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Smitten Kitchen Every Day: Triumphant and Unfussy New Favorites: A Cookbook Hardcover – October 24, 2017
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A happy discovery in the kitchen has the ability to completely change the course of your day. Whether we’re cooking for ourselves, for a date night in, for a Sunday supper with friends, or for family on a busy weeknight, we all want recipes that are unfussy to make with triumphant results.
Deb Perelman, award-winning blogger, thinks that cooking should be an escape from drudgery. Smitten Kitchen Every Day: Triumphant and Unfussy New Favorites presents more than one hundred impossible-to-resist recipes—almost all of them brand-new, plus a few favorites from her website—that will make you want to stop what you’re doing right now and cook. These are real recipes for real people—people with busy lives who don’t want to sacrifice flavor or quality to eat meals they’re really excited about.
You’ll want to put these recipes in your Forever Files: Sticky Toffee Waffles (sticky toffee pudding you can eat for breakfast), Everything Drop Biscuits with Cream Cheese, and Magical Two-Ingredient Oat Brittle (a happy accident). There’s a (hopelessly, unapologetically inauthentic) Kale Caesar with Broken Eggs and Crushed Croutons, a Mango Apple Ceviche with Sunflower Seeds, and a Grandma-Style Chicken Noodle Soup that fixes everything. You can make Leek, Feta, and Greens Spiral Pie, crunchy Brussels and Three Cheese Pasta Bake that tastes better with brussels sprouts than without, Beefsteak Skirt Steak Salad, and Bacony Baked Pintos with the Works (as in, giant bowls of beans that you can dip into like nachos).
And, of course, no meal is complete without cake (and cookies and pies and puddings): Chocolate Peanut Butter Icebox Cake (the icebox cake to end all icebox cakes), Pretzel Linzers with Salted Caramel, Strawberry Cloud Cookies, Bake Sale Winning-est Gooey Oat Bars, as well as the ultimate Party Cake Builder—four one-bowl cakes for all occasions with mix-and-match frostings (bonus: less time spent doing dishes means everybody wins).
Written with Deb’s trademark humor and gorgeously illustrated with her own photographs, Smitten Kitchen Every Day is filled with what are sure to be your new favorite things to cook.
Look for Deb Perelman’s latest cookbook, Smitten Kitchen Keepers!
- Print length352 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherKnopf
- Publication dateOctober 24, 2017
- Dimensions8.35 x 1.17 x 9.42 inches
- ISBN-101101874813
- ISBN-13978-1101874813
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“This is the kind of book you could easily cook out of for a month straight without tiring of it. You could also simply sit down and read it cover-to-cover, thanks to Perelman’s honest, funny, and at times charmingly self-deprecating personal anecdotes that introduce each recipe. Where Perelman really shines is in coaxing big flavors out of minimal ingredients. . . . As with her first book, she shot all the photos herself in her own home kitchen, further adding to that sense of aspirational approachability. And really, that’s the Smitten Kitchen magic: recipes that are ingeniously creative but so accessible that they leave you thinking, ‘Why the hell didn’t I think of that?’” —Eater
“Equal parts tongue-in-cheek commentary and measuring instructions, Perelman's style is relatable and fun. Her self-deprecating jokes are enough to make any novice cook feel comforted, and her well-thought-out recipe caveats will impress the most experienced baker. Perelman fills her latest cookbook with pages and pages of ‘real recipes for real people,’ as it says on the inside cover. I trust her to give me a great recipe for just about anything, and when a friend gives me a rave review, I tell them, ‘Deb hasn't let me down yet.’” —Gabriela Saldivia, NPR
“No one delivers recipes inspired by equal parts curiosity and appetite quite like Smitten Kitchen’s Deb Perelman, and [here] she celebrates the ‘unfussy but triumphant’ recipes that make her . . . really excited to cook and eat. Try getting through the book without flagging the Jam-Bellied Scones, Bacony Baked Pintos with the Works, and Lemon Meringue Pie Smash, and we’ll be amazed.” —Epicurious
“[The] Smitten Kitchen blog has won fans and followers with its spot-on recipe curation and Perelman’s winning prose—she makes you feel like you’re her friend. This book is a collection of recipes that, she writes, ‘don’t just fit into our lives, they make us happy.’ Readers can reclaim joy in the kitchen, too, with cauliflower wedge salad, mini-matzo ball soup, tomato and gigante bean bake.” —The Boston Globe
