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Summary: The New Standard
Review: This should become the new standard cookbook in all American kitchens. It is a fabulous foundation from which you can build great recipies, or enjoy the simplicity of those contained therein. I have yet to find any disappointment with this book for what it is.
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Summary: Great all-purpose book
Review: This is my first cookbook and it has proved very valuable when I have to fend for myself. It's filled with basic recipes, techniques, and general information for the person who may have never cooked before. Bittman has clear disdain for "prepared" foods and once you try making pancakes or mayonaise from scratch, you'll see why you don't need store-bought brands anymore.
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Summary: Recipes Great but the Book comes to pieces
Review: I loved this book when I first bought it. In fact I gave it to my daughter, 2 daughters-in-law and several friends. Then the BAD news. It is very poorly put together in a physical sense. It falls apart after limited usage. What a disappointment!
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Summary: Essential for anyone who enjoys great food
Review: I really can't say enough good things about this book. When I find myself wondering what to cook for dinner, this is always the first book I reach for. When I have a question about how to cook something, how long something will keep, how to pick an ingredient, I reach for this book and can almost always find an answer. For anyone who wants to learn how to cook well and is looking for a book stressing basic, solid techniques with easy to follow recipes, this is essential. It's changed the way I think about cooking and has given me a better understand of preparing and enjoying great food.
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Summary: It Has It All!...
Review: This is such a good cookbook I don't know where to begin. It has all the basics like how to bake potatoes and broil chicken plus a lot of great recipes for everything from appetizers to desserts. I've used this cookbook so many times over the years I could never list everything I've made from it. It's always the first cookbook I go to when I don't know how to prepare something. It's a cookbook you truly must have on your shelf!
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Summary: Revolutionized my cooking
Review: I had learned to do basic cooking for myself in college and had even tried a few relatively complex recipes, but not until I bought "How To Cook Everything" did I really ramp up my cooking skills. It is great to have a book with such a wide variety of recipes, well-indexed, and basic preparation instructions to boot. For instance, if I decide on a whim that I want to make an eggplant dish, I can find a variety of eggplant recipes in the book along with instructions on what the best sizes and shapes are and how to peel and prepare them. It really encourages experimentation when the book helps you out with the basics of a new food or style of dish. The author has a conversational style that I enjoy. He is the opposite of intimidating -- he seems genuinely eager for people to just hunker down and cook good food for themselves. I have made several of the recipes in the book and almost always found the instructions to be simple but detailed enough to be useful. It is rare to find a recipe that is overwhelmingly complicated and he also helpfully suggests substitutes for ingredients that might be a pain in the butt to find. Some of the recipes took some practicing to perfect, but it is worth it -- there is no scrummier lasagna than the batch you make yourself with homemade noodles and sauce, no banana bread sweeter than that baked in your own oven. I have become the Duke of Dough: bagels and pizza are my humble minions. My most-made recipe from the book however is the Cream Cheese Chocolate Brownies. My first batch was an epiphany. God lives in those creamy swirls. Subsequent batches have joyously fattened my friends and co-workers. (I should note that I roughly double the amount of chocolate in my brownies to get excessive darkness and richess.) And if for no other reason, "How To Cook Everything" is an entertaining book to have around the house when people come over, because visitors take the title as a personal challenge and look up the most obscure dishes they can think of. (Only person who has stumped the book so far was one who knew lots of traditional Mexican dishes.) The title is catchy but a more apt one would have been "Awesome Food is Easy to Make". Seriously, store-bought meals may save you some time but even as a novice cook you can definitely make yummier versions on your own using this book, tailored to your own tastes, and of course you get the satisfaction of making something with your own hands that will please your and your loved ones' palates. Unfortunately I have not used many other cookbooks so I cannot objectively rank "How To Cook Everything" against its peers; all I can say is that I am quite pleased with the book and its wrinkled and sticky pages hold a revered spot in my kitchen.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: What a great book. first to adress the detractors, 1. I agree this book is a little scarce on pastry but the recipes it does have i find are very good, for a recomendation try Regan Daley's book. In addition most of these recipes i have found to be foolproof so for those who complain they don't work either have tried very few recipes or simply are bad cooks. I have had this book for two years and it is falling apart i use it so much. I have done MANY recipes in all of the categories and they work quite well. This book is not incredibly internation but it had a decent selection fo foreign recipes and at least it is far from being a "waspy" cookbook. In short, BUY THIS BOOK
Rating: 
Summary: take with a grain of salt, maybe kosher salt.
