Comment by dragonwriter
Comment by dragonwriter 5 hours ago
> For anyone who wants to learn to cook my advice is not to learn recipes but instead learn ingredients, tools and techniques.
For anyone who wants to learn ingredients, tools, and techniques, my advice is to start by learning recipes, preferably from a source that explains both rationale and variations (America's Test Kitchen cookbooks are pretty good for this.)
The ATK cookbooks are fantastic, not only for explaining how the recipe works, but also explaining some of the things they tried that didn't make the cut and why they thought they didn't work.
They also did a cookbook devoted to recipes for two people a while back. Love that.