“Deb Perelman, the beloved food blogger and author, finally returns with her second book, five years in the making. Taking the name of her popular blog, the book is so much more: Of the cookbook’s 115 recipes, 101 are brand new. Each recipe is accompanied by a photograph shot by Deb (as she’s simply known to her many followers), herself. . . . It’s no wonder this lovely new book took half a decade.” —Chicago Tribune
“A tremendously appealing collection of recipes whose headnotes strike chord after rousing chord. Yes, of course I want those Pizza Beans and Pretzel Linzer Cookies. And why have I never heard of Jam-Bellied Bran Scones before—or had the sense to put jam in the belly of any baked good at all?” —Kristen Miglore, Food52
“Filled with fun and easy—but delicious and totally Instagramable—recipes that will have you actually looking forward to hitting the kitchen at the end of a long work day.” —Bustle
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
(or, hooray for breakfast, dinner, and cake)
One of the delights of life is eating with friends; second to that is talking about eating. And, for an unsurpassed double whammy, there is talking about eating while you are eating with friends. People who like to cook like to talk about food. Plain old cooks (as opposed to geniuses in fancy restaurants) tend to be friendly. After all, without one cook giving another cook a tip or two, human life might have died out a long time ago. —laurie colwin, Home Cooking
We home cooks have never gathered in force to speak out in defense of home cooking. So the image of cookery as drudgery lives on. —marion cunningham, Lost Recipes
This isn’t the cookbook I had expected to write.
When The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook headed to the printer in 2012, we were a family of three. Our two-year-old was eating table food, but in a dabbling way. Mostly, I cooked the food that I was excited to eat and little about having a kid changed how I went about it. In the years since, we’ve added another delicious little human to our family and while most people will tell you that going from 0 kids to 1 is the big adjustment, in the kitchen, the shift from 1 to 2 was more dramatic. All of a sudden, it wasn’t just us plus an extra half-portion stripped of offending chile peppers or with some couscous on the side to bait a suspicious toddler to the table. Quickly, half our family (ahem, the noisier half) needed square meals at predictable times and I, well . . . I began to understand why not everyone jumps with joy when it’s time to make dinner.
On any given night, most of us have countless really excellent reasons not to cook—be it picky kids, spouses, or roommates, or the extinction of a 9-to-5 workday that might actually get you home in time to assemble dinner for yourself, your friends, or your family. Even the people who are ostensibly cheering for you to cook can do more harm than good, be they restaurant chefs who forget you may not have a line of prep cooks at your disposal, recipe writers who alienate the budget-conscious by insisting on the “best” olive oil, or home-cooking advocates who tell you the very best thing you can do for your health/your children’s IQ/the economy/environment/nothing short of this earth (oh, the pressure!) is cook dinner every night—people who have clearly not spent a lot of time in the chaos of most households at Hangry O’Clock. (Roughly, 30 minutes after pizza would have been there already, at least around here.)
I began to wonder if it was time to write about the realities and practicalities of cooking. You know:
•How to Keep the Joy in Cooking
•42-ish Minute Meals (But You’ll Have to Rush)
•Things to Make with Broccoli and/or Sweet Potatoes, the Only Vegetables Everyone Agrees on This Week
•Just Kidding, the Baby Ate Blueberries for Dinner Again
There was only one problem: I didn’t want to write this book at all. And so I did not. I continued sharing new recipes a couple times a week on my website, Smitten Kitchen. I launched a newsletter. I worked with people to usher the technology behind my site into its second decade of web life. I started working with the Food Network on a digital series. I spent a lot of time around the table with friends and family and couldn’t help but notice that what was regularly taking place—telling stories, workshopping silly armchair philosophies, cracking up over the baby’s antics—barely resembled the compromised, plodding hypotheses I’d set out about cooking when life gets busier.
