Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat cover art

Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat

Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking

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Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat

By: Samin Nosrat
Narrated by: Samin Nosrat
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About this listen

The international sensation – award-winning chef Samin Nosrat distills the four key principles anyone can use to elevate their food and learn to cook instinctively.

'Revolutionary' YOTAM OTTOLENGHI
'A masterpiece' NIGELLA LAWSON

A Sunday Times Food Book of the Year and a New York Times bestseller

While cooking at Chez Panisse at the start of her career, Samin Nosrat noticed that amid the chaos of the kitchen there were four key principles that her fellow chefs would always fall back on to make their food better: Salt, Fat, Acid and Heat.

By mastering these four variables, Samin found the confidence to trust her instincts in the kitchen and cook delicious meals with any ingredients. And with her simple but revolutionary method, she has taught masterclasses to give both professionals and amateurs the skills to cook instinctively.

Whether you want to balance your vinaigrette, perfectly caramelise your roasted vegetables or braise meltingly tender stews, Samin's canon of 100 essential recipes and their dozens of variations will teach you how.

©2018 Samin Nosrat (P)2018 Simon & Schuster, Inc. Cooking Food & Wine Political Science Politics & Government Thought-Provoking

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All stars
Most relevant
Finally, someone explains the principles behind cooking, rather than just a series of seemingly random steps!

The author reads very well, making it a really pleasant listen, even the third or fourth time through.

Highly recommended

Ideal for anyone interested in cooking

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I was already incorporating tips from the salt chapter by the time I moved onto fat.

great advice

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My background:
M 36. I cook about as often as my wife, but none of us have any professional experience.
I prefer to know ingredients over following a recipe.

Description
The cook Samin Nosrat takes shows us a world of cooking through the lens she has come to see food.
Carefully considering Salt, Fat, Acid and heat, and adding thematic ingredients of different regions allow you to create delicious food from all over the world.
The book is not a set of recipes, but equally entertainment and introductions for how to approach salting, using fat, using acid and applying heat to make any dish taste delicious.

Concerns
The conversational style and dense flow of information can lull you into consuming the book as entertainment rather than cooking education.
It requires focus and diligence to sponge up the vast amount of knowledge shared in such a short time.

Strengths
The book is succinct. It does not repeat itself outside of overarching principles that naturally repeat throughout.
It is entertaining. Filled with small anecdotes and told in a very conversational style.
There is a wealth of knowledge and tips that you can keep coming back to.
The narrator (which is also the author) is passionate and has a great and friendly voice.
There is a great pdf attached that you can print out that has an overview of so many of the concrete applications of the general principles given in the book.

Conclusion
This is the perfect book for those who wants to be a better cook. Who wants to honour each ingredient, but is unsure what that means exactly.
The book is packed with information and entertaining to listen to. So multiple listens are warranted.
Recommended.

Learn to honour your ingredients

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this book is a wonderful guide for no longer being reliant on recipes. the content is really clear and accessible, allowing you the confidence to be created in the kitchen

brilliant introduction to cooking

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Great overview of cooking methods as well as using the different elements to be a better cook as well as improvise in the kitchen. If you cook a lot, you’ll find it covers some fairly basic information but also the way it structures that knowledge it gives you a new understanding of how different elements affect food and relate to one another. It’s like having visited a few places and then suddenly been shown a map of them and you go AHA! Thoroughly enjoyed it and also learned new things about the science behind how different foods transform from the addition of salt, fat, acid and heat as well as covered gaps in my knowledge of those elements. Certainly enhanced my toolbox of cooking knowledge and it’s a book I’ll refer back to as I experiment in the kitchen.

It’s like being given a map

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