Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking

Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking" by Samin Nosrat is nothing short of a culinary revelation. This beautifully written and visually stunning book goes beyond traditional recipes to explore the fundamental elements that make food delicious: salt, fat, acid, and heat. What sets this book apart is its approachable and intuitive framework for understanding cooking. Nosrat breaks down complex culinary concepts into simple, easy-to-understand principles, empowering readers to become more confident and creative in the kitchen. By mastering the interplay of salt, fat, acid, and heat, home cooks can unlock the full potential of any dish, from simple salads to elaborate feasts. The book is not just a collection of recipes; it's a comprehensive guide to the art and science of cooking. Nosrat's infectious passion for food shines through in every page, as she shares personal anecdotes, cooking tips, and insights gleaned from years of experience working in professional kitchens. What's more, the book is beautifully illustrated with vibrant illustrations and helpful diagrams that bring the concepts to life. Whether you're a novice cook or a seasoned pro, "Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat" is sure to inspire and inform, helping you elevate your cooking to new heights. In conclusion, "Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat" is a must-have addition to any cook's library. With its engaging writing style, practical advice, and mouthwatering recipes, it's sure to become a beloved companion in the kitchen for years to come.

I bought it a long time ago but never got around to reading or listening to it until a few weeks ago. I am just stunned by how amazing the book is. I am in Love with this book. It's the perfect balance of knowledge, tips, passion, stories, and anecdotes. Fun, yet also meaningful and impactful - a very rare mix indeed. This is easily one of the top ten cookbooks ever in my mind. It's a pleasure to read and listen to. Samin is like a great college professor, not the ones who read from the Textbook, but ones who engage you and share their joy of what they love, full of stories and anecdotes. They spark you to think for yourself, and they actually have more knowledge than any dry textbook could ever have. Reading/listening to this book is like spending a long weekend with a really good friend who has ADHD but is a master chef with world-class cooking experience. They just dump all their knowledge and love of cooking over the weekend, cooking dishes with you. At times, it can be overwhelming with all the knowledge and hot tidbits she provides, but Samin is so warm, humble, and unpretentious, her tone is so calming, you just go with the flow. But I am going to have to go back and listen and read the book multiple times and take notes, so that I can fully absorb the immense knowledge she has so generously shared with us. Thank you She really wants you to understand the concepts and empower you to make better food with the knowledge she is sharing. It's not about “I am an amazing Chef so copy me”. It's "I love food and cooking great food, and here are the secrets I used to understand the how and why to create great food, so can you too. I look forward to watching the Netflix series.

The book is divided into two parts. Part one covers the four elements of good cooking: Salt Fat Acid and Heat. The second part covers recipes and recommendations. In part one, the four elements of good cooking are covered in detail. For example – some of the headers in the salt section: What is salt, salt and flavor, how salt works, cooking foods in salted water, using salt, how to salt, layering salt, balancing salt, and improvising with salt. A really useful page is a salting calendar. In a very user friendly format, she spells out when to salt your foods, like a turkey can be salted 2 days in advance, a chicken 1 day in advance, cabbage salted 15-20 minutes before being used in a slaw. The fat section has subtitles like: What is fat, fat and flavor, how fat works, and using fat. There is a two page fold out spread on The World of Fat, which was fascinating. It covers what type of fat is used primarily by a country or region – for example India had ghee, grapeseed oil and coconut oil, while Brazil had palm oil, neutral oil, olive oil, and lard. The acid section was my favorite, just because I’m always hearing chef’s say something needs more acid. Some of the sections in acid include: What is acid, acid and flavor, how acid works, and using acid. Heat was the last element covered. The sections in heat included: What is heat, how heat works, and using heat. She covers everything from coddling and poaching to stewing and braising. Again, a wealth of knowledge. Part two is recipes and recommendations. This section includes kitchen basics, cooking lessons, suggested menus and further reading. The recipes are divided into: salads, dressings, vegetables, stocks and soups, beans grains and pastas, eggs, fish, thirteen ways of looking at a chicken, meat, sauces, butter and flour doughs, and sweets. There are plenty of full, complete recipes, but there are also lots of ideas for recipes. Just quick thoughts on what to do with an ingredient. For example in beans, she doesn’t actually have a bean recipe. She talks about soaking them and cooking them and then gives ideas of what you might do with the beans. She mentions a salad of cranberry beans, macerated onions, toasted cumin seeds, feta cheese and cilantro sprigs to a lunch honoring Deborah Madison. Salt Fat Acid Heat is a book that I know I will return to time and time again. I will probably reread it, or parts of it, several times to help the ideas stick. So much knowledge!