What I have always loved about cooking is the way a happy discovery—a new way to meatball, a four-ingredient farro that has caused more than 800 comment section exclamation points, cookies that look like clouds and taste like pink lemonade, crunchy spaghetti with crispy eggs, a birthday cake you can make from scratch in just over an hour (yes really) or maybe even four of them—has the power to completely change the course of a day.
I like the way that when you make something new and awesome the first thing you want to do is tell another friend about it so they can make it, too. I like the way following a recipe to the letter can feel like handing the reins over after a long day of having to make all the decisions, but also that pulling off a good meal when you least expected is the fastest way to feel triumphant, even if your day left you short of opportunities to. I like the way that when you sublimate your wanderlust in a dish—a cacio e pepe addiction picked up in Rome or a Thai salad with crispy shallots, lime, and fish sauce—it becomes a gateway, or an escape hatch, to so much more than dinner. I like the way that when you cook at home, you don’t actually have to compromise a thing; you get to make exactly what you want, exactly the way you want it, and then you get to invite all your favorite people over to pass the dish around. I like the way a great meal makes grouchy people ungrouchy or a thankless day filled with thankless stuff into a hilarious one. And I like the way the prospect of a fudgy one-bowl chocolate cake with a raft of chocolate frosting one hour from now might make us cancel our other plans.
And the thing is, people—that is, you, the people who have come along for all or part of Smitten Kitchen’s decade-plus story—had been trying to tell me this the whole time.
The stories in the comments and in my inbox are as much about the cooking as they are about the life around it—the delight from the surprise of a good meal, the person who thought they hated broccoli or Brussels sprouts finding that with the right preparation, they adore both, or finding, on a morning you think there’s no reason to cook, a new pancake recipe that you’re too curious not to make. This doesn’t mean that these dishes aren’t practical, that they cannot fit into a busy life, that they cannot accommodate picky eaters and grocery stores with limited imagination, it simply means that they don’t do that before—they don’t prioritize that over—making food that we are really, really excited to eat.
This book is how—forgive me—I got my groove back.
These recipes don’t just fit into our lives, they make us happy.
Happiness is great big bowls of beans that we dip into like nachos.
It’s my kids’ beloved roasted sweet potatoes given the dry-rub barbecue treatment, slaw and all.
It’s the famous chopped liver you get in a windowless basement restaurant on Christie Street that’s like a Bar Mitzvah that never ends (in a good way).
It’s a crunchy three-cheese pasta bake that tastes better with Brussels sprouts (yes, Brussels sprouts) than without.
It’s giant white beans cooked to the tune of baked ziti, bronzed melty lid and all.
It’s the hopelessly unapologetically inauthentic kale Caesar we make almost every week of the year.
It’s the English-muffin meets-Jewish-deli-rye-bread recipe I promised to a library full of people a book tour ago.
It’s a modern matzo ball soup and the beef bulgogi tacos I fell in love with at the Jersey shore.
It’s a whole-grain bread for people who don’t like to knead or time things, a bread that works on your schedule and not vice versa.
And such a great big noisy fuss over cake (and cookies and pies and Popsicles).
The jam-filled, sprinkle-rolled butter cookies I made at the bakery where I worked in high school.
The gooey oat and chocolate cookie bars that will win bake sales.
The strawberry tart that the stray friend we picked up at a party sixteen years tago coached me through over Skype from Germany.
The chocolate icebox cake to end all icebox cakes, with peanut butter too.
The crumb cake with impeccable priorities—that is, more crumbs than cake—and a very familiar name.
A sticky toffee pudding, but breakfast-style.
The blueberry muffins I made fifty ways before finding my forever formula.
And an accidental two-ingredient granola.
