Start Here
Sohla El-Waylly built a following by explaining the why behind cooking, and this cookbook turns that approach into a full course. Instead of grouping recipes by meal, she organizes the book by technique, with chapters on heat, browning, sauces, butter, and dough that teach the skills underneath good food. More than two hundred recipes sit alongside clear explanations meant to make you a more confident, intuitive cook rather than someone who can only follow steps. It is long and thorough, closer to a teaching text than a coffee-table book, and it earned major awards for exactly that reason.
What you might want to know about Start Here
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
A chef and video host's hefty guide to how cooking actually works, organized by technique rather than by recipe.
Yes. Roxane Gay chose it as the January 2024 pick for The Audacious Book Club.
It works for beginners and experienced cooks alike. It is organized around technique, so it teaches the fundamentals while going deep enough to challenge confident cooks.
Start Here was written by Sohla El-Waylly, published in 2023 by Knopf.
Start Here is 656 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Start Here takes most readers 10 to 14 hours to finish.
Start Here is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
