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Cooking at Home: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Recipes (And Love My Microwave): A Cookbook Hardcover – October 26, 2021
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JAMES BEARD AWARD NOMINEE • ONE OF THE BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE YEAR: New York Post, Taste of Home
David Chang came up as a chef in kitchens where you had to do everything the hard way. But his mother, one of the best cooks he knows, never cooked like that. Nor did food writer Priya Krishna’s mom. So Dave and Priya set out to think through the smartest, fastest, least meticulous, most delicious, absolutely imperfect ways to cook.
From figuring out the best ways to use frozen vegetables to learning when to ditch recipes and just taste and adjust your way to a terrific meal no matter what, this is Dave’s guide to substituting, adapting, shortcutting, and sandbagging—like parcooking chicken in a microwave before blasting it with flavor in a four-minute stir-fry or a ten-minute stew.
It’s all about how to think like a chef . . . who’s learned to stop thinking like a chef.
- Print length400 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherClarkson Potter
- Publication dateOctober 26, 2021
- Dimensions8.34 x 1.18 x 10.3 inches
- ISBN-101524759244
- ISBN-13978-1524759247
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now.
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About the Author
Priya Krishna is a food reporter for The New York Times and the author of the bestselling cookbook Indian-ish. She grew up in Dallas and currently lives in Brooklyn.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Dave Chang
I am a bad cook who can make delicious food. Yes, I’m a chef, but I’ve long felt that cooking doesn’t come naturally to me. It took me a while to realize, though, that what “cooking” meant had long been defined for me, by others. First, by culinary school, where I was taught that there is a “right” way to cook and a “wrong” way to cook, whether it’s braising meats or saucing pasta. Then, early in my career, I worked primarily in European-fixated restaurants, where the whole point is to make the same thing, the same painstaking way, again and again. You have to follow the rules. You can’t just make stuff up. And so I forced myself to learn the rules.
Meanwhile, I never used to cook at home. In fact, I bragged in interviews about how my fridge was mostly just filled with beer. I lived in my restaurants. My apartment was a place to crash, so restaurant cooking was all the cooking I knew.
But that’s all changed now. I have a wife, a baby, and in-laws, and most of the time, it’s my job to feed them. I’ve had to learn to become a home cook for the first time in my life, and it’s entirely different from how I cook at restaurants. Now I make stuff up out of necessity, with my new guiding principles: to create something as delicious as possible, in the least amount of time possible, while making as little mess as possible.
At home, I am flying by the seat of my pants: I play fast and loose with my microwave, throw aesthetics out the window, and generally don’t adhere to any particular style or cuisine. When you’re busy and you have a family and you need to put food on the table, you do what you have to do. As I’m writing this, I am in the kitchen of a rental house, where my family has been quarantining because of the coronavirus pandemic. When we arrived, the cabinets had dried thyme and bouillon cubes—and that was it. I diluted a bouillon cube in water, mixed it with crushed tomatoes, and added some sugar, salt, and fish sauce that we brought with us. I served it over pasta. It was great.
And it was only after I started cooking at home that I realized that most of the rules you hear about cooking exist simply because someone made them up once. In our country, those rules are very often from a European perspective. They could be genius, rooted in science, or they could be totally arbitrary. But if all you’re taught is to just follow the rules, there’s no way to tell which is which. These ingredients only go with these ingredients. You don’t mix this with this. This recipe is a “project” while this recipe is “easy.” The fixation on rules means we’ve created generations of people who rely on recipes and can’t actually cook a dish without one.
But cooking is really simple if you do it the way I do now: a little sandbagging, a little food science, and a little intuition. Forget the “right” way to do things. Just learn to make it up as you go. Giving you the tools to do that, along with a whole bunch of dishes and ideas that work for me, is what this book is about.
Hi, it’s me—Priya. I’m switching to my perspective for a minute. This is how co-authorships work: I write as if I am Dave. In a lot of cases, I am literally just transcribing things Dave said to me. In others, I’m channeling my inner Dave Chang. But I wanted to interject as myself here, because maybe by the time you’ve gotten to this point you’ve realized you just purchased a cookbook
by a famous chef with no recipes and you’re confused. Or disappointed. Or panicked. Let me reassure you by saying that I felt all of that when I first sat down to write this book with Dave.