So while this isn’t the cookbook I expected to write, I like the one that’s emerged much more—a celebration of breakfast, dinner, cake, and everything in between, and maybe a bit of resistance, too: against the idea that cooking must be an obstacle to overcome or and that the food we most want to eat cannot also be practical. This book is all of my new favorite things to cook, and I hope you’ll find a few worthy of your Repeat Forever files, too.
deli rye english muffins
yield: 12 miniature (21/4-inch) or 8 standard-sized (31/2-to-33/4-inch) muffins
My favorite thing about this recipe is where it started, which, specifically, was in front of a library full of people in St. Louis while I was on a book tour. Someone asked me how I came up with recipes, and I’m sorry if it disappoints you to learn this, but I’ve never been good on my feet and was as fumbling and inarticulate as ever: “Uh, sometimes they just come to me? Or I’ll just get an idea when I’m on the crosstown bus and . . .” It was pretty bad, but since there was no one to rescue me, I just blathered along. “. . . Like, this morning, I was thinking how cool it would be if you could make an English muffin that tasted like rye bread, because they’re my two favorite kinds of toast to go with eggs,” and someone said, “You should! Now you can start your second book!”
So, as fated—eh, 2.5 years and one kid later—I began here. I learned a few things along the way. English-muffin recipes are divided into two camps: those that require pastry rings to hold the batter in shape, and those that use a thicker dough but allow you to free-form them. The first category make for great nooks and crannies, but are unquestionably a pest to maneuver. The second category have some nooks and a few crannies but don’t require any specialty-store purchases. To get the results of the peskier method without the hassle, I found you had to use a softer dough.
And then, once you’ve made English muffins that taste like a good deli rye bread, what do you do with them? Toasting them with sweet butter is always my first choice. They’re also excellent with a heap of scrambled eggs or a crispy fried one, maybe with a little hash underneath. And they’re good for any kind of sandwich you’d normally put on rye.
21/4 teaspoons (from a 7-gram or 1/4-ounce packet) active dry yeast
1/4 cup (60 ml) lukewarm water
3/4 cup (175 ml) milk or buttermilk
2 tablespoons (30 grams) unsalted butter, plus more for bowl
1 tablespoon (15 grams) granulated sugar
2/3 cup (80 grams) dark rye flour
11/3 cups (175 grams) all-purpose or bread flour, plus more for surface
11/2 teaspoons coarse or kosher salt
2 teaspoons (5 grams) whole or ground caraway seeds
Oil, for greasing bowl and coating skillet
Cornmeal, polenta, or semolina, for sprinkling
Combine the yeast and water in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook. Let rest 5 minutes; the yeast should dissolve and look slightly foamy. Gently warm the buttermilk, butter, and sugar to lukewarm (not hot), and add it to the yeast mixture, followed by the flours, salt, and caraway. Use the dough hook to combine until a shaggy, uneven dough forms; then let the hook knead it down on the lowest speed for 5 minutes, until the dough is stretchy and cohesive. Butter or oil a large bowl (or do as I do and remove the dough long enough to oil the mixing bowl, then return the dough to it), and let it proof at room temperature, covered with a dishcloth or plastic, for 1 hour. (That’s it!)
Lightly spray a large baking sheet with oil, then generously sprinkle it with cornmeal. Lightly flour your counter, turn the dough out onto it, flour the top, and gently deflate it with your hands. Divide the dough into pieces; twelve pieces for minis, eight for standard muffins. Roll them gently into balls, and place on the cornmealed baking sheet, pressing gently to flatten them into discs (about 3/4‑inch diameter). Spray the tops lightly with oil, and sprinkle them with cornmeal, too. Cover loosely, and proof at room temperature for 30 minutes more or up to 3 days in the fridge. If chilled, let them warm up for 30 minutes at room temperature before cooking.
Heat oven to 250 degrees.
Let a cast-iron skillet warm over the lowest heat for 5 to 7 minutes, then lightly coat the inside with neutral cooking oil for insurance against sticking, but not enough that the muffins will fry. Dust off the excess cornmeal from the muffins. Let the bottom of each muffin brown slowly and very gently in pan, about 5 minutes. (If yours are taking longer, you can bump the heat to medium-low.) Flip them, and cook for another 4 to 5 minutes. You can flip back and forth again if needed.
Shake the excess cornmeal off the baking sheet, and transfer pan-toasted muffins to oven. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes until sides are firm to the touch. Cool to almost room temperature, then fork-split.
