This is a really interesting reference book perfect for at home cooks. I recommend for beginners and advanced chefs.

KitchenWise: Essential Food Science for Home Cooks by Shirley O. Corriher is a great resource for those wanting to learn more about cooking. The book was extremely informative and filled with new ideas. One thing lacking from the book that others books that revolve around this topic are photographs. If this book had photographs to go along with some of the ideas/processes, I would absolutely put it in a classroom.

Useful compendium! The author explains why the things we cook cook that way. In doing so, she helped me be more confident in the kitchen.

Really good book about the science behind cooking. There were recipes throughout, usually to demonstrate a technique or some piece of science info that was explained. Unfortunately there weren't any photos. I think I expected the book to be organized more into q&a or shorter sections on a specific topic, but it went into more detailed info. This is a great book for those who are really interested in the science behind cooking, or if people want to understand the optimal way to cook and get a great result because of the chemistry behind the recipes.
I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I always loved Shirley's visit to Good Eats and really loved this book that expands my knowledge of cooking science. I was familiar with a few of the principles but many will improve the results coming from my own laboratory. When I tell high school students that cooking is a form of chemistry, they always laugh until I start breaking it down for them. Their interest in chemistry usually improves at that point. No more I'll never use this in real life comments when they recognize the efforts pay off.

When you want to geek out, this is the cookbook for you. It analyzes the recipe from a scientific perspective, explaining why some techniques work better than others.

This more about kitchen science than recipes, although there are several recipes, they aren't the focus and there are no pictures.

If you want a cookbook, you should pass on this. If you want to "kitchen wise" this is for you.

Thank you Scribner and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I absolutely loved this primer. Great information - now I know why my scrambled eggs sometimes stick to the pan! - mixed with somewhat unusual recipes. I can't wait to try out the great pumpkin!

For fan's of Alton Brown's Good Eats! In fact (I only learned after I finished this) - the author of this book made guest appearances on that show. While this book does have a smattering of recipes, it's far from a cookbook. Instead, it will tell you everything you ever wanted to know about food science (and plenty you didn't know to ask about). How do proteins cook and what do varying cooking methods do differently? Do vegetables really lose nutrient when they cook? Why are my cakes coming out wrong?

"KitchenWise" explains some of the chemical reactions in cooking and some troubleshooting tips based on this information. The author also included recipes that demonstrated the points she was making in the chapter. She talked about flavor and things that can be done to increase flavor in food. Then she talked about meat, eggs, and other animal products, with much of the focus on using eggs in cooking and troubleshooting possible problems. The next section was on fruits and vegetables, and much of the focus was on potatoes (baked potatoes, French fries, potato salads, etc.) and troubleshooting problems with potatoes. The next section was on beans and grains. The next was on making the perfect sauce, and many of these seemed to involve cream or chocolate. She talked about which foods freeze well and which don't. She finished with a section on baking (mainly cookies, cakes, and baguettes) and a section on chocolate, ice cream, and other desserts.

Apparently, getting the "perfect" dish very often involves a lot of butter, cream, egg, or sugar. No wonder most commercial cakes taste so extremely sweet since they use more sugar than flour (by weight)...and that's not including the icing. Since I'm more interested in healthy (but still tasty) eating, much of her advice wasn't helpful for me. Overall, I'd recommend this book to people with an interest in science and cooking who are most interested in how food tastes.

Loved this book! It was a nice mix of education and easy recipes. I look forward to trying out these recipes and I think this is a great staple for any cook.

This is a great book for any home cook! It is easy to follow and chock full of helpful tips and tricks. There are never enough tips that culinary experts can share with home cooks.

KitchenWise: Essential Food Science for Home Cooks is an indepth science based instruction manual about the chemistry and physics involved in food preparation. Due out 17th Nov 2020 from Simon & Schuster on their Scribner imprint, it's 288 pages and will be available in hardcover, audio, and ebook formats.

According to family lore, my first word was not mama or dada but "why". According to my mother, I've not stopped asking why from that day to the present. This book is written for cooks who really want to know *why* eggs prepared a certain way are not as fluffy, or why their quiche was a runny catastrophe in the middle. This book is for cooks who want to understand *why* their gelatin mold didn't set properly with certain fruit but worked fine with the same recipe using different fruit.

