Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat
Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking
Samin Nosrat
“There are only four basic factors that determine how good your food will taste: salt, which enhances flavor; fat, which amplifies flavor and makes appealing textures possible; acid, which brightens and balances; and heat, which ultimately determines the texture of food”
Available as Hardback, eBook, Downloadable audio
A beautifully illustrated New York Times bestseller that distils decades of professional experience into just four simple elements - and will set you free from recipes forever.
Now a major Netflix documentary
A Sunday Times Food Book of the Year and a New York Times bestseller
Winner of the Fortnum & Mason Best Debut Food Book 2018
While cooking at Chez Panisse at the start of her career, Samin Nosrat noticed that amid the chaos of the kitchen there were four key principles that her fellow chefs would always fall back on to make their food better: Salt, Fat, Acid and Heat.
By mastering these four variables, Samin found the confidence to trust her instincts in the kitchen and cook delicious meals with any ingredients. And with her simple but revolutionary method, she has taught masterclasses to give both professionals and amateurs the skills to cook instinctively.
Whether you want to balance your vinaigrette, perfectly caramelise your roasted vegetables or braise meltingly tender stews, Samin’s canon of 100 essential recipes and their dozens of variations will teach you how.
“Quite simply an essential book … a masterpiece”
Nigella Lawson
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“I have become slightly obsessed … revolutionary in its simplicity”
Yotam Ottolenghi
“This beautiful, approachable book captures how it should feel to cook: full of exploration, spontaneity and joy”
Alice Waters
“An exhaustively researched treatise on the four pillars of successful cooking. If you can train yourself to recognize the proper balance between salt, fat and acid, then apply the right kind of heat, you’ll churn out simple, sophisticated fare in the spirit of Berkeley’s Chez Panisse, where Nosrat started out”
new York Times
“Funny and beautifully illustrated, this book will change the way you cook”
bbc Good Food
Samin Nosrat
Samin Nosrat is a writer, teacher, and chef. She’s been cooking professionally since 2000, when she first stumbled into the kitchen at Chez Panisse restaurant. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Bon Appétit, and the Guardian. Samin lives in Berkeley, California. Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat is her first book. www.ciaosamin.com @CiaoSamin
Wendy MacNaughton is a New York Times-bestselling illustrator and graphic journalist whose books include Meanwhile in San Francisco (Chronicle) and Knives & Ink (Bloomsbury). She lives in San Francisco with her partner, several four-legged animals, and a well-used kitchen, thanks to Samin. www.wendymacnaughton.com @wendymac
Samin Nosrat is on the 2019 Time 100 list
“She wins you over immediately with an irresistible combination of warmth, honesty, deep understanding of cooking and that ebullient laugh of hers. If anyone can show us how to cook, it is Samin.”
Alice Waters has written about Samin Nosrat and the wonders of Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat for Time’s list of their 100 most influential people.
Alice Waters
Time
Samin Nosrat’s Sensual, Compassionate Food Travels in Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat
The New Yorker writes about the wonder that is Samin Nosrat, and her indespensible cookbook Salt, Fat, Acid Heat:
“Authoritative but not despotic, aspirational but still realistic, and endlessly witty, the book invites us to liberate ourselves from the bondage of recipes, and instead to practice a form of cooking that is informed and intuitive, based on her theory of balance. (There are still very good recipes in the book; try the buttermilk-roasted chicken.) Now Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat is a hit documentary series on Netflix. Each of its four episodes is dedicated to both an element—‘Fat is a miracle,’ Nosrat says, in the first episode—and a region of the world. Plenty of amateur gourmands, myself included, were already Nosrat fans, but the enthusiasm with which the Netflix show has been received has to do with Nosrat’s uncommon earnestness on camera. It is disarming, and then relieving, to watch someone pledge to her life’s work such unmitigated love.”
New Yorker
Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat – the wonderful Samin Nosrat’s Sunday Times Food Book of the Year – is coming to Netflix! Here’s the official trailer: look out for it on 11 October.
Samin Nosrat introduces her new book Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking. “I have become slightly obsessed… revolutionary in its simplicity” Yotam Ottolenghi
