Joshua Weissman: An Unapologetic Cookbook. #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Let me start by saying I LOVE Joshua Weissman. I watch every SINGLE video. I make ALL his recipes. His cookbook was pre ordered by me the minute he announced it. YET This cookbook is soooo basic. Avocado toast? Cinnamon toast? Jam and toast? Basic Mayo and ranch recipes. How to make stock. How to boil an egg. There’s a legit recipe for how to fry an egg. I just expected his culinary art to shine through. Instead I feel like I’m reading “How to cook for people who don’t cook”. His bread section seems okay and lengthy, but I’m celiac so that doesn’t help me. Guess I’ll stick to his YouTube channel.

One thing I am seeing in the 2 star reviews is a lot of "he's not being his zanny self!" "there is a recipe for a fried egg!!" "I am disappointed because this is for beginners and I, dear sir, am NO beginner"...

Allow me to remind you all that this book was written by a man, not just a YouTuber, who loves food and has likely had this dream long before he became popular in 2020. This book was made for EVERYONE and not just those who have been cooking for years and want more of a challenge. I promise you, these beginner home cooks you are referring to as being the only ones that will enjoy the book are NOT making homemade mozzarella, they are NOT making branzino and milk bread is likely a new thing to them. They could say the exact same thing; that this book has a few recipes for "them", but it's really for people that already know how to cook.

I wholeheartedly disagree with these reviews and I will tell you why. My fiancé and I are very different in the kitchen. He measures an 1/8 teaspoon pepper any time he cooks and is very "by the book" and prefers a lot of explaining. I on the other hand have been the main cook in my family, both living at home and as an adult, since I was 13. I go by feel and will often use a recipe as an idea / guideline more than gospel. I have recently become more interested in yeast breads (where you can NOT go by feel alone). Both of us have already fallen in love with Joshua's ability to make the kitchen a comfortable place for anyone. I would bet that most everyone will learn something in this book and feel JW's passion for things as simple as, yes, a fried egg. I think there should be great pride in making a book that is approachable enough for a beginner who just stumbled on But Better and wants to make their own Crunch Wrap Supreme and the folks who found him through the Leftover Challenge because they already watch other YouTubers.

I understand not everyone can use every recipe (here's looking at you, friend that complained the bread portion of a book where the author ALWAYS makes his own bread was too long because you are celiac.), but I promise, this book IS for everyone and every skill level. and if you look at it through the eyes of someone who wants us all cooking from home more and from scratch often, I think you will see the vision for what it is and realize that it delivers on every such promise.

Now, excuse me while I plan the next several date nights at home from this book.

Updated 9/16: I tried the recipe for salt butter and jam toast. I used a 33g slice of hostess white bread (as grocery store as white bread gets), 30g of Kirkland salted butter, 50g of knotsberry seedless blackberry jelly. All measured on an oxo food scale. Butter and jam weights were selected to be somewhere in the middle of his selected range. I was shocked at how much butter and jam this is. I don’t know how his recipe for white bread comes out but even if it’s double the size of its namesake “grocery store white bread” this is a sickening amount of butter and jam. I couldn’t eat more than 2 bites. In his picture it seemed he used far less jam and much less butter too, which confuses me a bit as to why the range extends out to such massive amounts. He didn’t give a weight for his bread slice so maybe it’s 150g or something massive that you might need this much butter and jam. This is the first piece of toast I’ve thrown away in probably a decade. Maybe user error for not making his bread? But even if I doubled up and made this a sandwich to get it “thicc” it’s still way too much butter and jam for my taste. I really don’t feel like this cookbook is going to set anyone up for success. I want to try the popeye’s chicken next, hopefully will update with a more positive result in a few days. I’m curious to see the results you guys get and what the folks on his subreddit will come out with.

The bottom line: this book is for Joshua’s fans. It is NOT for anyone who is on a tight budget there is not much new here you cant already get for free on his channel, and the few new recipes include simple things like how to make toast or cook an egg.