Review: I picked up this book today second hand for 5$, in that particular regard, it's a bargain. At full price, I do not believe this is quite worth the money. My biggest peeve with it so far flipping through is the lack of "why" things are the way they are. In a book aimed towards novice cooks, "why" is usually the difference between a recipe bombing vs. turning out. So, I flipped it open and landed on fried chicken. First, let me note that I have yet to try any of the recipes. It sounds like folks here have liked them for the most part, with various opinions on Bittmen's creativity and/or lack of. However, it doesn't take too much to know a bad idea when you see it. Case in point, and example of the moment, the fried chicken recipe: Where's the concern for user safety or a quick frying 101 (did I miss it elsewhere in the book?)? Why is there no run down on oils and smoke points? Or reference to another page in the book containing something of the sort? A novice cook with a craving for fried chicken, flipping the book open to the fried chicken recipe, would not know that oil deteriorates quickly after each use at high temperature, nor would they know that there is a vast difference between olive oil and extra virgin olive oil's smoke points. Nor would they also realize, I suspect, that if they are using a cast iron skillet to fry their chicken, that it holds heat extremely well and does not just "drop" in temperature right away (or that an aluminum skillet conducts heat better & therefore heats faster than thicker heavy duty stainless steal). He recommends getting the oil to 350 (which, if you have any experiance frying food on the stovetop, you know that the oil doesn't get to 350 and just stay there), then cranking the heat to high before putting in the dredged chicken. Granted, yes, temperatures do drop when you add food to hot oil, however, high is overkill. Shortly after this, you cover the pan, turn it down to medium and fry for 7 minutes. Do you just walk away during this time? Go have a cigarette? Or, are we supposed to be monitering temperatures here? There is nothing quite like taking the lid off of a frying pan, only to have the oil burst into flame, to break in the nervous beginner cook. Yipe! Yet, I noticed no words of caution to this effect. Not only this, but frying at 350 for seven minutes on one side in a covered pot, yet at the same time saying you don't want to steam the coating is ridiculous. After 7 minutes in a covered pan, believe me, the side not in the oil will be steamed. If you are learning from scratch & want to understand why things happen in the kitchen, this is not the book for you. Try Shirley O'Corriher's "Cookwise" or the Cook's Illustrated series, or, as someone else recommended, Alton Brown -who is not only usefully informative, but amusing as well. You may not get as many recipes, but the knowledge you'll gain will allow you to improvise on your own. A much more valuable skill, in my opinion. If you want an open it up, follow the recipe, do what the illustrations say book... this is it. It is apparantly a bit more extensive/exotic (subjectively speaking) than Better Homes & Garden's cookbooks, but not that much, nor more informative by way of identifying veggies/meat cuts, etc. From what I'm seeing, I'm sure this is one book on my shelf that will end up having plenty of penciled in notes in the margins.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best
Review: If I had to pick one general subject cookbook to give as a gift, this would hands down be the one! Buy it; you won't regret it!
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Summary: How to Cook Everything-savory
Review: When I first received this cookbook I was thrilled. I found information on, what was at the time, alien produce. The illustrations are wonderful and the descriptions of various food items as well as the best method for preparation, storage and what it is best served with it were of great use to me.
Then I made Bittman's recipe for oatmeal raisin cookies. They did not turn out, I tried them again on the assumption that *I* had messed up the recipe. After more experimentation with other recipes I have found that the savory dishes, soups, breads, pastas, etc. all work out but, almost all of the "sweet" recipes are complete flops.
I also found that the binding in the book gives way after a few months of use. Is it a good book? Yes. Would I buy it again knowing what I know now? No. I think Deborah Madison's "Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone" and Alton Brown's (for meat) "I'm Just Here for the Food" would both easily replace and surpass Mr. Bittman's book.
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