Cooking at Home: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Recipes (And Love My Microwave): A Cookbook

This book is interestingly one of the most divisive ones around lately in cooking

Handpicked the very best of the bad and the good

and i think my 41 out of 100 rating
actually does seem to match up with the consensus out there, interestingly enough

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Amazon Reviews

Give it a chance

When I first opened up this cookbook I was instantly disappointed. The layout was awful: giant multicolored font on top of brightly colored pages with tons of empty space. The content didn’t seem much better. Vague advice throughout such as “cook meat until done”, “maybe use this many eggs?”, and “season to your liking with whatever you want” seemed incredibly unhelpful. The mostly unfamiliar Korean names also put me off, since I didn’t exactly have a Korean cookbook in mind when ordering.

Before sending it back, I figured I’d give it a chance though. Glad I did, because it just might be one of the most practical cookbooks I own. And because of its simplicity, maybe one of the most beginner-friendly ones as well.

Turns out, once you start reading it cover to cover, most of the “vague” statements actually make sense. Either being specific truly doesn’t matter or the topic was already talked about in detail (with a page number provided). – 8/10

Aaron Martin

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no recipes, just chatter

this is an expensive disappointment
very few ideas, lots of chatter
huge disappointment and terribly expensive – 2/10

Jacque Sharma

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Reinvigorating

I never really leave reviews for things but had to for this. I’ve been cooking since my early teens and have always enjoyed it, but recently had fallen into a bit of a rut of cooking the same things week in week out.

Maybe this book is more suited to people who’ve cooked a bit already as it’s quite conceptual, but for me it’s totally reignited the spark for cooking.

I’ve made the boiled chicken (the most uninspiring description of a total gamechanger) so many times now – I always thought you had to save all your chicken carcasses and boil em for 8 hours or whatever. Now I have a huge pot of chicken broth and a seasoned but not too far in any one direction chicken in 45 minutes, and a bunch of new ideas to take it in loads of different directions.

Great for principles and inspiration if you’re in a rut – I would agree that it’s not a book for vegetarians, but it definitely helps make the meat you buy go a hell of a lot further. – 10/10

Adam Byrd

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Did not like

Nope. I did not like this book – at all. None of the recipes inspired me and left a sour taste about the author’s attitude. He came off very negative about they way other people cook while being very elitist about his own way. – 2/10

G Thomas

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Great content, difficult to read

This book is an interesting ‘anti-cookbook’. The first thing you should know about this book is that it is very disorganized. There is a mix of lots of home cooking tips (which are pretty good, though again, disorganized), some personal stories, and a bunch of ‘almost recipes’ scattered throughout that offer pretty loose ingredient and portion guidance with the idea that you find out how you like it and that it’s fine to be a bit flexible about your inputs and cooking time – this is NOT a baking book that demands precision, it’s very loose and informal.

Frankly, I again find the layout hard to read – it’s overly ‘graphic designed’, with some text being quite difficult to parse and a lot of the content is really hard to find. Despite claiming that the book doesn’t contain recipes, it does (just not rigid ones), and they’re available in the index at the back but aren’t well-marked going through the book. They do roughly categorize sections by main ingredient, but it isn’t clear where to find the actual meal ideas. It’s very high concept.

This is probably better suited as a book to more traditionally read through cover to cover, picking up all kinds of useful tips along the way, then marking the recipes you like yourself.

The loose recipes themselves are heavily influenced by the cultures of the authors, with David Chang’s recipes heavily weighted to Korean food (without much explanation as to what the dishes are for audiences not familiar with them), and the coauthor’s recipes influenced by light Indian fare. It feels like they’re experiencing their childhoods in a sense with this book, bringing the cooking back to home, keeping the ideas and concepts casual and approachable.

There are recipes from other backgrounds (like say chicken pot pie), but I’d say it’s tilted more culturally than I expected.

Overall I’m both pleased and disappointed by this book. I’m disappointed at the overly chaotic layout and content organization – I know why they did it, it’s supposed to be loose and informal, but it’s hard to read and hard to find content. If you want to DO anything specific with the book, you’re going to find it tough to use. It is however a great book to read through, pick up ideas, mark up yourself and learn a lot of useful stuff about cooking delivered in a casual ‘layman’ way.

Depending on your mood and personality you could find it to be one star or five stars. – 6/10

Gordon R.

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Not for me

I bought the book on its premise – Chef / TV personality David Chang turns to cook for his family for an extended period of time after being forced to stay home due to the pandemic.

But I wouldn’t boil a 10-pound brisket to feed my family during the week… It’s just not the type of food I would prepare for them. I’m looking for ways to cut down on meat, not tips on creative ways to add pork butt to a meal. – 4/10

Jason Bradbury

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For me, it was worthless

As someone who has been cooking for many years and the owner of many excellent cookbooks, this one was a dud. Pretty, but that’s about all.

Perhaps this is for people who don’t know how to cook. Not a single recipe or idea that inspired me, and I love to cook, try new recipes, spices, ingredients, and combinations. What a disappointment. – 2/10

Judith Anderson

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Disappointed

Another cookbook I was absolutely nothing forward to. I think there’s only one recipe that’s written normally. It will give you a headache trying to look for this cookbook and decipher everything. I sent mine back. I wouldn’t give you $.50 at a garage sale for it. And I absolutely was looking forward to getting this cookbook.

So if you wanna Lotta good recipes this book doesn’t have them. And I’m a big fan of the author. I don’t think he knows how to make a cookbook. Maybe you should just stick to cooking. And the publishing company should Learn how to put a cookbook together. Because if you’re a cool foodie and like cookbooks. This isn’t one for you. So very disappointed – 2/10

Sandra Gilbert

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Unreadable and unusable

Horrible layout that makes this book unreadable. Skimming around is even hard.