What you think of this book is largely going to depend on why you buy it. If you are a huge fan of Joshua Weismann then for you this is probably a 5 star review, and I have no doubt that the Amazon ranking will be flooded with 5 star ratings from adoring fans. That is the biggest strength of this cookbook to be honest. It’s a way for his fans to get more of a creator they love, and its sort of like a tip bucket for them to give back for any of the video content you may have enjoyed and feel more immersed in the fandom. Why do I say a tip bucket? Well pretty much every single recipe in this book is freely available on his YouTube channel already and done “but better” in video form because the instruction in this book is far inferior to what you get from a video. The very few “new” recipes include things like how to boil an egg, how to make toast with butter and jam (pictured) and how to fry an egg. Not really great value for the purchase price. For most people I would suggest that this is not a good cookbook to buy. Personally this is a painful realization to me because I preordered pretty much the first possible day. You see Joshua has a knack for making some of the most beautiful food you will find on a YouTube video. If you look for all the big YouTube cooks making sour dough bread for instance Joshua’s bread looks better. With nice amber and bronze crust, complete with char marks and nice crumb. If this cookbook was a good path for getting an aspiring cook to that level I’d enthusiastically be singing its praises. Unfortunately this book is more about ego, vanity and flex than it is about actually teaching. When it comes to the teaching part this book is downright lazy. I’ve tried to make his sourdough twice and failed (pictured), and that is based on his videos which offer much better detail than the instruction in this book. In here many of the recipes offer confusing descriptions of what to do but include no photo or diagram to help explain. Like for the sourdough bread when he describes how to shape it I would have no clue if what I was doing was correct using this book alone. It was only by looking at the video that I could understand. Which is the added misery of how lazy this book is. He could have easily linked to his own content with time stamps to show you videos of all of these steps but did not. I suppose the fear is that it would make plain that there is very little new in this book and the instructions on the video are light years better.

The book is based on a promise that it will help build your culinary intuition, and it is possible that this is true. But if it is true, it is likely going to take you on a trip through frustration, disappointment and ‘hard learned’ lessons from mistakes and failures to get you there. Here is an example: There is a section called “lacto—fermented vegetables” where we are supposed to learn how to make flavorful condiments to increase the depth of flavor of your cooking. But the instructions are sort of this generalized 10,000 foot view of the method, coupled with a very technical instruction on salt percentage that somehow gets glossed over at the same time with the caveats like ‘vegetables with more water need more salt’ (only mentioning peppers and cucumbers specifically…and this is the first I’ve thought of as peppers being ‘high water’…so what else is?) and we are advised to ‘just play around with veggie types and fermentation times until you find combinations that turn out well.” Number of specific recipes he provides to demonstrate his method? Zero. Not even one. At least in his “pickle-anything” he provided the one concrete example of dill pickles. That’s the measure of what I consider laziness in this book. It would have taken next to zero effort to crank out 4-5 examples of recipes that are known to work and have a good flavor profile so that a newish cook could have some basis of comparison. So this approach he takes might be a catalyst for improving your intuition, but its going to take a leap of faith to accept the advice of ‘just play around with it enough and you’ll figure it out’ when you bought a cookbook expecting it to teach you.
And honestly its not impossible that that’s not the best path to go to ultimately develop skills…maybe you do have to suffer a bit to learn master level skills. For me the verdict is open. I could imagine being too beholden to recipes that are explicit and well written might make you too reliant on others and circumvent your own thinking and ultimately your own creativity. I just think its discourteous not to give more of a baseline for people to work with if you actually care at all about teaching them.

Structurally the book is kind of weird too, which makes me think the editing and planning could have used a little more effort. Like in the section that’s the big overview of whats included in this book he goes into detail about working bread dough…describing the ‘Rhubaud method’. So I’m thinking wow when I get to the chapter on bread it must have some really detailed instruction on how to work the dough! But when I get to the bread section, and it talks about working the dough there is no instruction…it just links back to the general book overview where you find the technical details of how to work the bread. What?! It also might just be a kindle thing but the labels on the photos are too small to read, you actually have to open the image and zoom in to even see what the text says. God help you if you bought the physical book and its this small. You will need a magnifying glass.

