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favorite Favorite cookbooks?

S

spicy.curry

What are your favorite cookbooks?   I am also interested in hearing about your favorite websites for recipes.
 
After years of making the same few dishes over and over again, lately I am trying new recipes, and I plan on buying some cookbooks.  There are countless recipes available free online, but many are of low or mediocre quality, or just not to my taste, and it is difficult and time consuming to sort through them all. 
 
I ordered three books on Amazon earlier this week. I will share my thoughts once I try the recipes.
The Blue Zones Kitchen: 100 Recipes to Live to 100
The Kamado Smoker and Grill Cookbook: Recipes and Techniques for the World's Best Barbecue
Smoke & Spice: Cooking With Smoke, the Real Way to Barbecue
 
I have tried several recipes from amazingribs.com. I found the website useful for learning theory and technique, and for product reviews, but most of the recipes were a little bland for my taste.  An exception is the whiskey bbq sauce recipe which I really enjoyed.
 
Cookbooks. Near and dear to me.
 
I don't have a particular "favorite" title to share, but I will share some methodology.
 
I discovered many years ago, that often,  cookbooks get donated to Goodwill and such places. They also find their way into thrift stores and such. While cookbooks were once revered by fading generations, it seems the younger crowd - not so much. 
 
My grandmother had a cookbook that was a trove of information. Handwritten recipes on old yellowed paper, clippings of recipes from magazines/ product promotions and something else I found intriguing, WWII recipes used during times of rationing. Alternate ways to cook with limited resources. Much to my chagrin (to put it lightly) the cookbook was given by my dad to an older sibling who was to type out and index the recipes for a book to be shared. Never happened and likely I will never see that book again. Been 40 years I guess..  I digress.
 
What I have seen with some of the Goodwill and thrift store books are (sadly) family heirlooms not unlike the one I described. Those are solid gold if you find one. Absent that, there was at a time (perhaps to date) money raising ventures done by small churches. Here, some publishing or printing company would produce a recipe book using submissions of the congregation. They would sell the books to raise money for a particular church project. Usually they were crude spiral-bound books. However, what visual appeal lacked, substance made up for tenfold. Knowing that their recipes would been seen (and likely tried) by other members in the congregation, the participants would offer up a recipe they thought "best" and were particularly proud of. Possibly an "old family recipe" never shared before. This was a religious deal, done for good cause. So the submissions were done so with great pride.
 
So, go to a thrift store or Goodwill. Look for one of the little church cookbooks. Fan the pages and you will find all sorts of great recipes. On occasion, I will find a page spotted with obvious grease marks or other stains. I try that recipe first. The books are cheap to purchase. But in another sense, they are priceless.
 
I am not really a recipe follower cook in general but i do love old cookbooks. I have a couple pushing 100 yrs old , they are a fascinating glimpse into a part of history that really isn't covered in school or even media about that time period.

There are about 100 old ebook versions of old cookbooks out of copyright at the Gutenberg project.

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/bookshelf/419


I do have a couple other ones that i really like but they aren't strictly cookbooks.

The joe beef cookbook has some really cool recipes but it is as much a lifestyle/history, and somewhat art type of book. Beautiful pictures. The peameal bacon/ backbacon recipe is phenomenal btw.

Au Pied de Cochon cookbook is beautiful. The few recipes i have made from it are very good. The photography is pretty awesome. We actually had it out on a display stand in our living room at one point. Just flipped to different pages . The maple baked beans recipe is legit.
 
I don't think I want this one
 
Cooking Poo.jpg
 
Nulle said:
Or this one (again) :P
61n3BFXih8L._SY498_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg
Click to expand...
 
Just showed this to the SO and she guesses there was a lot of lard involved.  :party: 
 
The Kamado Smoker and Grill Cookbook: Recipes and Techniques for the World's Best Barbecue:
I have really enjoyed this book, and I have already found several new favorite recipes.  The book offers some new ideas that I hadn't came across before.  Pork shoulder - fat cap up or down?  This book recommends a third option - removing the fat cap -  which I found to be an excellent approach for a cut of meat which is often a little too fatty for my tastes.
 
Smoke and Spice:
I have found this book less useful for techniques, but a good source for rub, marinade, injection, and sauce recipes.  There is a recipe for a turkey with jalepeno and peach which has become my new favorite turkey recipe.
 
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