 | |
| Authors | J. Kenji Lopez-Alt |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | Cookbook |
| Publisher | W. W. Norton & Company |
Publication date | September 21, 2015 |
| Publication place | America |
| Media type | Print, ebook |
| Pages | 960 (print edition) |
| Award | 2016 IACP Cookbook of the Year;[1] 2016 James Beard Foundation General Cooking cookbook award[2] |
| ISBN | 978-0393081084 |
The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science is a 2015 cookbook written by American chef J. Kenji Lopez-Alt. The book contains close to 300 savory American cuisine recipes.[3][4] The Food Lab expands on Lopez-Alt's "The Food Lab" column on the Serious Eats blog.[3] Lopez-Alt uses the scientific method in the cookbook to improve popular American recipes[3] and to explain the science of cooking.[5] The Food Lab charted on The New York Times Best Seller list,[6] and won the 2016 James Beard Foundation Award for the best General Cooking cookbook[2] and the 2016 IACP awards for the Cookbook of the Year and the best American cookbook.[1]
Lopez-Alt developed the cookbook over a five-year period.[4] He described the book not as a recipe book but as "a book for people who want to learn the hows and the whys of cooking".[4] The recipes in The Food Lab are arranged by the technique used to prepare them.[7] The cookbook also contains charts and experiments aimed at explaining scientific concepts like the difference between temperature and energy and the Leidenfrost effect.[7]
Emily Weinstein of The New York Times wrote that "the recipes are sophisticated in their grasp of how ingredients and techniques work" but noted that "it is Mr. López-Alt's original, living body of work online that to many may seem like his even greater achievement".[3] Eric Vellend of The Globe and Mail wrote that "Lopez-Alt's relentless pursuit of perfection yields hundreds of unconventional kitchen tricks".[5] Silvia Killingsworth wrote in The New Yorker that The Food Lab resembles a "hybrid reference text" more than a cookbook, and that "Kenji's appeal is that he channels the shameless geekery of hobbyists everywhere into inexpensive, everyday foods".[7] Penny Pleasance of the New York Journal of Books called The Food Lab "a seminal work that is encyclopedic in scope and can be used as a reference by even the most experienced home cooks".[8]
General references