Little things I liked: this book provides both metrics and imperial units. That’s a big win. I like that he often includes guidelines for how long things can be stored and under what conditions. He specifies the brands of flour he uses which could be a big deal in getting good results in the bread section (H-E-B organic, central milling, and Bob’s Red Mill). He gives both conventional and convection settings in recipes.

Little things I did not like: the bread section does not include bakers percentages for scaling recipes, no mention of percent hydration. I find his comedic schtick sophomoric, shallow, and grating. He is proud enough of his ego to flip the reader off in like the second photo in the book, and honestly I think if he could get over his ego he would be both a better cook and a better teacher. He claims this is about building intuition but doesn’t give you a base. Like he gives you an egg pasta recipe and a gnocchi recipe and sends you out to go try making pasta, without telling you there is water based pasta and which types of pasta are best for which shapes and why (google Helen Rennie pasta if you want to learn). I find him rambly, ranty, and disjointed…anything but his stated aim of being ‘thought provoking’… I don’t believe there are many people who don’t know what asparagus looks like. There are plenty of terms he just throws at you without ever explaining. Use a “pinch jar” to weigh down your lacto-fermented veggies? Use a “cast-iron combo cooker” to cook your bread? Where it would take next to no effort to explain, he just doesn’t bother.

I advise against getting this book. I give it 2 stars. I have no doubt Joshua is a brilliant cook and is capable of cooking 5 star food, I just don’t think this book is a way that he is going to teach it to you. It’s my saddest purchase when I consider what it could have been.

Recipes included in this book
STAPLES FROM SCRATCH
pickled anything
lacto-fermented vegetables
simple jams
nut butters
basic stock out of anything
pho broth
dashi
extracted animal fat
unsalted butter
compound butters
mozzarella
ricotta
chèvre
hot sauce
ketchup
pesto sauce
all-purpose barbecue sauce
mayonnaise
jalapeño salsa
flavored mayos
ranch dressing sauce
gribiche
horseradish-chive cream
katsu sauce

BREADS AND STARCHES FROM SCRATCH
sourdough starter
basic sourdough bread
big boy miche
my famous multipurpose dough
burger & sandwich buns
hot dog buns
dinner rolls
grocery store white bread
bagel loaf
cubano bread
fresh pasta
potato gnocchi
buttermilk biscuits
english muffins
flour tortillas
browned butter cornbread
ladyfingers
graham crackers

BREAKFAST
perfect soft-boiled eggs
browned butter–basted fried eggs
breakfast sandwiches
eggs benedict
cinnamon toast
congee
hokkaido milk bread
cinnamon rolls
french toast
ricotta pancakes
salted butter & jam toast
austin breakfast tacos

APPETIZERS AND SNACKS
pretzel sticks
whipped ricotta
garlic dip
cheese board that everyone will eat
smashed patatas bravas
avocado & egg toast

FISH
beer-battered fish
fried fish tacos
grilled branzino
the easiest crispy skin fish
parmesan & nut crusted salmon
maine-style lobster rolls
gravlax smørrebrød

MEAT
the perfect steak
mojo-braised pulled pork
chicken parmesan
chicken katsu
perfect pork chops
chicken breasts that are actually good
restaurant-style duck breasts
mom's chicken fried steak
roasted chicken
mom's pot roast
chashu
chicken nuggets

PASTAS AND SANDWICHES
pesto gnocchi
carbonara
cacio e pepe
cubanos
better than popeyes chicken sandwich
honey butter chicken biscuits
tuna melt allison's heart
the perfect blt grilled cheese
steak sandwiches
smash burgers

VEGETABLES AND SALADS
fried brussels sprouts
charred kale
broccolini with toasted peanuts & chili oil
esquites
the greatest caesar salad of your life
cobb salad
a respectable wedge salad

SOUP
mom's chicken noodle soup
roasted mushroom soup with garlic chantilly cream
french onion soup
beef pho
chicken tortilla soup
shoyu ramen
tomato soup
watermelon gazpacho
egg drop soup

DESSERT
the simplest chocolate cake
sticky buns
key lime pie
banana hot fudge sundae
the ultimate chocolate chip cookie
coffee ice cream
tiramisu
russian tea cakes
strawberry shortcake
peanut butter cookies

First things first... you have to know that I am a huge Joshua Weissman fan. His YouTube videos are great, and have really been a fallback for me when I want to cook something I've never attempted before and still ensure it's delicious. With that being said... I was slightly disappointed with this book.

