WRITING
I think this is what Thug Kitchen is most famous for – using an enormous amount of curse words. You probably can find a swear word in every 3 sentences. I personally don’t mind it. In fact, it kinda makes the reading part fun. It feels like you’re in a college cafeteria and overheard a funny guy complaining food with his friends. Despite the curse words, their writing is pretty persuasive, in a good way to convince people eat like you give a f*ck.
HOWEVER, when you’re actually making a recipe, the curse words become annoying, especially if it’s a long recipe. You have to mentally filter them all and find the actual step among all the swear words.
Design
The cookbook is well-organized. You can easily locate a recipe. Function-wise, it gets a solid A. Visual-wise, no so much. Some photos are quite unappealing, as for a cookbook. Rather than professional food photography you see on most cookbooks, the photos on Thug Kitchen Cookbook feel like they’re taken by a phone in a really dark home kitchen. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. The whole cookbook is telling you eating real healthy food doesn’t need to be hard or expansive, so the photos fit the vibe. I personally just prefer to see more beautiful photos in a cookbook.
Accessibility
One reason why Thug Kitchen Cookbook is so popular is the accessibility. Almost all the ingredients you see in the book are common pantry staples. They believe eating real healthy food can be cheap, so there aren’t any fancy ingredients involved. Simple ingredients and easy directions let anyone (even you’ve never cooked before) master Thug Kitchen Cookbook effortlessly.
Usefulness
Depending on your culinary skill, this cookbook can be either extremely helpful or useless. It’s like a cookbook 101 for people who are new to cooking. Before all the recipes, they talk very specifically about basic kitchen tools, pantry staples and how to cook grains. I like their occasional dropping knowledge and basic shit sections throughout the cookbook, which makes you feel you’ve actually learned something besides a bunch of curse words. If you’re a professional chef or a cooking pro, you probably wouldn’t learn anything exciting from this cookbook.
Taste
So far, I’ve tested 11 recipes from Thug Kitchen Cookbook.
Recipes I like and will make again:
Tofu Scramble Tacos – it’s one of the longer recipes and I was annoyed by how many curse words in the directions. A little skeptical at first, but it actually tasted really good. I’m not the biggest taco fan, but the tofu scramble tastes so good even in salads!
Maple-Oat Banana Bread – I have a dedicate blog post about it! It’s one of my go-to recipe if I have sad bananas. (Fun fact, this picture is also my most popular Pin on Pinterest! => People search Thug Kitchen Banana Bread recipe more often than you thought🤔)
Recipes are just so-so:
Creamy Peanut Slaw
Lemony Red Lentil Soup
Spicy Pickled Carrots
Carrot Cake Cookies
Cornmeal Waffles with Strawberry Syrup
Recipes I don’t like:
Oat Flour Griddle Cakes with Blueberry Sauce
Blueberry Sauce
Creamy Horchata
Coconut Cornmeal Cake
Just like I mentioned, this cookbook is a basic beginner cookbook, so everything kind of taste bland. I’m usually pretty forgiving when comes to recipes. If the outcome does not taste good, I will just add my own twist. That’s what I did for “Recipes are just so-so”. Recipes I don’t like? I tried really hard to save them but ended up throwing them away. Only 2 out of the 11 tested recipes I liked. Even most recipes are easily accessible to make, I don’t “trust” the cookbook’s taste any more to make other recipes.
Highlights
- Light and interesting read
- Detailed basic cooking 101 information
- Recipes are very accessible and only use pantry staple ingredients
- Easy to make
- Good variations of food to choose from
Recommend?
In most cases, probably not. However, if you have friends who have never cooked before and want to get into the habit of home cooking, this book can be a good start. The unique writing style will not bore them like other professional cookbooks. Plus, there is a good amount of basic cooking knowledge and the recipes are easy to make. Otherwise, skip it and save your bookshelf space for more valuable cookbooks.
Share this post, Leave a comment below or tag #hercookbookclub on Instagram! I’d love to hear your thoughts about Thug Kitchen Cookbook and any other recommendations
Next up, Momofuku Milk Bar!
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