Product details
- Publisher : Knopf; First Edition (October 24, 2017)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 352 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1101874813
- ISBN-13 : 978-1101874813
- Item Weight : 2.9 pounds
- Dimensions : 8.35 x 1.17 x 9.42 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #35,715 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #51 in Vegetable Cooking (Books)
- #99 in Cooking for One or Two
- #300 in Quick & Easy Cooking (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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About the author

Deb Perelman is a self-taught home cook, photographer, and the creator of smittenkitchen.com. She is the author of three New York Times bestselling cookbooks including The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook, which won the IACP Julia Child Award. Deb lives in New York City with her husband and two of the cutest kids she's ever met.
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Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers find this cookbook's recipes easy to follow and delicious, with beautiful colored photos for each recipe. Moreover, the book reignites customers' love for cooking and offers great weeknight meals, while being entertaining and funny. They appreciate the author's approachable writing style, with one customer noting her conversational tone, and find the book well-put together with a friendly voice.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers enjoy the recipes in this cookbook, finding them delicious and easy to follow.
"...Bacony baked pintos with the works This is a personal cookbook from a food blogger, so of course there will be a short story preceding..." Read more
"...I've made the jam-bellied scones (easy and delightful with the jam "surprise" in the middle- and fiber-y enough to make regularly); oat..." Read more
"...I also like the variety of types of food -- pastas, rice dishes, barley dishes, tofu dishes, peanut sauces, waffle brownies, infinitely adaptable..." Read more
"...with Tahini was very easy (I bought pre-shredded carrots) and packed full of flavor...." Read more
Customers find the cookbook easy to follow, coming together effortlessly and being simple to read and understand, with one customer noting that the author writes instructions in a conversational tone.
"...I've made the jam-bellied scones (easy and delightful with the jam "surprise" in the middle- and fiber-y enough to make regularly)..." Read more
"...Many of the recipes in this book are pretty easy to whip up with ingredients that one might typically have in their pantry..." Read more
"...Carrot Salad with Tahini was very easy (I bought pre-shredded carrots) and packed full of flavor...." Read more
"...I love the way Deb writes her instructions in a conversational tone, just like I'd hear my mom or mother-in-law explain a family favorite to me...." Read more
Customers find the cookbook to be a fun collection of recipes that reignites their love of cooking, with one customer noting it serves as an approachable inspiration for family meals.
"...This book has really motivated me to cook more and expanded my cooking skills...." Read more
"...As in, TWO LARGE COOKIES, THE PERFECT DESERT FOR TWO (or one, TBH). So obviously that's the first recipe I baked, which I will get to...." Read more
"...Each one has me excited for dinner, and delighted by my results. I can customize them a bit here and there, making it flex to fit my family...." Read more
"...There's a lot of new content, and not much duplication from the site...." Read more
Customers appreciate the beautiful pictures in the cookbook, with colored photos accompanying each recipe.
"...treat to have a paper copy of Deb's recipes and beautiful photographs to hold in your hands. I will update as I cook through it...." Read more
"This is a beautiful cookbook with a colored photo for each recipe (it's shocking to me that not all cookbooks have pictures for each recipe)...." Read more
"...Per usual, the photography and copy is fantastic as well." Read more
"...The recipes are explained well, the photographs beautiful, and I am excited to make most of them!..." Read more
Customers find the cookbook entertaining, with one mentioning that the short stories are fun to read out loud and another noting the personal anecdotes and witty banter.
"...Since discovering her, I have fallen hard for her witty banter, conversational recipe dialogue, and (of course) her recipes...." Read more
"...She's funny and very relatable! I have already tried two recipes from this cookbook and my family loved them both!..." Read more
"...Unlike a lot of food bloggers, she is a true writer, super entertaining and not "OMG THIS IS THE BEST RECIPE EVER!!!..." Read more
"...Plus, Deb is a fine writer and her short stories are entertaining to read out loud while in the kitchen...." Read more
Customers appreciate the cookbook's weeknight meals, with one mentioning it's great for dietary restrictions, and another noting it's easy for families.
"...Love the easy, everyday recipes that we can make on a busy weeknight...." Read more
"...The broccoli toasts and one-pan farro, those are great weeknight meals...." Read more
"...This book does not let us down. Deb will keep us cooking!" Read more
"Excited for Deb's new book, her first one is my most used cookbook." Read more
Customers appreciate the cookbook's pacing, with one noting its well-organized structure and another highlighting its magical two-ingredient oat brittle recipe.