I'll go over the pros first: 1. The quality is a 10/10 - great color and nice high quality pictures - printed nicely.
2. Easy to read and even easier to tell that Joshua wrote it. Nice humor throughout and it really does feel "unapologetic" at times.
3. Its very basic. I'd garner that most of you can cook anything in this book with what you have in your kitchen at this very moment (equipment wise). No fancy restaurant equipment required.

Cons: Its basic.... yes I know that was also a pro, but this book just feels kind of bland to me on the recipes and the content within. Now let me be honest here, I'm a 24 year old man. I have never in my life owned a cookbook before, so maybe this is just a symptom of my expectations being too high.

All in all I'm glad I bought the book. It's a nice reference to have, and I am happy to support Joshua with my hard earned money. However, I think you could easily just flip on some YouTube videos of his and get a much more pleasurable and stimulating experience than flipping through this cookbook.

As a person who has followed several of josh Weissman’s recipes (hello sourdough) i was very excited for this book to come out! It’s very well made and a beautiful book. They didn’t skimp in the quality when producing it.

Some/most of the recipes have been posted in his website. I don’t mind that there have been some repeats and I’m looking forward to trying the new ones.

There are a couple additions that left me scratching my head, though. There are 2 “recipes” for toast. One is literally “bread and butter with jam”. The instructions reference earlier recipes in the book for jam and say to put it in toast with butter…yeah, i know. Seems like a weird addition to a cookbook as a stand alone recipe. Maybe it would have been better places as a suggestion on the jam recipe

Another recipe for a cheese board names cheeses in the ingredient list and then The instructions are “assemble on board with small knives”. Again, doesn’t seem like a recipe to me.

Lots of great ideas and recipes to try in here and overall I’m really looking forward to it!

I love Joshua Weissman. I got the book as a gift from my teenage son who introduced me to Weissman's videos. I am not sure if my son plans for me to cook him the things in there or if he will take the plunge and try to hold a knife without major accident... :-). Weissman is who is he and his book "sounds" like him. Yes some recipes are basic, but when was the last time you had a toast with home-made jam and home-made bread? Well, I make bread everyday (have not tried Weissman's bread recipe yet - I bet mine is better ;-)). But the fact is that he goes back to basics and the simplicity of his approach is what makes it a great book. I consider myself a pretty darn good cook (have cooked and baked since I was 8 or 9). I make my own bread, cook French, Indian, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cajun... I never buy dressing for salad, and usually just use olive oil, salt, pepper and walnut vinegar (which I buy in France - Can't find it in the US) because I am usually in a rus. But I tried his cobb salad. His dressing recipe is at another level despite simple ingredients. It takes more time than I usually want to devote to home-made dressings, but it was totally worth it. I will paraphrase him saying you cannot rush good things, and his dressing is a good example how you can elevate something as simple as a dressing with simple ingredients. When I am out of my walnut vinegar, his dressing recipe will be my more-labor-intensive go-to recipe. It is the kind of dressing you would see in a restaurant who cares about simple wholesome ingredients and its patrons - but that you can make at home and impress your guests with by following his instructions. The book reminds me of the movie "Ratatouille": Everybody can cook! For people who are scared of cooking (and I feel the new generations are great at... not cooking), you can try to make your own mozzarella or your own pasta. You may fail, but the pride you will get when you succeed! And by mastering Weissman's simple recipes one by one, you will gain confidence and explore more and more. On the other side of the spectrum, an experienced cook like me who has explored a lot when it comes to recipes is still intrigued by Weissman's book and I want to try each and every recipe in there. So either you are a novice or an expert who wonders if Weissman's techniques make sense, you will learn and enjoy the book because it is unassuming and there is something for everyone, master or apprentice. This is what is so great about cooking: you can get great pleasure from going back to basics.

