Cooking for Geeks: Real Science, Great Hacks, and Good Food

I like cookbooks, not just for the recipes, but also to read. This one meets that need perfectly. It's such an interesting look at food and its preparation. I was looking for a Christmas gift for my son-in-law when I found this. He's a former IT guy and is now a nurse. He loves the creative side of cooking. One Christmas, he made bacon ice cream for all of us (not the same way that was demonatrated in the video above!). I can't wait to see his reaction to this. I have looked through the book and have just ordered a second one for my son. He was a bio-med science major in college and is now an optometrist. He, too, enjoys the creative side of cooking. I think he will also enjoy it. I am debating on getting one for my daughter and other son-in-law. They are both Hotel/Restaurant majors/grads. My daughter now teaches in the program. It's been awhile since she's taught the class on food born illnesses, but that information is in here as well. Might be a good resource for them.I admit to not having cooked any of the recipes. I've have read some interesting ones, however. I have really enjoyed the odd tips and hints (one was putting the muffin tin on the open door of the dishwasher to spray it with cooking spray). I have a feeling this will be one of those books passed around after opening on Christmas. Good thing we will have two!

I am an amateur cook at best. I was looking for a book that would increase my knowledge about ingredientes, spices, techniques, and equipment in the kitchen. This is the book for me. I can read it for hours at a time, and will keep reading it over and over to learn all of the techniques. The best part is that it explains what is actually happening with the molecules in the food, which allows me to apply the knowledge and techniques in unorthodox ways. It is great to know things like why medium rare beef tastes best to most people, how to cook food to acceptable safety standards (I like some meat more rare than FDA recommended, nice to know options and risks.), and also great to know why some things fail in the kitchen. The only bad side of this book is the interviews. The book is probably 1/2 scientific techniques and knowledge from the author, 1/8 recipes, and the remainder 3/8 interviews. The interviews are written in question/answer format, but can be very dry as many of them do not relate directly to ingredients or techniques in the kitchen. I could read this book from front to back, except I fall asleep during the interviews. And there are so many of them. Only a few of the interviews have been useful in increasing my knowledge in the kitchen. The rest just reiliterate topics that were already presented in very long winded manner, or have nothing to do with cooking (a lot of talking about creating food blogs...I am an amateur, I will not be writing food blogs, and do not feel that they are essential to the cooking process.). Although I am not a fan of the interviews, the book contains enough useful information that it deserves at least 5 stars. Very well written and scientifically sound.

