You Do Not Need to Ever Buy a Cook Book Ever Again.

I humbly submit to you: my reasoning.

1. Google It!

Every recipe ever is available online. Ever. There was a point where I’d get cook books every Christmas from my extended family because … well, it’s the laziest gift to give someone who “wants to get into cooking.” With the exception of the Star Trek Cookbook, which is more of a food prop guide than a cook book (because the recipes are terrible), I never much cared. Sure, I kept thinking “Oh, this’ll be neat” whenever I’d get one “I’m sure I can use it sometime to think up something” but when it really came down to it I’m way too lazy to thumb through a book when I can just type “Chocolate Cheesecake Recipe” into the Google and have a generally passable recipe in about 2 minutes.

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2. The Technique is More Important than the Ingredients.

What Cook Books I have kept and read are the professional textbooks like Gisslen’s Professional Cooking and Professional Baking which have a lot more to do with the technique than the recipe. If I want to remind myself how to fold butter and dough together to make Puff Pastry, or how to put together an obscure sauce I’ve not made in a while, I hop to one of those two books. It’s a great deal more like a technical manual than a “list of 30 dinner ideas your kids will love!” Once I’ve got the basics down, it’s (and keep in mind, everything I write here is strictly scientific*) at least a dozen times more fun to start improvising from that point.

3. Your Friends and Family Have Better Ideas.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from watching Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations - except that co-opting cultures is easier when you get paid to do it - it’s that big fancy chef type people love home-made food. For what it’s worth, some of my most successful dishes in the restaurant world have been adaptations of recipes I picked out of old family recipes. Same with the meals I’ve eaten. It’s why every ad for food in the history of ever has bragged about the product being “Just like Grandma Used to Make!” (I for one remember marching down on Christmas morning to find my grandmother standing over a hot stove of hydrogenated corn oil, high fructose corn syrup, and baker’s ammonia... [as for marching on Christmas, well, I'm from a German family.] )

4. Cook Books Cover the Same Territory Over and Over and Over…

With the exception of “Natural Harvest” cook books tend to tread over the same territory. Want an example?

Try here.
Or here.
Or here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Or, alternatively:
here, here, or here.

… There’s about 391 more of those, btw.

5. The Gimmicks, Oh Lord, The Gimmicks.

We’ve already touched on Natural Harvest which is probably the grossest, and Grilling and Cooking Healthy For Kids, but  let’s not forget that just about everyone you’ve seen on TV has their own cook book. Should you learn to Grill from Bobby Flay’s book, or Emeril’s? How about Al Roker?

Insert joke about weather men

A quick browse around Amazon finds the following counts by genre:

Outdoor Cooking (that would be Grilling and Barbeque, by the by) : 262
Special Diet (Not like, Special Brownies Special): 20
Vegetables & Vegetarian: 18 (Green Beans and Bacon are vegetarian, right?)
Reference: 18 [Citation Needed]
Quick and Easy (Hey, just like your mom!): 33
Culinary Arts & Techniques: 20 (okay, some of these might be practical, but you probably don’t need 20 of them)
Regional & International: 41 (one for every country and region… that sounds right)
Special Occasions: 85 (“Grandma’s Funeral Burger” is my favorite)
Cooking by Ingredient: 72 (Why stop with Natural Harvest when your body produces so many more fluids?)
Special Appliances: 13 (Nobody ever wants to eat anything you cooked using a fleshlight)
Meals: 21 (if this is the section for meals, in what other context are you supposed to eat the other stuff?)
Baking: 19

… you’re getting the point of this.

Oh Wait: Those are just the books that have to do with Grilling. As in, There are 18 grilling reference books out there. Take into consideration then things like Fad Diets (In case you’ve never bothered to look it up, Atkins and South Beach are the EXACT SAME DIET), celebrity cookbooks, and other niche markets  designed for the kind of people who “burn water" and all the remainder of the 107,000+ cook books on Amazon.com and you'll see I’ve developed an irrefutable demonstration that every cookbook ever is a cheap gimmick to make a buck. EVERY COOKBOOK IS THE SAME.

*as certified by top scienticians.