Joy of Cooking

[Pinga]

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IMO, you cannot learn how to cook simply by reading a book. But books are great places to start.

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I learned how to cook from books. I own JoC and have made many things from it.

Everyone screws up sometimes, but the cookbooks lay out the how-to about as well as you could ask for.

I never went wrong as long as I followed the directions.

My best cooking tip for a newbie is to use measuring spoons. Teaspoon doesn't mean grab a teaspoon out of the silverware drawer.

[Pinga]

I just re-read your post.

Are you talking mostly your meat dishes?

One way of keeping meat moist and tender is to cook it in an enclosed pan. Reynolds sells foil bags. The downside is everything comes out like a roast - this isn't for a nice steak.

Buy a big pork loin. Put it in a foil bag and add a whole bottle of italian dressing. Put it in a 400 degree oven for 45 minutes - 1 hour. Turn down the heat to 225. Leave it in there for a long time (1.5+ hours). Take it out and dump most of the liquid. Put it back in (.5 hours). Turn up the heat to 400 again. Wait until the oven gets hot (10-20 min), turn it back down to 200.

Serve whenever you want. The meat falls apart and is very strong in flavor.

This works good with chicken, too. Adjust the time on high/low/high with the oven depending on how much meat there is.

You can use other marinades. It also works good with Jack Daniels. Mix up some Jack and applesauce and try it. JD pork rocks!