Unlike other cookbook staples for home cooks, The Food Lab is about far more than recipes. Where The Joy of Cooking and How to Cook Everything are primarily sets of step-by-step instructions for preparing a variety of dishes, J. Kenji Lopez-Alt has included a mere 300 recipes in his massive book. The rest of the volume is dedicated to exploring the science of food and recipe construction, as well as recommended tools, tricks and techniques.
Lopez-Alt was previously editor of Cook's Illustrated magazine and is now managing culinary director of SeriousEats.com, where he writes "The Food Lab" column on food science. The Food Lab draws on those experiences to offer readers a guide to improved home cooking through scientific understanding. In the introduction, he writes, "Once you understand the basic science of how and why a recipe works, you suddenly find that you've freed yourself from the shackles of recipes."
Though one could dip into and out of each section on a whim, the book's structure allows for cover-to-cover reading--unusual for a cookbook--and the scientific explanations and theories behind each recipe build over the course of the text. Scattered among humorous and engaging anecdotes about his experiences experimenting with food, Lopez-Alt has included asides on techniques and ingredient-specific recommendations.
With a no-fuss, no-frills approach to cooking, The Food Lab promises to become essential for the cookbook shelf, with thoughtful, reasoned explanations for how to make classic American dishes the best they possibly can be. --Kerry McHugh, blogger at Entomology of a Bookworm