This is worth buying.

The title does not boast. If you own just one cook book, it should be this one. I reference mine constantly.

There is about everything under the sun in this book. It's thick and filled with a wide variety of foods and their offspring in almost every category. Some of it is a bit fancy and complicated but if it were all kept super-simple, it'd become super-boring pretty quickly.

This is by far the most straightforward, easy to understand, and most comprehensive cookbook available. I have tried a great many recipes (and variations) from this book, and they have all turned out exactly right. There is no better starter cookbook that I have ever come across, and I don't think any kitchen is complete without a copy. Perfs.

I think that Bittman's non-The Basics "How to Cook Everything" is probably better. I like his approach, but this was a little too basic.

Still -- it would be a great first cookbook for those first learning to cook.

There is nothing that, together, The Bittman and I can't cook together. Ice cream, black beans, beets, quiche, chickpea dishes of all sorts, roast chicken... it's easy enough for someone still learning her way around the kitchen to understand, but the flavors and concepts and flexibility of the recipes lend themselves well to someone with more skill. And he covers, really, EVERYTHING. It's great! I can buy random stuff at the grocery store and not worry in the slightest, because MB and I will tackle it together and all will be delicious.

I am obsessed with this book, use it all the time and am currently working with its bread recipes. If I could only have 1 cookbook (and at last count, I had about 60), I would choose this one.

This is less of a cookbook than a textbook on cooking, but a very useful textbook to have around. In the intro, Bittman makes the claim that in our quest for fast, convenient food, we've given up way too much in flavor and nutrition, and really haven't saved much time in return. His goal with this book is to teach the basics of cooking, so you feel confident making any basic home-cooked meal. In this, I think he succeeds.

And for time-pressed families, his quick meals strike me as more nutritious and better tasting than Ms. Thirty-Minute-Meals Ray's concoctions - and just as quick and easy.

One minor quibble I would have would be with the ethnic recipes. I suspect that most are not close to the real thing. I'm not familiar enough with all of the cuisines to know the difference, but some of the declarations he made about Eastern European and Middle Eastern dishes and coffee drinks I would consider flat out wrong. For example, he suggests that blini are just crepes with a little more egg in the batter, when actually they get their distinctive taste from yeast, which crepes do not have. I'm sure the crepe substitution would be just fine for most of his readers, so it isn't a huge deal, but look elsewhere if you really want to learn about another cuisine.

borrowed from the library and used it constantly, now it's on my to-buy list. clear, easy directions; great photographs; lots of helpful tips and great techniques to use as a jumping off point.

The section on eggs was a revelation. Low heat! Who knew?