The Everything Cookbook: Over 500 Easy Recipes, from Old-Fashioned Classics to Today's Healthy Favorites (Everything (Cooking))

Rating:
Summary: A great gift for your beginning cook
Review: I purchased this book to help teach my cooking-impaired boyfriend some basics in as guy friendly a way as possible. After going over a couple recipes and having him help me with some easy stuff, I came home from work (on his day off) and he'd made us a complete dinner solo with this book, and it was all delicious! His previous attempts at dinner turned into things like macaroni and cheese soup style and black on the outside, raw on the inside chicken, so if he can make something great with this book, anybody can!

Rating:
Summary: Cooking idiot learns new skills!
Review: I received this cookbook as a Christmas gift, and at first was slightly confused what what my frined was thinking, because I have absolutely zero cooking skill. But upon further inspection of the book, it's very interesting and actually goes as far as to make cooking fun for me. I do not know the first thing about cooking, and this book starts at the very basics...like how to properly thaw chicken and what different spices and herbs do. It actually gives you detalied pictures of how to cut up the meat if the recipe calls for you to 'julieanne' the chicken. The recipes are very basic, but every one I've tried so far has turned out great. And that's saying a lot for a very very very beginner cook like me! The only improvement I would make on the book is to make the pages laminated, and possibly make the binding spiral. It's kind of hard to keep the book open and I've spilled quite a few things on it already! Both are very minor drawbacks and I would highly recommend this book to a beginning cook!