I downloaded the free trial (which is generous, covering the contents table, the index, the first 3 chapters, and part of the 4th chapter, out of a 7 chapter book) and decided not to buy for the reasons I describe below. This review is based on that trial version. It is possible that the problems I had would not appear in the full version.The Kindle edition is said to be optimized for the larger screen of the Kindle DX. Unfortunately, it does not seem to be decently formatted for Kindle at all. The problems I found were present in both on my Kindle DX and in Kindle for Mac.There appear to be many illustrations, but what I got in the Kindle edition was captions which either had no picture or had a picture unrelated to the caption and the surrounding text. I could match up a few of the pictures (which are mostly very small) with distant parts of the text, but many were missing altogether. I did not find a single picture that was near the right place and had a matching caption. This seems to be a beta release of the book, being sold at a premium price by Kindle standards.There are also problems with displaying tables: sometimes we get columns that each contain a fraction of a word, and sometimes the table can't be shown in full even with panning. It is possible that these result from problems with Amazon's software. Likewise, sidebars and footnotes are inherently hard to handle on any device that reformats the book on the fly to fit the screen, font size and other settings, so the relatively minor issues they cause are forgivable.The book's content is mostly good, though it is unnecessarily padded with interviews, and contains oddly interspersed recipes (probably in sidebars in the hard copy book). There is the basic advice that we'd get from any cook book, but the aim is to teach us underlying principles, such as the important bits of the chemistry of cooking, so we don't have to rely on following a recipe slavishly then wondering what went wrong if it did not work out.If you don't get or enjoy geeky jokes and references to software engineering, or if you'd rather be told what to do in detail instead of how things work in general, look elsewhere. If you are fascinated to learn which amino acids cause the umami taste, or you'd like to know how to calibrate your oven thermostat, or you get a kick out of a dangerous-looking demonstration of how to make ice cream using liquid nitrogen, then this book is a good place to go. If you care about the layout issues, I suggest checking whether they've been fixed before buying the Kindle edition.I'll revise this review if the layout problems are fixed for the Kindle. In the meantime, 4.5 for content (for its target audience) and 2 for Kindle usability, averaging to 3 stars.UPDATE April 3, 2011.==============I bought the full Kindle version right away, as I mentioned in replies to some comments. My apologies for not updating sooner: new job, state, city and house intervened.The formatting problems were less than I had feared but were still present with the full purchased version. Fortunately, O'Reilly (the publishers) are not like most others and pretty quickly produced an improved version which has few, if any, formatting issues. If only all publishers were as conscientious.Getting the most out of an e-copy of this book really needs a screen big enough to handle the layout of the original, with its tables, photographs, sketches and sidebars. I have used the Kindle version on my Kindle DX and on my iPod Touch. The Kindle does not always handle the pictures and so on well; the iPod is too small to do the book justice. This is one case where, for me, reading on the Kindle is not as satisfying as usual. The appearance on my laptop screen is much better, but that's my least-favorite way to read a book. Perhaps someone who has read it on an iPad can comment on whether that is better.But I like the book a lot more than it might appear from all these criticisms. If I had waited for the paper copy I'd have written a 4 or 5 star review at the start. I'm glad to have the book in some form, and with the improved layout the author's presentation comes across better. I'd now give 4.5 stars for the content (I like the emphasis on underlying principles but still think there's a bit of padding) and 3.5 for the pleasure and practicality of using the Kindle version. I've revised my score to 4 stars.

I bought this book for the ginger lemon soda and keep going back to it, sometimes for a recipe but mostly just for fun (I guess that qualifies me as a true geek!) There aren't many recipes in here; it's not a cookbook. However it gives great explanations for reactions in the kitchen. So if you want to know why that steak got tough, this is the book to get. Great reference and great coffee table book (for the right type of person, of course!)

There is now an edition of this book in Portuguese. When I bought this one, it was not translated yet.The book presents the kitchen in a different perspective, sometimes based on chemistry reactions or physics phenomena. Explains things like how the temperature affect the food, changes driven by chemicals like salt or sugar, etc. Saying it that way, may seem that the book is too technical or monotonous, which is not true. Well written, with lots of interesting information, presents many answers for questions that a curious mind may have. A geek thing.It also contains recipes with measures expressed in both imperial and metric system, making the reading easier for non-Americans. I believe it is worth to buy.

Pese a las múltiples referencias frikis que contiene (por ejemplo: compiladores, algoritmos...) no es un libro dedicado en exclusiva a a geeks, sino un libro para todos aquellos que a la hora de cocinar no quieran sólo saber que hacer, sino cómo hacerlo.Plagado de explicaciones, te explicara desde cómo funciona el sentido del gusto a como mejorar el entrecruzamiento del gluten para obtener bollos más esponjosos. Desde como cocinar correctamente una crepe (y sus 100 desastrosos primeros intentos), hasta el arte de desnaturalizar el colágeno con poco calor para obtener deliciosa carne de pato. No es un libro para cocinar el día a día (aunque tiene muchas recetas válidas), sino para comprender una receta cualquiera, para entender por qué las cosas se hacen como se hacen, o por qué unas recetas se hornean a 160 ºC y otras a 180 ºC.Muy recomendable si deseas saber más sobre cocina o eres una persona de mente curiosa a la que no le asusta experimentar.

loved the book. so easy to read and informative

This book is exactly what the title says, and since I am a big geek, I loved it :-)You will get recipes, physics and chemistry and improve the way you make food.