I kept it together for most of the meeting, but when I walked home, I was sweating. How the hell was I supposed to take the ramblings of this man who spoke mostly in philosophical ideas and sports metaphors and David Foster Wallace speeches and turn them into an actually useful cookbook?
The first few months, I just watched Dave cook. I took notes. I transcribed the rants. I tried to get him to abide by a rough recipe list we had put together, to no avail. I’d ask him how much fish sauce he put into the chicken stew and he would have already forgotten. I’d ask him to slow down on the flatbread so I could watch his technique and he’d accidentally go faster. I’d ask him to walk me through how to make galbi tang and he’d give me career advice that inevitably involved Game of Thrones references.
Once we had cooked together about a dozen times, I started to take what minimal bread crumbs he gave me and make sense of them at home, following the measurements I had estimated and written down just by watching him. For the dishes I had made some version of before (pasta cacio e pepe, eggplant parmesan) everything worked the first time; for the ones I hadn’t (frankly, anything involving large hunks of meat), there were a lot of disasters. I’d go back to Dave’s apartment, complain about how the recipe didn’t work, and the answer was always the same.
It works. You’ve just got to stop expecting to have instructions to blindly follow. You need to understand what makes the dish work, and go from there.
What he wanted me to do was to sandbag. If you spend any time with Dave Chang, that’s a word you will hear often—sandbagging. It’s a golf term for when athletes pretend to be bad in order to play with a higher handicap. It’s also used in kitchens, referring to the necessary evil of sometimes having to cook dishes ahead of time to keep up with a busy service. Sandbagging is about being clever and judicious—getting ahead so you can win—but too much of it can feel hackish.
In home cooking, sandbagging means you take whatever you’ve got, even if it’s not the top-shelf stuff, and find creative, resourceful ways to turn it into something delicious. When Dave first described this concept to me, I was a little confused. He shook his head and told me I already knew how to sandbag, pointing me to my first cookbook, Ultimate Dining Hall Hacks, which teaches college kids how to make amazing meals from an unexpected source: cafeteria food.
After some assorted failures, I gave in. Okay, Dave, I’ll play your game. I stopped writing down measurements. I added fish sauce to my salad dressing, tasting as I went, until I thought it was delicious. I added a little rice vinegar to the ginger-scallion sauce because it tasted to me like it needed acid. I boiled meat until it seemed done, and then took it out and cooked the broth until it reduced and tasted good. I was trusting my own instincts.
Little by little, I was doing my own version of sandbagging. I was making short ribs, and I had movie plans in an hour, so I put the lid on and cranked the heat up to get it done faster. I was making sukiyaki and I way overcooked the brisket, but instead of discarding it, I let the meat stew in the broth for a few more hours to make an extra-flavorful soup. I had leftover squash soup and
a ton of rice, and I remembered that Dave made this delicious dish where he cooked rice in coconut milk and herbs. I realized that the squash soup could act as a cooking liquid. I simmered the rice in the soup and ended up with this unbelievable risotto-porridge hybrid.
Let me preface all this by saying that I have written an actual cookbook with recipes. They’re in the title, in fact (Indian-ish: Recipes and Antics from a Modern American Family. Available wherever books are sold!!!). I am a food writer. I probably know more about food and cooking than the average person. At the same time, before working on this book, I cooked mainly Indian American food at home. I don’t buy a ton of meat (out of habit, I guess—I was raised vegetarian). I eat out a lot for my job (or rather, I used to; as I’m writing this, we are in month eight of the coronavirus pandemic), so it’s rare that I get to cook for myself and others. When working on this book, I blocked out certain weeknights and Sundays and invited friends over to eat (a special thanks to Lauren Vespoli and Kate Taylor, who happily taste-tested all my Dave Chang food experiments). I knew something in me had changed the other day when I casually made gomtang—a richly flavored Korean oxtail soup. Was it gomtang I would confidently bring to a Korean restaurant and present as the best version of that dish? Of course not. But it was delicious and nourishing to me and I can’t wait to thaw the leftovers for dinner this weekend.
You’ll see me pop up again throughout the cookbook—maybe offering my two cents about the process of learning a particular Chang technique, or being a voice of reason. I’m here for you. You’re going to come out of this at least a marginally better cook. You might, in fact, become a much better cook. But Dave’s whole philosophy is underpromising and overdelivering, so let’s go with “marginally” for now.
