read in order from one page to the next and know you’re getting the information in a practically logical order.

The other obvious advantage is the lessons.  There is some information here, to provide context and lay the informational context you, as a cook, need.  But there are also clearly-labeled “Chef’s Lessons” that provide step-by-step instructions for preparing the food at hand.  In most cases, these include photographs so you know what things should look like.  Sidebars containing “expert tips” are unfussy in appearance, and set off from the main text so as to avoid adding unnecessary complexity to what a completely novice cook is learning.

Recipes fall at the end of each section, after the relevant information.  So a typical section looks something like this: general introduction, introduction to thing one, basic equipment for making thing one, chef’s lesson for thing one, introduction to thing two, basic equipment for making thing two, chef’s lesson for thing two, etc. — with “expert tips” sidebars scattered throughout.  Then recipes for the section.

There are also periodic sections introduced with additional skills/information that are necessary, but not quite so directly; these are set off by a darker page background.  These include, for example, how to cut vegetables and how to prepare peppers.

You could conceivably complete each chef’s lesson in order, and you’d have an excellent technical foundation by the end of the book.  This is where we see the book’s strength as well as its weakness.  Cooking at Home focuses on techniques — and tackles them well — but it really doesn’t address the more artistic aspects of food: developing and balancing flavors, recognizing what foods go together, etc.  This and Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat would pair very nicely.

The recipes here are very basic, but they build.  For example, the soups section starts with vegetable, chicken, and fish stocks, then chicken broth and clear vegetable soup.  Later in the section you’ll find Tortilla Soup, Beef Noodle Soup, Thai Hot and Sour Soup, Wonton Soup, Sopa De Albondigas, and Cream of Tomato Soup, all of which are built on stocks & broths.

This book, then, provides an excellent foundation but has the potential to be rather boring, in and of itself, so it’s probably something you’ll want to use alongside (or prior to) something else.

Cooking at Home: Essential Techniques and Recipes for Creating Great Food {review} is a post from: Titus 2 Homemaker

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