Talking Good Cooking with Harold McGee

For me, this interview was the equivalent of hitting a bottom of the ninth, game winning homerun. While it still baffles me about Alton Brown and his stance against interviewing with me for this site or my other writing outlets, I am always grateful that others in the culinary world find it worth their while to spend a few minutes to talk cooking and food with me.

And no more so than Mr. Harold McGee. I was quiet honestly in shock, and still am, over opening the email and reading about setting up the interview. After all, he's the man who wrote the book, literally, on using science to improve cooking. Way, way before AB even thought he might someday change up the cooking show genre.

So, to talk with Mr. McGee about his new book, Keys to Good Cooking, was just about the best thing ever for a cooking/food geek ever hope for. Now if AB ever changes his mind, that will be a tape-measure grand slam.

Harold McGee Offers Sage Advice in New Book

Dec 14, 2010 Lisa Hechesky

Looking at the science of everyday life lead Harold McGee to discoveries in kitchen and about food. In his newest book, Keys to Good Cooking, the renown food science guru provides expert advice for the home cook to improve his or her knowledge and skills.

Keys to Good Cooking

Building on the success of On Food and Cooking, the gold standard reference book explaining the hows and whys of cooking and science in the kitchen, McGee presents a succinct manual for curious cooks wanting more than just a collection of recipes. Keys to Good Cooking demystifies the act of cooking, debunks popular culinary myths and delivers information to assist any cook, from the novice to the seasoned. The 24-chapter tome discusses an array of topics from food and kitchen safety to recipe selection. The crux of the book, however, explains science and how and why it effects what is done in the kitchen. Also, it serves as an essential companion book for most many cook.

McGee, a former literature and writing instructor at Yale University, penned On Food and Cooking in 1984 and the subsequent revised edition in 2004 won a James Beard Award for best reference book in 2005. He currently writes the food column, The Curious Cook, for the New York Times and his own food science blog also by that name.

Q&A with Harold McGee

* Why did you decide to write this new book?

People who have read and enjoyed those others have pointed out to me that when they were having a particular issue in the kitchen, a particular problem or question, it often took them quite awhile to find the answer in the many, many pages of those other books that also include cultural history and chemical makeup and that kind of thing. So, I thought it would be useful to put together a book that would concentrate the practical elements of those earlier books of mine and expand on them. And make a book that would be usable not so much in the armchair but standing up in the kitchen in the midst of cooking.

* Are you steering away from recipes? You’re book is more about understanding the technique and the concept behind what’s happening.

Yeah, but I wouldn’t say exactly steering away from recipes. But there are lots of recipe books out there already. We have no shortage of recipes. But we do have a, maybe, too strong reliance on recipes and not enough of a basic understanding of what we’re doing, especially if we cook only a few times a week, as most home cooks do these days. If you’re a professional and cook everyday you develop, very quickly, an understanding—even if it’s just intuitive—of what’s going on. So this is a book that’s meant to supplement recipes with information that they often don’t provide.

* Why do you think recipes are written more as directions, step-by-step, rather than trying to understand those concepts the home cook may not know?

I think for a recipe writer those things may not be directly relevant or they assume that most people are going to know or something like that. It is hard to say, there are so many different writers of recipes and styles of recipe writing. Often there are space constraints, especially if they are writing for newspapers or magazines. Their editors are always trying to cut out stuff, so you end up with the bare bones.

* Which, then, puts the novice at a disadvantage.

That’s right

* And that’s where you come in to try to help us understand what’s left out.

Yes, and also to give you some perspective on recipes because recipes often sound as if this is the only way to do things. Usually there are lots of different ways to get to a good result. So I try to include that information as well. How to chose a recipe based on what is you’re looking for or what your kitchen has to offer in way of tools.
* Do you see science as being more accepted in the kitchen now versus when you wrote your first book?

Oh yeah, back then everyone thought it was kind of a strange connection to try to make and assumed anything to do with science and food must have to do with manufacturing of strange new snack foods and that kind of thing. Happily times have changed and people now realize that science isn’t a particular application or a particular body of knowledge, it’s more of an approach of curiosity and desire to understand things. And that it has a lot to offer the professional cook and casual cooks that don’t get to put in that many hours at the stove. For them, especially, understanding a bit about what’s going on can make a big difference.


Read the rest at Suite101: Harold McGee Offers Sage Advice in New Book

If you are interested, the book would be wonderful as a present for yourself or another cooking geek in your life.



** Photo credit: Karl Petzke**