Modernist Cuisine at Home

For those of you that don't want to read the silly-long review I wrote, scroll down to "BOTTOM LINE" for the important stuff. I'll start with a disclaimer: Do not buy this book until you are familiar with the original "Modernist Cuisine." By that I do not mean you need to own that set first (quite the opposite, this is the stepping stone to the full set), but you should understand that it encompasses a style of cooking that can be crudely summarized as "cooking for scientists" or "how to make dinner in a laboratory." Once you know what you're getting into, decide if it's worth around $140 of your hard-earned cash. Now, on to the good stuff. For those of you who salivated for a year, wishing you could justify buying "Modernist Cuisine" but knowing you wouldn't be able to use it to it's full potential (like me), your prayers have been answered! "Modernist Cuisine" made headlines (in the Food and Travel section) for: 1. Deconstructing the science of cooking rather than just listing recipes 2. Focusing on modern methods of preparing foods using tools such as combi ovens, sous vide setups, emulsifiers, etc 3. Including some rather stunning photography of the equipment and ingredients within I am happy to say that all three are present in the "at Home" version. First, "Modernist Cuisine at Home" (MCAH hereafter) introduces a consolidated set of kitchen tools and gadgets that the home chef can reasonably afford. Don't have the funds for the laboratory-grade centrifuge featured in "Modernist Cuisine?" No problem. Not only does MCAH omit the prohibitively expensive tools from its recipes, but many of them are the same recipes found in the original, redone for the home cook. MCAH even goes as far as offering several options at varying price ranges for the equipment used within. The same goes for the ingredients. MCAH mostly does away with the laundry list of exotic spices and chemicals featured in many "modernist" cookbooks and instead relies on ingredients you can find either at the local grocery store, or in reasonable quantities online. For the ingredients you are probably less familiar with (malic acid? agar agar?) there is a two-page spread detailing what each does, where it comes from, and what it costs. In many cases, the recipes will list alternatives if you choose not to add their recommendations to your shopping list. Much like Modernist Cuisine, MCAH explains some of the science behind the various cooking techniques, but at a beginner's level. Each recipe includes a blurb about what's going on inside the pot (so to speak), and almost all of them include multiple variations at the end, allowing for a wide variety of options. This is especially useful for people new to the idea of sous vide cooking, as MCAH does a great job explaining exactly how it works, and how to make it work for you. How has it taken me this long to get to the photography? Stunning, just as in "Modernist Cuisine". I don't know how they did it, but every picture is suitable for framing. Equipment has been dissected to yield amazing looking cross-sections used in explaining how the various tools function. And get this: included in the back are four prints from MCAH you can frame. I had no idea until they fell out while I was reading, but they are every bit as beautiful as the photos inside, and I dare say will look better on the walls of a kitchen than the usual crap paintings of grapes or farms or cows that people seem obligated to put up these days. If it seem like I'm gushing, it's because I am. Any home cook who has jumped into sous vide cooking has probably experienced the frustration I have with cookbooks dedicated to the style. You have Douglas Baldwin's "Sous Vide for the Home Chef," which, while great for it's temperature charts (and the fact it came out before anything else was available) is too simple for anyone looking to expand their horizons into restaurant-quality preparations (French Laundry, anyone?). And on the other end of the spectrum is Thomas Keller's "Under Pressure," which, while exquisite in creativity and detail, is geared completely towards the restaurant chef (which he warns in the forward), both in scale and complexity. Even the original "Modernist Cuisine", while featuring more accessible recipes than "Under Pressure", still excluded the home cook from about half of it's contents due to equipment or ingredient limitations. MCAH is the first book that features sous vide in a way that the home cook can learn and excel at, while also creating dishes that will blow the guests away. Seriously, the stuff you can make from this book looks like it belongs on the set of Iron Chef. BOTTOM LINE: This is a "modern" (or Modernist) cookbook, so the recipes inside are going to be closer to what you'd find in a restaurant that uses an obscure adjective for it's title rather than what you'd see in your grandmother's kitchen. If the idea of cooking a beautiful cut of salmon in a Ziploc bag seems blasphemous, or using a digital scale instead of an elephant-shaped measuring cup is akin to high treason, you may not be ready to make the jump. But if you want to learn how modern cooking styles can produce amazing taste and presentation in your kitchen (while removing much of the uncertainty and variation that traditional high-heat methods entail), this is the book for you. PROS: - Currently the best book available for home sous vide setups - Delicious recipes using accessible ingredients for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert. Meat, Poultry, Fish and Veggies. Even has a few vegan options inside. - Teaches the "why" of cooking, not just the "how" - Stunning photography, and great step-by-step images for most of the recipes - Comes with a separate water-resistant "kitchen manual" with every recipe inside so you can keep the gorgeous main-book away from the messiness of the kitchen. - Comes with 4 prints you can frame in your home. Or not. - Even though the recipes are designed using ingredient weights, approximate volume measurements are included - Well constructed. You could easily beat an intruder to death with this book if you caught him stealing your sous vide setup - Even has the bookmark ribbon you see in bibles, which fits, since this has become my new kitchen bible. CONS: - Though it says "at Home" in the title, your average kitchen will most likely lack some of the basic tools used in many of the recipes. At a minimum, you will need a digital scale, Sous Vide setup, a pressure cooker, and a whipped cream siphon. MCAH will help you in your quest to acquire those tools, but you should commit to expanding your kitchen arsenal if you plan to use this book to it's full potential. - There are no calorie counts on these recipes, and in some cases if there were, it would take scientific notation to fit on the page. This is not a diet book, this is a book dedicated purely to creating the most delicious food possible at home. When you get to the page about deep-frying a hamburger, you'll understand what I mean. - $140 (or whatever they charge now) isn't chump change, and for most people the new equipment will add to the cost. - The sandwich on the cover does not actually levitate when you make it at home. - Does not mow the lawn while you aren't using it. Feel free to ask any questions in the comments. I am in no way affiliated with the producers of this book, though I would consider trading my first-born for a chance to work in their kitchen. Your Mileage May Vary. EDIT - 6 Oct 2015: Three years later and I still love this book. I not own the full-fledged Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking , but I'm always going back to this one. Take the leap!

