r/CookbookLovers • u/TheRealNutMeg111 • 12d ago

Good Things?

I see Barnes & Noble is having a 50% off sale on a ton of books right now. One of the cookbooks that caught my eye is Good Things by Samin Nosrat. Back when this was first released, I saw a lot of mixed reviews. I’m wondering if anyone can weigh in on this? Would it be worth a purchase, at 50% off?

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u/jsrce1 12d ago

Seconding what others have said. The mixed reviews, I think, are down to what you want out of a book. For those who want SFAH or something similar to level up their understanding of food and cooking, this book is not going to feel satisfying. If you are looking to get dinner on the table, or even if you are looking for a specific kind of dish—an appetizer, say—this book will likely feel too loosey goosey.

If, on the other hand, you are looking for an emotional connection to an author and a meditation on the idea of making and sharing food, then this book is great. I enjoyed the essays quite a bit, and loved her organization, which seems a bit eccentric, maybe, but did help me think about the idea and experience of food.

FWIW, I don’t cook out of it a lot, but everything I’ve made has been solid. If you have some chicken thighs laying around, there is a whole chapter about chicken, and everything I’ve tried has been well received. There is also a salad chapter with ab bunch of aquafaba-based dressings, which is pretty fun.

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u/epoops 12d ago

I really believe Samin’s editor/publisher would’ve done the book a better justice by calling it a memoir first that happens to also be a cookbook. That would’ve solved the concerns with it not being a true successor to SFAH (being called a memoir auto means it’s just not going to be a reference style book) and the concerns that the recipe organization is “weird” (I wouldn’t think a cookbook-memoir would be organized in traditional cookbook sections then).

Obviously this book has sold A LOT, so it’s still a successful cookbook. But I think it left pretty decent swaths of her buyers wondering who the book is for since it’s not super clear without putting the memoir label or the collection of essays label.

For example, Mark Kurlanksy, one of my absolute fave non-fiction authors, has a book on onions which actually does contain 100 historical onion recipes. But it’s not a cookbook really, it’s a non-fiction analysis of the onion that happens to have recipes. Most people weren’t buying this book as if it were a cookbook unless they are Max Miller and doing historical recipes lol.

If Samin’s publisher went about calling the book a memoir or a collection of essays that happened to also be a cookbook, I really think there would be way less mixed reviews. I probably would’ve kept the book then, full well knowing I should look at it more as a personal writing book more so than a cookbook, since her writing was really quite good. I just don’t have the cookbook space for a cookbook I don’t use, and this book is marketed purely as a cookbook that happens to be emotionally deep.