Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I was so excited for this book to arrive because I geek out over food science and I've always been fascinated by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt's Serious Eats articles. However, I've never been so disappointed by a book about food. Having been classically trained and a professional chef for over a decade, I understand that I'm not the target audience here. He's almost laughing in the face of traditional methods and he's proud of it. I'm all for efficiency and trying out new methods (that's why I bought the book) but every Food Lab technique I've tried has been a disastrous failure. The worst yet is the caramelized onions. He claims that if you add a tiny amount of baking soda to sliced onions, you can cook them at a higher temperature and they "caramelize" in a fraction of the time as the traditional method. I loved the idea because I battle with our kitchen staff about rushing caramelized onions (the flavor isn't right if you rush them). I figured this would be a nice compromise if it works so we tried it. We caramelized onions the traditional way (1.5 hours at the lowest temperature possible) alongside this version. The photo attached is 5 minutes into the cooking process. We were fascinated by the difference in color between the two methods (traditional on the left, Food Lab's version on the right or bottom). When they were done, the difference in taste was night and day. The traditional onions were a beautiful, deep golden hue and had incredible depth of flavor. The Food Lab's were bland and were such an odd yellow-orange color that someone asked if we added turmeric to them. (I should have taken a photo of the end result but my overwhelming disappointment distracted me.) We decided to make caramelized (French) onion dip with each batch. I mean, if the "turmeric" onions made a decent French onion dip then I can get behind this method. They're getting puréed anyway so the weird mushy texture won't be noticeable in the dip, right? Wrong. It was AWFUL, only suitable for the garbage. However, the batch with the properly caramelized onions was so good that my boss texted me on an off day and asked, "do we have any more of that French onion dip anywhere?" This book is no good for actual cooking science. The "caramelized" onions is just the tip of the iceberg. Our staff was also able to tell the difference between a classic sauce made with real chicken stock and with Lopez-Alt's fake chicken stock (chicken broth with added gelatin), among two more failed experiments before this book got tossed. I didn't even feel right about donating it or selling it because I didn't want anyone led astray with bad information. The one positive thing it achieved is that my staff now believes me when I say there is no substitution for proper technique. Nothing has gained me more street cred with an entire kitchen staff than trying Food Lab techniques and then showing the proper, time-tested processes in comparison. Really, there is no comparison.