Product details
- Publisher : Clarkson Potter (October 26, 2021)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 400 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1524759244
- ISBN-13 : 978-1524759247
- Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
- Dimensions : 8.34 x 1.18 x 10.3 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #104,101 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #13 in Microwave Cooking
- #234 in Cooking for One or Two
- #696 in Quick & Easy Cooking (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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About the authors
David Chang is the chef and founder of Momofuku. Since opening his first restaurant, Momofuku Noodle Bar, in 2004, he has received six James Beard Awards, and has been recognized as GQ’s Man of the Year and a Time 100 honoree. In 2018, David formed Majordomo Media. He is the host of The Dave Chang Show podcast and two Netflix original documentary series, Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner and Ugly Delicious. His cookbook, Momofuku, is a New York Times bestseller.
PRIYA KRISHNA is a food reporter for the New York Times, and the author of the bestselling cookbook, Indian-ish. In 2020, she was named to Forbes' 30 Under 30 list, and she has also been nominated for an International Association of Culinary Professionals award for her journalism.
Customer reviews
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Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers find this cookbook has great recipes and helpful information about cooking techniques and methods. They find the recipes easy to follow and the dishes tasty. Many describe it as a fun and engaging read. However, some customers have issues with the organization of the book and find the content amazing or useless. There are mixed opinions on the readability - some find it easy to understand and well-written, while others find the printing difficult to read. The design is also criticized, with some finding it nice looking while others say it's not what they expected.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers find the recipes in the book great and practical. They mention it's about cooking techniques and using what you have at home. The recipes encourage flexible cooking, experimentation, and are easy to make. Readers appreciate the author's coverage of kitchen staples and how to use food grown at home.
"...does lend itself to the Kindle edition in terms of readability and convenience, which I highly recommend over the hardcover—unless that's your only..." Read more
"...It's about cooking techniques and using what you have (don't have a red onion? Use that white one the dish will be fine!)...." Read more
"...David goes through the basics of kitchen staples (thank you for saying knife block sets are a scam), how to tackle all the different types of meat..." Read more
"...Glad I did, because it just might be one of the most practical cookbooks I own...." Read more
Customers find the book full of useful information, tips, and tricks. They appreciate the clear purpose and practical approach. The food facts and science sections are interesting. The links in the text and index make it easy to jump to specific techniques, topics, and dishes. Overall, customers find the book helpful and resourceful.
"...Moreover, there are convenient links in the text and index for jumping to specific techniques, topics, and dishes...." Read more
"This book was AMAZING. It was a real confidence booster for me. I'm a mom, I cook dinners most nights. I get stuck in a menu rut...." Read more
"...I also love that he keeps the ingredients realistic...." Read more
"...layout, the advice given and the example recipes provided are the most useful, grounded, and practical I've read, especially for those that are on a..." Read more
Customers like the recipes in the book. They find the dishes tasty and fun to experiment with. The vegetable section is good, though some find the portion of the recipes excessive.
"...will have a shopping list - it's a cookbook about methods and combining flavors...." Read more
"...a good alternative for a nicer looking but still pretty easy and useful recipe book if you're looking for something similar to give as a gift)." Read more
"...soon you'll be ready to go into the kitchen and throw some stuff together that will taste great...." Read more
"...It came out as expected and really was a bit of a labor and flavor saver. Now if I could just melt butter without the spatter ......." Read more
Customers enjoy the book. They find the recipes fun and practical for home cooking. The style is engaging and enjoyable to read.
"tl;dr: - Good dishes that are fun to experiment with and practical for home cooking -..." Read more
"...tips and tricks in this book, and the writing style is really fun and engaging. However, it's focused about 75% on how to cook animal proteins...." Read more
"This is a fun cookbook. I gave it to my girlfriend for Christmas." Read more
Customers have mixed opinions about the book's content. Some find it amazing and engaging, with good food facts and science sections. Others feel the formatting is bizarre and makes the book useless.
"This book was AMAZING. It was a real confidence booster for me. I'm a mom, I cook dinners most nights. I get stuck in a menu rut...." Read more
"...The content didn't seem much better. Vague advice throughout such as "cook meat until done", "maybe use this many eggs?",..." Read more
"Love the concept behind this book. Fascinating read, full of great tips. Told from 2 totally different perspectives. Have learned a lot." Read more
"...And I agree with the other posters - the hardback format is an absolute waste of money...." Read more
Customers have different views on the book's readability. Some find it easy to understand and better than other cookbooks. Others mention issues with the pink printing, large fonts, and long sentences that take a page to say little.
