Kenji Lopez (MIT grad chef who is reasonably famous on YouTube and for writing for Serious Eats for years and for writing this amazing cookbook https://www.amazon.com/Food-Lab-Cooking-Through-Science/dp/0...) gives the exact opposite advice of this blog for salt where he recommends using large flake salt for finishing and "table salt" for cooking.

Kenji is wonderful. The Food Lab (https://www.amazon.com/Food-Lab-Cooking-Through-Science/dp/0...) is still the first cookbook I turn to when investigating a recipe I haven't made before. His blog on Serious Eats has been amazing through the years - his advice on sous vide in particular is as good as anyone I've found, but all of his advice is solid.

If you're ever in the Bay Area, his Wursthall restaraunt is well worth a visit. I don't live there but I make it a point to visit at least once a year when travelling.

Cooking is one of my favorite activities that I'm actually decent at. One "cooking sin" that I do is that I don't taste my food throughout cooking. The general feedback on my cooking has been positive.

When I try and cook new dishes, I do it by theme. The theme can be:

* Ingredients (eggs, poultry, grains, tomatoes)

* Courses (breakfast [eggs, pancakes from scratch], dinner, desserts [flan, custard]

* Execution (baking, sauté, oven)

* Cuisine (Mexican, Thai, French, Puertorican)

You will easily overlap the themes the more you cook, the themes are a starting point.

Two of my favorite books that the audience here might appreciate are The Food lab[0] and Cooking for Geeks[1].

* [0]: https://www.amazon.com/Food-Lab-Cooking-Through-Science-eboo...

* [1]: https://www.amazon.com/Cooking-Geeks-Science-Great-Hacks/dp/...

These two books have nothing but good recipes. The Food Lab also explains why to cook something a certain way. My food is so much better after buying these two books.

https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Americas-Test-Kitchen-Cookbo...

https://www.amazon.com/Food-Lab-Cooking-Through-Science/dp/0...

Tangentially, I recently bought Kenji's new book [1], and my friends and I have been having tremendous fun reading through and trying out the recipes therein. Kenji's empirical approach and attention to the science behind cooking (not to mention sassy writing) really appeals to our inner geeks.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Food-Lab-Cooking-Through/dp/039308...