Betty Crocker Cooking Basics: Recipes and Tips toCook with Confidence

My 22 year old son was starting out on his own. I gave him this for his new home. Pictures were nice and recipes are simple. Only down side is he doesn't call and ask me how to make different dishes.I put myself out of a job. Lol!

Fantastic starter cook book! Bought our daughter and daughter in law each one of these for this past Christmas. They both seriously loved it,actually it suprised us how much they really loved the book and how excited they both were after spending some time with it. Our daughter used it to help order items it recommended that she didn't have for her kitchen and our daughter in law is thrilled with the quick but really great tasting meals as both her and our son work long hours. I definitely recommend this for those just starting out and looking for help in how to start a kit when from ground up all the way to the cook who wants to learn more to make cooking easier and fun. My husband and I both love cooking and have a pretty good amount of experience between us however there was even a few things I didn't really know so all and all we couldn't be any happier. Fantastic gift!

I have an older copy and bought this newer one for a friend who never was taught the basics. It has a lot of really helpful topics as well as recipes inside it! I also like how the recipes start out simple and get slowly more challenging to really help train the cook! I especially like the tips within each recipe that even include photos! My favorite dish in there is the Parmesan Dijon Chicken.Especially for beginners, it's really helpful that it has tips on how to measure different types of ingredients, tells you what kind of staples to have available, food and measuring substitutions, common prep techniques with pictures, food safety tips, herbs and what they taste like/what they go well with, how different salad greens taste/texture, and even how to set the table. But my favorite is how to plan for and cook Thanksgiving dinner!

Four and a half stars really. In the beginning the book advises that you read the recipe carefully all the way through before beginning - and I strongly recommend that you do - read everything on the recipe too. I found several mistakes, like in the Cook's Tip on Pad Thai talking about substituting linguine for rice noodles. It advises you to follow the linguine cooking directions and to skip step 3. Uh, that should be skip step 2 which covers preparing the rice noodles. In the recipe for Risotto the list of ingredients call for long grain white rice if Arborio rice isn't available - but the Cook's Tip on the next page says to use another short grain rice. From experience I know that long grain rice doesn't make a good Risotto, as it doesn't have enough starch. Short grain rice isn't readily available in my area, but medium grain works well enough. So far the mistakes have been easy to catch, but I don't know if I would give this book to a complete novice. I love the Beyond the Basics section. That part of the book is fantastic. I don't mean to discourage anyone from purchasing this cookbook, just understand some additional logic might be needed.

My eyesight is dimmer now but this is a easy to read and understand cook book and the print is readable.

I purchased this cookbook about 3 weeks ago and have only made 4 meals with it but I’ve loved every one!

This book is perfect for a beginning cook--or for anyone--but especially for a busy student/young adult. I tried two others, before I found this, the perfect one.

I got an older version of this book for my wedding 25 years ago and my kids loved the meals I made from it. Now my daughter is in her fist apartment and is learning to cook for herself so buying her a copy of this was a no-brainer. This version has some recipes that I aren’t in my version and vice-versa, but overall it’s a great book with lots of excellent tips! I highly recommend this for anyone just starting out in the kitchen!

Love this book. It has so much information in it. I have learnt a lot.

The contents of the book were fine, unfortunately the book when it arrived appeared to be a "second" with what looked like water damage to the cover and front pages. I would have returned it but it was a gift and there was not time to get a replacement. Very disappointed.

thorough and great gift for a niece who doesn't cook