I received as a gift (some great gift!) the original Modernist Cuisine -- the full 5 volume set. I loved reading it, but never really got to cook from it. For me it functions as a reference book and I love it. Modernist Cuisine at Home is a whole other thing. This really is a book for home cooks who want to know the hows and whys of cooking and who enjoy trying new techniques. While there are some way-out-there recipes involving special ingredients and equipment, there is so much that is really for making home cooking wonderful. The price of the book is worth it just for the directions for pressure cooking stock -- veggie, meat & poultry! I followed the recipe for the pressure cooked chicken stock, also made a pot using the techniques used by my Grandmother and a third pot using a mix of the two ( needed a lot of stock for the holidays). Then I held a blind tasting for my family. Unanimous and enthusiastic agreement: the pressure cooking method won hands down. AND it was easier and faster than the traditional method. The directions are clear, the explanations enable you to be able to riff on recipes with your own variations if you enjoy doing that. So my feeling is that although there are recipes that are way more involved than most home cooks will want to use, there are so many that can enhance and elevate even our everyday cooking. And did I mention all the information about sous vide that makes me feel it really is worth doing at home?! Fantastic. One more thing which I am adding a day later to this review: The Modernist Cuisine at Home does one more thing which is VERY helpful and which I wish would become the standard for cookbooks from now on: measurements are given in weight, volume and scaling percentages! Yeah! Weighing is much easier and more efficient. The scaling method is very useful when wanting to make a recipe for 2 or for 12 or even 20. Digital scales are so cheap and useful that I believe that every kitchen should have one sitting on the counter. If you haven't used one when baking, borrow one from a friend and try it -- once you do, you'll be a convert, and you'll thank Myhrvold and Bilet and all the team at The Cooking Lab for this extra measure of help and usefulness. Now if only other cookbook writers and their publishers would take their cue and provide us with this help. I no longer buy books on baking which don't provide measurements weights -- if I want to guess at how much of an ingredient to use, I don't need to pay for a recipe, and that if what it amounts to using volume measurements when baking. Also, don't let the size and weight of the book put you off -- that is just for reading and reference even though it has the recipes in it. What you will use in the kitchen is the smaller spiral bound plasticized pages book with just the recipes. Splattered? The pages wipe clean. Open it up to a recipe and the pages lie flat. Easy to use in kitchen while cooking. But wait, there's more: there are charts giving guidance on various cooking methods for various cuts of meat, etc., such as best cooking methods for tough cuts of meat and then listing the various ways -- pressure cooker, braising, sous vide, etc for different cuts of meat. And excellent overview. As I say, this book is useful for all skill levels.

I can't say enough about how cool this book is. I've only tried a couple recipes, but i love that they are written for maximum reproducibility. I already had most of the tools needed for many of the recipes (pressure cooker, hand blender, sous vide setup) and really enjoyed the gorgeous photos. I also loved that the companion "cookbook" with just the recipes has waterproof pages, totally designed for being in the kitchen with you. There's so much great information in this book, it's definitely become a new favorite.

The first cookbook I ever read head to tail within a week followed by a shopping spree in order to acquire a Jaccard, a pressure cooker and a blowtorch. Used a whipping siphon for the first time in my life. Beautiful 🤩 photos and impressive Cut through of stoves etc . The recipes are easy to scale up or down , which is great and the recipes are printed on user friendly paper washable in an extra ring book.

Il titolo rende l'idea... passare dalla cucina casareccia approssimativa (dove non si sa mai come sarà il risultato) all'approccio ingegneristico dove la cucina diventa una scienza esatta e replicabile se fatta debita attenzione. Purtroppo non economicissimo ma pure bello come oggetto.

That’s a bible for cookers and enthusiasts! An obligatory reading on techniques and modern processes of cooking.

This book has just arrived and already I can't praise it enough. To get some idea of the sheer content and breadth of this book - check out the content list on their site: [...] - I can't even begin to review the detail of the topics covered but will give a couple of lines on who it may suit. I'd describe myself as an enthusiastic home cook with a growing shelf of cooking books and countertop of kitchen gadgets (including a sous vide cooker). I'm happy to take time over recipes but don't possess the skills or resources of a professional kitchen. I have read (or at least dipped into) a large number of cookbooks which have excellent content including the full version of modernist cuisine. The recipes that inspire you in the likes of the Fat Duck Cookbook, Under Pressure and titles of similar calibre are mainly beyond what one can reasonably hope to replicate in the home kitchen due to all the individual parts that go into each dish. This book manages to contain similar dishes but quickly gets to the crux of why something should be cooked in a certain way, explains it simply and gives an interesting recipe that incorporates it (without requiring 8 other parts to be prepared before plating). The stunning photography challenges any coffee table cookbook yet this is not a book that is likely to remain there. There are so many recipes that will inspire you and all are accessible to a (enthusiastic) home cook. It's printed on the highest quality art paper and includes a cooking proof kitchen manual that includes all the recipes on washable, tear resistant paper. If you have a passion for cooking (or know someone that does) just buy the book - it's well worth the cost and there's no way you can be disappointed.