I have been waiting for this cookbook ever since I heard that Joshua was writing one. It is one of the best cookbooks I've ever owned. Each recipe is accompanied by a mouthwatering color picture. There are so many recipes I am dying to make right away. We subscribe to his YouTube vlogs, he has never disappointed us. I highly recommend this book to anyone that wants to make delicious food with fresh ingredients that won't break the bank.
Thank you Joshua for creating a beautiful book!! I only wish that it had your autograph 😀

The book is literally not just a recipe book. Its an extension to Joshua's youtube channel. He has recipes here that vary by levels, from grilled cheese and how to assemble a cheese board to nut butters and beef pho. Its a how to as much as it is a recipe book, which is what his entire brand has been from the beginning. If you are looking for unique recipes, or an alternate version of a food you've heard of, this is Not that book. This book is similar to americas test kitchen. Its to teach you how to cook, and how to make food from scratch. Like his channel, he breaks down the steps and the chapters.
As in comparison to another youtuber (who i will Not name) who i also love and have their recipe book, they seperated the recipes by season and their recipes were mostly their personal take on the original recipe of the dish.
This book is perfect for every level cook, its also perfect for those who wish to know how to make food hard to find in stores, and its perfect for those who just wanted to know how to cook the dish as it was originally intended. Can't wait for the next book.

This book isn't for me, but maybe I'm probably not the target audience. Most of recipes in it are pretty basic; and the ones that I have looked up are already available on his youtube channel in more detail and with more instruction. The youtube videos even have more variations of the recipe in some instances.

I think this book aims more towards entry level cooks wanting to approach scratch made food or a simple cooking project. The book teaches you how to make basics/essentials (bread, butter, jam, biscuits, rolls, condiments, etc.) that are listed in the first section to incorporate in recipes in the following sections. So you'll find slightly elevated versions of recipes that you already know. That all being said, it's particularly triggering when those recipes include "salted butter and jam toast" and "grilled cheese".

I'm really not one for writing reviews, but I came here to write one for this cookbook. Yes I've watched Josh on YouTube, and I am an amateur cook. When I first received this cookbook I found that it held very true to the personality of both Josh himself, and his YouTube style. The recipes focus on simplicity, make from scratch styling, and delicious food with touches of humor. I've made quite a few dishes from this cookbook now (the tomato soup, the burgers, several bread doughs, the breakfast tacos, grilled cheese, etc) and each time I have a ton of fun with it. Not only are the recipes DELICIOUS (god that soup and grilled cheese was fan-freaking-tastic) but it's really fun to crack open a recipe book, find a stunning full color picture of some amazing dish and go "aight imma make that". So not only is it a fun activity, you end up with delicious food when you're done. I just made the English muffins yesterday. I've never made English muffins in my life. So this book is also encouraging me to step outside of my comfort zone. I was really surprised to read a couple of the two star reviews (long winded guy and celiac girl, looking at you) who ragged on him. This cookbook is obviously not for someone who wants to be a pro level chef, and considering the massive bread section you can't rate it on your inability to consume wheat. Or, shocking idea, take the recipe and use gluten free flour and xanthan gum like I did when I made tacos for my celiac mother. Josh has spent years creating amazing YouTube content that he shares for free, and this is a great way to support him. Additionally, it's his first cookbook. Did it occur to no one that he would use this to frame in some basics and then create subsequent cookbooks where he could expand and create more amazing recipes? I'm waiting for people to rag on his next one for not being "basic enough" after they rag on this for being too basic. It's a great book, and you will enjoy it.

TLDR: this cookbook is a perfect choice for an amateur chef who likes to tackle the occasional challenge to take their time creating beautiful and equally delicious food while supporting Josh and appreciating his humor. If that sounds like you, it's a great buy. I look forward to his second book, which I will be purchasing as well.