It feels like an unorganized blog, not a cool book.

The colors hurt the eyes and make certain text illegible (yellow print on a white page, really?) they were obviously trying to be clever but failed to be artistic in my opinion and made the book useless. Besides that, recipes I saw didn’t even have measurements… what? – 2/10

Jeffrey

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Waste of Time & Money!

Before buying this book, ask yourself how much time you want to dedicate to poring through the seriously overwrought layout searching for information and, most of all, inspiration. I found neither here – only useless “content” which seemed to serve as more of a vanity piece for the authors. Please be warned that there are very few microwave recipes despite the subtitle! – 2/10

Topper

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Horrendous
Absolutely terrible. Completely useless. Offers less than nothing. – 2/10

Paul TT

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Too big. Too little
They took a page to say very little. If they just printed the content, it would be a very little book – 4/10
Elaine T. Gelinas

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Good dish ideas, shockingly bad design. Ok for intermediate cooks.

In short

a. Good dishes that are fun to experiment with and practical for home cooking
b. Disappointingly small section on microwave recipes (despite the title)
c. Inconvenient book organization
d. Very ugly
[would not recommend as a gift, good if you want some more ideas and light guidance for cooking at home]
e. Very meat-heavy
[especially beef]

I am a longtime listener of Dave Chang’s podcast and was super excited for this cookbook after hearing about his experiences cooking for his family at home (make it acceptable to eat, easy to clean up, and less prep work). In particular, I was really excited to learn how to better use my microwave because Dave Chang talked about how much faster and easier it is to cook with a microwave if you really know how to take advantage of it.

Overall, I agree with the philosophy of the book. The recipes encourage flexible cooking, experimentation, and it’s easy to make the recipes your own. Because the recipes are relatively simple and don’t have measurements, they’re easy to remember and bring into the regular meal rotation. I have enjoyed the ones I’ve made – they’ve all been pretty tasty!

The focus is on making food that tastes good at home, rather than worrying about making sure the food is authentic, so it feels low-pressure. It fits with the style of inexact, spontaneous cooking of never being able to get the same results twice, but it all tastes good.

Learning how to make chawanmushi in the microwave was amazing and something that will definitely be a go-to for me.

[Note that if you make this, you need to use about 2.5x the amount of liquid Priya recommends or the egg will be very dry, illustrated by their chosen photo of the dish in the book]

That said, I would NOT recommend this book to a beginner cook.

Since most of the recipes don’t really give measurements or even tell you what heat setting to cook things on, it is very easy to overcook meats or overseason if you’re not already pretty confident in the kitchen. This is really meant for someone who is comfortable experimenting with and changing up recipes.

A couple other notes on the recipes themselves – I was really bummed that the microwave section was so small! There are only ~10 microwave recipes which just seemed really misleading given the book title calls out the microwave. Also, would just note that this book is very very meat heavy (especially beef), so if you’re vegetarian (I’m not), there won’t be much to cook from here.

Negatives – Usability Aesthetics

The book organization is pretty bizarre where the expectation seems to be that you will read it like a textbook, in full. You cannot just open to a single recipe and get all the information you need. Techniques are often consolidated in their own section rather than being in the recipe itself, and many times, there is no mention of where to find the relevant information in the recipe.

The design is very unpleasant from a readability standpoint.

I like the recipes but am a little bit pained everytime I open up the pages. There are a lot of really odd design choices like blocks of white text on a yellow background (or vice versa), or black text on a dark green background. I was in my living room and had to turn up the brightness on my lamp because I was straining my eyes to read the text. No good.

The photos are also kind of mind-boggling for me… they are very consistently pixelated, low-resolution, and out of focus. I understand that Dave and Priya wanted the food to look authentic to what someone would make at home, so they opted not to use a food stylist. But my issue isn’t with the layout of the food – it’s with the image quality. It’s a bummer because the dishes taste great when making the recipes but they look so unappealing. I attached some examples here, but the low resolution issues may not be as noticeable on the small images. Trust me – full size on the page, it’s very apparent.

I will definitely continue using this book and the recipes, but would NOT recommend getting this book as a gift for anyone (especially for someone who appreciates aesthetics or design).

The Lucky Peach cookbook is a good alternative for a nicer looking but still pretty easy and useful recipe book if you’re looking for something similar to give as a gift. – 6/10

Jonathan Huang

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Misprints and migraines

I love the content, but the formatting is bizarre. They made so many odd choices that it took me a while to realize that some of them were accidental, I hope. I have tons of pages in my copy that have blurry shadow print, which is hard to read. – 8/10

Robyn Lopez

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Not a typical cookbook, but in a good way

First, if you’re looking for a traditional cookbook with pages of recipes and perfect measurements you can look elsewhere.

However, if you are looking to truly up-level your cooking skill at home give this book a chance.

This book is an attempt to collect your mother/grandmother’s random cooking skills/knowledge/recipes as organized as possible in a book format.

David goes through the basics of kitchen staples (thank you for saying knife block sets are a scam), how to tackle all the different types of meat from what types to get, how to get them, how to cook them. This is the book to get if you’re ready to step outside of getting chicken breast and ny steak in the meat section.

I also love that he keeps the ingredients realistic. Most of the recipes here do not require a trip to a high-end specialty store for some imported spices.

And I agree with a previous reviewer’s comment regarding lack of vegetarian dishes, it’s true. I would say over 50% of this book is more for non-vegetarians/vegans. But considering his restaurants are most famous for meat dishes I’m also not surprised by this. – 10/10

MShopper