Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I'm not a fan of purchasing Food Network personality cookbooks since you can usually get the recipes online for free. I did buy a signed copy of AB's Gear for the equipment info and I dearly love it. When I found a signed copy of this one (Crate & Barrel) I couldn't pass it up. This book is all and more of the food science in the show. It's organized by cooking method. There are chapters on brining, sauces and eggs. The appendix is substantial, which I love. There are the famous meat diagrams with the quirky magnets. The Basic Culinary Toolbox is a very, very condensed version of Gear. The notes on sanitation are good, I don't think I 've seen them in a cookbook before. Top Five Activities, A Selected Reading List,resource guide and metric conversion charts round out the section. This book is dense. You don't have advantage of the easy-to-follow, cool, teach-by-quirky-demonstrations method of the show. No wonder it won a James Beard award. This doesn't mean the material is incomprehensible; you just have to concentrate more. As with Gear, I could care less about the recipes. The book's worth is as a reference guide. I hate I waited so long to buy this. This book is for the curious cook. If you aren't interested in the "why" and just want recipes, you'd probably find it frustrating.