Secrets of the Best Chefs: Recipes, Techniques, and Tricks from America's Greatest Cooks

Learn to cook from the best chefs in America.

Some people say you can only learn to cook by doing. So Adam Roberts, creator of the award-winning blog The Amateur Gourmet, set out to cook in 50 of America's best kitchens to figure out how any average Joe or Jane can cook like a seasoned pro. From Alice Waters's garden to José Andrés's home kitchen, it was a journey peppered with rock-star chefs and dedicated home cooks unified by a common passion, one that Roberts understands deeply and transfers to the reader with flair, thoughtfulness, and good humor: a love and appreciation of cooking.

The culmination of that journey is a cookbook filled with lessons, tips, and tricks from the most admired chefs in America, including how to properly dress a salad, bake a no-fail piecrust, make light and airy pasta, and stir-fry in a wok, plus how to improve your knife skills, eliminate wasteful food practices, and create recipes of your very own. Most important, Roberts has adapted 150 of the chefs' signature recipes into totally doable dishes for the home cook. Now anyone can learn to cook like a pro!

"Roberts, better known as the Amateur Gourmet blogger, showcases 50 of the chefs he's encountered throughout the years, both professional and home cooks, and recounts their culinary journeys and favorite recipes to inspire readers to cook at home. A who's who of the food world, participants include Barbuto's Jonathan Waxman, Alice Waters of Chez Panisse, noted TV personality and restaurateur Lidia Bastianich, La Brea Bakery's Nancy Silverton, and Sara Moulton, famed TV host and cookbook author. Among these legendary cooks we find culinary gems such as Tim Artz, who makes his own honey, mead, and soap (from rendered beef fat), not to mention growing everything from figs and Meyer lemons to kaffir lime leaves. Angelish Wilson, chef-owner of Wilson's Soul Food, offers food that radiates the warmth and comfort you'd expect from a Southern soul food restaurant, from vegetarian collard greens and chow chow to glorious fried chicken and fresh pecan pie. Melissa Clark, cookbook author and New York Times food columnist, shares her seared duck breast with garam masala and grapes, while Top Chef winner Harold Dieterle offers up chicken with rosemary and fennel and balsamic-braised radicchio. While some of these dishes may seem beyond the reach of amateur home cooks, Roberts argues just the opposite. As a self-taught cook, he aims to inspire confidence in the kitchen and encourage home cooks to expand their culinary horizons. No one could ask for a better group of instructors." Publishers Weekly Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Adam Roberts is the creator of The Amateur Gourmet, called one of the "World's Best Food Blogs" by The Times of London and a "food world must-read" by The Denver Post. Since he began his blog in 2004, Roberts has been featured on CNN and hosted several shows for Food Network online, and in addition to writing his own blog, he writes for Food & Wine, Salon, Serious Eats, The Huffington Post, and Epicurious. He is currently discovering places to eat in his new hometown: Los Angeles, California.