The Kitchen Pantry Cookbook: Make Your Own Condiments and Essentials – Tastier, Healthier, Fresh Mayonnaise, Ketchup, Mustard, Peanut Butter, Salad Dressing, Chicken Stock, Chips and Dips, and More!

If you enjoy cooking time in your kitchen, making your own version of many common commercial items in your pantry and refrigerator will likely improve the flavor and nutritional value of your meals. Erin Coopey’s The Kitchen Pantry Cookbook is an excellent addition to your cookbook shelf, even if your collection is nearly overflowing. This beautifully produced trade paperback is filled with useful recipes and information. Her preparations reduce salt and sugar and eliminate preservatives, additives and high-fructose corn syrup. She has an enormous collection in this cookbook: condiments of all sorts like mustards, ketchup, mayonnaises and many often-used sauces, seed and nut butters, curds, twenty salad dressings, stocks, relishes, chips and dips. Many are easy to prepare, but some are time-consuming (like Worcestershire sauce having nineteen ingredients). Most of the recipes are within easy reach of the average home cook who enjoys puttering in the kitchen and ingredients are mostly readily available. Layout is very good, keeping each recipe to its page, and instructions are clear. In addition Coopey includes numerous useful sidebars (How to make a garlic purée; food mill versus food processor; ketchup vs. catsup). The photo illustrations are excellent and so is the well cross referenced index.