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Summary: Stay away from the CD-ROM
Review: Stay away from the CD-ROM edition of The Joy of Cooking. It's a technological disaster.It doesn't run on many PC's and it's dead slow even on high-end PC's. Simon & Schuster offer no support for this. Their web site doesn't even list TJOC CD-ROM and tech support offers no help. Given the popularity of The Joy of Cooking this could have been a great product. Better yet, this could have been a Great Web Site -- Anyone listening? The CD is just a technological disaster.
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Summary: I'll stick with Better Homes and Garden
Review: I received this cookbook for Christmas and I wasn't too thrilled with it. It seemed a little too old fashioned and the recipes did not inspire me.
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Summary: Perfect for begining chefs like myself.
Review: I am a non domesticated newlywed and this book has become my kitchens bible. Anything you need to know about cooking... a dish to bring to a brunch, how to reheat left overs, how to filet a fish, cook a French, Indian, or German meal. This book is a must have for those who need ideas or help in the kitchen.
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Summary: An excellent cookbook for beginners!!!
Review: I just recently started to take an interest in cooking and JOC has been a great reference for ideas and basics with cooking several different meals.
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Summary: Terrific resource for cooks who like variety
Review: My friends and family tell me I am a gourmet cook. I wouldn't go that far, but I do consider my kitchen my natural habitat. So, when I find a cookbook I like, I really use it. This book is the most used book in my collection. I have given it as a gift to cooks of varying skills -- all enjoy it. The directions are clear. I especially like the narrative sections relating to specific ingredients and cooking methods. If I could have only one cookbook, this would be it.
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Summary: Great old favorites and inovations worthy of trying
Review: The new version of "Joy" is truly a joy of variety in new versions of food combinations and methods. An example is a delightful shrimp curry which taught me new methods of preparing onions, incorporated ancient spices such as fenugreek, and demonstrated the basic techniques of preparing a curry. This is what a good cookbook should do. A great cookbook such as "Joy" not only combines recepies which you can easily follow and produce the dish, but also teach you basic techniques which can be incorporated in other cooking. This is the reason we watch TV cooking shows which teach us basic cooking methods. We learn basic techniques which apply across for a broad range of oooking applications. I have found these basic techniques infused into many of the good recepies I have tried from this book.
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Summary: A useful resource, but I'm hanging onto my old one
Review: My mother belonged to the 1950's school of cooking: all-white dinners, canned fruit salads, and boil those vegetables into submission. In 1968 I shared an apartment with a fellow student whose mother came out of the same school. But we had a copy of "The Joy of Cooking," and under its tutelage we both turned into fairly adept cooks.
The new edition has some interesting recipes, and I like the spiral-bound format: my old hardbound edition had a tendency to flip shut just as you were at the trickiest part of the recipe! But it assumes more cooking expertise than I had in my twenties -- not an entirely safe assumption, given that the present generation was raised on microwaveable everything. The depth of background information is uneven -- there doesn't seem to be a consistent "format" that the many authors were asked to follow. And I miss the anecdotes that made the old "Joy" a pleasure to read: I'd be trolling for a new way to cook, say, rutabagas, and get lost in it for hours!
This is still a good, comprehensive cookbook, but for basic information I'll continue to use my old one. (And I disagree with their assumption that nobody cans fruit or makes preserves any more. Maybe my vision is warped by living in a semi-rural part of the country, but last summer, when we had the best apricot crop in years, there wasn't a canning jar to be had for love or money within a 20-mile radius!)
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Summary: FABULOUS!!
Review: After a year at cooking school you tend to think that you know everything-but when I'm stuck for how to do something this book is invaluable. A must have for everyone who loves and HATES cooking! I couldn't get through the week without this book, it has absolutely everything you'll ever need from formal parties to everyday dinner. Truly the BEST.
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Summary: expanded and updated, but hold on to older editions!
Review: I was given this new edition for a present. It's an impressive book, with a lot of updates, however, the book has deleted some important material that the new eds must consider outdated. I have always considered Joy of Cooking one of the best general cooking reference books, but I have had to retain the previous edition for some very important recipes, etc.
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Summary: A great cookbook to have...if you've already got the first.
Review: As a long time afficionado of the first Joy, I was wary to buy this one, especially after closely following the making of it. I wasn't sure a collaborative effort among some twenty chefs -- two or three per chapter -- could equal Irma's ability to make good cooking easily understood, even to a rank beginner, as I was when I was first introduced to Joy. The new edition has many good changes. It has greatly expanded the non red-meat sections in keeping with today's lifestyles. Many of the recipes also include ideas for lowering the fat and cholesterol. The problems come in when a beginning cook tries to make something as simple as scrambled eggs, and is instructed to first read "About scrambled eggs" which delivers an interesting, but complicated version of how French master chefs prepare this dish. While I do not doubt the excellence of a true French-style scrambled egg, in my mind the instructions for making scrambled eggs should read "Whisk eggs in a small bowl. Pour into a heated pan, stirring frequently with a spatula, until firm." The original Joy, written from the perspective of a midwestern housewife for other midwestern housewives, made cooking seem easy. If you had a saucepan and a pantry, you had dinner. Irma gave suggestions on how to stretch a budget by turning leftovers into casseroles, and even advocated using canned foods as time-savers. This new Joy reads more like a gourmet cookbook than the "all-purpose" one it claims to be. However, if you already own the original Joy of Cooking, especially an older edition (mine is from 1951!), the New Joy is a fantastic supplement. It may be the only cookbook in which it is possible to find both a recipe for a French rolled omelet, and tuna casserole made with Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup.
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