Forum

Alice Waters In the Green Kitchen and/or The Art of Simple Food.  The 1950s Joy of Cooking I inherited from my mother is still an indispensible reference, and I'm sure the linked version or the current edition would be for any new household today.

How to Cook Without a Book by Pam Anderson gives you the tools to handle whatever is in your fridge and pantry. The Victory Garden Cookbook by Marion Morash, the companion to the PBS show of the early 1980s, is still one of the best cookbooks ever written -- organized alphabetically by vegetable, a great resource for grocery and farmers' market shoppers as well as gardeners. It's out of print, but worth seeking out. Love Soup by Anna Thomas is organized seasonally, full of delicious and simple soups (and a few breads and salads and toppings).

And I cannot recommend highly enough Jacques Pepin's New Complete Techniques, full of photographs that show you how to do the things you do when cooking.  Start with the knife techniques and branch out from there.

Checking some of these out of your local library to see if they are in fact helpful to you (but just go buy Pepin's Techniques; it's very reasonably priced). 

Julia Child's The Way to Cook is filled with sound instruction and good photographs of the steps in the recipes. If your library has it, it's worth checking out to study and practice some of the more fundamental dishes.  But it's not IMO something to buy for just-starting-out cooks: it's physically huge and heavy, goes much further into elaborate, advanced techniques than I would recommend for a starter book, and has nothing to say about equipment.  [My take on starting-out cookware: All you need is a medium skillet (9" - 11"), a 4- to 6-quart boil pot, a medium saucepan (2-3 quarts), and a large frying surface (12" skillet or 11" saute pan), plus an aluminum baking sheet (9" x 13" or 13" x 18") with a grid rack that fits inside it.]

This advice might be hopeless vague, but I'll throw my two cents in based on my own experience, anyway! The hardest thing for me starting out was figuring out what to cook that we would both enjoy. My husband is a little more adventurous with food these days, but especially when we first lived together, he really was used to dinner being meat, starch, and vegetable (and usually the most boring, plain vegetables one could possibly think of!) -- I found the prospect of eating that way all the time incredibly dull and was used to more variety in the recipes I chose to make for myself. So figuring out that we both like, for example, Italian food, soups, roasted vegetables, etc. has led to more specific cookbook purchases. So especially if your typical food preferences aren't that similar (and even if they are!), I definitely recommend figuring out what your common ground is and looking for cookbooks that will fit that. (And a few general books that teach basic techniques and dishes certainly never hurt either!)

A lot depends on how experienced as cooks they are.  If beginners, The New Best Recipe from Cook's Illustrated is very good at explaining basic techniques and why cooking methods work as they do.  Jamie's Food Revolution is a good learning-the-basics book and his down-to-earth cheeky chappy style appeals to younger cooks.  A good general cookbook, popular with EYB members, is The Essential New York Times Cookbook by Amanda Hesser.

In terms of other books, a lot will depend on what kind of food they like to eat.  There's no point getting them books which contain food they have no interest in.  Take a look at the EYB Library, sorted by Buzz - that will give you an idea of which books we are cooking from, as opposed to the books we own.

Throughout my school years I collected recipes (still have all of them) but did not really start cooking on my own until I moved out since kitchen was mom's domain and she was an excellent cook.  However, she cooked mostly Japanese, American and limited Italian. 

As soon as I was able to have my own kitchen, cookbooks and magaines became part of my life.  I started out with Joy of Cooking and all the books called Recipes on Parade from military wives.   These books are not based on beautiful photography like many modern books, but I consider them some of the best cookbooks.  Most of recipes are all there.  Recipes on Parade had a book called International and that book is priceless even now because it covered so many interesting recipes from 4 corners of the world.  As a 20 YO, I was already making wonderful gazapachos, curries, mapo doufu, Hungarian goulash, etc from that book.  Next came trying out Mastering French Cooking by Julia Child.  Tried many recipes from there and after that all of her other books. 

When I met my husband he did not like soy sauce, tofu, rice, vinegar, etc and I knew it was going to be an uphill battle.  He now eats raw fish, soy sauce, rice and most anything I put out.  He still does not care for too spicy or too vinegary foods and I have to tone down. 

I think our tastes continue to evolve as years go by.  If you don't like certain foods, try again next time.  Good luck. 

I frequently give cookbooks as wedding or shower gifts and tend to look for all purpose basic cookbooks unless I know the couple has more advanced cooking skills.  I started out myself many years ago with just Betty Crocker, the Betty Crocker Cookie book and a Joy of Cooking so I know that having some basic cookbooks is vital to the new young cook.  I often give folks the New Basics from Julie Rosso & Sheila Lukin, Joy of Cooking, and for the new husband's sake I often try to find a really instructional barbecue book with lots of photos and good recipes too.  So far everyone seems to have been pleased.  Last year I had a very creative nephew who married and I knew that he and his intended were both into DIY for everything.  I spent a bit of time collecting the red baking utensils I knew they would need for pies, cakes and basic baking and that would go with the rest of the red kitchenware they had requested.  I also included a copy of Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours.  The young couple was absolutely delighted to get the book plus the utensils and have emailed several times about their baking adventures.  You can't go wrong with the basic cookbooks but if you know the couple well you can certainly have fun finding cookbooks to suit their interests.