Welcome to Cooking Basics For Dummies, 5th Edition. Taking into consideration recent cooking trends, this updated edition includes new information on Asian and Mediterranean cuisine, cooking techniques like pan-roasting and steaming in foil pouches, and how to get the best from farmers’ markets. We’ve also added shorter recipes, including some that call for eight or fewer ingredients and are complete meals. Unlike most cookbooks, this one is more than a compilation of tasty recipes. We also focus on traditional cooking techniques, like broiling, steaming, braising, and roasting. This edition carries expanded information on grains and pastas and offers recipes for trendy new ingredients, like kale and bacon.

You discover the best way to mince garlic, peel a tomato, and truss a chicken. After you master these techniques, you’re no longer a slave to recipes. You can cook with imagination and creativity — and that’s the sign of a skilled cook.

Furthermore, this book is structured around the way you live. For example, it includes information about cooking economically, making a delicious meal when you don’t even have time to get to the market, and throwing a party or celebrating a holiday when you have the time to make it special.

Most of all, you actually have fun as you explore the endless pleasures of cooking. And that, after all, is what this book is all about.

About This Book

We start at the very beginning: your kitchen and your equipment. What basic tools do you need? How do you use these things? We help you stock your pantry, refrigerator, and freezer with basic staples so you know what to have on hand. Then we move on to cooking techniques to get you up and running as soon as possible. Doing simple things well offers great personal satisfaction.

Depending on your needs and cooking skills, you can start at the beginning of the book and work your way through, go straight to the chapters that interest you most (the table of contents and index point you in the right direction), or read the book backward if that’s your thing.

Before charging ahead to make any of the recipes in this book, you should know a few things about the ingredients and instructions:

• Milk is always whole. You can substitute low-fat or skim milk, or even soy or rice milk, but these products give soups and sauces a thinner, less creamy consistency and may influence the texture in other dishes (although not necessarily in an undesirable way).
• Butter is unsalted so you can control the amount of salt in a dish. We don’t recommend substituting margarine, which has just as many calories and just as much fat as butter, unless you’re avoiding dairy products. Margarine’s flavor is generally inferior to butter.
• Unless otherwise noted, all eggs are large.
• All dry ingredient measurements are level. Brown sugar is measured firmly packed.
• All measured salt is common table salt, and black pepper is freshly ground. We don’t mind if you use sea salt or kosher salt when a recipe calls for salt “to taste.”
• All oven temperatures are Fahrenheit.

And keep the following general tips in mind:

Foolish Assumptions

We wrote this cookbook with some thoughts about you in mind. Here’s what we assume about you, our reader:

• You love the idea of cooking. You’re a crackerjack at boiling water. But you just aren’t quite sure how to actually organize a meal, make lots of things at once, or combine foods or flavors in ways that make your family members sigh with satisfaction after they put down their forks.
• You’ve cooked before. Sometimes it was pretty darn good. Sometimes you were glad you didn’t have company. Sometimes the fire department had to be called. But really, sometimes it was pretty darn good! You’re almost positive you have potential.
• You sometimes daydream about going to cooking school or impressing people with the way you chop garlic with your very expensive chef’s knife. But you don’t yet own a very expensive chef’s knife.
• You have basic kitchen equipment on hand, including pots and pans and measuring cups, but you aren’t sure whether you have all the right things you need for efficient cooking, and you probably don’t know what all those different pots and pans are called.
• You bought this cookbook for yourself so you can finally gain the skills you need to earn the title of “really great cook.” Or somebody gave you this cookbook as a gift, and you assume that it was a hint somehow related to that interesting casserole-type thing you attempted last week.

Icons Used in This Book

Icons are those nifty little pictures in the margin of this book. They each grab your attention for a different reason, and we explain those reasons here.

When there’s an easier way to do something, a step you can take to save money, or a shortcut you can take to get yourself to the dinner table faster, we let you know by marking the tip with this icon.

The kitchen can be a dangerous place. This icon, like a flashing yellow light, steers you clear of potentially dangerous mishaps.

We hope that you remember every valuable piece of information in this book, but if your brain can hold only so much, make sure you hang on to the tidbits marked by this icon.

When we describe cooking techniques, we often refer to recipes later in the chapter that put them to the test. This chef’s hat lets you know that a related recipe awaits!

Where to Go from Here

You can start enjoying Cooking Basics For Dummies, 5th Edition, with any chapter you like. Even if you know your way around a kitchen pretty well, we recommend that you start by reading Chapter 2, just to be sure you have all the equipment to cook the recipes in this book, and Chapter 3, which talks about all the basic ingredients every well-stocked kitchen pantry, freezer, and refrigerator should contain.

If you’re in the process of buying a house, remodeling a kitchen, or just dreaming about your perfect kitchen, check out Chapter 1, where you can read all about kitchen design. Wary about safety? Check out the end of Chapter 1. Or maybe you just want to start cooking. In that case, check out any of the other chapters in this book. Some are arranged around techniques; others are arranged around menus for parties, for economy, or for times when you need to prepare a meal on short notice. But all these chapters are chock-full of delicious recipes with simple instructions.

One place to check out that isn’t in this book is www.dummies.com/go/cooking. The site features lots of cooking-related videos, many of them that are directly connected with what we discuss in this book. So if you’re reading our instructions for how to carve poultry or how to mince garlic, check out the website for videos that bring the steps to life.

We know you’ll enjoy cooking with us. Cooking doesn’t have to be complicated, as long as you know the basics. So come on in to the kitchen, grab a pot (we tell you which one), and get cooking.

IN THIS PART …

Figure out what’s what in your kitchen, and get tips on staying safe in all sorts of kitchen situations.

Know what devices and implements you need when you’re just starting out as a cook.

Stock your pantry, refrigerator, and freezer with ingredients that you’ll be glad to have on hand.