For my birthday my wife got me "The Food Lab" and I'm dying to read it, but it's like 800 pages and we have a toddler to take care of. The time has not been made yet.

Read the intro section - it'll be maybe 30 minutes, and then just flip through and find recipes or topics that look interesting. It's a reference book. Check out the chili section, the weeknight chili might be a good fit. I've had the book since it came out and there's still whole sections I haven't read

I've been reading it in 5-10m increments for 5+ years. That's all you need to learn something neat.

Food lab isn’t that dense I think it’s only 100 pages then recipes. The best reading is the first tome of modernist cuisine. The knowledge contained there on food safety really is mind blowing. Nobody else has dared to publish that kind of info in an accessible form.

His articles on SousVide cooking on SeriousEats have been very helpful to me. His writing style is accessible to beginners such as myself. And the results always beat restaurant foods in taste for similar meals.

That's a ridiculous thing to say without saying which restaurants (or some idea of a class thereof that) you're eating in. As if any 'dummy' armed with some articles is 'always' beating 'restauraunts'.

Don't get me wrong I'm not anti home cooking or massively pro restaurant, I love cooking & food, large categories of restaurant (and especially 'restauraunt') are no longer interesting to me due to the cost vs. taste relative to what I can do, but I don't kid myself, there's plenty of places I can eat the food of professional cooks and be impressed, inspired, enjoy it, find it good value; especially with company. And without touching the Michelin guide.

> That's a ridiculous thing to say without saying which restaurants (or some idea of a class thereof that) you're eating in. As if any 'dummy' armed with some articles is 'always' beating 'restauraunts'.

FWIW, I suspect your comment is getting downvoted because of the nasty tone, not because of the larger point your making.

Thanks, I try my best not to make assumptions about tone when reading comments, because it's not well conveyed in text. I did my best to quote " 'dummy' " for example, to allude to 'for dummies' texts rather than to describe the commenter I replied to as such. On re-reading myself though, probably that was still misunderstood.

As for writing comments, it helps not to worry about internet points :).

Agreed, I enjoy his YouTube videos, but find other YouTubers who are make as-good or better content, but his articles on Serious Eats were in a league of their own.

There are gems in his videos, but it's a few tidbits here and there compared to the content in his written articles.