The author was formerly a research chemist and has an academic background. There is a lot of technical information contained here (which was a huge plus to me, but won't suit readers looking for a straight cookbook containing mostly recipes).

Because of the nature of the interconnectedness of the ingredients we use in cooking and their relationship to one another, this book is sometimes difficult to navigate. The chapters are arranged thematically: Flavor, Proteins, Fruits & Vegetables, Grains, Perfect Sauces, On Freezing, Baking, More Desserts, and an index. I made use of the search function often on the electronic copy which I received for review. Much of the information in the book is referenced in other chapters, so this isn't a book which is easily read cover to cover like a novel.

For cooks looking for good background info about why things work (or don't) in the kitchen and how to improve standard recipes without a huge amount of trial and error, there's a lot to love here. For readers looking for a cookie-cutter cookbook, this is emphatically not what you're looking for.

Kitchen science 4 stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

As a huge fan of the TV show “Good Eats” I was really looking forward to reading “KitchenWise: Essential Food Science for Home Cooks” by Shirley O. Corriher. Ms. Corriher’s approach to food science and her simple explanations were always entertaining, informative, and useful.

Unfortunately, having seen “Good Eats” and possessing all the cookbooks from that series, there wasn’t too much new in this book. I enjoyed the explanations, and a few of the tips and tricks will be valuable in my kitchen, but much of the book has been covered elsewhere. I’m not really sure who the audience is for this book – there are too few recipes to make it a cookbook and too much science to make it a handy kitchen reference guide. I think I would mostly use this to understand what went wrong when something failed, a guide to trying something different. If that’s the case, then unfortunately this book doesn’t cover enough ground to make it worthwhile.

So – an overall enjoyable review of things learned elsewhere with a few new tips and tricks. And a good guide for learning what went wrong, although for pretty specific instances.

I requested and received a free advanced electronic copy from Scribner via NetGalley. Thank you!

Offers the hows and whys that tells you why Certain things happen in food preparations. She explains the various roles of ingredients. There are recipes throughout the book but this is not a cookbook. It is an understanding of how the ingredients react with other ingredients. This is quite helpful. I would need this book to be with my cookbooks as the book is packed with useful information. I know I couldn’t remember everything. It’s a lot to remember. I do think it will make me a better cook.

I’m one of those people who read research and wants to know ‘why’ something happens, so this book is perfect for me. I loved the explanations and liked the recipes. The recipes include short little explanations to explain why this must happen. What I really, really wish is that there were photos. Every cookbook needs photos, and this has none. Photos are such a necessity that it take what would have been a 5 star book down to almost a 3. Because the book is so interesting, I’m going to compromise and give it a 4.

While I enjoyed some elements of this book, it really frustrated me at times. The author uses science and an understanding of ingredients, heat, reactions, etc. to instruct you on cooking. She provides some recipes to illustrate her teachings (there are no photos or nutritional info and these are not the bulk of the book). It goes into great detail about this science, but often reads like a textbook. There are no photos and there's no levity to break up the text.

All that said, I would have loved the book if it had been helpful in what I use food science for -- finding ways to recreate great recipes and results with alternative ingredients.

I love cooking but I also juggle several challenges in my kitchen. I cook very frugally as a mom of 5 (3 still at home now) on a tight budget. I am also a health nut and tend to cook from scratch with natural and organic ingredients. I have a child who's a cancer survivor, a husband who's disabled, and I recovered from serious autoimmune illnesses by adopting a healthy diet and lifestyle, so my first priority in food is keeping my family healthy and not producing the best tasting biscuit. Lastly, I cook for kids who are gluten free, vegetarian, and sometimes dairy-free.

I frequently find ways to use kitchen science to do things like make really convincing gluten free or vegetarian versions of well-loved foods. For instance, when we started foraging a lot of pheasant back mushrooms my family loved the flavor but they were a little chewy in mouthfeel. I brainstormed about what had a similar mouthfeel and realized it could make a great vegetarian version of clam strips. I cut it into strips, marinaded it with some bouillon and some nori for sea flavor, and breaded and fried it, and it became a well-loved treat here. When Corriher started talking about all of the ways various flours and starches helped with baking, I was so hopeful that she would talk about ways to use mixtures of gluten free flours and starches to replicate gluten in baking and bread recipes. Even though she clearly knows all about how gluten free flours like tapioca starch and arrowroot work in recipes, she goes into extreme detail just about gluten recipes. She also cares only about the best tasting result, which goes against what I use the science for. I don't want to know that shortening and extra sugar will make a recipe better, I want to know how to use that knowledge for my benefit in finding healthier ways of getting the same result.