"...hand, the design does lend itself to the Kindle edition in terms of readability and convenience, which I highly recommend over the hardcover—unless..." Read more
"...had to turn up the brightness on my lamp because I was straining my eyes to read the text. No good...." Read more
"..." and he can teach you how to use salt, heat, fat, and sweet in a way you'll understand. *However.*..." Read more
"...also these fonts are huuuuge, yo. ISWYDT dave chang" Read more
Customers have different views on the book's design. Some find it visually appealing, while others say the layout is poor and unreadable.
"...The layout was awful: giant multicolored font on top of brightly colored pages with tons of empty space. The content didn't seem much better...." Read more
"...As a book designer for the past 20+ years, I love original and beautiful layout, but i'm not fond of designer ego getting in the way of readability...." Read more
"...There are a lot of really odd design choices like blocks of white text on a yellow background (or vice versa), or black text on a dark green..." Read more
"Fast delivery, beautiful copy, great condition." Read more
Customers dislike the book organization. They say it feels like an unorganized blog and not a cool book.
"...The book organization is pretty bizarre where the expectation seems to be that you will read it like a textbook, in full...." Read more
"...However, the funky layout and general poor organization, hampers what would be otherwise great information...." Read more
"...Skimming around is even hard. It feels like an unorganized blog, not a cool book...." Read more
Reviews with images

Good dish ideas, shockingly bad design. Ok for intermediate cooks.
Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on November 12, 2022First, a note on the overall design: Before buying, I read a lot of complaints about the design and almost passed on this book. As a book designer for the past 20+ years, I love original and beautiful layout, but i'm not fond of designer ego getting in the way of readability. The print book probably could have been 200 instead of a bloated 400 pages.
On the other hand, the design does lend itself to the Kindle edition in terms of readability and convenience, which I highly recommend over the hardcover—unless that's your only practical option. Plus, I suspect the images look better on my iPad. Moreover, there are convenient links in the text and index for jumping to specific techniques, topics, and dishes. In any case, I recommend reading David Chang's "Momofuku" first, which is a beautiful and useful introductory book in the hardcover edition.
The substance of this cookbook is right up my alley. I don't like following recipes and rarely stick to measurements and exact ingredients, but use my own judgment and the foods and seasonings I have on hand. In this book, Chang doesn't hand you a fish so you can eat today, but teaches you how to fish so you can eat every day.
I'm not a great cook and generally avoid it, but I love Korean and Asian dishes, so I have to cook since I don't live in or near an Asian neighborhood. The sections on how to chose, prepare, and cook meats, fish, rice, and so on are alone worth the price of admission. And, evidently, Chang loves microwave cooking, as there are numerous references throughout the book on how to save time in the kitchen.
Bottom line: If you seek adventure in the kitchen and dinner table, Dave Chang's "Cooking at Home" is a reliable and accessible guidebook and a worthy companion to his other book, "Momofuku."
- Reviewed in the United States on January 10, 2022This book was AMAZING. It was a real confidence booster for me. I'm a mom, I cook dinners most nights. I get stuck in a menu rut. It's hard to feel like you're doing a good job. This book was all about "not every meal is the best" in a very encouraging, helpful, liberating way. It's about cooking techniques and using what you have (don't have a red onion? Use that white one the dish will be fine!). I've got post-it noted pages of ideas to try. My first day reading the book I was making dinner and used the ideas behind this book to make a dinner my family raved about!
This is not a recipe book where you will have a shopping list - it's a cookbook about methods and combining flavors. Even when there are recipes quantities are not listed (add some garlic). It's very freeing because I don't need someone to tell me how much salt to add - I can taste and know how much to add. Also I know there are certain things my family doesn't like - I feel free to adapt the dishes in this book to fit us. Because that's what it's all about.
This book has changed my approach to dinner! I read it in two days. I am so glad I did!
- Reviewed in the United States on October 28, 2021First, if you're looking for a traditional cookbook with pages of recipes and perfect measurements you can look elsewhere. However, if you are looking to truly up-level your cooking skill at home give this book a chance. This book is an attempt to collect your mother/grandmother's random cooking skills/knowledge/recipes as organized as possible in a book format.