"...; oat brittle (honestly, I wouldn't bother a second time- but my daughter feels differently);..." Read more
"...I have made: - Magical Two Ingredient Oat Brittle (indeed magical, delicious on yogurt or by itself) -..." Read more
"...YOU WILL LOVE IT!" Deb is personable, honest, and totally devoted to her craft. I will buy every cookbook she writes until I die...." Read more
"...Gorgeous photos, well put together...." Read more
Customers appreciate the voice of the author, with one noting her personable and friendly writing style.
"...Everyday meals? Unfussy meals? I would have new favorites? Sounds good...." Read more
"...YOU WILL LOVE IT!" Deb is personable, honest, and totally devoted to her craft. I will buy every cookbook she writes until I die...." Read more
"...about this beautiful book is the food styling/photography and Perelman’s friendly, funny introduction to each recipe..." Read more
"...It's fabulous and I can't wait to start making recipes. Deb writes in a voice that makes it fun to read...." Read more
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- Reviewed in the United States on November 14, 2017Here’s a review from someone who actually tried multiple recipes from the book.
I’ve been a reader of Smitten Kitchen for many years, although I can’t remember making a recipe from her blog. I think I wasn’t a very confident cook at the time and the kitchen I was stuck with wasn’t easy to work around. Plus I was in grad school and didn’t have the motivation to cook often so I would only admire the photos from her blog. Then one day I moved to a different city to start a new job and stocked up a nice little kitchen for myself. I started planning meals I could bring to work everyday and looked to my small collection of cookbooks for recipes. It felt like I would try a handful of recipes from a book, and maybe 1-2 recipes would be good, but then sometimes they weren’t, and then I became disinterested in the rest of the book very quickly.
So far I’ve had the complete opposite experience with Smitten Kitchen Everyday. I hadn’t visited her blog in a while and was excited to see a new release from Smitten Kitchen on Amazon. Since I passed her first book (I was under the impression there would be too many recipes using sour cream and goat cheese?), I was excited for a chance to try a Smitten Kitchen book called “Everyday”. Everyday meals? Unfussy meals? I would have new favorites? Sounds good. I almost passed this one too since I’ve been trying to keep my cookbook collection to a minimum. My first impression upon scanning the pages was skepticism. Uh, cheesy beans? Corn pizza? Tomato clam chowder? Smoked fish sandwich? Hmm…
One day there were strawberries in the fridge that were becoming overripe. What should I do with them? Oh, I know! There’s a blueberry recipe in the book. I can substitute the blueberries with strawberries. And since I didn’t have yogurt on hand, I would use buttermilk instead. I don’t have turbinado sugar and have no intention of buying it, so I will leave that out. The result was delicious, fluffy, and moist. It was my first time making muffins too, by the way. I have found that this has been a common theme in the book, in that her recipes are very flexible, but will still come out full of flavor.
Below is a list of recipes I’ve tried so far (pictures to be uploaded).
Perfect blueberry muffins
Sushi takeout cobb
Carrot salad with tahini, crisped chickpeas, and salted pistachios
Red lentil soup, dal style
Spiced carrot and pepper soup with a couscous swirl
Grandma-style chicken noodle soup
Smoky sheet pan chicken with cauliflower
Bacony baked pintos with the works
This is a personal cookbook from a food blogger, so of course there will be a short story preceding each recipe. If you enjoy reading her blog, then you will enjoy reading her cookbook. I didn’t mind at all and found it made it more fun to read and that’s one of the reason’s I collect cookbooks. The recipes were very easy to follow as I’m prepping and cooking, and include a lot of helpful notes. I believe a photo also accompanies each recipe.
I have to say I greatly appreciated the addition of metric units and weights, which is incredibly rare in American cookbooks. Although I’m American, I have no idea what a small carrot or onion looks like, and would rather not spend time debating whether a potato looks medium enough at the grocery store, nor do I have any intention of measuring 12 cups of spinach. It just makes grocery shopping easier and I can scale recipes more easily.