Even though I am a food science nerd, I had to make myself finish this book. It just gets long and frequently feels like a college lecture. If it had been actually helpful for my needs then I would have probably devoured it (no pun intended) but it was ultimately not very helpful for my kitchen.

I read a digital ARC of this book for review.

I'm a beginner-level cook and have no idea what to do in the kitchen, so KitchenWise is a much-needed addition to my bookshelves. I am sure to go back to the pages and consult Shirley's advice when I run into problems.

Serious cooks like to know everything about what they are cooking, and also want to know why. Shirley O. Corriher, is the award-winning author of two previous books regarding food chemistry, and has released KitchenWise: Essential Food Science for Home Cooks . This excellent book is essential for anyone who cooks and wants to know why things turn out how they do.

According to Corriher, “KitchenWise’s goals are to enable you to spot bad recipes and know how to fix them, to know some science of taste and flavor so you can make a good dish taste great, and to allow you to consistently prepare wonderful, delicious, beautiful food. Bon appétit!” Is there anyone out there who doesn’t want to fulfill that same goal?

The book has an entire chapter on flavor – and the differences between flavor and taste. Most of us haven’t thought of it before, but it’s important when improving cooking skills. Corriher also lists the chemical aspects of flavors – sweet, bitter, sour, umami, and salt.

There is a box after each recipe with “What this recipe shows” and an explanation of what we need to know. Each recipe illustrates the facts about her points, i.e., “cheese triggers umami flavor receptors,” and “The high temperature caramelizes sugars on the vegetables’ surface for great flavors and rich browning.” She also addresses problems with ingredients and tells how to solve those problems.

The section on Freezing is very helpful, and there are baking hints for everyone. The Sauce chapter is also very helpful, and has already been utilized for some sauces at home, proving that her information has been tested and researched so that we don’t have to.

The one negative about this book is that there are no photographs. It would have been nice to see what the recipes are supposed to look like.

Although I’ve been a cook and caterer for over 40 years, this book has enough information that I can’t believe all of the new things I have learned. This is a book I will go back to often and will continue learning. It is an excellent source for all cooks, whether experienced or novice, and would be a good gift for beginning cooks. High recommended.

Special thanks to NetGalley for supplying a review copy of this book.

I'm sure I recently mentioned this recently -- in March 2020, I hit my kitchen full-force in cooking and baking, however I hit a wall in June. I was so tired of cooking that I reverted back to bowls of cereal for dinner (Lucky Charms anyone?). I lost my interest and only after picking up my cooking-related galleys and trying recipes, have I regained my love of cooking and baking. Reading through KitchenWise has really helped me get out of that rut. Having close friends who are scientists (and my day job involves daily interactions with researchers) this author peaked my interest in her background as a research biochemist. 'A little science can free you to be much more creative in the kitchen' - how cool is that? I'm the furthest away from being a scientist, however, SCORE! You don't really stop (or at least I don't) to think about the different between taste and flavor. Reading the chemical makeup of five physical taste receptors, how the size and shape of a protein determines how to brine, ginger enhances flavor of fresh fruit, was all fascinating. 'Helping mother nature' wasn't something I really thought about -- I'm a fan of raw vegetables, fruits, on their own, but pairing them together and slightly seasoning or sweetening -- what what? I'd recommend this book for anyone who needs a bit of help or renewed enthusiasm for the kitchen. It's not scientifically overwhelming (or my brain would shut down), I do miss photos of recipes, and numbered instructions, but overall a good read and simple recipes.

This is an interesting cookbook. It presents the recipes inside in a scientific manner...the what and why the recipe evolves as it does. Learning how the cooking process works and the chemical reactions should make the failures in cooking less. If you know why something didn't work and what the solution may be, your successes in the kitchen will grow exponentially.
I requested and received a NetGalley ARC to peruse and offer my opinion freely.