David goes through the basics of kitchen staples (thank you for saying knife block sets are a scam), how to tackle all the different types of meat from what types to get, how to get them, how to cook them. This is the book to get if you're ready to step outside of getting chicken breast and ny steak in the meat section.
I also love that he keeps the ingredients realistic. Most of the recipes here do not require a trip to a high-end specialty store for some imported spices.
And I agree with a previous reviewer's comment regarding lack of vegetarian dishes, it's true. I would say over 50% of this book is more for non-vegetarians/vegans. But considering his restaurants are most famous for meat dishes I'm also not surprised by this.
- Reviewed in the United States on October 27, 2021When I first opened up this cookbook I was instantly disappointed. The layout was awful: giant multicolored font on top of brightly colored pages with tons of empty space. The content didn't seem much better. Vague advice throughout such as "cook meat until done", "maybe use this many eggs?", and "season to your liking with whatever you want" seemed incredibly unhelpful. The mostly unfamiliar Korean names also put me off, since I didn't exactly have a Korean cookbook in mind when ordering.
Before sending it back, I figured I'd give it a chance though. Glad I did, because it just might be one of the most practical cookbooks I own. And because of its simplicity, maybe one of the most beginner-friendly ones as well.
Turns out, once you start reading it cover to cover, most of the "vague" statements actually make sense. Either being specific truly doesn't matter or the topic was already talked about in detail (with a page number provided).
Oh, and despite the unfamiliar names, most use very familiar ingredients like soy sauce and ginger. And even if there is an ingredient you don't like, substituting or taking it out is hardly an issue.
Overall, even though I'm still not fan of the layout, the advice given and the example recipes provided are the most useful, grounded, and practical I've read, especially for those that are on a budget, just starting out, and/or don't have a lot of free-time.
- Reviewed in the United States on May 27, 2024There are some great recipes in here, but the real lesson is… just have fun cooking. This book is for anyone who wants to understand some basic rules about cooking delicious food at home and emboldened to experiment. DC provides a framework for cooking a variety of dishes but illustrates how to fill it in by using just your instinct and personal taste.
Top reviews from other countries
- K EReviewed in Canada on October 28, 2021
5.0 out of 5 stars You need this book
I buy a TON of cookbooks and this one is a must have. I feel like I will actually improve my cooking from this book. The only thing I don’t really care for is I really only care what DC had to say, I’m not sure why there is a co author.
- tomashReviewed in the United Kingdom on January 16, 2025
5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic
This is one of the best books I've ever bought. Very accessible no frill way of cooking Asian home food with great background on how to cook and plan around, especially if you like meat dishes. I agree that this is a book heavy on meat dishes as it gets you to cook whole chicken with broth or boiled beef brisket and what follows are ways how to make these into separate meals. Design is modern and colourful (quite busy and anxious), plenty of pictures ad tons of ideas what to do with veg and how to use microwave to cook nice food.
Edit. Made a few things from the book and confirm it's great. As someone else made clear this is a concept based book looking further than just recipes. As a professional chef I've never been more excited about making simple chicken broth again (the one in this book is absolutely stunning), chowder, juk, noodles etc and this book brings all the sparks back into cooking for me, for some reason. I can't recommend this enough, especially for experienced cooks and chefs. As a side note, if you're not a fan of David Chang and his writing and cooking, just save your money and look elsewhere.
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SABRINAReviewed in Italy on May 21, 2024
5.0 out of 5 stars Mio figlio lo adora
Richiestomi da mio figlio, gliel'ho regalato e lo adora.
- OP sharma; Jacque SharmaReviewed in India on April 6, 2022
1.0 out of 5 stars no recipes, just chatter
this is an expensive disappointment. very few ideas, lots of chatter, and i needed recipes for microwave cooking. a huge disappointment and terribly expensive. do not buy this book.
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Christoph NauheimerReviewed in Germany on February 23, 2022
5.0 out of 5 stars Grossartiges Buch
Endlich mal ein Kochbuch, welches auch ohne Vergrösserungsglas oder Lupe lesbar. Grossartiges Layout, ansprechende Rezepte und ein treffendes Wording. Musst have!