Cookbooks
How to Cook - Building Blocks and 100 Simple Recipes for a Lifetime of meals: A Cookbook
An empowering collection of delicious, practical recipes that will teach young adults and kitchen novices all the skills they need to cook for themselves—from a James Beard Award-winning chef and author.
Acclaimed chef, TV, star, and dedicated father Hugh Acheson taught his teenage daughters that cooking is an essential life skill. But he also knew that people don’t need to cook like a chef to feed themselves and their friends. Really, they only need to learn a handful of skills to enjoy a lifetime of cooking.
So, in How to Cook, Hugh distills the cooking lessons that everyone should master into twenty-five basic building blocks: easy-to-grasp recipes that can turn anyone, young or old, into a confident home cook. Each of these recipes teaches a fundamental skill, such as roasting or whisking together a classic vinaigrette, and each stands alone as a stellar back-pocket basic. After laying the groundwork, Hugh then offers recipes that expand on these foundations, whether it’s remixing the flavors of one of the basic recipes, or combining a couple of them, to show you how you can produce a lifetime’s worth of dishes.
This is the book Hugh is going to give his kids as they head off to college, knowing that they’ll be prepared to feed themselves for the rest of their lives.
Sous Vide: Better Home Cooking
Photographs by Andrew Thomas Lee
Just as Hugh Acheson brought a chef's mind to the slow cooker in The Chef and the Slow Cooker, so he brings a home cook's perspective to sous vide, with 90 recipes that demystify the technology for readers and unlock all of its potential.
Whether he’s working with fire and a pan, your grandpa’s slow cooker, or a cutting-edge sous vide setup, Hugh Acheson wants to make your cooking life easier, more fun, and more delicious. And while cooking sous vide—a method where food is sealed in plastic bags or glass jars, then cooked in a precise, temperature-controlled water bath—used to be for chefs in high-end restaurants, Hugh is here to help home cooks bring this rather friendly piece of technology into their kitchens.
The beauty of sous vide is its ease and consistency—it can cook a steak medium-rare, or a piece of fish to tender, just-doneness every single time . . . and hold it there until you're ready to eat, whether dinner is in ten minutes or eight hours away. But to unlock the method’s creative secrets, Hugh shows you how to get the best sear on that steak after it comes out of the bath, demonstrates which dishes play best with extra-long, extra-slow cooking, and opens up the whole world of vegetables to a technology most known for cooking meat and fish.
THE CHEF and THE SLOW COOKER (2017)
Photographs by Andrew Thomas Lee
ABOUT THE CHEF AND THE SLOW COOKER
Hugh Acheson brings a chef’s mind to the slow cooker, with 100 recipes showing readers how an appliance generally relegated to convenience cooking can open up many culinary doors. Hugh celebrates America’s old countertop stalwart with fresh, convenient slow cooker recipes with a chef’s twist, dishes like brisket with soy, orange, ginger, and star anise, or pork shoulder braised in milk with fennel and raisins. But where it gets really fun is when Hugh shows what a slow cooker can really do, things like poaching and holding eggs at the perfect temperature for your brunch party, or for making easy duck confit, or for the simplest stocks and richest overnight ramen broth. There’s even a section of jams, preserves, and desserts, so your slow cooker can be your BFF in the kitchen morning, noon, and night.
THE BROAD FORK: Recipes for the Wide World of Vegetables and Fruits (2015)
Photographs by Rinne Allen
ABOUT THE BROAD FORK
Photographs by Rinne Allen
ABOUT PICK A PICKLE
From Hugh Acheson’s Southern kitchen, a swatchbook containing 50 tangy pickle, condiment, relish, and fermented recipes, to put up seasonal produce and fill the pantry.
Simply fan out the pages for recipes including: Classic Bread ‘n’ Butter Pickles, Icebox Dill Pickles, Pickled Peaches, Classic Chow Chow, Green Tomoato Relish, Classic Cabbage Kimchi, and more!
A NEW TURN IN THE SOUTH: Southern Flavors Reinvented for Your Kitchen (2011)
Photographs by Rinne Allen
Foreward by Bertis Downs
ABOUT A NEW TURN IN THE SOUTH
When Hugh Acheson (now a James Beard Award winner as a chef and author) moved from Ottowa to Georgia, who knew that he would woo his adopted home state and they would embrace him as one of their own?
In 2000, following French culinary training on both coasts, Hugh opened Five and Ten in Athens, a college town known for R.E.M., and the restaurant became a spotlight for his exciting interpretation of traditional Southern fare. Five and Ten became a favorite local haunt as well as a destination—Food & Wine named Hugh a “Best New Chef” and at seventy miles away, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution named Five and Ten the best restaurant in Atlanta. Then came the five consecutive James Beard nominations.
Now, after opening two more restaurants and a wine shop, Hugh is ready to share 120 recipes of his eclectic, bold, and sophisticated flavors, inspired by fresh ingredients. In A New Turn in the South, you’ll find libations, seasonal vegetables that take a prominent role, salads and soups, his prized sides, and fish and meats—all of which turn Southern food on its head every step of the way. Hugh’s recipes include: Oysters on the Half Shell with Cane Vinegar and Chopped Mint Sauce, shucked and left in their bottom shells; Chanterelles on Toast with Mushrooms that soak up the flavor of rosemary, thyme, and lemon; Braised and Crisped Pork Belly with Citrus Salad—succulent and inexpensive, but lavish; Yellow Grits with Sautéed Shiitakes, Fried Eggs, and Salsa Rossa—a stunning versatile condiment; Fried Chicken with Stewed Pickled Green Tomatoes—his daughters’ favorite dish; and Lemon Chess Pies with Blackberry Compote—his go-to classic Southern pie with seasonal accompaniment.
With surprising photography full of Hugh’s personality, and pages layered with his own quirky writing and sketches, he invites you into his community and his innovative world of food—to add new favorites to your repertoire.