A few years ago, it seemed like Great Lent snuck up on me. (Well, to be truthful, it seems like this every year). As a Greek Orthodox priest, this meant more evening services and a restricted fasting diet. With my wife having gone back to school, it also meant not much time for cooking supper. Our solution was to try home delivery meals. We figured we could cut down on the time we spent selecting recipes and shopping at the store. This was one of the best decisions we’ve ever made. Not only were the ingredients fresh and measured out, but it also taught me how to cook—and I’m the guy who once cooked a frozen pizza with the cardboard still under it! So began my love affair with cooking. But, soon, I wasn’t satisfied with just following a recipe. Don’t get me wrong, the meals were delicious, but my curiosity was kicking in—I wanted to know *why* the recipes worked. What’s the secret to combining ingredients? What made these home delivery meals so great? I soon discovered the answer to my question, and it came in the form of this wonderful book: Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking by Samin Nosrat. Nosrat not only writes well, but she expertly explains how you should put things together to make a delicious meal. If you understand the balance between salt, fat, acid, and heat, then you can cook almost anything. Perhaps, the best part of the book is the charts. These charts are divided by regions of the world, and then by countries so that you get the main fats, flavors, and acids used in those areas. This means that you can mix and match to cook a dish and make it taste like it’s from any part of the world. My only regret is that these charts didn’t come unbound with the rest of the book so that I could lay them out on my kitchen table to explore. I not only recommend this book to folks like me—who want to know the “why” of cooking—but to anyone who has to cook. After all, knowledge is power, even in the kitchen.

I hardly ever use a recipe when I cook. I look at what I have in my kitchen and make whatever I can from whatever I have. I joke with people when they say they love something I threw together: "Well, I'm glad you enjoyed it. I didn't write it down, and I may never make it again." Of course, I also have failures. What that happens, I'm glad I will never make it again. Even after countless years of cooking and baking, this book has helped me learn and grow. You know how sometimes you make something . . . and it's good . . . but it just needs a little something . . . but you don't know what? SALT, FAT, ACID, HEAT will solve it. My cooking and baking have improved so much since devouring this book, and I do mean devouring it! First, I watched the 4-part series on Netflix. Then, I bought the Audible audio version because I love listening to Samin. She is a happy, food-loving, life-loving person who smiles when she talks, and she seems to genuinely enjoy everyone she knows while she does everything she does. She is a down-to-earth no-pretention gal. So cool. THEN, I finally broke down and bought a hard copy of the book because, well, with a great cookbook, you gotta have a hard copy. I studied it as though I were a student and loved it. It is destined to become a classic. It is beautifully written, beautifully illustrated and a fun read. I learned so much. Would you believe I never knew how to properly salt water for blanching vegetables? (Yes, I salted water in the past, but not the way this book trained me to do.) Good grief, I'm a senior citizen who has been cooking for far longer than I care to admit. AND I DIDN'T KNOW HOW TO SALT THE DARN WATER CORRECTLY? Who knew that there's a big deal secret behind salted water? (I sure didn't.) What I love the most is that now, when I throw a meal together, and I want it to taste more like restaurant-good instead of thrown-together good, I can do it. And I can do it easily. Thank you, Samin. I really appreciate that. So, if you want a cookbook that will make you look good and make it look like you really know what you are doing, buy it.