I was surprised by some of the negative reviews. I found them overly dramatic and ridiculous. Spoiler alert: This is not a vegetarian cookbook. This is not a 5-ingredient cookbook. This is not a 30 min or less cookbook. This is not a “cook a new recipe everyday after work” cookbook. If there’s baked potato in a recipe, it’s going to take an hour to bake them. If it’s too much work to throw a potato in the oven, then don’t make baked potatoes for breakfast on a Monday morning. If you can’t bring yourself to put an extra 5 minutes filling 10 scones, then don’t fill them.
Don’t be deterred by the negative reviews. The same people who think the recipes in the book are fussy would be too lazy to cook from recipes that have more than one sentence in a step. This book has really motivated me to cook more and expanded my cooking skills. I’m looking forward to trying more recipes from the book, including the cheesy beans and corn pizza. I think this will be my go-to cookbook for weekly meal planning for now.
- Reviewed in the United States on October 28, 2017I just got my copy! I am so excited to start cooking from this book. There are multiple recipes in each category that I can't wait to try- all of which have the Smitten focus on flavor with minimal effort. Not ZERO effort, but one bowl or pot where possible, no unnecessary steps. I can't wait to try this new collection of vegetable forward dishes- and treats.
Taste is subjective, but I'm frankly baffled by the negative reviews. I'd normally wait to review a cookbook until I'd cooked from it a while, but I wanted to balance what I think it may be a case of "over expectation"- where nothing could match the mental hype. I have Deb's first cookbook and cook from it (and the blog) regularly. This book seems faithful to the ethos of the SK blog- real food, from a loveably flavor-obsessed cook, who's committed to feeding her family (even though dinner happens every day) and doesn't enjoy dishes any more than the rest of us.
If you are on the fence- get it! You won't be disappointed- it's a rare treat to have a paper copy of Deb's recipes and beautiful photographs to hold in your hands. I will update as I cook through it.
Update: So far, I'm still loving this cookbook. If you are a follower of Deb's blog, these recipes will be familiar territory- they are very "Deb" which I think is a good thing. I've made the jam-bellied scones (easy and delightful with the jam "surprise" in the middle- and fiber-y enough to make regularly); oat brittle (honestly, I wouldn't bother a second time- but my daughter feels differently); kale Caesar with broken eggs (a simple take, but yum! Great idea to add the egg & super dressing); avocado black bean salsa (delicious! Also a kid-fave); broccoli-cheddar wild rice fritters (I think I over-broccolied mine- need to do over); Halloumi roast with eggplant, zucchini & tomatoes (I could eat this every day- yay, leftovers). And I still have a looong list I haven't made yet...
Top reviews from other countries
- Sarah MathisonReviewed in Canada on July 6, 2024
5.0 out of 5 stars inspiring. Dependable. Delicious.
My favourite thing about this book is everything! I have given copies away to friends. I like the photography, I like the narrative, I like the instructions. Great book.
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Monzerrath SánchezReviewed in Mexico on November 28, 2019
5.0 out of 5 stars genial
el mejor libro de cocina del mundo, después del Smitten kitchen 1... recetas originales y comprobadas, fotos geniales y la forma de escribir de Deb es genial.... definitivamente me iria por un tercer libro de ella
- EmilyMReviewed in Australia on December 3, 2019
5.0 out of 5 stars Simple and delicious
The perfect book for this season of life with small children (ages 6, 4 and 3). Delicious and simple, this is my handbook for weeknight dinners.
- Gegp2000Reviewed in France on February 14, 2018
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent second book
Love, love, love this book. Have tried several recipes already and they all came out perfectly! I'm a big fan of the blog, this book is a very nice follow-up. Definitely one of my favorite and go-to books for everyday cooking.
- RincewindReviewed in the United Kingdom on January 18, 2018
5.0 out of 5 stars Bought it for a Smitten Kitchen fan
Bought it for my girlfriend which is a Smitten Kitchen fan and loves cooking. She loved it and enjoyed this book more than the previous one as it has recipes she can use more often. The pictures are amazing and the book edition is of great quality. I have only read a few pages here and there but I like Deb style of writing with a short introduction before the recipe and sharing some of her life experiences which makes you somehow feel close to the author. I like the style of food and I will definitely borrow it sometime and try it.