A culinary instructor details the six basic techniques needed to successfully cook at home, form learning how to handle a chef's knife to properly cooking leafy greens.

From America’s favorite cooking teacher, multiple award-winner James Peterson, an invaluable reference handbook. Culinary students everywhere rely on the comprehensive and authoritative cookbooks published by chef, instructor, and award-winning author Jim Peterson. And now, for the first time, this guru-to-the-professionals turns his prodigious knowledge into a practical, chockablock, quick-reference, A-to-Z answer book for the rest of us. Look elsewhere for how to bone skate or trim out a saddle of lamb, how to sauté sweetbreads or flambé dessert. Look here instead for how to zest a lemon, make the perfect hamburger, bread a chicken breast, make (truly hot) coffee in a French press, make magic with a Microplane. It’s all here: how to season a castiron pan, bake a perfect pie, keep shells from sticking to hardcooked eggs. How to carve a turkey, roast a chicken, and chop, slice, beat, broil, braise, or boil any ingredient you’re likely to encounter. Information on seasoning, saucing, and determining doneness (by internal temperatures, timings, touch, and sight) guarantee that you’ve eaten your last bland and overcooked meal. Here are 500 invaluable techniques with nearly as many color photographs, bundled into a handy, accessible format.

Recalling an earlier era when cooks relied on sight, touch, and taste rather than cookbooks, the author encourages readers to rediscover the lost art of preparing food and use their imagination in the kitchen.

Winner, James Beard Award for Best Book in Vegetable-Focused Cooking Named a Best Cookbook of the Year by the Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Bon Appétit, Food Network Magazine, Every Day with Rachael Ray, USA Today, Seattle Times, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Library Journal, Eater, and more “Never before have I seen so many fascinating, delicious, easy recipes in one book. . . . [Six Seasons is] about as close to a perfect cookbook as I have seen . . . a book beginner and seasoned cooks alike will reach for repeatedly.” —Lucky Peach Joshua McFadden, chef and owner of renowned trattoria Ava Gene’s in Portland, Oregon, is a vegetable whisperer. After years racking up culinary cred at New York City restaurants like Lupa, Momofuku, and Blue Hill, he managed the trailblazing Four Season Farm in coastal Maine, where he developed an appreciation for every part of the plant and learned to coax the best from vegetables at each stage of their lives. In Six Seasons, his first book, McFadden channels both farmer and chef, highlighting the evolving attributes of vegetables throughout their growing seasons—an arc from spring to early summer to midsummer to the bursting harvest of late summer, then ebbing into autumn and, finally, the earthy, mellow sweetness of winter. Each chapter begins with recipes featuring raw vegetables at the start of their season. As weeks progress, McFadden turns up the heat—grilling and steaming, then moving on to sautés, pan roasts, braises, and stews. His ingenuity is on display in 225 revelatory recipes that celebrate flavor at its peak.

An illustrated, practical guide to everything you need to know about using knives in the kitchen. As the number of gourmet home kitchens burgeons, so does the number of home cooks who want to become proficient users of the professional-caliber equipment they own. And of all kitchen skills, perhaps the most critical are those involving the proper use of knives. Norman Weinstein has been teaching his knife skills workshop at New York City’s Institute of Culinary Education for more than a decade—and his classes always sell out. That’s because Weinstein focuses so squarely on the needs of the nonprofessional cook, providing basic instruction in knife techniques that maximize efficiency while placing the least possible stress on the user’s arm. Now, Mastering Knife Skills brings Weinstein’s well-honed knowledge to home cooks everywhere. Whether you want to dice an onion with the speed and dexterity of a TV chef, carve a roast like an expert, bone a chicken quickly and neatly, or just learn how to hold a knife in the right way, Mastering Knife Skills will be your go-to manual. Each cutting, slicing, and chopping method is thoroughly explained—and illustrated with clear, step-by-step photographs. Extras include information on knife construction, knife makers and types, knife maintenance and safety, and cutting boards. “In the old days, when kitchens weren’t equipped with a lot of fancy gadgets, a skilled chef needed only one tool to ply his trade: a sharp knife. This book will introduce novice cooks to and reacquaint experienced chefs with everything they need to know about a good knife and the art of using it.” —Cecilia Chiang, James Beard Award–winning restaurateur and author of The Seventh Daughter “This beautifully illustrated book, written with passion and precision, minces no words in guiding the reader to choose, maintain, and use a knife. Indispensable for anyone who prepares food, it has taught me how to cut produce much more efficiently.” —David Karp, Fruit Detective

The art of Indian cuisine at your fingertips Neeta Saluja simplifies Indian cooking with a unique approach to its preparation. She focuses on the fundamentals—the special ingredients and techniques every cook can use to create fragrant, delicious, and well balanced dishes. Six Spices demystifies the exotic and complex flavors of Indian cuisine by explaining the characteristics of its essential ingredients—hot chili powder,aromatic coriander, sweet cumin, roasted nutty mustard seeds, bold asafetida, and hearty turmeric. But here is the twist: the book also reveals the methods used to incorporate them into exquisite, authentic recipes. Keeping clarity and simplicity in mind, Saluja has created recipes easy enough for beginners, yet inspirational enough to encourage inventiveness in the more seasoned cook. Readers will discover that seasoning with chounk is one of the basic techniques used to enhance the flavor of beans and legumes. A dish of red lentils will become memorable when infused with aromatic seasoning of hot ghee, fresh herbs, and spices; and cooking with masala, or curry paste, can turn a humble dish into the essence of Indian cuisine. Saluja has taken the fear out of approaching unfamiliar culinary fare. Her recipe collection has been tasted and tested throughout her more than twenty years of teaching and cooking Indian food.

Winner of the Andre Simon Food Book Award 2009. Darina Allen has won many awards such as the World Gourmand Cookbook Award 2018, the Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Irish Culinary Sector by Euro-Toques, the UK Guild of Food Writers Lifetime Achievement Award and the 2018 Guaranteed Irish Food Hero Award. 'There's not much this gourmet grande dame doesn't know.' Observer Food Monthly In this sizeable hardback, Darina Allen reconnects you with the cooking skills that missed a generation or two. The book is divided into chapters such as Dairy, Fish, Bread and Preserving, and forgotten processes such as smoking mackerel, curing bacon and making yogurt and butter are explained in the simplest terms. The delicious recipes show you how to use your home-made produce to its best, and include ideas for using forgotten cuts of meat, baking bread and cakes and even eating food from the wild. The Vegetables and Herbs chapter is stuffed with growing tips to satisfy even those with the smallest garden plot or window box, and there are plenty of suggestions for using gluts of vegetables. You'll even discover how to keep a few chickens in the garden. With over 700 recipes, this is the definitive modern guide to traditional cookery skills.