Samin Nosrat is one of the two patron saints of cooking. She stands right next to my mom on the pedestal of food education. I hate being tied to recipes (because I rarely in my life outside of my mother's kitchen ever had ingredients on hand--I was poor for many years, or living with an obsessive minimalist who didn't believe in keeping a food or ingredient cushion or "unnecessary spices," but recently because I am so busy I go months without grocery shopping). I can always tell when something is missing from my dishes, but I didn't always know how to fix it. I bought this book about 2 weeks ago, and after reading about half of the section about salt, my cooking has already improved dramatically. It's written halfway as a cookbook and halfway as a text book about how to cook. It's got an entire page the charts when to salt different types of food for maximum flavor. It's got an entire page of types of salt, another page of salty foods to add to your plate to create balance, and that's literally just the chapter on salt. I love the tone that she uses to write her book, it is so friendly, and memorable, and humble. She doesn't pad her pride by omitting tales of kitchen woe and failure, there are many times when she uses her own failed cooking experiences as an example of what not to do. These vivid examples stay in my mind as I cook my own food, and have helped me to make fewer mistakes--and be less afraid of those mistakes--on my cooking journey. A cookbook that is a delight to read is a rarity, but this one really takes the cake (pun intended). Ms. Nosrat finds perfect balance between a beautiful, memorable narrative, and helpful charts for the science of cooking. (Beautifully illustrated by Wendy MacNaughton.) I've regretted many purchases, this is not one of them.

If you are looking for just a cookbook of recipes from the show, you can download those on Samin's website. If you want to learn more about the science of cooking that goes beyond the site and series, this book is a MUST have. It is structured more like a text book, but the print, humor, and beautiful drawings make it both easy and entertaining to read and learn. A HUGE plus are the fold outs charts of key ingredients and flavors from around the globe. I read the first part twice and was surprised to see how much I missed in the first read. You will honestly start feeling like a professional cook after reading and applying your knowledge and wisdom from the book. The recipes are all wonderful, and the suggested meal plans and pantry essentials are also a nice bonus. I gave this book 4 stars for ease of navigation. The recipes and links to other sections in the book are not referenced (this would make a great hyperlink source in e-book), and you end up having to scurry back and forth from the TOC and index to find them. I made lots of notes throughout the book (mostly based on tips from the series). Some of the recipes between the book, site, and series are not consistent. For example, I made the Focaccia bread from the recipe on the site, which said to stir dough with spatula until just combined. In the series, they were kneading and punching the dough. As a result, I ended up with dried out crumbly dough and loose flour on one end of the tray. Also the recipe text on the site is fine print size and hard to read. Finally, I added more key content to the Index for easier reference. Really not a huge deal. Like the author says, it's about understanding key concepts and experimenting on your own, and not following the recipe to the T.

I really like this cookbook. It wasn't what I expected after listening to a radio interview with the Author but am both captivated & intrigued by the information!!! The reasons for the addition of Acid ingredients and the ways to use it are what has captured me. (My body is NOT a fan of fat or salt so will keep to my avoidance practice but WILL make good use of the Acid/Heat parts of the book.) This book is a work of art! A collaborative effort by TWO ARTISTS! THANK YOU BOTH! I plan to give a couple of copies of this book as gifts. And I can't forget to say how much I LOVE the colors!!! And the style and... I LOVE THE COLORS! The information and the colors elicit a strong desire on my part to cook - and I had given up on cooking because it was so boring! Ladies, you have won over a convert! I am going to experiment with using Lime Juice to replace Vinegar in ALL the recipes because I'm allergic to Vinegar's (fermented stuff I guess - it makes me retain fluids)... So, last year I switched to Organic Lime Juice because I figured it would add that necessary 'whatever' to salads in place of the Vinegar. It works great. Yes, it does change the flavor a bit, but I have gained a new appreciation for LIMES. I've used most of the herbs/spices mentioned in the book for much of my life - but many of the combinations and the reasons why they work are new to me and the results so far are rather AMAZING! My next experiment will be to make fridge veggie pickles with Lime Juice. Shrimp pickled in Lime Juice (Ceviche) is beyond GREAT so why not pickle veggies the same way. Some of my cookbooks from India have great recipes using Lime Juice so...With THIS MARVEL OF A BOOK - I'm off and... COOKING AGAIN :) Thank you Samin Nosrat and Wendy MacNaughton.